Potential

The first tourist site I visited was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Teol Sulk was originally built as a high school and was later, under the Khmer Rouge, turned into an infamous detention center. This was a place of horrific tortures and indignities against anyone who fell on the wrong side of the cruel regimes whims, including children. Lashes were given with electric wire, bodies hung upside down until passed out, then revived in bucket of excrement. One of the sleeping quarters consisted of a small room with a bar against one wall with steel shackles where dozens of men women and children would sleep on top of each other and women were raped while everyone else in the room had to remain silent.

You can hear and understand the statistics of the million people killed and another million starved in the few short years when Pol Pot was in power but it’s a very different thing to see pictures of the individual faces and to imagine the stories of their too brief and painful lives. Accounts from survivors who had lost their loved ones are posted in one section of the museum. This is a very chilling experience. The philosophy of the Cambodian people is that you cannot punish all those involved, because it was necessarily almost everyone, no one ha a choice. The primary goal is to document exactly what happened, to uncover the worst of it so that it can’t happen again.

My next stop was down some very dusty road on the back of a motorbike, while the sun fried my skin my mouth filled with grit. I was headed to the Killing Fields. This site was one of 129 identified mass graves throughout Cambodia. There’s a solemn pagoda in the center built to commemorate the dead found at the site, as well as hundreds of their skulls. During the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, anyone with an education as purged, most city dwellers were killed and the few remaining professionals were killed. The country came out of it when the Vietnamese invaded and occupied the country, even thought the UN continued to recognize the Pol Pot regime as the legitimate power for years to come. After loosing their entire educated base, literacy rate of 0, the country was starting from scratch, and all this happened within my lifetime.

I’m running out of money and in a brilliant scheme to save money I did as any good American would o, I found a hotel that takes American Express so I have more cash to spend on nic-nacs. The place I checked into was sweet. There was a nice pool, great rooms and bathrooms, a cool patio bar, and fast internet. The hotel owner is also an art collector so the place was filled with modern and classical Cambodian art. The bar was just outside my room which I thought would be a problem but the people who go there were really cool. So I spent a LOT of time just hanging out at the bar, even though I didn’t order a single beer the whole time. The people who frequent the bar were young expats from all over the place, now living in Phnom Penh. They were fascinating and creative people doing very interesting things.

Phnom Penh is a lot like the American Wild West. It takes a certain type of character to pick up and move there and to survive. The rules are very different here. Many say there are much greater freedoms in that you can do whatever you want as long as you aren’t stupid about it and know the right palms to grease. Some say the rules are actually the same but on a smaller, less sophisticated scale, extortion being a form of permit system. The people who come here are doing things that they wouldn’t be able to do back home, the opportunities are infinite if you play the game right. I’ve met businessmen, editors, teachers, NGO people, it’s up to your ambition and creativity.

I had also been told on a few occasions that Cambodia offers greater freedom than more developed countries. What they mean is that you could decide to start up a business today an immediately begin selling things from your shop. Eventually someone may come by and ask for his piece and maybe not but it’s up to you to decide if you want to continue your business. I don’t agree, options such as education, dissent and resource availability make this an oppressive society that only those with means can truly exploit.

At the hotel, I had mentioned that I was collecting experiences to write about and meeting people to tell bar stories on. I was invited along on an errand because there was someone interesting I should meet. We went to a bar in the Lakeside area. Lakeside is a bohemian neighborhood where hip locals and foreigners live side by side. It’s where the less upscale ex-pat restaurants and bars are located. The bar we went to had a sign out front advertising itself but it looked closed. The windows were blacked out and the door was locked. My new Swedish friend with ripped jeans, neck tattoos, and shaved head under a garish hat knocked on the door until a Cambodian man answered and allowed us in.

There was, of course, no bar to be seen, it was actually a loft apartment. We were greeted by a Danish girl who offered us a drink. We decided on beer, which she went out to get because there was none there. But first she brought us upstairs to introduce us to a Nigerian and a Thai on the couch and then to the loft bedroom where a Lankan in a loin cloth was waiting for us. He spoke a ridiculous number of languages. Like most people in an illicit trade he was genial and polite, speaking in careful paranoid nuance. And like most successful professionals was eager to tell us his story without sounding like he was bragging. I was asking so many questions that he had hoped I was actually a journalist. Apparently he IS the central drugs dealer in the city, anyone with any quality goods gets their stuff through him. I had asked what the situation is like with the police. Lifting a big bag of opium said I could write his name and the name of his bar on it and hand it to any cop in town and it wouldn’t be any trouble for him, only trouble for me. He explained he sometimes has the police sitting on his couch downstairs while making deals upstairs.

I had to leave as I was late for dinner with someone else involved in international commerce. I had dinner with a Cambodian artist who exhibits his work all over the world. I was told the next day by the hotel owner that he was Cambodia’s most successful modern artist. His enthusiasm and unpretentious love of art were refreshing. We ate at what everyone in Phnom Penh raves about as being an awesome Mexican restaurant. Being from California, I just could not make peace with this place. I suddenly really missed the food back home. The rest of the night was spent back at the hotel bar shooting the shit with more people. The night manager and barkeep was this really cool guy named Rock. He obviously spent a lot of time in the US because he sounded like he was born and raised in Oakland, except smart. I’m already starting to forget names, but if I come back I’ll figure out a way to reach out.