Burma, Whaler and Music Festival!

For the end of February we were asked to join an international school course for their expedition. None of us were particularly happy about this as we thought it would be just the usual spoilt kids who moan all the time and don’t want to be here. We were very wrong! This was a school from Burma(Myanmar) and the kids were brilliant! Due to the country they had grown up in they weren’t spoilt because Burma is only just opening its doors to the rest of the world with its McDonalds and Playstations etc. The course was a lot of fun and the kids put on a great performance at the end of course BBQ with everyone dressed up in traditional Myanmar dress! Since we didn’t do a 25day Classic Course when we arrived we were going to have whaler training! This has been my favourite training! After 6months we were finally getting to go sailing on the whalers! The plan was to head down from OB to Pulau Rumbia on day one and then back up around Pangkor to Syawal on day two and back to OB on day three! On day one there wasn’t much wind so we had to row most of the way, around 20km. I think everyone out of the 9 of us was seasick apart from myself and Alistair so we pretty much had a continual rowing shift while everyone else tried their hardest when they felt reasonable enough. The bay we were anchoring in should be pristine with a lovely view out to sea however due to the currents and stupid humans dumping rubbish the whole shoreline in the bay was lined with plastic, bottles, slippers, tubs, balls, fishing net etc it is really quite upsetting how much litter there was. It made me realise how much rubbish there must be floating in seas all over the world, this was only one wee bay. I have never seen mosquitoes like the ones at this campsite, it was insane, and they were really small so they could fit through the window net on the tent so we had no ventilation all night! Day two we got the tides and wind just right! We sailed all the way up with the tide in our favour and as soon as we turned around the north of Pangkor the tides also changed to continue to be in our favour! It wouldn’t be a proper training session if there wasn’t some sort of disagreement so in true training style with Syawal in sight there was debate as to whether we should stop for lunch meaning we may lose the wind and would drift further away from Syawal, or whether we should just press on for another half hour and reach the campsite and then eat. We pushed on. Syawal also has a lot of nyamuk(mosquitoes) but not quite so bad thankfully. We set off a Chinese lantern out on the mother boat when it got dark which was nice seeing it float of into the distance and blend in with the stars before burning out. Day three was an easy hour cruise back to OB! Unfortunately we all had two back-to-back corporate courses next each 7 days long. Not the most exciting courses we’ve been on, but hey at least I finally got to do HTM trek! A very uneventful two courses! Far more exciting though was Future Music Festival Asia (FMFA)! A one day music festival that included acts like FUN, Rita Ora, PSY, The Temper Trap, Bloc Party and Prodigy! We were at the barrier for them all!!! All of them are amazing live! Hannah even got the guitarist from FUN’s guitar pick!! This was a really fun weekend down at Sipang, Malaysia’s Formula One circuit! Only cost £28 for a ticket as well, well gid! Shortly after, we got a visit from our Desk Officer Chris Hitch from Project. It was nice to see him again, we expected some practical jokes since last time we saw him there was a fish head left in his tent! He also commented on the amount of time that we spend eating or thinking about food or having conversations about food! Of course we took him to Biri’s! Libby was on course so we went over to Pangkor as well so Chris could see her. He said he normally cooks a meal for the volunteers one night, so for us he also cooked a meal, on the boat! It was an amazing meal too! Homemade roti, a tasty salad and the normal rations spiced up a little! Damn I’m speaking about food a lot again, maybe Heloise and Chris have a point…nah! I’ll repeat Ali’s quote again: “Malaysia is food”!

