True Tales of Days Gone By ~ UNTAC recollections
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I'm 67 and work long hours in current brutal West Australian heat and I've not looked at this thread for several months as I lack the energy or inclination to argue politics in my limited free time though when our (minor, labouring) part in this project ends in about 6 months I'd like to open a thread on Pilger's mischief.
Today being my Rostered Day Off and as I'm in aircon comfort then in between watching the cricket I'll post a series of recollections of daily life as they come to mind.
There was the constant sound of crashing. The cheap gyms were perilous because the locals all wanted to bench press but the stands that held the bar were the same width as the bench itself with the result that at each end the bar extended far beyond its central support. Consequently you had to be wary every time they loaded or unloaded a weight because some would leave the bar static and the consequent load imbalance would send that bar flying into the air and so mirrors and skulls got battered and cracked.
And when motorbikes became the status symbol the locals would purchase and then immediately start riding so there would forever be the clattering crash as new motorbikes and their owners hit the ground though most of those falling had only their egos dented as the rutted city streets kept speeds right down and there was little other traffic.
Journeys beyond the capital were initially forbidden for Westerners but in Khmer New Year 1992 I took the chance.
I've posted this earlier on an obscure thread but as it relates directly to the very early UNTAC time I'll reproduce it here:
The country had just reopened, and having waited 17 years to return I was just about first back in but I had very little money. I got a basic job but by New Year in April 1992 I'd decided that I needed a bit of Pattaya civilization. At the time foreigners were not allowed outside Phnom Penh without a permit, and there was no land travel to the border and in fact no authorized land border crossings. Pochentong Airport was the only entry-exit point and with a monopoly going and no other way in or out, the airfare was an exorbitant $200 each way.
However I heard there was a boat to Koh Kong leaving in early afternoon from Srey Ambil, which is a tiny inland river port some way off the mid-point turnoff between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, so I got myself there and boarded a ship.
About eight Khmer passengers, myself, and the crusty sea captain and his 1-2 man crew, some cargo and a fixed machine gun set off in the wooden fishing boat through mazes of very narrow waterways with vegetation often brushing the vessel, and it was mystically like something out of Apocalypse Now.
But then in early evening we hit the open sea. Holy Bejeezus, it was now like something out of Perfect Storm. We got pounded ... bashed and whacked and tossed ... and the captain was hollering and screaming and at one point about midnight in a rage he even blazed off a couple of furious machine gun bursts at the sky.
Although there were no border cross-points, a young pimp on board with a couple of girls he was running into Thailand invited me to come along with him as "I know a way in". I agreed, largely because I had the hots for one of the girls whose hairy armpits held me mesmerized.
After brief sanctuary at an island port, the weather calmed a little and then finally after having survived the night we pulled wearily into Koh Kong.
I departed the boat tagging along behind my 'guide' but the police grabbed me as we disembarked and marched me into the adjacent station, the result being that the pimp took one look at this, shook his head and disappeared.
The cops asked if I knew I was not allowed out of Phnom Penh and I pleaded ignorance. Then the chief looked at me with narrowed eyes and asked if I planned to try to cross illegally into Thailand and I assured him I'd just come to see the beautiful Koh Kong.
Wallowing in the muddy remnants of that fierce overnight storm, the place was an absolute dive, way beyond Third World, more into Fourth or Fifth. This was not the Koh Kong town attached to the mainland that travellers pass through today. Instead, I was on the actual island. The whole place was wooden and you could hear rats scuttling around behind the walls and it was immediately apparent that the entire settlement needed to be razed and rebuilt. I checked into a grotty little wooden shack on stilts over the water which at least had some girls, and gave up on thoughts of Thailand because every boat coming and going did so under the watchful gaze of the police.
Next morning I wandered the few hundred meters back to the port's jetty with my little bag, intending to return to Phnom Penh (again, this is not the port area of the later Koh Kong-Sihanoukville boats).
A heavily hooded boatman on a longboat took one look and asked if I wanted to go to Thailand. I glanced at the neighbouring police station, which could see absolutely everything entering and leaving by sea, and saw that it was empty because this was now the first official day of New Year so on the spur of the moment I agreed and after changing some dollars into baht from someone hanging round I jumped in.
My anonymous boatman had just eye slits to look through, and after only a short distance he pulled into land and pointed to a faint track leading up a steep, high hill. I began clambering up the incline with absolutely no idea which country I was now in until I eventually crested and found a Thai lady selling sticky rice and mango under a big shady tree beside a road.... Heaven !!
And a vehicle was about to depart for Klong Yai so I got in and thought ' That was just TOO easy' ... and it was, because after only a matter of a kilometre or so a couple of heavily-armed Thai soldiers stepped out and waved us down, and to the left I saw a sizable Thai military base. I knew I was going to get done for crossing illegally and froze in the middle of the back seat. But with a uniformed Thai sailor slumped lazily to my left against the window all I got to see of the soldiers' faces were their chins as they gave a cursory glance and waved us through.
