No trains at all in Cambodia now
Oct. 22nd, 2008 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietI acquired a BIKE again this afternoon, courtesy of my guesthouse (though I did have to wait 15 min while the nice man took it to the nearest roadside bike/moto fixing place to sort out a puncture). And headed up to the train station, where I was told that there is no longer any service to Battambang. :( This doesn't enormously surprise me, as by all accounts the train's been on its last legs for years (the girl I spoke to in Moscow who'd taken it from said that there were whacking great holes in the floor of the only carriage). I may wander up again on Friday just to confirm, but it looks like the bus for me. Bah!
On the other hand this does simplify one thing: I wasn't planning to visit Angkor Wat (v famous temples), and then I was thinking maybe I would like to after all, and considering ways to manage this. If I'm not getting the train to Battambang, I can get a bus to Siam Reap instead, spend a day looking at temples, and then another bus to the Thai border and on to Bangkok. I'll lose a day in Bangkok, but that's OK.
Currently I am in the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Phnom Penh, which is a splendid building with no windows, big armchairs, wireless (sadly pay-for), GECKOS on the walls[0], and $1 local draft beer during happy hour.
I did go to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum today - it was the S21 prison and torture centre during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979). The building is so - I don't know, "quiet" or "unassuming" aren't quite the right words. It used to be a high school - classroom-size rooms, concrete blocks, orange and white tiles. There's very little left in most of the rooms to show what happened - although one of the large mass-incarceration rooms (prisoners shackled in rows) had numbers on the walls, which is the sort of thing that hits harder than you would expect. Some of the rooms on one floor had been turned into individual cells - and the brickwork was really *crappy*, it wouldn't hold up to determined assault, but of course the people inside weren't in any condition or position to assault it, and were being watched 24/7 anyway.
There's a documentary shown twice a day, which uses the story of a particular couple to illustrate the system as a whole. It's all very saddening, but the bit that really got to me was one of the survivors (7 people, of 20,000 odd that went through there) talking to one of the guards about what had happened. They both seemed very calm, and I couldn't understand how the guard wasn't - I dunno, showing more remorse, maybe. But afterwards I was looking at one of the displays about some of the guards and Khmer Rouge soldiers, and they were kids, many of them - in their teens. And constantly aware that if they didn't do what they were told they'd be on the other side of things (and many of them were - guards and torturers would be denounced and become prisoners and tortured; and then of course killed). Which doesn't excuse people's behaviour, necessarily, but - it's always more complicated than just black and white.
The more cheerful thing today was a wander round the National Museum, which has assorted art, sculptures, steles etc, in a lovely building, and which although small was lovely.
[0] I love geckos. My Dad spent a couple of years in Singapore in his early twenties, and used to tell us about all the rooms having geckos on the walls and how this was a Good Thing as they ate the biting insects. I found the idea of indoor geckos impossibly exotic, and it's almost symbolic for me of the Far East. I am thus inordinately excited about them. Also don't they stick to the walls with van der Waals force? Which is pretty awesome.
On the other hand this does simplify one thing: I wasn't planning to visit Angkor Wat (v famous temples), and then I was thinking maybe I would like to after all, and considering ways to manage this. If I'm not getting the train to Battambang, I can get a bus to Siam Reap instead, spend a day looking at temples, and then another bus to the Thai border and on to Bangkok. I'll lose a day in Bangkok, but that's OK.
Currently I am in the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Phnom Penh, which is a splendid building with no windows, big armchairs, wireless (sadly pay-for), GECKOS on the walls[0], and $1 local draft beer during happy hour.
I did go to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum today - it was the S21 prison and torture centre during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979). The building is so - I don't know, "quiet" or "unassuming" aren't quite the right words. It used to be a high school - classroom-size rooms, concrete blocks, orange and white tiles. There's very little left in most of the rooms to show what happened - although one of the large mass-incarceration rooms (prisoners shackled in rows) had numbers on the walls, which is the sort of thing that hits harder than you would expect. Some of the rooms on one floor had been turned into individual cells - and the brickwork was really *crappy*, it wouldn't hold up to determined assault, but of course the people inside weren't in any condition or position to assault it, and were being watched 24/7 anyway.
There's a documentary shown twice a day, which uses the story of a particular couple to illustrate the system as a whole. It's all very saddening, but the bit that really got to me was one of the survivors (7 people, of 20,000 odd that went through there) talking to one of the guards about what had happened. They both seemed very calm, and I couldn't understand how the guard wasn't - I dunno, showing more remorse, maybe. But afterwards I was looking at one of the displays about some of the guards and Khmer Rouge soldiers, and they were kids, many of them - in their teens. And constantly aware that if they didn't do what they were told they'd be on the other side of things (and many of them were - guards and torturers would be denounced and become prisoners and tortured; and then of course killed). Which doesn't excuse people's behaviour, necessarily, but - it's always more complicated than just black and white.
The more cheerful thing today was a wander round the National Museum, which has assorted art, sculptures, steles etc, in a lovely building, and which although small was lovely.
[0] I love geckos. My Dad spent a couple of years in Singapore in his early twenties, and used to tell us about all the rooms having geckos on the walls and how this was a Good Thing as they ate the biting insects. I found the idea of indoor geckos impossibly exotic, and it's almost symbolic for me of the Far East. I am thus inordinately excited about them. Also don't they stick to the walls with van der Waals force? Which is pretty awesome.
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Date: 2008-10-22 09:55 pm (UTC)It is believed so, at least partially. There are claims that a layer of water one molecule thick plays a part as well.