In February after Liz Lewis and I got back to Bangkok from Burma , the next stop was Cambodia where our first project was just being launched. Cambodia was still not recognised by the UN pending the elections which finally happened in 1993 so there were officially no flights to Phnom Penh. Of course, if there’s business to be done a way can be found. So, in the early morning we went to the domestic terminal at the old airport and were sent to check-in desk at the furthest point far away from all other flights, where a small group of people were checking in for a flight with a number but no destination.
“What’s going on?” I asked Liz.
“Oh,” she said, “the plane sets off for an unspecified local destination then ‘loses’ its way and lands in Phnom Penh. It’s good business, so why shouldn’t they do it?”
Certainly a lot less unsavoury than the continued recognition of the Khmer Rouge government by the international community.
We duly boarded, took off, and flew pretty much in a straight line as far as I could make out, whatever the log book said. A little under an hour later we were in Phnom Penh.
There was the ritual scrum at the visa desk and the passports went down the row of expressionless soldiers and were disgorged at the other end. The trick was to fill in your form as quickly as possible and force your passport on the first official. Then you just waited and hoped you’d recognise your name when it was called out. The basic procedure hadn’t changed when I left HU 15 years later.
We were looking for the luggage and wondering, given the amount we were carrying, whether customs would be happy. As we talked about it, our office manager, Agnes, who was the wife of the political attaché at the Hungarian Embassy, wafted through the customs barrier, helped us gather our things, had a few light words with the officials and out we went to load our luggage into the most unlikely car, a huge Bulgarian imitation of a fifties American saloon with a trunk big enough to take a tractor. Standard issue in the bad days, and there were very few cars. They came later with the huge influx of aid agencies after the election. Where people were the victims of conflict, we didn’t much care for those legal niceties.
Clive Nettleton
Phnom Penh January 1991
Phnom Penh was an extraordinary place as it emerged from the Khmer Rouge Years. There were two working sets of traffic lights with very few cars and huge numbers of small motorbikes carrying goods and people. There were four western style restaurants each with the identical menu, though some far more interesting local places in the back streets serving local dishes. There was only one proper hotel – a Soviet-built monstrosity with little natural light and not much in the way of service. A lot of mosquitoes in the gloom as well. There were five embassies – Vietnam and some East Europeans including the Hungarians. Only about a dozen agencies were operating in the country.
But the streets were bustling as people carried on living and making a living. The ubiquitous small motorbike carried people, sometimes whole families, and goods. For some reason there were an enormous number of photo shops, willing to develop films and print photos for very reasonable prices. You could change your money and get a huge wad of notes in a bamboo wallet for a few dollars. And, despite the Khmer Rouge, the central market had survived with trade in just about everything including gold and precious stones. Craftsmanship was not valued – jewellery was sold according to weight. One evening Liz and I had supper at a local restaurant in a back street, a kind of fondue with meat and vegetables boiled in a pot next to the table, encouraged and helped by the people who showed us both what to do and how to eat with our fingers (no Swiss fondue forks here). As we finished we decided to go to another place for a coffee. I glanced at the shelves of liquor from all over the world while we waited. Who was buying this stuff? How had it got here? And there, at the back, I saw some familiar looking tins of beer. “Surely not” I thought and got up to take a closer look. But it was what I thought: sanctions notwithstanding, South Africa’s favourite, Castle Lager. What was a nice South African beer doing in a place like that? I wondered.
But the bustle of the city as it emerged from the terror of the Khmer Rouge years, hid a darker side. Everyone you met had lost family and friends in the killing fields, though few at that stage wanted to talk about it. But as happened a few years later in Rwanda, it coloured everything and continues to do so to this day. A visit to Toul Sleng, the notorious detention centre where 20,000 people were tortured and executed was, and is, a painful reminder of the past which continues to haunt the country. It was the pictures of the thousands of victims, looking straight into the camera, surely knowing their fate, that shocks the most. Crossing the yard as you leave to walk into a quiet city street cannot free you from the feeling of evil.
But we were not planning to work in Phnom Penh. Rattanakiri in the hills on the border with Vietnam and Laos, was regarded by the government as a kind or wild west and the Ministry of Health were amazed that we would consider working there, particularly as it was the area in which Pol Pot had built up his original support and where Khmer Rouge gangs were still rumoured to be hiding in the forests. Negotiations had been tough and had completed by Pelham Roberts, our programme manager a few months previously. There is a good story attached to his work and I’ll hope he’ll join the group and tell it. Otherwise my version of the story will have to do.
My next post will describe the journey from Phnom Penh to Rattanakiri to see the early days of the project.
(I hope to be able to post some photos of Phnom Pehn and the people, but my album seems to have gone walk about and some searching is required)
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