I had a great couple of days in Pattaya except that now I came to the realization that I had to somehow get back past the military base, somehow find a way across the water, and then somehow evade the all-seeing Khmer police at Koh Kong. I actually hadn't thought that far ahead when I'd impulsively jumped into the long boat, but I sure as hell mused on it now.
My first stroke of luck was that wandering along a Pattaya soi I chanced upon a place advertising runs to Cambodia! This was a big new thing for guys in Pattaya as Cambodia of early 1992 was this whacky place that they couldn't imagine so someone had arranged a deal with the Khmer authorities whereby they could run these foreigners in who would then enter without any paperwork, see Koh Kong for a couple of hours, then leave; all without any documentation occurring, just so that those Westerners could say they had been to Cambodia.
Whacko. So that would get me past the Thai soldiers, and it did, but as we neared the Thai jetty for a boat crossing to Cambodia the guide explained to me that all the Westerners would hand their passports to those Khmer police at the Koh Kong jetty, then be given their passports back one at a time as they re-boarded the boat to return to Thailand. That was unfeasible for me so I left the vehicle thereafter because the furious Khmer cops would be eagerly waiting to nab me.
So I stayed back and watched the others depart then wandered alone to the little jetty and thought that even if I could get a boat of any kind back in, the cops would still see me. I sat there helplessly for about ten minutes, time which I would have spent pondering options if I'd been able to think of any, but just then a little vessel went past, saw me, and pulled in. The guy spoke a little English and I explained my problem but he just laughed and said "I'm the king of Koh Kong. Come .. I stop at my house, not at the police."
Sure enough we pulled in and moored at his house, probably a hundred or so meters before the police station.
I thanked him profusely and then I had to walk past the police to some lodgings, carrying my little bag, and I felt the cops' eyes burning into me as I went past but they couldn't say anything as they had neither seen me leaving for Thailand nor arriving from there.
But I certainly never contemplated that again. I had fluked it all the way in and out, and even in Pattaya I'd had a moment as I used a travellers' cheque and watched the female money changer repeatedly going through my passport trying unsuccessfully to find my entry stamp before finally she mercifully gave up and handed over the baht.
Postscript:
On the boat back to Phnom Penh, there was the pimp and the girls! They'd been caught trying to cross over, and he'd been heavily fined, and they'd all only just been released from 3-4 days in jail, so if I'd gone with them as originally agreed I would have got done.
The pimp was so pissed off that I'd made it but he hadn't.
Today being my Rostered Day Off and as I'm in aircon comfort then in between watching the cricket I'll post a series of recollections of daily life as they come to mind.
There was the constant sound of crashing. The cheap gyms were perilous because the locals all wanted to bench press but the stands that held the bar were the same width as the bench itself with the result that at each end the bar extended far beyond its central support. Consequently you had to be wary every time they loaded or unloaded a weight because some would leave the bar static and the consequent load imbalance would send that bar flying into the air and so mirrors and skulls got battered and cracked.
And when motorbikes became the status symbol the locals would purchase and then immediately start riding so there would forever be the clattering crash as new motorbikes and their owners hit the ground though most of those falling had only their egos dented as the rutted city streets kept speeds right down and there was little other traffic.
Journeys beyond the capital were initially forbidden for Westerners but in Khmer New Year 1992 I took the chance.
I've posted this earlier on an obscure thread but as it relates directly to the very early UNTAC time I'll reproduce it here:
The country had just reopened, and having waited 17 years to return I was just about first back in but I had very little money. I got a basic job but by New Year in April 1992 I'd decided that I needed a bit of Pattaya civilization. At the time foreigners were not allowed outside Phnom Penh without a permit, and there was no land travel to the border and in fact no authorized land border crossings. Pochentong Airport was the only entry-exit point and with a monopoly going and no other way in or out, the airfare was an exorbitant $200 each way.
However I heard there was a boat to Koh Kong leaving in early afternoon from Srey Ambil, which is a tiny inland river port some way off the mid-point turnoff between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, so I got myself there and boarded a ship.
About eight Khmer passengers, myself, and the crusty sea captain and his 1-2 man crew, some cargo and a fixed machine gun set off in the wooden fishing boat through mazes of very narrow waterways with vegetation often brushing the vessel, and it was mystically like something out of Apocalypse Now.
But then in early evening we hit the open sea. Holy Bejeezus, it was now like something out of Perfect Storm. We got pounded ... bashed and whacked and tossed ... and the captain was hollering and screaming and at one point about midnight in a rage he even blazed off a couple of furious machine gun bursts at the sky.
Although there were no border cross-points, a young pimp on board with a couple of girls he was running into Thailand invited me to come along with him as "I know a way in". I agreed, largely because I had the hots for one of the girls whose hairy armpits held me mesmerized.
