Gary Glitter, the British pop star who had a couple hits in the 70’s, was convicted of kiddie porn offenses in England several years ago. So he fled to Phenm Penh, Cambodia. It’s no wonder: the Southeast Asian kingdom has a reputation for being soft on sex tourists. Jill and I spent four days in the Cambodian capital and I can tell you this: that reputation is well-deserved.
Prostitution permeates the city. It’s a relatively pretty place, with French architecture and a tree-lined waterfront strip. But sex workers are everywhere. I saw numerous white men in their 30’s or 40’s strolling around with Cambodians–both men and women–in their teens and early 20’s. I even saw a guy who looked to be about 30 get on a motorycle and drive away with a Cambodian girl who was, at most, 13 years old. Hookers and johns are everywhere, and the cops don’t care.
Beyond the prevalence of the skin trade, my other lasting impression of Phnom Pehn is the complete insanity of the Khmer Rouge regime. Jill and I visited the Choeng Ek Memorial Killing Fields outside the city, an extermination camp where over 8,000 skulls are on display. We walked around the mass graves and the horror was palpable–we stepped on and around and over bones caked in the dirt, teeth strewn about the path, and the vicitms’ clothes, which still litter the ground.
The Khmer Rouge’s murderous Pol Pot, in an insane attempt to transform Cambodia into an agrarian society, abolished schools and set about exterminating intellectuals, ethinc minorities, and gays. The madness lasted from 1975-1979, and some 1.7 million people–about a fifth of the country’s population–was murdered. But visiting the killing fields, in its state of unreconstructed disorder, gives the impression that the genocide only concluded a few years ago.
We also made our way to the gloomy S-21 prison, where captives were held and tortured before being sent to the killing field. Sadness and depravity on a monumental scale. For more on traveling in Cambodia, see John Collins’s “Welcome to Khmer Rouge Land!”