The most depressing Walkabout post yet!

I hired a Tuk tuk to take me out to the killing fields. A Tuk tuk is standard motorcycle hooked up to tow a two-wheeled passenger compartment. It is a descendent of the rickshaw and a good way to go shorter distances in crowded Asian streets. The name comes from the “tuk tuk tuk…” of a two stroke engine. They are common in Thailand, and here in Phnom Penn where there are few cars and taxis they are essential transportation. There were six Tuk tuks waiting outside my hotel in hopes of a fare. In a spirit of charity I chose a shabby one with an even shabbier driver, elderly and twitching, and offered $12 for the 3 hour round trip. The driver was thrilled, but apologized that he would need a $1 advance to buy gasoline for the trip. He used some of the dollar to buy me a paper face mask to protect against the dust and gravel that passes for roads in today’s Cambodia.

Half way down the 15 kilometer road it became clear there was a problem. The engine sound became more of a “…tuk……tuk……tuk” and we slowed to a crawl. The driver pretended nothing was wrong as he tried to eek enough out of the machine to finish the trip. He clearly was terrified I would bail out and he would lose his fare. I helped by getting out to push it up several hills. When we finally reached the killing fields I left him tinkering frantically with the engine while I looked for a fellow tourist to beg a ride back. When I told my driver I wouldn’t be going back with him, but gave him the remaining $11 anyway, he practically hugged me.

Phnom Penh is a sad little city and capital of a sad little country. It is still very much defined by the killing fields I was visiting; one of hundreds of similar sites of Pol Pot’s genocide of the 1970s. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces came to power in 1975 he ordered Phnom Penh's two million inhabitants into the countryside. The shopkeepers, professionals, old and young spent the next several years trying to grow enough rice to avert starvation. Anyone suspected of subversive acts or thought was sent to a torture prison and ended up in a mass grave in one of the killing fields. The ultimate death toll may have been as high as three million people.

Perhaps it’s a function of my age, but the whole Cambodian tragedy looms large in my psyche. I vividly remember seeing it on the news, reading about it in the daily paper, and being moved by Sydney Schanberg’s reporting in the New York Times and his later book and movie. Perhaps at that point, in my early 20s, I was still idealistic enough to be surprised, shocked, and horrified that despite vows of “never again” the world was sitting idly by watching the deaths of millions of innocents. Since then we’ve seen genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere, and I have to admit that I’ve pretty much stopped paying attention. I didn’t go to Cambodia to dredge this up. Like everyone else I came to visit the temples of Angkor Wat. But once here I was compelled to take a look.

And while the Cambodian genocide happened 30 years ago, in Phnom Penh the legacy is still all around, and the city feels like a place where a war has just ended. Phnom Penh was once known as the “Pearl of Asia” – the loveliest of French colonial cities. Its pleasant boulevards were lined with shade trees and bougainvillea, Buddhist temples, sidewalk cafes, elegant restaurants, and an occasional opium den to spice things up. It is still possible to imagine what the city must have been like back then. Some of the pieces are still there in a sunny park or graceful colonial façade. But the stronger sense is of a place neglected, crumbling and irreparably broken. Damaged structures are everywhere, as are damaged people missing limbs from combat or land mines. There has been no resolution. No trial of the perpetrators has ever taken place, though there is finally movement in that direction for those still alive. Some of the torturers live freely, and prosperously, here in the city. The government includes former Khmer Rouge and is notoriously corrupt. Its ministries are surrounded by armed guards and rusting barbed wire. Though there is a good deal of foreign aid, much of it is misdirected and ineffective.

Yes, there are signs of new life. Some buildings are being repaired and many small shops are open. And perhaps I am being too bleak. But it seems more like desperation than vitality. I never got my Tuk tuk driver’s story; he didn’t speak enough English and the volume of a Tuk tuk isn’t conducive to conversation. But he was undoubtedly a victim, one way or another, of his country’s wars and its barren peace. I wonder whether as we were driving to the killing fields he was thinking of his friends and relatives who must certainly lie interred there. Or was he only wondering whether he would earn enough to eat that night and repair his Tuk tuk to start again tomorrow.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave