Top: Asia’s ghosts in pictures : A deadly reminder of what humans are capable of.
Bottom: A Cambodian Buddhist monk looks at a painting depicting torture at a former Khmer Rouge prison, known as S-21, at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, in Phnom Penh.
AP
June 29 2011
By Yasmin Palani
IOL, South Africa
In the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, as you wander the sites of mass graves, you see a clear glass box, filled with bones and teeth.
The sign on the box says: “When walking among the graves, if you see any bones lying around please put it into this glass box.”
When it rains, more bones get revealed.
Reading about it or seeing flashes of it on a television screen still doesn’t prepare you for a walk through the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
The numbers are so immense they lose all their power from far away: 3 million Cambodians died between 1975 to 1979 under the genocidal reign of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge madmen. Two million were slaughtered by Pol Pot’s soldiers and another million died from starvation.
In the Killing Fields museum, in the capital Phnom Penh, the sheer horror hits you right in the face. As you enter, you are confronted by a massive glass-walled shrine which contains more than 9 000 human skulls.
The conversation is bludgeoned out of visitors as the reality sinks in. These were real people, with real dreams, real aspirations, real brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers and children. Now their skulls – some with the marks of brutal assaults – bear silent, accusing witness to the depravity of which human beings are capable.
I was stunned. There were no words. Even the feelings, of horror, of shame, of sadness and anger, were impossible to articulate as I walked around that shrine. I said a silent prayer.
And I thought about how we, here in Africa, have been through that too. I hoped the people of Rwanda would never forget their terrible genocide.
Pol Pot was driven by a vision of a glorious Communist peasant farming society – and those who didn’t share that belief were either killed or “re-educated”. Three decades ago, Phnom Penh was a ghost town – literally and figuratively. Hundreds of thousands were murdered there and the rest fled.
Today things are returning to normal: the city is a throbbing hub in a vibrant part of the world, south-east Asia. But the past will not be forgotten. It may be some sort of macabre tourist attraction to outsiders, but to Cambodians the Killing Fields remind them: never again.
The 9 000 skulls were only a portion of those exhumed from the mass graves which litter the Cambodian countryside. We walked to some of the graves that had been dug up.
We were shown a tree where Pol Pot’s soldiers hung huge speakers with loud music which played as they tortured people. They also bashed babies’ heads against the tree to kill them. The idea was that other farmers in the area would only hear the loud music – not the last sounds of the dying.
Children who joined the Khmer Rouge were brainwashed into hating others and distrusting their parents and family, inevitably killing them.
As we walked around, we saw signs telling us how many bodies were found in each grave site.
Later, we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum – a school that had been converted into a prison in 1975 and which became the largest centre for torture and detention. Classrooms were converted into cells where people were shackled and beaten.
It is a disturbing site, and one fails to comprehend such madness.
As we left, we met a survivor, now well into his 80s. He wrote a book about his survival experience. (I bought his book and took pictures with him.) He said he had survived because he was a portrait artist and Pol Pot had allowed him to survive as he (Pol Pot) wanted him to paint what had happened during that time.
To say that the experience of the Killing Fields drained my husband and I would be an understatement. It was a gut-wrenching thing to see and think about.
The experience was not what we would have expected a few months earlier when our daughter, Terryn, gave us this trip of a lifetime as a surprise “thanks Mom and Dad” present.
She booked our holiday to Vietnam and Cambodia – four-star hotels, a personal tour guide and driver, everything paid for… but when you go that part of the world, which is simultaneously beautiful and tragic, you are not on holiday. You’re on a non-stop sensory roller-coaster, bombarded by new sights, new sounds and, most of all, new (and often difficult) things to think about.
From the moment we arrived at Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport, we were assailed by Vietnam. As we stepped out of the airport we were flattened by the humidity and heat.
If you think that we have terrible traffic and our taxi drivers are bad, think again – and everywhere you looked there were scooters. Everyone rides one.
Everything gets transported on scooters, from family and flowers to bags of rice and livestock.
A trip through Hanoi’s Old Quarter saw the roads become even more narrow and congested.
The houses are narrow too. The reason: the wider your house, the more tax you pay, so they are narrow and three storeys high.
The house’s owner lives on the two top storeys and rents out the ground floor.
Vietnamese life revolves around the extended family life – they all live together (mother, father, grandparents and children), and if they run out of space they simply build up on the old house.
