Cambodia

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Ta Prohm, Cambodia. This place is straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Most of the high-profile temples have been cleared and restored (see pix below) but many others have been left as they were found, or just slightly cleared to allow access. Ta Prohm has been mostly left alone. Giant trees grow out of cracks in ancient temples, in some places looking like melted wax dripping over the structures.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia. This is the amazing, stupendous, mind-blowing temple/city of Angkor Wat. It's hard to overstate the size, scale, style, and just sheer audacity of this place. It's the largest religious monument in the world, covers over 400 acres, and takes at least half a day just to tour the 'good' parts. Hard to believe it was built almost 1,000 years ago in a swampy jungle, using stone hauled in from far away. You just find yourself walking around the ruins wide-eyed, wondering "how the hell did they DO this ??" And "Why has it not sunk into the swamp???"

Angkor Wat. It would be easy to fill up the whole "Cambodia" page with just Angkor Wat photos but I'll refrain. This place is so sprawled out it seems like a dozen different temples all in one, each with a different set of amazing sights. If you're ever in Cambodia- go there!
Top photo: More of the intricate stonework. Some repairs have been made but all things considered, Angkor Wat has held up pretty well over the past nine+ centuries...

Middle: Waiting out the monsoon rains in one of the towers.

Bottom: Carved reliefs cover huge areas of the temple walls. This one wraps all the way around the building, spanning a length of many hundreds of feet. It tells an epic tale of the kingdom's history in intricately-carved pictures.

Angkor Thom, Cambodia. Despite being smaller than the better-known Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom may be even more interesting because of the large carvings of dieties that cover nearly the entire structure. It's tempting to refer to every carving as a "Buddha" but most are other dieties that I'd never heard of. What I mainly remember is that they all have really, really long names.

Angkor Wat was originally built as a Hindu temple but it was later converted over to Buddhism, and it remains a Buddhist temple today. It's still a very active temple: Buddhist monks and nuns wander the grounds here, beg for alms, pray, study, tend to altars, etc just like they would in a regular monastery.

Left: Young monks looking for alms and some free English practice. We were happy to give both.

Right: A nun tends to her altar deep inside the temple.

Tonle Sap River, Cambodia. Here are several scenes of life along the Tonle Sap River. This river runs southward for about 150 miles from the Angkor ruins to the capital city of Phnom Penh. Along the way are floating villages (like the one above) and countless scenes of rural Cambodians living their lives in the traditional manner. It was not uncommon to see three generations of family members living on a single 20-foot boat. We took a fast (modern) boat from the ruins down to the capital in about a half-day. I highly recommend this scenic trip.

In Cambodia's floating villages large numbers of boats raft up together or tie up to flimsy temporary docks. Some boats have batteries so they can run lights, radios, or tv's. The crazy thing is that they get their drinking water from right beside the boat, which is also where the bathroom is... and the neighbors' bathroom.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In the capital city, monks go about their business near the Royal Palace.

Mekong River, Cambodia. Local fishermen, working hard for a living.

Tonle Sap River, Cambodia. Some classic Southeast Asia scenery along the riverbank.

If you've got a weak stomach I wouldn't go any further on this web page; the next section could be upsetting to some. It sure upset me.

Tuol Sleng, aka S-21. Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This is one of the most horrendous places I've ever been. Even now, more than 15 years later, it's difficult to look at these picures and write about it. Tuol Sleng was originally just an average high school in downtown Phnom Penh. When the Khmer Rouge came into power in the 1970's they converted it to a detention / interrogation / torture / execution facility. It's been estimated that up to 30,000 people were 'processed' through this place; only a handful survived. Almost anybody could be targeted: "crimes" ranged from having an education, to being from the 'wrong' political party or ethnic minority, being religious, failing to achieve any goal that the regime set such as crop quotas, factory production goals, or military actions. The Khmer Rouge was all about eliminating it's "enemies", real or imagined. But what set it apart from other similar purges throughout history were two things, both of which are on display here:

1) the sheer scale of the operation: killing up to 2 million innocent people, which corresponds to 25 percent of Cambodia's population (and the highest-educated people in the country no less).

2) the gruesome way that these people were killed. Not content to just quickly execute perceived enemies of the state, systematic torture was used to extract confessions, betray friends and family members, basically to make the victim tell officials whatever they wanted to hear, whether true or not. These people died slowly and painfully.

For good or bad, the Khmer Rouge documented these abuses in great detail, and photos of torture sessions and executions were taken by the thousands. When the Khmer Rouge was finally run out of power the conquering Vietnamese turned this former prison into a genocide museum. They left this site pretty much as they found it, right down to the blood stains, torture racks and electrocution equipment. It's a very eery feeling, walking through the same 'interrogation' rooms, cramped holding cells, and among the very equipment that was used to inflict so much suffering on so many. Hundreds of photos of the victims of this place were put up on display: men, women and even children - the regime did not discriminate by age or sex. It's all a very sobering exhibit, and is geared toward making sure it never happens again, paying some kind of respect and remembrance to the dead, and holding the surviving regime members accountable for their crimes. In those three things I think this museum succeeds - but it is a very difficult place to see.

For those same reasons I though it was important to put a set of photos of S-21 on this otherwise upbeat website. This genocide got little attention from the rest of the world even as it was happening. And now, with Khmer Rouge 40 years gone, only a few regime leaders have been held accountable. A few have been tried and sentenced to various prison terms. Many are still in hiding. And Pol Pot, the leader of the regime, died of natural causes in 1998, defiant to the very end that Khmer Rouge was a noble cause.

Some explanations are in order for these photos.

Center: The main building at Tuol Sleng Prison, aka S-21. It still looks like a high school even after being converted over to its more gruesome purpose. It looks peaceful now but it's really hard to imagine what went on inside these walls.

Top left: Bloody photos of the victims of this place, violently 'interrogated' to death. There are thousands of these photos on display, including many of women and even children.

Top right: A photo of a mother and infant child as they were being processed into this facility. I really hope they were among the few who made it out of this awful place alive.

Bottom right: I don't usually go for graffiti on historical artifacts but this seemed entirely appropriate, scrawled on the wall of one of the torture rooms: "The pain of man's inhumanity to man is unbearable" - Wayne - Ireland.

Bottom left: Tens of thousands of skeletons pile up outside of Phnom Penh at a place called Choeung Ek. The thousands of victims killed at S-21 were buried here; many others were brought directly here for execution. This place was featured in the movie "The Killing Fields".