Chapter 12: Cambodia - Years Zero and 802

Hi, do you realise that on 01/03 it was exactly 1 year ago since work gave me up? And tomorrow is one year since I first started travelling.

Anyway, an eventful crossing from Laos to Cambodia by 4 minibuses, some of it over dirt roads, a boat and hours of paperwork (and handing dollars over). I've never seen anything quite so chaotic for an international border, but finally made it to a small city, Kratie, on the Mekhong river about halfway between the Laos border and the capital, Phnom Penh. Yet another one with loads of French colonial buildings, many rundown but many now government offices, but friendly and pleasant.

Talking of government, the politicians and armed forces here are apparently even worse than Thailand and Laos - openly corrupt; selling public land to developers and keeping the money; jobs for the families; swanning around in enormous 4WD Lexus landcruisers. The remainder of the population can now run their own businesses or they farm.

Slightly odd here is that there is still a Royal Family, who until very recently were still active in the politics, even managing to come through the Khmer Rouge years unscathed. It is all extremely confusing with people changing sides quite regularly it seems with support from China, Vietnam or the West.

The Khmer Rouge, whose leader was Pol Pot ("Brother No 1"), was the infamous band of rebels who overran the country in 1975 when the Americans and Vietnamese left. Extreme Maoists who declared it to be Year Zero and that everyone had to work in the fields for the common good and that educated people (and any rivals) were the enemy. So they closed all schools, temples (Buddhism was banned), hospitals, etc and de-populated any cities to agricultural work camps. The educated were imprisoned, tortured and killed in the most inhumane ways, there were prisons set up in hundreds of ex-schools around the country.

The famous prison of Tuol Sleng (or S-21) in Phnom Penh with its accompanying Killing Field at Cheoung Ek, 13km away is actually only one of 343 killing sites found containing 19,433 mass graves. Estimates are 3 million people killed or starved to death in the work camps. Tuol Sleng had 14,000 prisoners in 5 years, 12 survived; Cheoung Ek has 129 mass graves (86 excavated contained 8,985 corpses); people were killed there by clubbing to death to save on bullets, with chemicals piled on top just in case they weren't dead and to stop the smell. Kids (families of the educated, just in case they too became clever) were killed by smashing their heads into a tree!

Eventually the Vietnamese took over Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge fled to the jungle mountains bordering with Thailand, where they continued to fight until 1991, taking thousands of prisoner workers with them. The world's largest minefield was laid by the freed Cambodians and Vietnamese to try to keep them there. Amazingly at this time the Western nations supported the Khmer Rouge to prevent Thailand going Vietnamese-style communist, we actually fed them and gave them ammo! Because a "fair trial basis" could not be agreed, Pol Pot died a natural death in 1998, others still await trial, if it ever gets agreed upon.

Cambodia today though is booming with foreign investment, particularly in tourism and infrastructure. Phnom Penh is really lively with the French influence coming back in a big way. Siem Reap (feeder city for Angkor) is a boomtown, building hotels and shopping complexes everywhere. So, despite all the chaos only ending 29 years ago, the locals are really looking forwards and their standards of living are rising in the towns if not for the rice farmer and fisherman - lots still live in bamboo shacks and scratch a living from pretty poor lands.

And so to Angkor from the Year 802 to 1432: firstly, what a place it is not a single temple, Angkor Wat is a single temple, vast but just one, inside Angkor. Angkor is a collection of temples, walled cities, royal palaces, reservoirs which started to be built in the halcyon days of the Angkor empire. This empire covered Thailand, Laos and the southern half of Vietnam, and Cambodia. Succeeding kings outdid each other in their building works, not just temples and walls but also enormous reservoirs and water systems to support a metropolitan area of 26 square kilometres (I think) and of up to 1 million people (many being builders and labourers, but a troop of 650 dancers, 1000 staff organising festival events and so on. They even carved the rocky bed of a spiritual spring and river 30 kms away (Kbal Spean) which fed the reservoirs.

The buildings that remain are mostly the temples as they were made of sandstone, the rest wood. The reservoirs have all but disappeared as rice fields, and so temples that would have been set as a floating island lose the impact. Unfortunately, sandstone is great for carvings but erodes and discolours to a uniform grey and succeeding empires and looters have ransacked many statues and treasures, so imagination is required as are good shoes and water. I took 3 days to get around most of it, there was more but it all becomes a blur.

I'm not sure why but Angkor didn't grab me the way Machu Picchu and Chichen Itza did. I think the others have more dramatic geography, more culture and engineering to grasp. But it is still a stunning place that I shall never forget.

Back in Phnom Penh now, came back by boat from Siem Reap down the Tonle Sap lake and river. It is the only river (and lake) in the world that flows in two directions depending on time of year. It feeds into the Mekhong at Phnom Penh during the drier seasons but when the Mekhong rises, it backs up from its delta in Vietnam and forces the water back up the Tonle Sap and refills the lake 330kms away!

Off to the seaside tomorrow (at last, the sea!) to see how developed the beach tourism is here, booming apparently with the government selling bits of beaches to private developers, and in one case to their own families! Still it has been 3 months since I left Phuket so a beach and a swim sounds good to me.

Photolink is http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/laurentmik/Cambodia_2008_Chapter_12

Cheers!

Mike