Last weekend we went to Cambodia to spend four days in Siem Reap, which is the city close to Angkor Wat. Somerset Maugham, on his second visit to Cambodia in 1959 (he’d been there in the 1920’s) said
“No one should die before they see Angkor”. I agree – although I hope that doesn’t mean I should go ahead and expire now having seen some of it – still have lots more on my list! The photo above was taken by a photographer named Trey Ratcliff. If you want to see some really neat and unusual travel photography, check out his blog,
Stuck in Customs.
There are more than forty temples in Angkor spread over about 320 kilometers – the best known is Angkor Wat. It is the largest religious building the world has ever known covering 200 hectares (whatever that is, being metrically challenged) inside a large surrounding moat. The temple structures are amazing, as well as the carved bas reliefs that stretch around the structure. Angkor Wat was built by a cast of tens of thousands in the 12th century and around the monument there used to be a city of over a million people that was at the heart of an empire stretching into what is now called Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. At the same time, London was a city of less than 35,000.
Of the temples we visited, I think my favorite was the much smaller Ta Prohm. This matched my mental image of what Angkor was – real Indiana Jones stuff. It is deliberately being left as it would have looked when first discovered by western explorers, overgrown and surrounded by jungle, which is a great decision. It is a peaceful place with extraordinary vegetation. Huge roots and vines intertwine with the rocks and bricks of the temple, becoming part of the structure itself. Parts of it look like the creature from
Aliens.
On the way to Banteay Srei, another gorgeous, smaller temple exquisitely carved of pink sandstone about 30 km from the city, I noticed a sign in front of a small building, "
Land Mine Museum". On our way back we stopped and went inside. There we found the astonishing story of the founder of the Museum.
In 1975 a 5-year old boy who now calls himself Aki Ra saw both his parents killed by the Khmer Rouge when they took over Cambodia, leaving him to fend for himself in the midst of the horror that was taking place throughout the country. Several years later, he was taken into the Khmer Rouge army as a boy soldier conscript, where he was trained to lay mines, make bombs and handle weapons. He has now taken on the role of de-miner and his personal mission is to see the removal of all land mines in Cambodia. He estimates he has personally removed and defused around 50,000 land mines. He goes into the countryside and teaches people how to identify and report mines they may find. The children especially, need to be educated to identify them and not to play with them. There are many NGO organizations in Cambodia working in de-mining.
Some estimates say that there may be something like 10 million mines and unexploded bombs in Cambodia, a legacy of the Vietnam War (or the "American War" as it is called over here), the civil war involving the Khmer Rouge, and the Vietnamese invasion. Land mines are not designed to kill people. They are intentionally designed to maim - to destroy limbs or to blind people. The reasoning is that it is more damaging to the warring armies. Dead soldiers no longer cost money but damaged soldiers need treatment and support and are no longer productive. In civil conflicts land mines become targeted at civilians and unfortunately no mine mapping exists. Today, in Cambodia, someone is killed or maimed by land mines every day resulting in an estimated 40,000 amputees in Cambodia, the highest ratio per capita of any country. After learning about this at the Museum, I started noticing evidence of it around me. As you drive along the roads you see many signs for training facilities for the disabled and some of the art workshops we toured where people are doing stone sculpture or weaving are manned by people with missing limbs. The musical groups playing near the temples are victims of land mines. And, you begin to notice maimed adults and children on the streets of Siem Riep.
Not only people are affected. This little elephant stepped on a land mine over by the Thai border, where literally tons of these mines are. He has been fitted with a prosthetic leg and is being taken care of at the Elephant Training Center near Lampang in northern Thailand.
Cambodia has had a truly tragic recent history. It became independent from the French in 1953 and by 1964, the Khmer Rouge, a Marxist insurgent group, threatened the country's precarious stability. In 1970 a right wing coup overthrew the head of the government, Prince Sihanouk who was supported by the Khmer Rouge. Fighting between factions continued until 1975 when the Khmer Rouge finally occupied Phnom Penh which was shown in the brilliant movie
The Killing Fields. Millions of people died of torture, starvation, murder and brutality as the Khmer Rouge implemented a devastating social engineering experiment. In 1978 the Vietnamese invaded and toppled the Khmer Rouge government, but fighting continued for many more years in some parts of the country. In 1989 the Vietnamese withdrew and the United Nations came in to stabilize the country. However, it wasn't until 1998 that the Khmer Rouge was defeated once and for all. Stability is only a few years old.
There are odd legacies of this violent past. Here is a sculpture in front of the Foreign Correspondents Club (
FCC), a hotel in Siem Reap - made of old weapons.
In these past few years development is taking off. In Siem Reap there is a banner over the main street celebrating the fact that in 2007 2,000,000 tourists visited the city (and of course Angkor Wat). The road in from the airport is lined with brand new hotels. There's lots of restaurants, bars and shopping. People approach you constantly trying to sell you things, especially around the temples, where the vendors are, shall we say, VERY persistent.
"You want buy DVD? Only 10 dollah. Oh you have one? Well you need buy another one." It will be interesting to see how development proceeds over the next 10 years. As a traveler, it is somewhat irritating to be one of 2 million people climbing the steps of the temple. However, I realize that I'm about 150 years too late to be that early western discoverer of Angkor or perhaps even 10 years too late to be one of the tourists who arrived after the recent troubles ended and the doors of Cambodia opened again. I also recognize that the money we bring as tourists is making a big difference in many peoples' lives in this country of extreme poverty, so why complain? I'd definitely like to go back and spend more time there.
The bartender at the
Sofitel Hotel used to be a subsistence farmer a few short years ago, as many people are. He says he much prefers to be a bartender at the Sofitel Hotel.
