Feature : cambodia
In the last blog I mentioned how Laos suffered such massive collateral damage from the Vietnam War as the US sought to choke the Vietnamese Ho-Chi Minh Trail . The trail continued south through Cambodia so naturally it was bombed here too . A flight of just three B-52s could devastate a swathe 3 miles long by 1 mile wide and like Laos , Cambodia has been left with a massive UXO problem . By 1975 the US were propping up an anti-monarchist government led by a superstitious Cambodian general called Lon Nol . His opponents were the Chinese backed , communist Khmer Rouge . The campaign was a disaster for Lon Nol and gradually his forces were forced back on the capital now swollen to 2-million people with evacuees from the US bombing in the east . Lon Nol ’ s ‘ cunning-plan ’ to defend the capital included the use of helicopters to sprinkle a ring of sacred sand around the capital that Buddhist advisors assured him would render the city impervious to all Khmer Rouge attacks .
When the Khmer Rouge entered the capital in April 1975 , breaching the line of sand ( surprise , surprise ), Lon Nol had fled . People warmly welcomed them as liberators and looked forward to a period of peace and stability . They were immediately advised to flee the city as the Khmer forces had intelligence that the capital was about to be bombed by B-52s . This was a ruse to empty the entire city population into the country and there would be no return as Pol Pot set everyone to work in the Killing Fields for the next four years . In the end it was the Vietnamese who intervened . They had heard brutal tales from Cambodian refugees and some of their own citizens who became victims of the regime . They tried to involve the international community but no one in the civilised world would listen to a bunch of communists spouting off about the behavior of their communist neighbours , so in the end Vietnam invaded and liberated the Cambodian people as we heard from Sinarth . As they gradually reclaimed control over the country the big question was
‘ where are all the adults ?’; the Khmer Rouge soldiers killed or surrendered were mostly young men or children .
The simple truth was that the ‘ adults ’ were nearly all dead . Anyone suspected of being an intellectual ( and this definition extended to something as innocent as wearing glasses ) was summarily executed as everyone was put to work the land . Artists died including Sin Sisamuth , our singer from The Blossoming Romdoul , allegedly murdered by Pol Pot ’ s own hands . An estimated one-in-four of the population were killed in the genocide and this is evident in the fact that over 70 % of Cambodians today were born after 1979 . This harsh recent history affected us both very deeply especially as we trod the interrogation centre at S-21 , where prisoners were assumed to be guilty on receipt and all that remained was to brutally extract their confessions before a trip to Choueng Ek for murder ( if not already dead ) or burial . It is so hard to contemplate and reconcile that all of these events happened in our own lifetimes . Those dark times are rendered even more brutal by the aspect of the Cambodian people today ; a more beautiful , smiling , fun-loving and delightful people you would be hard pressed to find . How can such people turn on themselves and produce a Pol Pot ?
From Phnom Penh we rode soberly south down to the coast . Along the way we rode the spectacular Bokor National Park road for a magnificent afternoon just scratching on the bike to reach fantastic views over the Gulf of Thailand . At Otres Beach we finally stopped to chill out and enjoy some of the best sunsets in SE Asia and met up with David once more , downing a few beers together before saying farewell for a while as he rode off east to Vietnam and we set our sights on a return to Thailand .
Sin Sisamuth sings the Blues