Fucko

There is good road between Battambang and Phnom Phen. Two lanes of straight clean highway. I sat by the window of the bus and watched mile after mile of rice fields roll by. Here and there I saw coconut trees or farmers in conical straw hats stooped in the fields. We stopped at a dusty gas station and instead of giving the beggar children money I bought them each a sweet rice cake wrapped in a banana leaf.

When we got to Phnom Phen I wanted to keep on going. It is a dirty city that makes Bangkok seem charming by comparison. One of the moto drivers wanted to charge me 8 dollars to get a hotel. A guy on the bus from Cincinnati had recommended it to me. He had warned me it should cost about 3000 riel or seventy five cents but all the arguing in the world only got this local hustler down to 2 dollars. Every time I tried to get away from him he gave the other driver a menacing look and they backed away.

The Paragon Hotel is located on the riverfront. All night long motorbikes cruised by my window. Still I was thrilled to get a decent cappuccino and I decided to give the city one day.

I hired a tuk tuk driver for the day. Our first stop was the nearby Royal Palace, still very much in use. I am no expert but it seemed to me that portions of the Bhagavad-gita are depicted on the inside walls of the palace. I think about the killing fields and am reminded of a story from The Gita. In it Arjuna is faced with the dilemma of having to kill his own family. He does so to prove that he is an authentic leader, willing to do whatever is necessary to "serve the people" This is exactly what the Khmer Rouge required of its soldiers.

I sat cross legged on the Burgundy carpet int the Royal temple and meditated for awhile. A couple of students and their professor sat next to me and engaged me in conversation. He was an interesting guy and it turns out he is serving on the tribunal that is trying to bring the few remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice. We have an interesting talk on the cultural underpinnings of the Killing Fields era. I ask him if religion was used to justify any of Pol Pots actions. He mentions a book to me "Year Zero" that he says addresses this topic.

My next stop is S-21, the compound where much of the killing for the KR was conducted. Once again the setting is a bucolic area just outside the city limits, not unlike Berlin's Buchenwald. The monument is similar to the one in Battambang.

I spend the afternoon at the Hotel Julianna where I have on of the best cheeseburgers in all of Asia. They have a big kidney shaped pool there and I manage to get in 20 laps. I have a massage at their spa and then head back to The Paragon.

I go looking on the street for a copy of Year Zero. I thought instead of buying it at a book store I would buy it off one of the urchins who had offered it to me the day before. I remembered that the street girls had a copy of it in their baskets. Actually they have the complete reading list for a college course on the Cambodian Civil War. I buy a copy of it from a sweet little brown skinned girl. As I turn to go home I am surrounded by other street kids demanding that I buy something from them. One of the older ones claims that I had refused her the day before and now I buy from:
"That one."
"Yesterday was different." I protest.
"Not different." She screams at me.
A tiny little girl yanks at my pant leg and starts shrieking:
"Fucko, Fucko, Fucko"
I run back to my hotel in horror and hide.

The next morning I board an extremely hot bus in a parking lot. We choke on the fumes as we wait for them to fill the thing. After a full half hour they turn on the air con and we begin the slow creep to the edge of the city. We are surrounded by impossible traffic. We cross a bridge and begin to roll. Soon we are surrounded by farms again. Four hours later the flat fields of central Cambodia give way to the strange hump backed mountains of southern Asia. Soon after, we arrive in Kampot.