After brief sanctuary at an island port, the weather calmed a little and then finally after having survived the night we pulled wearily into Koh Kong.
I departed the boat tagging along behind my 'guide' but the police grabbed me as we disembarked and marched me into the adjacent station, the result being that the pimp took one look at this, shook his head and disappeared.
The cops asked if I knew I was not allowed out of Phnom Penh and I pleaded ignorance. Then the chief looked at me with narrowed eyes and asked if I planned to try to cross illegally into Thailand and I assured him I'd just come to see the beautiful Koh Kong.
Wallowing in the muddy remnants of that fierce overnight storm, the place was an absolute dive, way beyond Third World, more into Fourth or Fifth. This was not the Koh Kong town attached to the mainland that travellers pass through today. Instead, I was on the actual island. The whole place was wooden and you could hear rats scuttling around behind the walls and it was immediately apparent that the entire settlement needed to be razed and rebuilt. I checked into a grotty little wooden shack on stilts over the water which at least had some girls, and gave up on thoughts of Thailand because every boat coming and going did so under the watchful gaze of the police.
Next morning I wandered the few hundred meters back to the port's jetty with my little bag, intending to return to Phnom Penh (again, this is not the port area of the later Koh Kong-Sihanoukville boats).
A heavily hooded boatman on a longboat took one look and asked if I wanted to go to Thailand. I glanced at the neighbouring police station, which could see absolutely everything entering and leaving by sea, and saw that it was empty because this was now the first official day of New Year so on the spur of the moment I agreed and after changing some dollars into baht from someone hanging round I jumped in.
My anonymous boatman had just eye slits to look through, and after only a short distance he pulled into land and pointed to a faint track leading up a steep, high hill. I began clambering up the incline with absolutely no idea which country I was now in until I eventually crested and found a Thai lady selling sticky rice and mango under a big shady tree beside a road.... Heaven !!
And a vehicle was about to depart for Klong Yai so I got in and thought ' That was just TOO easy' ... and it was, because after only a matter of a kilometre or so a couple of heavily-armed Thai soldiers stepped out and waved us down, and to the left I saw a sizable Thai military base. I knew I was going to get done for crossing illegally and froze in the middle of the back seat. But with a uniformed Thai sailor slumped lazily to my left against the window all I got to see of the soldiers' faces were their chins as they gave a cursory glance and waved us through.
I had a great couple of days in Pattaya except that now I came to the realization that I had to somehow get back past the military base, somehow find a way across the water, and then somehow evade the all-seeing Khmer police at Koh Kong. I actually hadn't thought that far ahead when I'd impulsively jumped into the long boat, but I sure as hell mused on it now.
My first stroke of luck was that wandering along a Pattaya soi I chanced upon a place advertising runs to Cambodia! This was a big new thing for guys in Pattaya as Cambodia of early 1992 was this whacky place that they couldn't imagine so someone had arranged a deal with the Khmer authorities whereby they could run these foreigners in who would then enter without any paperwork, see Koh Kong for a couple of hours, then leave; all without any documentation occurring, just so that those Westerners could say they had been to Cambodia.
Whacko. So that would get me past the Thai soldiers, and it did, but as we neared the Thai jetty for a boat crossing to Cambodia the guide explained to me that all the Westerners would hand their passports to those Khmer police at the Koh Kong jetty, then be given their passports back one at a time as they re-boarded the boat to return to Thailand. That was unfeasible for me so I left the vehicle thereafter because the furious Khmer cops would be eagerly waiting to nab me.
So I stayed back and watched the others depart then wandered alone to the little jetty and thought that even if I could get a boat of any kind back in, the cops would still see me. I sat there helplessly for about ten minutes, time which I would have spent pondering options if I'd been able to think of any, but just then a little vessel went past, saw me, and pulled in. The guy spoke a little English and I explained my problem but he just laughed and said "I'm the king of Koh Kong. Come .. I stop at my house, not at the police."
Sure enough we pulled in and moored at his house, probably a hundred or so meters before the police station.
I thanked him profusely and then I had to walk past the police to some lodgings, carrying my little bag, and I felt the cops' eyes burning into me as I went past but they couldn't say anything as they had neither seen me leaving for Thailand nor arriving from there.
But I certainly never contemplated that again. I had fluked it all the way in and out, and even in Pattaya I'd had a moment as I used a travellers' cheque and watched the female money changer repeatedly going through my passport trying unsuccessfully to find my entry stamp before finally she mercifully gave up and handed over the baht.
Postscript:
On the boat back to Phnom Penh, there was the pimp and the girls! They'd been caught trying to cross over, and he'd been heavily fined, and they'd all only just been released from 3-4 days in jail, so if I'd gone with them as originally agreed I would have got done.
The pimp was so pissed off that I'd made it but he hadn't.
.
* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
Karma
Best post on this thread by far.
Best post on this thread by far.
