Cambodia

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In Siem Reap



I have so much to write about. It’s overwhelming and I haven’t had time, but this afternoon, while the gang is out in rural villages, having a rice harvesting experience and riding on an ox cart, I’m hanging out in my room at the Amasura hotel, one of the best hotels we’ve ever stayed at. I’m having some stomach “issues” and now all four of us have had them. I was last.

I’ve decided not to write about the specific activities that we have done as tourists though if you’re a tourist you should do these things. The temples are magnificent, we visited a half dozen, each one from different periods and in different states of deterioration (the youngest one was from 1,100 CE. They are wonderful to visit for so many reasons, among them the story they tell of an ancient civilization and the creativity and skill of the artisans. Angkor Wat , the largest and most famous temple, is huge with a mote that’s six miles around. Inside the moat, well, look it up. We also visited the Land Mine Museum, took a 6 mile hike through forests and rural villages, took a sunset boat ride on the Angkor Wat moat, atet Khmer and traditional restaurants (we liked this food), took tuk tuk rides (two person rickshaws pulled by a scooter) into town, and a lot more. Our tour guide Bun Chao is terrific and we were lucky to additionally have an Aussie archeologist with us to see all the temples and a Brit naturalist for our hike yesterday. There’s a big ex pat community here.

What I want to write about is what I think I’ve learned about Cambodia in the 3 days we’ve been here. Again, 3 days is not enough but I’ll try.

The Cambodian people, called Khmer have been in the area a long time, before the Common Era (BC). Anthropologists think they think that they originally came up from the south, Indonesia and the Philippines, and later, mixed some with the Indians who were trading from the west. The Vietnamese are mostly descendant from the Sino peoples from the north. So there’s a big difference in the way they look, their language, and their customs. The carvings on the temples attest to the fact that they look similar today to what they looked like 2,000 years ago. They are a very attractive people, especially the women. And they have this custom that I love. As a greeting, coming or going and as a thank you, men and women put both their hands together in front of their chest (like praying) and bow while smiling. Gary and I have been trying to get Fran and Judi to do this. We have some work to do.

This is a very poor country with minimal infrastructure except in the cities, and there aren’t too many of those. 70 plus percent of the people make their living in agriculture, the vast majority with small rice farms. The average life expectancy is 53 years. This is dramatically affected by one of the highest infant mortality rates being measured. There are virtually no factories. We saw no U.S. investment or European investment yet 40% of the government’s revenue comes from foreign aid. Tourists come from all over but they are mostly Asian from China and Korea. The Khmer seem very industrious and hard working so why are they so poor? Why haven't they progressed like their neighbors to the east and west? As with most things, it’s complicated and I wouldn’t presume to have a complete handle on this but from what we could tell, from our conversations with hotel employees and our guides and from what we observed first-hand, there are certain things that I can say with confidence.

First, history has been very hard on Cambodia and the Khmer people especially recent history, beginning with the Vietnam war. The Ho Chi Minh trail went through eastern Cambodia and America carpet bombed a wide swath. They estimate 500 million pounds of US bombs were dropped on Cambodia. They used Agent Orange and Napalm with abandon here. During the war there was an ongoing power struggle between the government of Cambodia which was sometimes U.S. ally and a radical marxist guerrilla group called the Khmer Rouge. After the war, the Khmer Rouge took power, killed all the intellectuals and former government officials and set about to vacate the cities pushing everyone back to the farms so as to build a pure Marxist agricultural society. Their ally in this was China. The estimate is that 2+ million Cambodians were killed by execution or starvation during the Khmer Rouge period. This, in a country of 9 million. For reasons I don’t know the Khmer Rouge engaged in cross-border raids and the Vietnamese used that as pretense to invade Cambodia in 1978, militarily occupying it, and installing their own puppet regime. Vietnam was supported in this by the Soviet Union. The cold war between China and the USSR was partially fought in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the mountains and forests and continued to undertake a guerrilla war. In the effort to drive the Khmer Rouge out, millions of land mines were planted by both the Vietnamese army and the Khmer Rouge. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in the late 1980s, Vietnam could no longer afford to occupy and in the early 1990s a peace accord was signed, elections of sort were held and Cambodia became in form, a constitutional monarchy. It wasn’t until 1995 that the Khmer Rouge was finally defeated.

It’s been 20 years but a surprisingly little has changed. People along the Thai / Cambodia border are regularly killed or maimed by land mines and older unexploded ordinance. Most people still have no electricity or running water. Most live off subsistence farming. The educational system is a disaster, The medical situation is terrible. The people are small, smaller than the Vietnamese or the Thais, the product of too little protein. Ox carts and horse drawn carts have largely been displaced by wagons pulled by scooters and that’s something, I guess. Tourism is growing, slowly. Yes, there is peace, and for a while NGOs and developed nations were eager to invest, but much less so now. The government is totally corrupt. It’s estimated that 90% of foreign aid is syphoned away to government officials. If you want a job in government, you have to pay somebody to get it. Want to log old growth hardwoods in national parks, you just have to pay somebody. Hardwood forests, one of Cambodia’s true unique resources have been devastated. Want a contract to build a road, make sure the right people are taken care of. If you get robbed or assaulted and want the police to arrest the perpetrator, you’ve got to pay the police and the prosecutor. If you want to stay out of jail, pay the judge. I’ve never heard of such rampant corruption anywhere I’ve been. Last year there was an election. The opposition party apparently won by a landslide but the party in power rigged the results and they remain in power. Why do the Cambodians put up with it? Our British naturalist said that the people are so afraid of anarchy and going back to the Khmer Rouge time than having a corrupt but peaceful government. Elections are due again in 2019. The opposition is getting stronger. When I asked our guide, Bun Chao, what ends this culture of corruption, he said that the opposition party must win next time. Even if they do, and even if they are not corrupt, which I doubt, to stay in power they will need to make deals. Putting Cambodia on the right track will not be easy.

We are loving Cambodia. What a wonderful people! What a wonderful history! And it’s so different from anything we’ve experienced. Highly recommended.





Pictures later.

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