Monday, June 18, 2007

~ I can post!! ~

Hey hey guys!! I can post once again!! woohoo!! I mean not that i have anything significant to say.. but i decided to try signing into blogger again and after months of "tauing" me I finally managed to sign in! No idea what the problem was all this while tho! Hmmm.
Anyway wonderful posts Rustom, such an adventure. I could look at those pretty pics over and over... and yay i finally got the postcard, terribly overdue tho! I told Rustom about how my dad's postcard from overseas got lost in the mail somewhere and only reached us one month after he returned. And Hamid, your turn to post now!
Hai anyway this holidays has been pretty unremarkable for me.One year ago we had exciting zoo pics and world cup pics to put up but this year... apart from those of you who sniffed out foreign lands, we've not done anything together! :( aah well... even JB is not gonna happen seeing how people either cannot make it or are not too comfortable with safety what with the recent news and all.
Ok I am done! I will come back and say something significant when I find something significant to say. Exactly one more week guys!! Can't believe we waited half a year for this and suDDenly its coming to an end already!!! Aaaah how does one stall time....
love u all,
Harti
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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Phomn Penh Day 6

our 6th day in cambodia was a sobering experience for us. at least, for the first part of the day when we visited the killing fields & genocide museum, which are stark reminders of the horrifying Pol Pot regime. from what we got from our guides, read abt in books & brochures & watched in videos there, basically the Khmer Rouge started in 1975, just after the city of Phonm Penh was liberated from 5 yrs of civil war & american bombing. led by Pol Pot, its soldiers rounded up fellow cambodians, who were thought to be american or vietnamese spies, tortured them in the prisons & then killed them by the masses. this lasted from 1975-1979.




our first stop was the genocidal centre, better known as the killing fields, where the massacre victims were killed & dumped in mass graves. actually there are hundreds of such sites all arnd cambodia, which have yet to be excavated.
enlarge this to read...the english is a bit flawed but u can feel the anger in the words...

the memorial "stupa", which houses 17 stories of bones which were excavated in 1988 from the killing fields. most of them contain the skulls of the victims. the last few stories hold the long bones.




beneath the bones at the base of the structure are some of the victims' clothes which were cleaned & deodorized after the excavation.

one of the mass graves in the area. beyond these graves is a shallow river which was not excavated & still contains the bodies of many more victims. in fact, according to our guide, the rest of the sites will probably be left untouched for now, as enough evidence has been dug out for the ongoing tribunal to try the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

women, children & babies were not spared. the leaders of the Khmer Rouge believed that the whole family of a traitor should be slaughtered as none could be trusted.

as we walked arnd the grounds, our guide pointed out the small bones that could not be properly removed from the area...we were literally walking on these bones.

the victims' clothes also on the grounds of the area...



we proceeded to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which used to be the main prison in Phonm Penh for the so-called traitors & spies. here, they were chained & locked up in cells, starved & then brought out to be tortured periodically.



we were expecting a typical musuem with exhibits locked up behind glass panels. nothing prepared us for what we got instead.




the khmer rouge soldiers made use of the building & grounds of a high school as their prison. ironically, the man in charge of this particular prison, Warden Duch - responsible for ordering the torture & killing of 14000 of his fellow cambodians - used to be a mathematics teacher.

the barbed wire to prevent escape.


enlarge this also, quite chilling...these were the actual rules (translated) of the prison.

the cells for isolating prisoners while awaiting their turn to be sent to the torture chambers. as i was saying, definitely not your-run-of-the-mill museum. the cell walls still have scribblings on them, and in one, u can see numbers being crossed out, probably a prisoner counting down to freedom. the worst thing was that prisoners were duped into thinking that they would be sent to work in the plantations after they had confessed, & with this promise, were blindfolded, shackled & brought to the killing fields where they were bludgeoned to death or beheaded.


the man behind it all.

a survivor of the Tuol Sleng prison (only 7 survived out of the 14000 inmates) painted scenes that he could recall from his imprisonment. here, a soldier (or combatants as they prefered to be known) smashes a baby against a tree as its mother watches. rem the killing tree in the photos above? this was how it was done.
the shocking thing is that the "combatants" who committed such heinous acts were actually 10-15 year olds recruited by the Khmer Rouge leaders, & they were indoctrinated to such an extent that many even killed their own parents.

one of the many evil & ingenious methods of torture devised by the combatants. most of the prisoners were tortured so badly that they gave pages & pages of confessions to crimes they had never committed. e.g. one prisoner gave a 1000 pg confession that he was an american spy.

