Cambodia & Vietnam - July 6, 2008

– This man was old and trembling so that he could hardly walk. He looked like he wanted to cry. When I left him I heard two rifle shots.
Life, January 19, 1970 (Quote under picture at the Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam ,War Memorial Museum)

– “Guys were about to shoot these people,” photographer Ron Haeberle remembers, “I yelled, ‘Hold it,’ and shot my picture. As I walked away, I heard M16s open up. From the corner of my eye, I saw bodies falling, but I didn’t turn to look”.
Life, January 19, 1970 (Quote under picture at the Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, War Memorial Museum)

People have been asking me whether I’ve changed in the past couple of months, now that I’ve been away so long. It’s usually said with a laugh, maybe with a slight question behind it. I too find the whole ‘finding yourself’ concept a little trite, if not pretentious. At the same time, I would dare anyone to learn more about the recent history in Laos, Vietnam & Cambodia and not feel their outlook on the world to be a little altered.

I came here with very little knowledge of these countries’ past…in my head were approximate (weak) definitions – Vietnam War = BAD; ‘Apocalypse Now’; Draft dodgers… Khmer Rouge = Genocide; Civil war; Cambodia… Cambodia = landmines; child prostitution… Laos = little country by Thailand/Cambodia…. That was about it. Embarrassing, yes, but I don’t know that there are that many people in the western world that really have a full grasp of how the past half-century’s events have affected these countries. I certainly can’t claim to have a good grasp on it all, even having spent the past weeks going to museums, reading books & visiting sites to do with this time period.

Vietnam I suppose was to be expected. Of course arriving at a war site and learning more of the gory details makes it all more real. But it does. To such an extent that you wonder how this sort of thing could ever have happened. Not only that but, having happened, why isn’t it discussed in basic high school social studies or history classes? Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. Little countries on the opposite side of the world from us, yes, but it’s a small world. Shouldn’t their history be acknowledged as part of our history too? We get the same extensive Canadian history rammed down our throats, year after year, but end up knowing little to nothing about much more recent, and in effect more pertinent, events. Montcalm & Wolff are all well in good, we even did learn the odd bit about the second world war (and of course Canada’s part in it), and if you’re lucky you get a brief mention of the Vietnam war (and then only because Canada played host to draft dodgers). Fine, but shouldn’t somewhere, somehow, there be a lesson about how within our teachers’ lifetime the Americans dropped more bombs on little Laos than were dropped on Europe & Japan combined in WWII? That was only 30 years ago, yet somehow I feel a little as though wars in school history classes are sort of treated as if the major ones are over. WWII was the last of the great wars and now we just have ‘little’ ones to straighten out, ‘unimportant’ ones… The Vietnam War Memorial museum in Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) had some of the most depressing sights I’ve ever seen. 2 days later we learnt of the quarter of Cambodia’s population that were massacred in the Khmer Rouge genocide. ‘Unimportant’ wars? Somehow that doesn’t seem right.

Evy & I weren’t in Vietnam very long, but the War Memorial museum we went to in Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) was by far one of the more culturally/intellectually stimulating tourist attractions we went to. Perhaps part of the most moving sections of the exhibition were the photographs taken by various photo-journalists, the majority of which had comments like ‘last shot of so-and-so before hit by enemy machine gun’, or ‘last shot before photographer accidentally hit landmine & died’ or even ‘photographer killed in ambush, film roll found later in possession of Japanese soldier’. Then there were the quotes like those I quoted in the beginning, which would be under a seemingly less terrible photo, of a single person or group of people. Prisoners, but not wounded. Or perhaps a group of already dead. And then you’d read the quote.
‘Most were women and babies. It looked as if they tried to get away.’
Life, January 19, 1970 (Quote under picture at the Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam ,War Memorial Museum)
And then you’d wonder what it must have been like to be documenting an event like this. You’d wonder what the photo-journalist must have gone through, what they must have been like. How they could survive in a war day-by-day, living, broaching death, and often dying with the army, purely to attempt documentation for the outside world. And last but not least, how it could become possible to stop the killing of civilians in order to take a photographic shot, and then just turn away.
Perhaps as a sort of explanation, there was this (as posted near the end of the photographic exhibit):
‘Photographs are the images of history rescued from the oblivion of mortality. Long after those who died to take these photographs are gone, long after those of us who knew them & survived them and remember their experience are gone in turn, the images they captured will remain to show generations to come the face of the war in Indochina.’
Neil Sheehan
Very true, and much appreciated. The Vietnam war is no longer a minor headline in my mind, and I would recommend anyone to both visit Vietnam (we found it to be a beautiful & fascinating country) and in particular, visit the war memorial museum in Ho Chi Minh city (for a little historical perspective).

