War Tunnels

Today I found myself crawling through the Cu Chi Tunnels not far from Ho Chi Minh City. These famous tunnels were used by large numbers of Vietnamese fighters during the country's war against the USA . They run for many kilometres, different tunnels going in different directions but all connected.

You can see how small and cramped these tunnels were for me but they used to be even narrower because they have been widened for tourists! Imagine having to live inside these for days on end, sharing your space with poisonous centipedes and scorpions as well as a whole village worth of people.

Did You Know?: The only time people left these tunnels, even though it got so hot inside, was after dark when there were no US soldiers around. However, if bombing was happening it could be days before anyone went to the surface!

Cambodia's Darkest Hour

Today I visited the building in the photo below, it is a museum now but it has a famous past; starting life as a high school but being turned into a prison called S-21.

In 1975 Cambodia was taken over by a group called the Khmer Rouge led by a man called Pol Pot. Within hours of taking over he started moving people from the cities to the countryside to live as farmers and within one week the cities were deserted. The Khmer Rouge bombed banks because they didn't want people to use money any more, they closed down schools because they didn't think people needed educating (This is when the building below became a prison) and they also shut down hospitals. Sadly many, many people didn't survive this because they simply didn't know how to farm properly to make enough food.

Pol Pot also didn't want any intellectuals (Educated, clever people) in his country so he arrested every teacher, doctor, lawyer and politician his soldiers could find and put them in prisons like S-21. The soldiers even arrested anyone wearing glasses or having soft hands as this was seen as a sign of intelligence! Those that were arrested also had their whole family captured too and had to stay in prison until they admitted they were spies. If they didn't admit to this (They rarely were spies) the soldiers found ways to force the prisoners to say they were. Once they had said they were they were killed with their family.

Unfortunately this lasted for nearly four years until other countries found out what was happening and in that time 3,000,000 people lost their lives. Cambodia is not the biggest country on the planet so that works out at more than 1 in every 4 people!

It may seem weird to think of turning places like S-21 (Or even the concentration camps in Germany) into museums about times like this but the Khmer Rouge is a big part of Cambodia's history and it is agreed that keeping these places open means that no one will ever forget those that died and it will help stop someone like Pol Pot ever being in control again. What do you think?

A Bit More About Cambodia

Apart from what happened here in the 1970's, which I will blog about in the coming days, I was aware that I didn't actually know too much about Cambodia. I thought that I'm probably not the only one so I had the idea of doing a bit of reading and writing a short history of the country for those that want to learn a bit more...

It's in the year 802AD where things kicked off as Jayavaraman II started calling himself 'Universal Monarch' (I have no idea what happened to Jayavaraman I!?) and built the first temples. All was going swimmingly until important people started falling out.

In the 10th century, Suryavarman I took charge and brought everyone back together and in the next century Suryavarman II reigned. He asked for Ankgor Wat to be built and started wars with his next door neighbours, Vietnam. Vietnam fought back though and killed him in the end, obviously annoying the Cambodian royal family a bit.

Years later one of the murdered kings cousins created an army that beat the Vietnamese. After winning he made himself King Jayavarman VII. This guy was a big fan of buildings and set about building loads more colossal structures near Angkor Wat (Including the Terrace of the Elephants in the photo). He got a bit carried away though and spent all the countries money on it! Eventually word got out there was no money left and the Angkorian Empire fell and 150 years of war with Thailand began.

Then, for nearly 300 years smaller kings (As in not very powerful. Not as in not very tall!) ruled Cambodia but had to do what Thailand or Vietnam said. Then France arrived and weren't very nice. They basically made the king sign things to say Cambodia was no longer it's own country but actually part of France (A colony). Cambodians weren't very happy with this so there were a couple of years of fights but after that it was all a bit quiet until the end of World War II.

In 1953, King Sihanouk began a royal mission to make Cambodia it's own country again and was successful later that year. In 1965 the same king fell out with America because he thought they were after him, this led to the Americans bombing Cambodia and killing thousands. 1970 saw the king visit France and while he was away two people took power from him, one of them being his cousin!

This led to the horrible things that happened to millions of Cambodian people in the 1970s. Since this period ended in 1999 things have been much quieter and the country has tried to get back to normal. Twenty-first century Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in Asia but is slowly getting back up again after being knocked off of it's feet a few times and the people that live here are looking to a better future.

There we have it; a brief history of Cambodia. I enjoyed learning all of this and I hope you did too.

Angkor Wat

Today I visited the world famous Angkor Wat site, it is so iconic that the building behind me features on the Cambodian flag! We got up super early (4:30am) to go and see the sunrise and then spent about 5hrs wandering around this and surrounding sites.

Angkor translates to 'Capital City' and Wat means 'Temple' meaning that this construction was the main religious building in the country when King Suryavarman II ordered it to be built around 800 years ago and it stands out because of it's 65m high towers that were built to look like lotus flowers.

There were so many buildings and temples to explore, many were still being rescued from the jungle that had swallowed them up after centuries of neglect (At Ta Phrom there are still many huge trees with roots as thick as tree trunks wrapped around the carved rocks) and at Angkor Thom there are massive faces carved in stone and a long construction called 'The Terrace of the Elephants' where huge images of elephants are carved into the walls and columns are made to look like trunks. It was fascinating to look around the ruins of a culture I know so little about and I definitely want to learn more about the Khmer.