the actual torture instruments displayed openly, in the actual rooms that they were used. this is the barrel used in the torture method shown in the above painting.

other instruments of torture.

one of the beds used for torture, with some of the instruments still on it. the body seen in the picture on the wall was one of the 14 corpses left behind after the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown and the prison hastily abandoned.

the faces of the innocent victims stare hauntingly. all prisoners had their pictures taken when they were brought in.

this is a photo taken during the excavation of the killing fields in 1988.

even an old bar in the exercise area of the former high school was converted into a torture device. here, prisoners were hung upside down in the hot sun until they lost consciousness. then they were brought down & their heads dunked in sewage water, causing them to regain consciousness, only to be hung up again. this was done repeatedly until a confession was obtained.
behind this bar, those white things sticking out of the ground surround one of the graves for the 14 corpses that remained after the prison was vacated. these 14 victims were probably the only few to get a decent burial.

in total, an estimated 2 million cambodians were massacred in the 4 year period. the trial still goes on while many of the top leaders are alive & free somewhere. pol pot himself died of natural causes in 1998.







later in the day, we visited the royal palace & silver pagoda, which as i mentioned before, was really quite lavish. unfortunately, we were only allowed to take pictures of the palace grounds. inside the royal palace, the ceilings were decked with beautiful frescoes & there was gold everywhere. the inside of the silver pagoda, though less stunning to look at, was more impressive cos of the real silver tiles on its floors (thus the name) plus the 90kg pure gold Buddha studded with like 4000 diamonds that stands in it. there was also an emerald Buddha as well as a Buddha relic in a glass case, purportedly an actual eyebrow hair of Buddha himself.


monks on the grounds of the royal palace...postcard-worthy photo...



after that, we visited the Wat Phonm temple. according to local belief, the city of Phomn Penh got its name when an old woman named Penh found 4 statues of Buddha which had washed up along the shores of the Mekong River. this temple was built on that spot & eventually the city sprung up arnd it. Wat Phonm apparently houses the original 4 Buddha statues but we could not tell which ones they were as the inside of the temple contained so many Buddha statues.



at the base of the temple, we pooled all our cambodian riel to give to the beggar & his son. we saw many more beggars in Phomn Penh than Siem Reap, & most were child beggars! most of the adult beggars are land-mine amputees. (the landmines were left behind during the years of war & many are still active)

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Friday, June 15, 2007

Siem Reap - Phonm Penh Day 5

it was a 5hr plus bus ride to Phomn Penh in a rickety bus with weak airconditioning. seating was also first come first served, & as we were e last few to board, had to sit at the backseat. thank gdness for mo's anti-histamines which we all took. the sedative effects ensured that we were conked out for most of the ride.

the bus made a rest stop. according to mo, who went down to buy food, the locals were selling fried spiders as big as a child's palm. oh & there were 2 ladies in front of us in the bus who were enjoying a delectable meal of fried crickets & rice. i couldnt stop staring in fascination. how? how can one eat bugs & actually look like they're enjoying it?!
our hostel in Phomn Penh

took a cruise down the tonle-sap to mekong island that evening...
one of the fishing villages along the river banks...

the locals take a dip with their animals
at mekong island, we were invited to a villager's house where her family produces silk products for sale...




befriended this boy, whose father was our boatman...
phonm penh, we realised, is much more developed than siem reap, with many more cars & even some medium-rise buildings & shopping centres.


very scenic also as the city centre faces the tonle-sap lake...

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---------------oOo--------------- Siem Reap Day 4

hey guys, hope i'm not boring u w all this!

on our 4th day in cambodia, we visited a touristy place called the cambodian cultural village, which is a fairly large compound on which are replicas of the different types of villages belonging to the various cambodian ethnicities. admission was US$9, & we declined a tour guide, which would have cost us another US$5.

our first stop was e mini-museum near e entrance. immediately, we realised why we needed a tour guide - aside from the title of the museum displays, there was no other information given. thus we had to rely on our own deductions & came up with our own stories. roughly though, the displays showcased, in chronological order, the different eras in cambodia's history, starting from the tribal pple, as u see below, to the Khmer empire & its kings, all the way to the vietnam war period. noticeably absent was any reference to the Khmer Rouge (or Pol Pot regime)...
the migration of the vietnamese Muslim Cham people to cambodia
outside again to the blazing hot sun, after the cool relief of the musuem. here we are walking on a replica of a floating village

at each village, a cultural performance was staged. weirdly, we were the only tourists there that morning, and thus the audience consisted solely of us 4 each time. the hilarious thing was that the same pple performed the different shows, & as we walked from one village to another, we would see them rushing in the hot sun to change & get ready for the next one. it was really sporting of them to go all out even though we were the only ones there!


