If there was one country that I wanted to go back to – and this time with my mom – it’d be Cambodia. My mom is very much into history, especially those related to humanity so I decided it had to be Cambodia. It was more like a family trip this time – with two of my eldest siblings tagging along.
So I traced back the route that I took when I went to Cambodia for the first time back in 2011. I touched down at Phnom Penh, took a bus to Siem Reap and returned to KL from there.
We stayed at a hotel called Pandan Boutique Hotel right in the middle of Phnom Penh. I didn’t really like the location but it was located in a rather quite area of the city, surrounded by other hotels and posh apartments and I did see good restaurants within the vicinity but they were more like for the tourists so I didn’t go to any of them. The hotel was good and the hospitality was superb despite the fact that most of the staff looked very young as if they have just finished secondary school or something. Priced at some USD38 per night on Agoda, the room was quite comfortable, spotlessly clean and very spacious. I couldn’t really ask for more.
My sister is an avid traveler – or rather a tourist – because she is more into tour packages so she was very excited about joining me and having her very first taste of traveling without subjecting herself to a tight schedule and restricted movement offered in tour packages. In fact she was the one who was so eager to taste just about every weird food that we came upon on the streets of Phnom Penh and later in Siem Reap.
My brother is a house builder – and in almost total contrast to me – is one of the handiest persons that I’ve ever known. So coming to Cambodia really made him excited especially for the fact that Cambodians are famous for their craftsmanship that traverses back to the time when the Angkor Wat was built. He was so amused when he first saw a Tuk Tuk outside of Phnom Penh international Airport that he actually took photos from just about every angle of the 3-tyered vehicle. “I could make this back in Sabah” he said confidently. Knowing him all my life, I actually believed him.
Phnom Penh really has changed a lot from the last time I went there. There seems to be more people and the number of vehicles seems to have doubled and it is much more busy and noisy and bustling now. It is so difficult to cross a road during peak hour that there were times when we were left stranded on the side of the road so we had to ask any of the policemen that we saw around to take us over to the other side of the road. The traffic really can be so scary and very intimidating.
The Independence Monument
Of course, traveling with mom on a Sunday means I had the extra chore of finding a church that we could attend before anything else. After a lil bit of googling, I managed to locate St Joseph’s Catholic Church on the east part of Phnom Penh. The church looks very much dilapidated from the outside and it was actually quite nice and well-maintained on the inside.
The church compound is a combination of a beautiful school building of European architecture (probably Dutch) and probably built during the colonial time. Co-joining the school building itself is the church where the local mass is held. I was there just in time to see how the mass was performed in Khmer (national language of Cambodia) and I couldn’t help but seeing a significant influence of Buddhism even in its decoration. They even had incense sticks placed at the altar – the kind that they burn at temples.
Mom at the entrance to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Phnom Penh
The English mass that we attended was not performed there but at another building which was more like a rundown half-concrete and half-wooden 3-storey. I could only assume that the reason why the local mass is performed at a different building is the need to take off shoes which is not a necessity when attending the English mass – and probably the exclusion of those Buddhism-influenced deco and rites.
So, after having lunch at one of the restaurants that overlooks the mighty Mekong River, we dared the blazing hot sun and the dusty air of Phnom Penh to go to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. I found it quite difficult to explain about the genocide to them in the beginning due to its complexity so I just led them to the tour according to the numbering provided on the brochure.
I later found it wasn’t quite a smart move because they wouldn’t see anything interesting in those empty rooms without really knowing what exactly happened in those rooms during the genocide. I should have brought them to those rooms with those exhibited photos and illustrative paintings to fastidate their understanding of what really took place right there during what is considered one of the worse genocides in the modern era.
Just as I was, they seemed to be so much disturbed by the mug shots of those who were cruelly prosecuted at the Tuol Sleng. My mother was especially affected by the mug shots of children who were killed in the name of ambition and power. She couldn’t help but thinking of her grands. She couldn’t imagine if some of those in the photos were actually her grands. By the time we made it out of the compound again, they were all quite, probably trying to chew in whatever that they had learned from that rather brief but very eye-opening tour.
Then from Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, we headed out of the city towards the Killing Field where most of the mass prosecution had to be carried out during the night when the number of prisoners at the Tuol Sleng was too big for them to handle. That was when all of a sudden a very heavy downpour suddenly took over from what appeared to be a very hot day earlier.
It was so heavy that it felt almost like a thunderstorm but the Tuk Tuk driver seemed so adamant about pushing on. In fact he kept assuring us that it was very normal – which was actually evidenced by the fact that vehicles were still galloping by – but then it was the ladies who couldn’t take it any longer. I had to ask the driver to stop and he stopped at a marble slab manufacturer where we took cover behind a parked car. It really was a raging rain.
Brrrr!
We continued over to the Killing Field when the rain slowed down and it was still drizzling when we reached the gate. The most significant improvement at least through the eyes (or rather ears) of a Malaysian like me is the availability of audio guide in Malay. My mom and siblings seemed so immersed in the audio as we traversed along the path of the tour across the killing site that in the past had witnessed some of the darkest history that the world has ever seen – or rather not seen since what happened in Cambodia during the genocide where 3 million Cambodians were killed within a very short span of 3 years was largely unknown to the outside world.
By the time we arrived at the last stop of the tour – which was the multi-level racks where dozens of dug-out skulls of those who were prosecuted at the killing field were placed in – my mom seemed quite so stressed out, and angry especially for the fact that Pol Pot – the man who was responsible for the genocide had never been prosecuted and actually died a happy man (and with a young wife) at 90.
“God will punish him anyway” she said, in a very church-ly way.
“I don’t think they were smart enough. 3 million people could fight back if they were smart (enough)” said my brother when I told him how Pol Pot targeted the intellectual Cambodians who he thought could pose a threat to his ambition.
Needless to say, the genocide became our topic of conversation for much of the rest of the day.
We ended our tour in Phnom Penh by going to the Central Market – something that I didn’t get to do when I came to Phnom Penh 3 years ago. They were jumping in excitement as they discovered more and more things at the market. Of course what made them really go wow was the sight of exotic food, especially the fried tarantula. I bought a stack, supposedly one tarantula for each of us but I ended up being the only one who didn’t eat. Huhu.
Shopping started quite early especially for my sister who was all over to buy whatever she thought was interesting enough to buy. She only stopped when I assured her that there’d be more to buy in Siem Reap. I mean, we had a bus to catch anyway.
It would be our last day in Phnom Penh and we returned to the hotel to prepare for our bus trip to Siem Reap. A van came to pick us up at the hotel about an hour before the departure time at 12.30pm. BY the time we pulled out of Phnom Penh, it was almost 1pm. My sister kept saying how her wish to see the Angkor Wat in real since she was 17-years-old would finally be fulfilled.
I mean, there’s always something so exciting about fulfilling a dream and wish even though it is not even ours.
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