Rated R for Ricecakes
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The Cambodian fish available in the markets at the time was quite magnificent, with varieties that I'd never before seen or tasted.
One kind in particular had to be the best fish ever, but of course it couldn't last.
In about 1993 the Cambodia Times carried a story extolling the initiative of a Malaysian businessmen who was exporting a particular delectable variety of Cambodian fish to Kuala Lumpur, a species which had long since been completely fished out in his home country.
Similarly, in a cheap gym I got talking to another Malaysian who was telling me of his grandiose plans to set up large chicken farms where the fowls would be given 'medicine' for rapid-fire plumping. It happened that I'd spent a lot of time in Malaysia and was well aware that in that country the natural scrawny 'kompong chicken' fetched a higher price than the dosed up versions.
Lexus and ricecakes, as the two of you seem to like personal recollections, I'll divert from daily life with a couple of stories that, with apologies to OML, divert slightly in parts from the UNTAC time.
Upon the reopening of general entry in early 1992, all sorts of ghosts from the past went back for a look-see.
I sat next to the Newsweek journalist Ron Moreau when I flew in from Bangkok and when we departed the plane a group of young Khmer women handed an attractive middle-aged European female passenger a large bouquet of flowers and I like to imagine that it was Marie Claude Martin whose report The Vietnamization of Cambodia had been instrumental in the UN denial of recognition to the Hanoi-installed regime.
From my second night on I stayed at the government-owned Guest House (these days a private residence) on the Monivong side of what is now The Billabong. On my third day, leaving early one morning to go and eat a roadside breakfast I saw a fellow guest, a Khmer, standing against the front wall and when he responded with an American accent to my greeting then after identifying myself as just a tourist from New Zealand and enquiring about his past it became very noticeable that though he was talking to me he barely gave me a glance but rather his eyes darted from side to side which, coupled with his back now hard against the wall, gave the appearance of someone in full protective mode.
He only gave a couple of hints of his past including his rather mundane position during the Lon Nol regime but it was enough for me to blurt out "You're --- -----" and the poor guy almost collapsed in shock that an apparent blow-in visitor from NZ could so easily identify him.
He rapidly disappeared and I have no idea if I actually was correct in my identification but this guy (assuming it was him) should have become one of the key figures of the 1970-75 war but didn't due to tragic misconceptions and instead he only ended up being offside with each of the Rouge and the Lon Nol government and the Americans.
I'll give a full account of who and why in Part 2 of my kindle which I'll get done after I eventually stop work.
Some months back I also mentioned Ambassador Holloway but that will get too long-winded for this thread as it involves too much, including a full explanation of the Soviet perception that Australia and NZ were the West's weak links in the mid-1980s, culminating in the subsequent Soviet-Hanoi attempt to get Australia to break away and grant recognition to Vietnam's puppet regime in Phnom Penh in hope that this would lead to eventual UN acknowledgement.
This particular endeavour centred on a Vietnamese delegation going to Australia in 1984 to get Canberra's likely recognition.
Alarmed, I played a minor part in scuttling that, teaming up with a then-nondescript Cambodian on Australia's east coast to sting the dormant and placid Khmer expatriates into a protest that couldn't be ignored by the Australian Labor government.
I'll go into full detail on that in Part 2.
After I'd been in Phnom Penh for awhile in 1992 I learnt of the existence of an 'Ian from Australia' staying at The Capitol who said he'd been in Phnom Penh before it fell, and the given description exactly matched the young guy who I barely knew but had certainly heard all about. Unfortunately I could find no trace of him at the Capitol or his later whereabouts because I wanted to tell him a follow-up yarn.
Ian had felt so strongly about the anti-Khmer Rouge cause of the Lon Nol soldiers that he'd volunteered to serve in the trenches with them until one horrific and heaving night out there saw him decide that maybe he'd unvolunteer himself, and basically he was then persuaded to leave town before he had another change of heart and returned to the front.
He departed in early March of 1975 while myself, unwilling to trust that I'd be able to be notified in event of a final American departure, evacuated Phnom Penh on April 6 just a couple of days before Pochentong fell to the Rouge. Indeed I'd held off until I could see that the airport was about to go and that I really couldn't delay any longer.
I'd then holed up in Bangkok as the actual full evacuation came and went and a few days after that there was the BBC news report that those Westerners who'd remained behind (to welcome the 'liberators' if the harsh truth be told about the bulk of them) were desperately calling for an American rescue mission to get them out as if they'd only suddenly become aware of the reality of the Rouge.
But it was too late and they'd have to stay and hope for the best.
While waiting for the fall I decided to head off to Aranyaprathet to hang around the border to see what was going on.
Arriving at Aran after a near-full day on the train I went to the wooden bridge that linked the two countries.