we were serenaded by traditional music

watched sea creatures dancing
& giggled at this cheeky courtship dance, where the guy disturbs the girl, & she pushes him away huffily, pretending to be irritated but then looks back at him from the corners of her eyes. then he plucks a flower & hands it to her, & their friends creep up behind them, causing them to spring apart & pretend nothing happened. haha so cute...we dont see such scenes nowadays, do we?
& for the grand finale *drum-rolll*...bingz got married...gasp!
here he is dressed in his wedding finery.
bingz on his way to pick up his bride, followed by a procession of his cambodian relatives.


everyone waits in anticipation for the bride to appear. esp bingz...cos he doesnt have a clue how she looks like. (sekali same same but different! ok but this one not thailand lah)
a gong sounds out, e curtains at the door of the bridal chamber part, & out steps the lovely bride. ooh not bad bingz! the couple garland each other...
receiving blessings from his new parents-in-law...


well the shocks dint end there for the rest of us. after bingz' shocker of a marriage, we headed to THE JUDGEMENT TUNNEL for some thrills & chills. this is the cambodian idea of hell, & there are different punishments for different sins. ok the photos here make it look cheesy (illuminated by the bright flash of ningz' cam), but let me tell u, when we were there, it was pitch black, with ghostly red lights here & there & horror movie sound effects...just my idea of heaven, eh?

these things looked super freaking scary in the dark...we were all clingning onto each other, no one wanted to be in front or at the back, so we ended up walking in a clump. well except for ningz, who is not afraid of anything...he lingered behind, taking photos leisurely like he was at the botanic gardens looking at flowers & butterflies or sth...oh yeah btw we went w a bunch of scaredy-cat local girls who screamed at every single turn & manhandled bingz in their fear...

now this thing kept creeping up behind us, egged on by those girls' constant screaming...rem it was really dark at the time...so even fearless me was freaked out...yeah right
in the end, we made frens w the freaky creature! sweet!


here, we're looking at a replica of the royal palace & silver pagoda...we saw the real thing in Phonm Penh...lavish! mo said it was as impressive as the european palaces she had seen....but more on that later...

after lunch, we decided to visit this modern temple near the siem reap town ctr called Wat Bo. unfortunately, we got abit lost. we saw a little opening next to what looked like a temple, & cleverly went in. turns out, it was a monastery & as we walked in, every single monk turned & stared at us. mo & i felt really scandalised cos probably females were not allowed in the area, plus we were wearing hats, which we immediately took off. btw, in temples, the royal palace, the killing fields etc., head coverings are not allowed as a sign of respect.
luckily, the actual temple we were looking for was right next door...

the monk who greeted us at Wat Bo was very nice. he opened the temple esp for us & gave us a mini-tour of the inside. whats special abt this temple is that it's e oldest modern temple in siem reap. it had murals of the ramayana on the walls, i think dating back to the 18th or 19th century.

later on, we walked to the Artisans d'Angkor village. Artisan's d'Angkor is an organisation which trains young cambodians in the art of wood-carving, sculpting, siilk-weaving & painting, in order to make handicrafts to sell to tourists. here, our guide explains to us abt the organisation.

trying my hand at a spot of wood carving using a hammer & chisel...
a relief such as this copied from one of the bas-reliefs on the angkor wat takes 10 wks to finish & costs abt $700. with such astronomical prices, it was no wonder we walked away from the souvenir shop empty-handed. the crafts were lovely though...

in the evening, we went to a guesthouse for another cultural performance. this time however, the whole show was performed entirely by children! it was organised by a really amazing charity which goes towards building schools for the cambodian street children. tickets cost US$6 each, & all proceeds go towards this. the performers were thus actual students of the schools! what a brilliant way to raise funds!


first up was a shadow puppet show. the kids performed 3 separate folk tales & stories, to the accompaniment of traditional music, also played by kids.

behind the scenes - the kids at work

we had dinner as we watched the show...

after the shadow puppets were 4 dances. here is the traditional apsara one...i was super impressed cos to me, they seemed as gd as the adults we saw...though being kids, once when the dancers were walking in, one of them tripped a little & giggled..so cute
splendid performance! what an amazing charity!

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