Cambodia
‘To keep you is no gain; to lose you is no loss.’
Khmer Rouge slogan (as seen posted at the Killing Fields)

Cambodia, if possible, was an even more emotionally taxing tourist experience than Vietnam. It’s hard to know where to even begin. On the bus ride from Vietnam I read the Lonely Planet recommended ‘First They Killed My Father’, an absorbing (& depressing) autobiographical account by a woman who was 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge first took over. It gave me a good introduction to the time period, and an idea of what the sights we’d be seeing really meant.
The commonly advertised daily tuk-tuk tour in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, is a trip to the Killing Fields in the morning, with a visit to the Tuol Sleng Prisoner Museum in the afternoon. In our case, however, we’d heard via Lonely Planet that they played a film at Tuol Sleng (in the morning and in the afternoon) regarding the Killing Fields – so we decided to go there & see that first instead.
The original plan was to see the film & visit Tuol Sleng in the morning, and the Killing Fields in the afternoon. This was abolished upon waking up less than half an hour prior to the start of the film. We ended up doing some other touristy stuff and then making it to the afternoon screening at the prison. The Killing Fields were left for the following day.

There are some sights, especially some seriously touristed sites, that lose their impact with the large number of visitors. For us, Tuol Sleng prison is not one of them. Whether because it hasn’t been fully maintained & put together as a tourist site, or because it was a site of such horrible acts, recent enough not to have completely dulled with time, I’m not sure. It, along with the Killing Fields, is one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been to.
The prison is a converted highschool, ie. it was once a highschool but then it was turned into one massive torture location during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps that is part of its emotional weight. Hallways, classrooms, it still feels like a highschool, kind of…
Except for the barbed wire criss-crossed through all the windows and exterior walls (criss-crossed so as to prevent suicide attempts).
and …
Except for the presence of long rows of shackles in the larger rooms, used to hold 20 to 30 prisoners (penning them head to foot, and they with punishment-enforced no right to move).
and…
Except for the little one-man prisoner stalls, with barely enough room for a single person, created in several of the classrooms – and each complete with their own individual shackles.

There are rooms with remnants of the prison ‘facilities’. There are rooms that are empty, fallen into complete disrepair since their last atrocious use. And there are rooms with photographs. Hundreds of photographs, of prisoners. Men, women & children alike. And there are signs which request no laughter.
It is not a place where you feel like laughing.
There is even a room with skulls. Skulls of murdered prisoners, at times with descriptions (post-death deduced), of the method of killing.
The Tuol Sleng prison is a must-see museum.

The Killing Fields in some ways had more impact for us after the Tuol Sleng prison visit.

The Killing Fields are the fields outside of Phnom Penh where a vast quantity of the quarter of Cambodia’s population that was killed during the time of the Khmer Rouge were murdered (often transported directly from the Tuol Sleng prison).
The Killing Fields countryside would be a beautiful area, were it not for the deep holes peppering it throughout, each labeled with a sign reading the quantity of bodies discovered within. Some with heads. Some without. Some only children. Some only naked. And then there’s the tower, probably 20 metres high, filled to the top with victims’ skulls.
It is not something I can adequately describe.
And it is not something I will ever forget.
It is something that everyone should visit.
Genocide is a term easy to gloss over until you see sights like this. We ran into after-effects of the Khmer Rouge genocide consistently, and in a vast array of areas. In cultural museums and locations it was to be expected, but to see the result on the actual population was shocking. It was a brain drain – the Khmer Rouge, as an acquaintance of ours working in Cambodia aptly put it, ‘killed anyone with an IQ above being able to tie their own shoes’. From my understanding there has never before been such a systematic killing of one nation’s ‘intelligentsia’ – no matter age, sex or religion. For example? – Little children weren’t permitted to wear glasses, because wearing glasses could be seen as a sign of intelligence…
It was not a good time to be in Cambodia, and the after-affects are still very-much being dealt with.
From restaurant owners to store clerks, we consistently ran into a general lack of education, visible not only in the lack of general knowledge and aptitude (we literally never had a properly added bill) but in basic skills such as being able to think for oneself (a very low-percentage of entrepreneurs or wannabe entrepreneurs). Following orders is the most many can do, and even that appears to be difficult at times. {At our guest house the owner was trying to get several of his staff to do various odd jobs around the yard – every job had to be precisely demonstrated to it’s full extent, even simple ones like painting a piece of wood. It was painful, reminded me of working with really dumb PA’s (film production assistants), except in this case it was more distressing than simply writing it off as a case of stupidity as I would on a film set… We encountered various similar episodes.}
It is also a very young population in Cambodia. Whenever I’d see a middle-aged to elderly person on the street all I could think of was ‘you lived through the Khmer Rouge. You must have crazy stories to tell.’ Unfortunately we weren’t in Cambodia long enough to really talk with a lot of people, but we got a good start.
We also learned of & donated to a local hospital basically started with the help of one guy and the Swiss government – quite a story, which I won’t get into right now. His name was Dr. Beat Richner and it seems mainly through him there are now 4 hospitals in Cambodia which help prevent something like 1000 child deaths per month. He plays the cello every Saturday at a concert hall near Angkor Wat in Siem Reap to help gather money for the hospitals from tourists – a very interesting character & story.

I think I may have made Cambodia sound very depressing, but it wasn’t. Just thought provoking. I would highly recommend visiting the country – very nice people and culturally absolutely fascinating!

PS Angkor Wat was fun to explore too!