Angkor What?

Today, I can honestly say for the first time, it sucks to be in this region in the “hot” season. I've had really warm days before; I've been sweating my ass off in Thailand on numerous occasions and in Cambodia things are not much better, especially inland. But, most of the time, when this happened, I was out and about, running around during the hottest part of the day taking some snapshots of some temple in the jungle. I didn't mind. The shade and a cool drink were always there at the end of the day. This time it's different.

I'm currently staying in Phom Phen, after spending (read my previous entries to see what happened during that time) two and half weeks with the Cambroadians. We went from Shinoukville, to Phom Phen, to Siem Reap and then with only Tette, we took a eight hour boat ride across the lake to Battambong and then back again to the capital.

Today is my first day on my own again. And it's terribly hot. Cities in the tropics have that exasperating effect. It started with the rain around eleven – one moment the sun is shining, the next it's pouring. The rain falls in big, heavy and fat raindrops. Within seconds your soaked. Muddy puddles form immediately; there is not proper drainage underneath the paved roads. Just as suddenly it started, it stops raining. The sun comes back, pounding the pavement with it's unmerciful rays. And then the humidity kicks in. Even sitting in the shade, a fan on full power and next to a lake – big bodies of water become natural places of refuge from the heat – I can't stop sweating. No breeze. No escape.

To be really honest – this is not the worst heat I ever had. That was in Angkor Wat, a couple of days ago. Angkor Wat, the pearl of Cambodia. Forget all the other temples, Buddhist wats and religious shrines from days long gone: the national symbol of the Khmer people is one of the most impressive sites I've ever seen. It rightfully deserves the title of 8th Wonder of the World.

Angkor Wat refers to the biggest and best preserved temple, but people also use the name to denote the massive collection of various different temples spread out in kilometers of jungles and countryside. Roads crisscross from one temple to the other. Some of the places are thirty kilometers away; you need to hire a tuktuk or rent a bicycle to properly explore Angkor Wat. If you want to rush you can do it in a day, but if you want to chill out a bit a three day pass is a much better option.

Close to the complex is a nice and tidy town, called Siem Reap. It's the place where everybody stays. There some cool places where you can drink the night away. Including our favorite hangout : the Angkor What? Bar. The drinking hole where you can get a cool t-shirt, but not before you “earn” it by ordering two buckets (similar to jugs) of strong liquor. Unfortunately this happened more often than not. There is another lurking danger in Siem Reap. The heat. The temperature regularly hovers around 40 degrees Celsius.

Checking out the temples with these kinds of temperatures and high humidity, and a hangover, is just asking for trouble. On our last day in Angkor Wat proper, it was unbearable. Three hours spending in the jungle, and all your clothes were completely wet from the sweat. Luckily nothing serious happened, but we had to get back a bit earlier, to relax for a bit, because everybody was almost falling over from fatigue and close to heat stroke.

If Angkor Wat is the Wonder in the official tourist slogan of Cambodia (“Kingdom of Wonder”), then the Killing Fields and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge is the dark side, the “other wonder” of this poor and complicated country.

Just a quick history lesson: Cambodia has been in trouble from 1970 onwards. First, after the army commander Lon Nol deposed of the authoritarian king Shinaouk in that year, the country was plunged in a war against the Vietnamese Vietcong and Cambodian Communists (that were using the remote border regions as a base for attacks against American troops in South Vietnam). The Lon Nol regime lost against a far more superior adversary, that at one point got the name Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians). The Americans supported the Lon Nol regime with substantial military aid and massive bombing raids using the infamous B-52 bombers, to carpet bomb the countryside.

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phom Phen and ordered everybody out of the capital. Year Zero had begun. Everybody was forcefully relocated, all money was abolished, education was prohibited – the whole country went into isolation. Kampuchea – new name for Cambodia – was going to be the great Marxist-Maoist experiment. No more social classes, no more poverty. All of the population had to grow rice, but techniques were medieval and working hours barbarous. Most of the food was used to buy military equipment from the big provider China, the rest went to the leadership. Just a tiny bit was reserved for people themselves. Soon there was starvation.

Not long after, Pol Pot (“Brother Number One”) and his leadership got increasingly paranoid and ruthlessly started hunting down anybody and everybody that were perceived to be dangerous. Former Lon Nol soldiers, teachers, educated people, journalist, “spies” from the KGB or CIA or archenemy Vietnam, poor farmers who got accused of stealing food or criticizing the party. In the end the Khmer Rouge started devouring itself – former ministers, military commanders, ambassadors, they, like so many before them, all got sent to the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Tortured, made to confess to imaginary crimes, and then sent to their demise in the mass graves of the Killing Fields. This was happening in the whole country. But Tuol Sleng, in Phom Phen, was the most visible “prison”. Twentythousand passed trough the former school gates. Seven survived.

One last piece of the puzzle is needed to explain why the Khmer Rouge lost. They started picking a fight with their neighbors and their sworn enemies – the battle hardened Vietnamese, who just won their epic fight against the US and reunited their country. Cambodians fear and hate the Vietnamese after hundreds of years of war, being conquered many times and having lost large parts of their once big kingdom (the same one that build Angkor Wat) to their “brothers”. After many raids, instigated by the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese hit back. First with a limited war. A year later, at the end of 1978 they went all out, and in early 1979 the Vietnamese conquered Phom Phen and had “liberated” the country.

I see I grossly overshot my own imposed word count with my little history lesson. I'll talk a bit about the current state of affairs in Cambodia in the next installment. What happened after 1979 and how things came to be, why the country is still poor and nothing really changed.

I want to end with the observation that the Khmer people are still very poor and the troubles of the past are still very much here. You don't see any old people on the street. Only youngsters. There are a lot of beggars on the street. One legged men selling books or cigarettes. Of course I visited the Tuol Sleng prison and the Killing Fields just outside the city. It's a very moving experience. But maybe it's better expressed in pictures. To end on a happy note: here are two Khmer kids trying to "play" with a poor dog.

Looking out over the lake, it is still hot but a bit more bearable. A slight breeze is picking up. On the horizon dark and black thunderclouds are forming. It is going to rain soon.

Till next time.