There I was amazed to see a rather attractive mature German woman just standing around on the Thai side, and when I asked what she was up to she responded that as a child she'd been under American bombs in World War 2 so now her full sympathies were with the Khmer Rouge liberators and that once they were in control then she would cross the border to glorify with them in their victory. I was trying to explain 'DON"T' to her when she happened to mention that only an hour or so earlier she'd been talking to an 'Ian from Australia' who had said he was crossing over as he needed to get to Phnom Penh to get his Khmer girlfriend out.
I yelped and immediately crossed over myself into Poipet to try to find him and knock some sense into his head. It was then about April 15 and unknown to us Phnom Penh only had two days left. I scoured and searched and asked but no-one had either seen a Westerner or could give me any info on Ian so I eventually gave up and crossed back into Thailand. There'd been no border controls at all on either side with nothing and no-one at the Cambodian end, while the Thais had just grinned and waved me on my way out and then on my way back in.
I then decided that I'd really, really like to do the fraulein if I could, but now I couldn't find her either.
I went to drink a beer and while doing that I decided to dash back to Bangkok and make a quick farewell visit to beloved Saigon as the news bulletins were making it ever more apparent that that city too was about to go.
A couple of days later, about mid-morning on April 17, our pilot announced that we were now passing right over the top of Phnom Penh and though I strained my all and, oblivious as to what exactly what was unfolding directly below us at that very moment, I couldn't see the dear city clearly and it was only after we'd landed and I was strolling Tu Do Street that the paper boy held up the front page of the Saigon Post with its awful thick-print words PHNOM PENH FALLS.
One kind in particular had to be the best fish ever, but of course it couldn't last.
In about 1993 the Cambodia Times carried a story extolling the initiative of a Malaysian businessmen who was exporting a particular delectable variety of Cambodian fish to Kuala Lumpur, a species which had long since been completely fished out in his home country.
Similarly, in a cheap gym I got talking to another Malaysian who was telling me of his grandiose plans to set up large chicken farms where the fowls would be given 'medicine' for rapid-fire plumping. It happened that I'd spent a lot of time in Malaysia and was well aware that in that country the natural scrawny 'kompong chicken' fetched a higher price than the dosed up versions.
Lexus and ricecakes, as the two of you seem to like personal recollections, I'll divert from daily life with a couple of stories that, with apologies to OML, divert slightly in parts from the UNTAC time.
Upon the reopening of general entry in early 1992, all sorts of ghosts from the past went back for a look-see.
I sat next to the Newsweek journalist Ron Moreau when I flew in from Bangkok and when we departed the plane a group of young Khmer women handed an attractive middle-aged European female passenger a large bouquet of flowers and I like to imagine that it was Marie Claude Martin whose report The Vietnamization of Cambodia had been instrumental in the UN denial of recognition to the Hanoi-installed regime.
From my second night on I stayed at the government-owned Guest House (these days a private residence) on the Monivong side of what is now The Billabong. On my third day, leaving early one morning to go and eat a roadside breakfast I saw a fellow guest, a Khmer, standing against the front wall and when he responded with an American accent to my greeting then after identifying myself as just a tourist from New Zealand and enquiring about his past it became very noticeable that though he was talking to me he barely gave me a glance but rather his eyes darted from side to side which, coupled with his back now hard against the wall, gave the appearance of someone in full protective mode.
He only gave a couple of hints of his past including his rather mundane position during the Lon Nol regime but it was enough for me to blurt out "You're --- -----" and the poor guy almost collapsed in shock that an apparent blow-in visitor from NZ could so easily identify him.
He rapidly disappeared and I have no idea if I actually was correct in my identification but this guy (assuming it was him) should have become one of the key figures of the 1970-75 war but didn't due to tragic misconceptions and instead he only ended up being offside with each of the Rouge and the Lon Nol government and the Americans.
I'll give a full account of who and why in Part 2 of my kindle which I'll get done after I eventually stop work.
Some months back I also mentioned Ambassador Holloway but that will get too long-winded for this thread as it involves too much, including a full explanation of the Soviet perception that Australia and NZ were the West's weak links in the mid-1980s, culminating in the subsequent Soviet-Hanoi attempt to get Australia to break away and grant recognition to Vietnam's puppet regime in Phnom Penh in hope that this would lead to eventual UN acknowledgement.
This particular endeavour centred on a Vietnamese delegation going to Australia in 1984 to get Canberra's likely recognition.
Alarmed, I played a minor part in scuttling that, teaming up with a then-nondescript Cambodian on Australia's east coast to sting the dormant and placid Khmer expatriates into a protest that couldn't be ignored by the Australian Labor government.
I'll go into full detail on that in Part 2.
After I'd been in Phnom Penh for awhile in 1992 I learnt of the existence of an 'Ian from Australia' staying at The Capitol who said he'd been in Phnom Penh before it fell, and the given description exactly matched the young guy who I barely knew but had certainly heard all about. Unfortunately I could find no trace of him at the Capitol or his later whereabouts because I wanted to tell him a follow-up yarn.