There are no sidewalks in Hanoi’s old part so you have you walk in the street. At night, when the shops have closed, people take out their grass mats, put them on the road and braai dried squid on their small charcoal hibachis.
Vietnamese people seem to be happy, always smiling.
What I found interesting was that they rarely own refrigerators. They buy everything fresh for the day.
In the morning the women go to the market to buy meat, fruit and vegetables and carry them home on two baskets balanced on a bamboo pole on their shoulders.
Although there are signs of free enterprise everywhere and the country has opened up to outsiders, it is still, nevertheless, a Communist state. The echoes of clashes on home soil against the French and US are still all around.
A trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels, close to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), is a strange and in some ways emotional experience.
Here, the curious may crawl or walk down the tiny tunnels, which are only 50cm x 80cm, and which go down through a number of levels.
It was in these tunnels that the Vietcong and regular Vietnamese army would evade and survive the bombardments of the US’s B-52 planes.
If you are claustrophobic I don’t suggest you go down one of these tunnels. I went down the 20m one, and it was hot, dark and small. And to think that during the war people lived in them for years. The 120km Cu Chi Tunnel served as the base of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968.
We also examined some brutal booby traps.
Then we visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and saw a collection of documentary photos on “aggressive war crimes”, artillery, tanks, planes and helicopters that were used during the Vietnam War.
Worst of all was the devastation caused by Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant used by the Americans to clear large areas of jungle. To this day, children of those exposed to Agent Orange (and their grandchildren) are giving birth to deformed babies.
Ho Chi Minh, the man who liberated Vietnam and won the war against the Americans, is revered.
Most of the visitors to his mausoleum, north of Hanoi, are Vietnamese making the pilgrimage to show their admiration and respect to Uncle Ho, as he is popularly called.
Cameras and bags are not allowed in the mausoleum, and must be checked in at the reception. No shorts, tank-tops or hats either. And you are not allowed to put your hands in your pockets.
As we reached the entrance we had to walk in single file on the red carpet only.
There were guards all along the way and there were cameras everywhere, watching your every move. If you stepped off the carpet a guard was there to tell you to stay on the carpet.
The place where his body lies in state is cool and dimly lit. “Uncle Ho” is preserved and laid out under glass for display.
Looking at him was like looking at someone asleep. His body is well preserved.
But the horrors of the wars and massacres should not blind you to south-east Asia’s beauty.
For example, the enchanting Halong Bay, with limestone rocks, islets, caves and grottos. We enjoyed a seafood lunch on a boat as we took in the calm waters and sights of these rock formations, which are thousands of years old.
There was the Thien Cung Cave and the Dau Go Cave in the same area.
To get to the cave you climb 100 steps, and what greeted us was an amazing sight – as breathtaking and stunning as the Sudwala caves.
We also visited the Notre Dame Cathedral in Hanoi. It looks exactly like the cathedral in France. Entering this spiritual sanctuary with its cavernous interior and stained glass windows was a humbling experience.
Another highlight was seeing the ancient temples of Cambodia – Angkor Thom: South Gate, Bayon Baphoun, Terrace of Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King and Phimean Akas temple, and the world-famous Angkor Wat temples. The latter is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
As we entered the main causeway to the start of the long walk to the main temple, I found the structures amazing and was awestruck.
The temples have long galleries of detailed bas-relief carvings of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
Standing within the cloister, it’s a feast on your eyes because there is so much so see.
There is a huge statue of a Buddha but it is actually the deity Vishnu, the Hindu God, dressed as Buddha.
Many people come to pray and give their offering while visiting Angkor Wat. In another area is the gallery of 1 000 Buddhas.
There can be few places like south-east Asia for giving your senses – and your emotions – such a workout.
If You Go...
l Our flight from Joburg to Thailand was booked with Travel Associates (Chantal Barr 011-895-0308) on Thai Airways
l From Bangkok we flew to Vietnam on Vietnam Airlines and our flights were booked with PA Tours, the company that compiled our itinerary
l PA Tours
Tel: +84 43 662 8515
Fax:+84 43 662 8524
E-mail: info@privateasiatours.com
l We dealt with Mr Do Ha as our guide
Tel: +84 9892 9193
l A visa for Cambodia can be obtained on arrival at a port of entry (an airport, for example) and costs $20. A passport photo is required.
l Visas for Vietnam: R500. Obtained at the Embassy of Vietnam in Pretoria, 87 Brooks Street, Brooklyn, Pretoria, 0083
Tel: 012 362 8119; Fax: 012 362 8118 - Saturday Star