Chinese New Year, Singapore and Pulau Kapas

In February we got a visit from Heloise the Educational Development Officer at PT. She was in Thailand and Cambodia so decided to come to Malaysia specially to visit the OB volunteers. Knowing nothing of Malaysia or OB we decided that we would teach her all we knew: food! Pretty sure she left feeling like she wouldn’t have to eat again for another week!! We also did pretty much nothing OB related other than tell her about it. We did however go around the island on the speedboat, eating sugar crackers, stopping only for a little snorkelling and to get some more food! After pestering people about getting time off to go down to Johor for Chinese New Year we were given 10days off. First stop Kuala Lumpur for two nights to meet up with some of the other PT’ers. Guess what we did…yup went out for a few drinks, went to the cinema and ate food! We also saw Clea from OB Sabah who we hadn’t seen since first arriving in Malaysia so it was great hearing about another OB. Next stop Johor (after worrying slightly that we wouldn’t get bus tickets as the station was literally full). Myself and Alistair took up the offer to celebrate Chinese New Year with Kelly, one of our Chinese friends, and her family in Johor in the south of Malaysia. Their hospitality for us was great especially since we were “ang mow” (white people) invading a family celebration! Kelly’s parents are amazing, they allowed us to stay at their house, fed us as many Chinese cookies as possible and showed us around Johor Bharu explaining the meaning behind all the New Year traditions. We were taught that “wot” and “fatt” both mean lucky in two different Chinese dialects although I can’t remember which ones! This caused absolute hilarity in the back of the car ie. “You’re fatt”, “Wot?”, “Yeah you heard!”, “You calling me fatt?”, “ Yeah!”, “You’re fatt!”, “Thank you!”, “Wot?!” yeah so basically it kept us amused for a good 15mins! We saw the traditional dragon dance and lion dance, kind of like the ones you’re probably thinking off when you think of CNY! They set off very noisy fire crackers and bang a drum to ward off the bad spirits(?!) It’s all very impressive! We had a number of home-cooked meals with Kelly’s family like cow intestines (surprisingly tasty)! My chopstick skills were laughed at and we didn’t quite understand the traditional salad tossing so while everyone else lifted the salad a little, myself and Ali literally tossed up in the air! We were also privileged enough to be given ang pow, the small red packets containing a small sum of money! Ang pow are given to young single people by those who are married and grown up. The money we made in the ang pow we were then made to bet with at a relative’s house! I made a loss of 1RM which is pretty good considering how pro these people were! After Chinese New Year we headed across the bridge to Singapore. Now Singapore is not a place that we like. Know why? It’s bloody expensive! By Malaysian standards anyway! However it has some very spectacular architecture, a boat sitting on top of three skyscrapers?! We found a 3 person slingshot bungee at the harbour that we splashed out on doing, there is a video but that is not for public eyes!! It was far scarier than the bungee jump I did as a fundraiser! There is no warning that they are releasing it, Ali was mid sentence when they released it and sent us spinning up skyward and then toward the ground, its so disorientating! Great fun, mind you! Oh we were sitting in an Indian restaurant one night when I went to wash my hands and some Indian lady comes up to me and invites me and MY SON to her wedding later in the month!! What on earth?! Do I really look old enough to be Ali’s mother/does Ali really look young enough to be my son?! Told you to keep the beard Alistair!! One afternoon I went to a “theme park” called Haw Par Villa. It was basically an area that has lots of weird statues in it, like gorillas, tigers, owls and anything else! It also has the “10 Courts of Hell” which is a disturbing display of statues depicting Chinese myth! I had great fun wondering around on my own taking selfies with the statues! Enough of spending away our money in Singapore, we took a bus back to Johor and then another to Kuala Terrenganu to meet up with the other PT’ers again but this time on Kapas a small island off the East coast. It’s a beautiful island that was almost deserted when we went as it was just the end of monsoon season when the whole island just shuts down! The place we stayed was so nice, a single building up on huts literally on the beach with hammocks everywhere and the jungle right behind! It was very rustic but the owner was lovely cooking everyone staying there a meal on the last night! It was nice to be able to chill on a beach and go swimming without a lifejacket on! Back on the mainland we stayed at Nick and Josh’s project for a night. Although I had to stay with one of the female teachers as Terengannu is a very muslim state. We had hoped to get a bus back to OB around midday but when we tried to book one we were told they were all full! Little did we know that all the universities started the next day so students were all heading off to uni! We finally managed to get a night bus leaving at 11pm to get in at 7am. So we had a full day in KT. KT doesn’t have very much to do! We wandered around a lot and then found a mosque called Crystal Palace which looks a little like the Disney Palace! The bus ended up getting in at 8am and by the time we got picked up from the station we had 20mins to shower ready to start work at 9am!