Ian had felt so strongly about the anti-Khmer Rouge cause of the Lon Nol soldiers that he'd volunteered to serve in the trenches with them until one horrific and heaving night out there saw him decide that maybe he'd unvolunteer himself, and basically he was then persuaded to leave town before he had another change of heart and returned to the front.
He departed in early March of 1975 while myself, unwilling to trust that I'd be able to be notified in event of a final American departure, evacuated Phnom Penh on April 6 just a couple of days before Pochentong fell to the Rouge. Indeed I'd held off until I could see that the airport was about to go and that I really couldn't delay any longer.
I'd then holed up in Bangkok as the actual full evacuation came and went and a few days after that there was the BBC news report that those Westerners who'd remained behind (to welcome the 'liberators' if the harsh truth be told about the bulk of them) were desperately calling for an American rescue mission to get them out as if they'd only suddenly become aware of the reality of the Rouge.
But it was too late and they'd have to stay and hope for the best.
While waiting for the fall I decided to head off to Aranyaprathet to hang around the border to see what was going on.
Arriving at Aran after a near-full day on the train I went to the wooden bridge that linked the two countries.
There I was amazed to see a rather attractive mature German woman just standing around on the Thai side, and when I asked what she was up to she responded that as a child she'd been under American bombs in World War 2 so now her full sympathies were with the Khmer Rouge liberators and that once they were in control then she would cross the border to glorify with them in their victory. I was trying to explain 'DON"T' to her when she happened to mention that only an hour or so earlier she'd been talking to an 'Ian from Australia' who had said he was crossing over as he needed to get to Phnom Penh to get his Khmer girlfriend out.
I yelped and immediately crossed over myself into Poipet to try to find him and knock some sense into his head. It was then about April 15 and unknown to us Phnom Penh only had two days left. I scoured and searched and asked but no-one had either seen a Westerner or could give me any info on Ian so I eventually gave up and crossed back into Thailand. There'd been no border controls at all on either side with nothing and no-one at the Cambodian end, while the Thais had just grinned and waved me on my way out and then on my way back in.
I then decided that I'd really, really like to do the fraulein if I could, but now I couldn't find her either.
I went to drink a beer and while doing that I decided to dash back to Bangkok and make a quick farewell visit to beloved Saigon as the news bulletins were making it ever more apparent that that city too was about to go.
A couple of days later, about mid-morning on April 17, our pilot announced that we were now passing right over the top of Phnom Penh and though I strained my all and, oblivious as to what exactly what was unfolding directly below us at that very moment, I couldn't see the dear city clearly and it was only after we'd landed and I was strolling Tu Do Street that the paper boy held up the front page of the Saigon Post with its awful thick-print words PHNOM PENH FALLS.
.
* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
You have your Marie Martins confused. It was Marie Alexandrine Martin, "Vietnamised Cambodia". No luck finding a copy though I did pick up her book Cambodia: A Shattered Society.karmageddon1 wrote:The
I sat next to the Newsweek journalist Ron Moreau when I flew in from Bangkok and when we departed the plane a group of young Khmer women handed an attractive middle-aged European female passenger a large bouquet of flowers and I like to imagine that it was Marie Claude Martin whose report The Vietnamization of Cambodia had been instrumental in the UN denial of recognition to the Hanoi-installed regime.
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jm wrote:You have your Marie Martins confused. It was Marie Alexandrine Martin, "Vietnamised Cambodia". No luck finding a copy though I did pick up her book Cambodia: A Shattered Society.karmageddon1 wrote:The
I sat next to the Newsweek journalist Ron Moreau when I flew in from Bangkok and when we departed the plane a group of young Khmer women handed an attractive middle-aged European female passenger a large bouquet of flowers and I like to imagine that it was Marie Claude Martin whose report The Vietnamization of Cambodia had been instrumental in the UN denial of recognition to the Hanoi-installed regime.
I couldn't find any references to Marie Claude Martin either. As for Marie Alexandrine Martin, I found her book to be fairly balanced, unlike Karmageddon's.
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
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Thanks jm,
When I later tried to google her I couldn't find her either!
When I later tried to google her I couldn't find her either!
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* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
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She also wrote one of the best references about agriculture during the Khmer Rouge.
Martin, Marie Alexandrine, 1983. La riziculture et la maîtrisse de l’eau dans le Kampuchea démocratique. Études Rurals, pp. 7-44.
Martin, Marie Alexandrine, 1983. La riziculture et la maîtrisse de l’eau dans le Kampuchea démocratique. Études Rurals, pp. 7-44.
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Two very interesting post karmageddon1.
As I think I posted at the near start of this thread, my first boss in the UN, in fact the person who recruited me in to the UN system, was Paul Ignatieff, a Canadian of white Russian ancestry, and whose family members have served the UN well in different agencies at different times. Paul was very much to the fore at the old French Embassy in Phnom Penh in the negotiations with the KR to get the international community members and some Khmers holed up there safely out to Thailand.
