The Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC), an open patio-style bar/restaurant with heavy leather wingback chairs, dark wood stools to match the thick wooden columns, and framed black-and-white photographs of life 20 and 30 years ago, as taken by those who used to frequent this establishment after a hard days work, both physically and emotionally. I couldn't help but imagine this place, overlooking the Tonle Sap River from its second-floor view, 30 years ago as Cambodia's borders opened and journalists and photographers from around the world came to record the footprints of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's mass genocide of their own people. Phnom Penh must have been virtually abandoned at that time, aside from some remaining revolutionaries, the Vietnamese who led the invasion into Cambodia, and the news correspondents; during Pol Pot's regime, the city's population was reduced to the bare minimum government workers and leaders, as everyone else was sent out to the countryside to complete their agrarian responsibilities. For most, it was inevitable that they and their families would eventually be sent to Tuol Sleng to be tortured and forced to confess to irrational and paranoid accusations of treason against the regime before being shipped off to the Killing Fields, where pieces of victims' clothing still litter the ground today.
The 5-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap provided us with a glimpse of life for the typical Cambodian. For the grand majority, every day seems to be a survival game; most huts had a few animals, and a small garden. The land was dry, mostly due to the season and to the fact that people cut down most of the trees to sell the wood. Survival.
Speaking of survival, our next destination before leaving Cambodia was Angkor Wat, the wonder of the world that survived a couple of centuries under the rule of the jungle, unknown to man until rediscovered in the mid-1800s. A source of pride for the Cambodian people, perhaps because the survival of this man-made marvel epitomizes their resilience in spite of their turbulent past and their certain survival despite the still-long road ahead of them - this sprawling city of great temples, many of which are still intact despite the huge bayon roots seemingly wanting to crush the walls to no avail.
All in all, the Cambodia experience left Tiffany, Ange, and me wiht a desire to learn more - and a determination to bring a leash for one counterpart who happened to lose her group in Angkor Wat while taking pictures... who could that be???
Paste the following link into your browser to check out my pictures!
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=4zp3vcn.4cza6ok7&x=0&y=-b6dbxa&localeid=en_US
No comments:
Post a Comment