Land of smiles....

I have just gotten back from a one week vacation where I travelled through a country still recovering from it's recent genocidal history: Cambodia.


If you don't know it's history, it's worth learning about in twenty minutes on Wikipedia. Essentially, a revolutionary group called the Khmer Rouge took power by force in 1975, even though they had a large backing from Cambodians themselves. They then began to destroy the beautiful culture and history, as well as the people. All intellectuals, foreign elements and those of the old guard were purged for the next four years. Close to three million Cambodians were killed during this time, some tortured and executed, some starved to death. In 1979, the Vietnamese army was sick of Khmer Rouge raids and ended their rule by invading the country.


AFTERMATH: The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, managed to never be put on trial and died of natural causes about twnety years later. No official trials have really beed held, and ridiculously enough, the Khmer Rouge were recognized and given representation at the United Nations until 1991.


TODAY: The country itself is beautiful, but obviously still developing. It made Thailand appear first world in many ways, which I sporadically began to miss. For whatever reason, they use American money almost as much as their own currency, the Riel. Telephone booths are non-existent, instead a large piece of cardboard with area codes is positioned on a street corner, and someone on a chair with a cellphone sits next to it, whom you pay to use the service.


Traffic is chaotic, far worse than Thailand, and people turn and veer whimsically without paying attention to street signs or other drivers. At an intersection, a green light is just as valid as a red light for a motorist. One cannot take anything for granted on the roads, and when I rented a motorbike, this fact became extremely evident when I barely avoided two or three collisions in one day. People also honk their horns as though they just realized they had them, not for any particular reason, but simply for the sake of honking them. Unlike Thailand, police look to extort money from foreign drivers for any mistake made, despite the fact that probably thirty Cambodians made the exact same mistake before you did. They will ask for a license (which they know you don't have), and then ask for money (which you claim you have little of). The police are paid poorly and are not very respected by Cambodians as a whole.


Yet the food is delectable. Although I haven't tried all the Thai dishes, it certainly gives them a run for their money. Less spicy and very little, if any, cilantro (which I despise - I actually found out how to say "No Cilatro Please" in Thai within the first week of arriving). The only difficulty when travelling alone is finding someone to enjoy the food with you.


Siem Reap was an adventure of sorts. I hired a motorcycle tour guide at about ten dollars (US) a day and he took me everywhere. The floating village, which is a village which is flooded for six months of the year was something that almost seemed unworldly. The houses are literally floating in a large river, and the village hosts many different amenities from a floating school, hospital, super-market, police station, basketball court, library and various restaurants. People have electricity somehow, even satellite television in some homes. At one point, I even saw a couple pulling their home with their speedboat. The village connects to the Tonle Sap, which is the largest freshwater lake in South-East Asia (which I swam in).

The town itself is somewhat touristic, but quite safe when compared to Phnom Penh. The name Siem Reap means "Siam Defeated" in Khmer, which is not a particularly friendly name considering Thailand is Cambodia's neighbour. In fact, riots occured in Phnom Penh in 2003 when it was alleged that a Thai actress had claimed Angkor belonged to Thailand. The Thai embassy was burned to the ground. Let's just say that Thais and Cambodians do not have a particular affinity for one another.


Angkor Wat and the other temples were extraordinary though. Despite the fact that the Khmer Rouge degraded or destroyed many of the sites, it was pretty amazing to think that people used to live there 900 years ago. The fact that there are geographical anomalies like trees growing at the top of buildings is unlike anything I have every seen. Both the sunsets and sunrises were magnificant, and I probably have never been in edifices with such history and longevity ever before in my life.

Phnom Penh was also pretty touristic, although with a bit of a harder and dirtier side to it that one would expect in a larger city. The drug trade is ubiquitous, as well as prostitution and Tuk-Tuks that would never stop asking you if you wanted a drive somewhere. Robbery was also pretty bad too: one night I asked a server at a restaurant I was eating at how safe it was in the city, to which she replied that she had already been robbed three times at gun point. A foreigner just doesn't drive a motorcycle at night if they want to be careful.

Being a history major, I went to visit the S-21 prison and the killing fields. S-21 was a former school that was transformed into an interrogation and torture centre during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Spring beds and photographs are really all that is left of what once was. From the outside, it looks like any normal set of buildings with trees, benches and the like. But inside the terrible past was palpable, it was this aura which cannot properly be described and probably never should be. The killing fields had the same feeling: they were very calm and one could almost have a picnic on the property if they were not aware that thousands of people had been executed and put into mass graves throughout the grounds. The macabre undertone transformed both sites into unsettling experiences.

An equally unsettling experience (in a much different way) was found at the Thunder Ranch shooting range outside of the city. This is a place where people can use weapons that would otherwise be illegal in their home countries. It is run by members of the Cambodian army and rumour has it that some people have gone so far as to shoot rocket launchers at cows. I opted for inanimate targets (despite being offered a chance to shoot chickens) and tried a Kalashnikov rifle (which is scary) and then threw a grenade into a pond (even scarier). Moments before the pin was pulled from the grenade, however, the man overseeing the fiasco remembered to tell me that I had to keep the vertical bar pressed in after the pin was pulled. Had he not done so, I might not be writing this now. But the grenade was thrown without a hitch.

All in all, Cambodia was a lovely country to visit and get a small glimpse of. I am happy that I got a chance to see something so different, and despite the twenty-five dollar airport tax to leave the country, and I was also happy to come back to my home away from home.