I am fortunate to have a acquaintance that I drink with occasionally in Bangkok, Les Strouse, an American, who had for many years been a pilot with Air America in Lao and appears in text and photos in several books about that secret air war in Lao. Les was piloting aircraft involved with the evacuation of US Embassy staff right up to and at the very fall of Phnom Penh. In fact Les flew what he believed was the last extraction out of Phnom Penh when the US ambassador implored him to make just one more last flight which he did against his better judgement and only just managed to pull off.
OML
As I think I posted at the near start of this thread, my first boss in the UN, in fact the person who recruited me in to the UN system, was Paul Ignatieff, a Canadian of white Russian ancestry, and whose family members have served the UN well in different agencies at different times. Paul was very much to the fore at the old French Embassy in Phnom Penh in the negotiations with the KR to get the international community members and some Khmers holed up there safely out to Thailand.
I am fortunate to have a acquaintance that I drink with occasionally in Bangkok, Les Strouse, an American, who had for many years been a pilot with Air America in Lao and appears in text and photos in several books about that secret air war in Lao. Les was piloting aircraft involved with the evacuation of US Embassy staff right up to and at the very fall of Phnom Penh. In fact Les flew what he believed was the last extraction out of Phnom Penh when the US ambassador implored him to make just one more last flight which he did against his better judgement and only just managed to pull off.
OML
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I was unaware that M.A. Martin had written a book.Lucky Lucan wrote: I found her book to be fairly balanced, unlike Karmageddon's.
LL praises what he refers to as her 'balance' but that very aspect frustrates a reviewer: We're told that, "Vietnam imposed on Cambodia a painful and complete protectorate, against the will of the entire population..." And, right after that we were told that, "They did not mistreat the people, who welcomed them as liberators." That's what is exasperating about this book: was the occupation against the will of the people, or did the people welcome the liberators?
Maybe this is the ultimate political correctness. Every time a statement is made, immediately contradict it, and that way nobody's feelings are hurt...or maybe the book is therefore unacceptable to everyone.
LL, my Part Two will include the 1970-75 war and more background to it, as was always intended.
You refer to Part One which had the stated intent of outlining the decades-long deceit of the Vietnamese Reds, and that's what it did.
Given Hanoi's duplicity which resulted in death and suffering for multiple millions in a needless Second Indochina War caused solely by Ho's desire to turn all of Indochina communist, then just how exactly am I supposed to 'balance' out the unutterable misery that those North Vietnamese Reds inflicted?
Your same inane critique would surely then apply to all books on the Khmer Rouge regime whether written by Cambodian survivors or analysts as they too make one-sided condemnation of the Cambodian Reds as how in hell could anything positive be said about that period?
OML,
One ex-Air America pilot I knew got back into town one afternoon very shaken and told me about how just a short time earlier he'd landed his small cargo aircraft but while jogging for the terminal to get a ride into town to get out of the vicinity an explosive blast knocked him onto the ground and when he looked back his plane was in flames.
Returning to topic:
There were three very common phrases used at the time by English-speaking Cambodians.
The first was Step by step which reflected their desperate hope that UNTAC's presence meant that the long horror was finally coming to an end and that gradually they'd get a return to the kind of life they'd had decades earlier.
The second was I don't like someone looking down on me which was a sad indicator of things.
Even sadder, the third was In my next life I don't want to be Cambodian.
I happened to be passing along Monivong when the Indonesian UNTAC forces announced their appearance in a most astonishing manner with a massed jog-trot down that boulevard in full combat mode except with berets rather than helmets as they roared out fierce chants. Robust and fit and crisp, they were a real gob-smack for those Khmer on the street at the time.
Regrettably it all ended being more show than substance as UNTAC's overriding intent became to see an election rather than to enforce anything.
One of my great memories is of being at a juice stall off Monivong early one evening and meeting a couple of youngish Europeans who told me in very low-key manner of their incredible jaunts around the countryside.
At the time the Khmer Rouge were still on board with the election process as UNTAC hadn't yet disappointed them (I brought up the reason for their subsequent disillusionment somewhere on the thread) and so the top UNTAC officials were due to travel to certain Khmer Rouge strongholds by helicopter and it was going to be this big fuss of 'the first white men to ...blah blah') but when those UNTAC top brass flew in expecting a special moment they found instead that these two young guys had upstaged them and were already there, standing beside the Khmer Rouge welcoming party.
Knowing the proposed UNTAC itinerary in advance and where UNTAC would head and on which day, and applying the rationale that the Khmer Rouge were preparing for Western visitors anyway, the guys pulled the same stunt several times over to entirely deflate the initial appearances of the peacekeepers.
I was in awe of those them because the roads were in a condition that defied belief, mines were still prevalent, and they'd fearlessly pierced their way into Rouge strongholds.
Has anyone mentioned the cost of international phone calls?