S-21 and Choeun Ek Killing Fields of Cambodia

The blog that follows is very long-winded and could be disturbing to some people, however it is something which had a great impact on me and interests me greatly therefore it may be more about me just needing to write stuff down as opposed to you wanting to read about it! I took no pictures as a small mark of respect (and because both phone and camera are broken). I'm in a state of complete and utter disbelief. How can a few people cause such a widespread devastation. These people killed 2million of their own, enlisted child soldiers, destroyed the whole infrastructure of a country. These people are still alive and until 2007 free. These people are the Khmer Rouge. A ruthless communist party who during the Cambodian civil war fought, with the support of the King, against the US backed Lon Nol, the government army who had overthrown the King. The US bombings in Cambodia aided the Khmer Rouge in gaining support. The US bombing campaign dropped more bombs in Cambodia than all the bombs dropped in WW2 combined. The Khmer Rouge gained support and large areas of the country until they gained control of the capital Phnom Penh and with it the government. Citizens celebrated as they thought the war was over. Celebrations were short lived as a mere 3 hours later the citizens of Phnom Penh were being evacuated out to the countryside under the pretense that the city was about to get bombed by the US. Instead it was a move by the Khmer Rouge to start again at "Year Zero" . The people moved from the city worked in the fields as slaves for 12-15hours a day. Upon taking control on April 17 1975 the first targets were the senior government and military officials who were connected to the old regime of Lon Nol. The vision of the Khmer Rouge was to "cleanse" Cambodia and start again at "Year Zero". They destroyed banks, universities, religious buildings, abolished currency and closed all borders cutting Cambodia off from the rest of the world. The aim was to make Cambodia a classless communist state based on rural agrarian economy. To achieve this anyone who was "impure" was detained in prison where they were tortured, interrogated and executed. "Impure" was deemed to be anyone with a professional background or educated or of ethnic minority, so teachers, professors, doctors, nurses were all killed. The regime were paranoid, ordering that whole families be killed in order to prevent children coming back to take revenge in later years. By the later years of the.revolution ordinary Cambodian citizens were being imprisoned on accusations that they were part of the CIA or supported Lon Nol or were anti-revolutionary. When people were captured many were taken to Tuol Sleng also known by code name S-21, which was a school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison. Here prisoners were detained for 2-6 months while they were interrogated mainly for crimes they didn't commit. They were forced to admit to these crims to lessen the time they were tortured for. Prisoners would be detained in single 0.8x2m cells or in classrooms of 40 people lying on the floor with feet shackled together and hands tied. The only time they were allowed out was for interrogation and torture. Torture methods included continuous whipping of the back, when one guard got tired another would take over; removing finger nails and then pouring alcohol on the wound; having scorpions and centipedes sting nipples of both men and women; hanging victims upside down until they were unconscious and then dipping them in dirty water used as fertilizer so they quickly regained consciousness to continue interrogations. Victims would be tortured for hours a day. The torture wasn't intended to kill them but to force confsessions. However many died in Tuol Sleng due to torture, starvation (prisoners got approx 8mouthfulls of thin rice soup a day) or disease. The Khmer Rouge were meticulous with their documentation. Photographs were taken as prisoners entered Tuol Sleng, during their torture, careful lists of prisoners names to be transported to ChoeungEk and endless pages of confessions made by prisoners. When enough information had been extracted prisoners would be sent in trucks to a killing field at Choeung Ek. Here name lists would be double checked to ensure no-one had escaped before the blindfolded and shackled prisoners were told to kneel down at the edge of pits. Guards would hit the back of victims necks with everyday farming tools: hoes, ox-cart axles, sticks etc: to save bullets which were too expensive. Their necks were then slit, blindfolds and clothes removed and the bodies thrown into the pits. Chemicals would be thrown over the bodies to kill anyone still alive and to disguise the stench of death. The majority of the Khmer Rouge were young Cambodians who