You had to make them at the post office using phone cards which had denominations of $20, $50 and $100. The cards were rather beautiful, the $100 one being an Angkor Wat stunner.
You know how before the BBC news on TV they show the countdown clock with the seconds flashing past, well that was what happened when you used these cards except it was your dollars disappearing at a rate of knots.
I was entering the post office one day when the street urchins who used to hang around there rushed up to a Westerner and handed him a pile of used phone cards that UNTAC personnel had discarded when there was no credit left in them. He in turn handed them a pittance and it was obviously a regular arrangement and I'd love to know what those cards are worth today.
Smart guy.
The CPP crook in charge of the phone price scam obviously caught on too because suddenly the ultra-attractive $100 cards were no longer available and were presumably being hoarded.
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* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
* my 99 cent Kindle memories of 1974 CAMBODIA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/EXPLAINING-CAMB ... B00L0LC8TO *
Good posts Karmageddon...looking forward to "Pilger's mischief" .....
- Lucky Lucan
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Perhaps both were true? Maybe they welcomed them at first and later grew to resent their presence? You weren't even aware she wrote a book and now you are judging it from one sentence is someone else's review?karmageddon1 wrote:That's what is exasperating about this book: was the occupation against the will of the people, or did the people welcome the liberators?
Maybe this is the ultimate political correctness. Every time a statement is made, immediately contradict it, and that way nobody's feelings are hurt...or maybe the book is therefore unacceptable to everyone[/i].
Anyway, it's got nothing to do with political correctness. That's just a cop out fit-all label for anything that doesn't fit in with your black and white thinking. Blaming "Uncle Ho" and the " Vietnamese Reds" for everything that went on in the region is the sort of simplistic reasoning I'd expect from a child, not an adult. In case you had forgotten, there were many belligerent parties involved in these wars.
I expect an "if you're not with us - you're against us - so you must be a commie" response soon.
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
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Per OML's comments, would it be possible to break out a new thread for recollections by Aussie Vietnam vets ? There are precious few of you fellas left. I have read extensively on the topic, but there is far too little scally waggery therein.Holdfast wrote:Ot Mean Loi, hope you don't mind me making a comment about your few posts on the 26 th last month, on the subject of where mines came from, and the couple nonsense posts disagreeing with you view that it doesn't really matter, quote, to hell with statatisticiansn,NGO's, Historians and other like organisations. This is slightly off topic, also, but I arrived in Nui Dat Oct'69, posted as an FE with 3 troop 1 Fld Sqn, a national serviceman, but who cares, anyway over the next 12 months I had quite a bit to do with mines but never once did I, or anyone else there care about the origin of the awful killing and maiming device, the M16 which of course came from the good old USA. As you would know mine incidents were so relevant around those times thanks to that disastrous decision of the barrier minefield from the Horseshoe to Dat Do. Anyway, as someone who unfortunately still has bad memories of them, I'm with squarely with you on this one, as I really don't think these treaties, bits of papers, or shaming countries as was suggested achieves anything.
But to the current situation at least here in Cambodia, I've had a little bit to do with the supply of equipment, training etc with a small demining organisation based out of Siem Reap. I'll be back up in Siem Reap, Phnom Penh at present, in a week or two and at first opportunity I'll ask Aki Ra what sort of records he's kept and pretty sure all I'll get in reply is that infectious grin and "what mean". I don't know what Halo or MAG do we blow every device in the ground, so much for the origin, who cares, although I believe the Chinese made M72 was pretty prevalent In some area's. Just as a matter of interest, when I get around to it I'll check with some contacts to see what sort of, if any, records CMAC keeps on this subject.
Bit long winded, but to be expected from someone who first came here 14 years ago, read this forum for what must be a decade, and only registered and first post today.
Haha - my money’s on Playboy
If we're talking about "Shattered Society" I would disagree. It very much reflects Karmageddon's anti Viet worldview. It confuses communist political indoctrination for Vietnamization ("ethnocide" ) throughout. It's full of quotations without attribution and made up or unreferenced statistics "Vietnam planned to send five million immigrants of which one million arrived before 1979" which are then quoted elsewhere as authoritative..Lucky Lucan wrote:jm wrote:You have your Marie Martins confused. It was Marie Alexandrine Martin, "Vietnamised Cambodia". No luck finding a copy though I did pick up her book Cambodia: A Shattered Society.karmageddon1 wrote:The
I sat next to the Newsweek journalist Ron Moreau when I flew in from Bangkok and when we departed the plane a group of young Khmer women handed an attractive middle-aged European female passenger a large bouquet of flowers and I like to imagine that it was Marie Claude Martin whose report The Vietnamization of Cambodia had been instrumental in the UN denial of recognition to the Hanoi-installed regime.
I couldn't find any references to Marie Claude Martin either. As for Marie Alexandrine Martin, I found her book to be fairly balanced, unlike Karmageddon's.
Don't blame me I voted for Sanders
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