had volunteered as in a time when there was little food they knew they would be fed and have a job. Few joined on grounds of political agreement. These young "cadres" as they were called were as young as 13 and were guards at Tuol Sleng, at the killing fields and fighting on the front line against the Vietnamese. These cadres were also victims, when they signed up they didn't think they would be killing their own people, their own families. If they didn't do as they were ordered they too would be killed for being antirevolutionary. On January 7 1979, 3 years 8 months and 20 days after the Khmer Rouge took power the Vietnamese toppled Pol Pots government. As Vietnamese troops neared Phnom Penh the Khmer Rouge fled to the jungle and mountains in the west. When the Vietnamese came across Tuol Sleng they found 7 people alive. 20,000 people had gone through Tuol Sleng, no-one ever escaped and only 7 survived. At Choeung Ek Killing Fields 129 mass graves were found containing about 17,000 bodies: men, women, children, babies, elderly, foreigners and members of the Khmer Rouge themselves. Around the country over 20,000 mass graves and hundreds of prisons have been found. Until 1999 the Khmer Rouge were still in existence, however then all the senior leaders defected to the Royal Government of Cambodia, had been arrested or had died. Up until that point, 20 years since their fall from power, they had lived as free people still with some control over the country and even until 1990 had a seat in the UN. Of the 6 main Khmer Rouge leaders only 4 are still alive. Pol Pot, the leader, was arreste in 1998 but died in 1999 before he could be put on trial. Leng Sary was arrested in 2007and was awaiting trial when he died only 4 weeks ago. Leng Sarys wife and sister-in-law of Pol Pot, leng Thirith was also arrested in 2007 but was excused in 2011 due to Alzheimers Disease. Comrade Duch is the only one so far to be trialled. He was sentenced in 2010 to 35 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity, genocide and breaches of the Geneva Convention. He is also the only leader to admit to any involvement and plead guilty to his crimes. He was the officer in charge of Tuol Sleng. The remaining 2, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were also arrested in 2007 and await trial. Both deny any involvement despite being second in command after Pol Pot. As for all other members of the Khmer Rouge, no charges will be put against them. Most are remorseful for their actions and given the choice wouldn't have done it, but it was kill when they were told or be killed themselves. Some however support the Khmer Rouge and have no regrets about what they did. Its strange to walk the streets of Phnom Penh knowing I might be walking with people who killed tens or hundreds of their own people. These Khmer Rouge soldiers will now be as young as 50 years old. I have spent the last two days at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek and it has been a deeply moving experience. A lot of Tuol Sleng has been left almost exactly the way the Vietnamese it in 1979. The torture beds and tools still remain, cells are the way they were left, chalkboards still hang on the walls from the school days before 1975. I'm not sure but I think some of the the blood stains still remain on classroom floors. The barbed wire on the outside of one of the four buildings is still there, put up to prevent prisoners from jumping to their death. Inside some of the rooms are the thousands of pictures that the Khmer Rouge when prisoners entered. Pictures of women, men, elderly, children, babies, foreigners and government officers. There are also pictures that the Vietnamese took when they found Tuol Sleng of the last 14 victims to be killed. They buried them in the courtyard outside. The guide that showed me around had herself experienced the ruthlessness of the regime. She had seen her father and brother taken away, she never saw them again. Her and her mother were sent to opposite sides of the country to work in the fields, 14 hours a day, fed twice a day on very thin rice soup. At the end of the revolution, aged 13 she walked across the country to the district she knew her mother to be in where they were reunited. I also met Chum Mey, one of the seven survivors of Tuol Sleng. He is now over 80 years old and survived because the Khmer Rouge found out he was a painter. He was told to paint the scenes of torture so the soldiers could prove to those above them that their orders were being carried out. He was given the privilege of sleeping in the painting room, getting the left over food from the soldiers and not getting interrogated after the first 2 months. Today he tells his story so the younger generation of Cambodia understand the mistakes made and don't allow history to repeat itself.