History
For those of you who have absolutely no knowledge about the region, allow me to give you the garage-sale summary of a usually untold story. About 1500 years ago there was an empire (very similar in size and scope to the Roman Empire) in its beginnings. The heart of it stood on the edge of the giant Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. This spot was chosen because each year the Tonle Sap River actually flows backwards from the Mekong River as a result of the monsoon flooding. The Mekong river delta cannot disperse the water quickly enough so it reverses and fills the massive lake creating a haven for rich wildlife and fish. It is this unusual process that allowed such a huge empire to thrive here. The Kymer Empire (now reduced to only Cambodia) contained Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and portions of Laos and China (in other words it was huge). At Angkor Wat, the Khmer people built massive religious complexes using hard manual labor supported by the fertility of the region (fish, fruits, rice, and vegetables). These complexes are special because they are the largest man-made religious structures in the world (even bigger than the great cathedrals of Europe). Within them you can see elements of Buddhism and Hinduism, China and India, as well as a long line of historical record. The Kymer Empire thrived because of a largely uneducated labor force that was controlled by few—which is very important in history because the same situation was attempted again in Cambodia after the Vietnam War with horrible results. Then sometime during the Middle Ages the empire was abandoned and fell to ruins for reasons unknown (a similar pattern seen in many feudal societies through time such as the Incas, Aztecs, Mayans, Egyptians, and the Europeans) which give credence to the belief that from a social perspective all revolutionary social ideas (including democracy and human rights) have to live and die in their own time . . . so to speak.
So now you may be asking, "What was the Vietnam War? How does that affect Cambodia?"—Yes, let’s get to that. Since the mid 1900s SE Asia (Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam) fell under the control of French imperialists with mixed results. The Vietnam War started when too many factions began fighting for control (Imperialists, Communists, and Capitalists all supported by relatively uneducated people). Let me explain simply. During the 1960s there was a major shift in world events. The United States and the Soviet Union were having a fierce Cold War (remember the "Space Race", Castro, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Bay of Pigs?). In Vietnam, procommunists held control of the North while prodemocracy leaders held control of the South. From the early 1960s the French were engaged in war in the region. In the mid 1960s the Soviet Union began supplying the North and the United States began supplying the South. In short, Vietnam became just one of the many pawns in a world game of Cold War chess. From the mid 60s to 1975, war ravaged the area. In the late 60s the Communists began crossing the Cambodian border and running supplies down a secret road through Cambodia called the Ho Chi Min Trail to their positions in the South. The United States then began a secret war in Cambodia that consisted of carpet-bombing massive areas of jungle with Agent Orange (a defoliant that causes cancer—the only one of three color-coded "Agents" used in the region whose content has been declassified) and napalm (incinerates everything by consuming all available oxygen) in an attempt to stop the supplies. This then engaged the Cambodian people whose country had still never rebuilt after the fall of the Khmer Empire. Small factions from the countryside of Laos and Cambodia supported the Americans and were even trained by United States Special Forces (watch Apocalypse Now—an incredible war movie based on historical fact and the psychological profile of the character in Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness). However, when the United States retreated (due to a seemly endless war, heavy casualty numbers, and loss of support in the homeland) it abandoned the local people to horrific fates previously unseen in the First World (remember the famous pictures of helicopters taking people off the roof of the American Embassy in Phnom Pen?). Regardless, the terrain, the people, and the war proved to be a burden American people were unwilling to carry. The Americans suffered heavy casualties (50,000), paid huge war bills, and lost homeland support for the war causing rioting and demonstrations nationwide. The war was devastating to everyone (it was the most dangerous place on earth with the average life span of a new US Soldier in combat being only six minutes), but it was worst for the people of the region who were left to the merciless conquerors who then vengefully took control.
After the "official war" when the Communists won and the US retreated (still unexplainably debated though the truth is obvious—strangely like the Japanese occupation of China and Korea) war continued to ravage Cambodia. Pol Pot, a secretive and elusive leader trained by the Communist North emerged and plunged Cambodia into one of the most horrific acts of genocide ever to happen on Earth. After the war, from 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot tried to reinstate a radical feudal society in an attempt to rebuild the Khmer Empire at Angkor Wat. He believed that education, money, and love of one’s family were evil. He began his reign of terror by executing and imprisoning all educated people. He then began forcefully evacuating the cities and placing the people in forced labor camps in the countryside. In Phnom Pen he converted schools into reëducation torture centers that served to end the lives of Cambodia’s educated (called the S-21 center, it is a horribly scary place). He abolished school, money, writing, freedom of speech, and separated children from their parents. In many cases children were forced to kill their parents to demonstrate understanding of his will. Scores of people fled the country creating a refugee dilemma that still exists today in Thailand and Laos. In short, Pol Pot executed over 4 million people (as many as 6 million are claimed) through barbaric means such as chopping off limbs with a shovel, slow suffocation, crucifixion, starving, malnutrition, and sawing off heads with a palm tree branch (see or read The Killing Fields). He simply did not have the resources to use bullets, so the hands of Cambodia’s children were forced to do the worst.
Today, Cambodia exists as a devastated empire. It has been decimated by continual war and never rebuilt. It is one of the poorest countries on Earth with only one road and a government that continues to extort and steal from the people. Land mines continue to claim lives and body parts every day because the mines have never been removed. Beggars, dogs, and dirty children line the streets. The sight of people above the age of 40 is rare. The country remained closed to foreigners until the late 1990s, and still abduction and kidnapping by rural communist sympathizers continues. By anyone’s standards, Cambodia is a horrible, sad, and scary place.
So there I stood, waiting in line for the guards to arrive at the border crossing that had been unofficially open for only six months. There, I refused to pay the $1 for a soldier who can neither read nor write to tell me that I did not have AIDS or any other communicable diseases (bad idea). Instead, I borrowed the health papers of a 50-year-old British woman (she was clearly more insane than I), showed them to the guard, and passed confidently to the other side (horrible, horrible idea, but it worked).
Upon moving through the border crossing and entering Cambodia (which is actually a series of $1 bribes, mine fields, and barbwire—a common theme in Cambodia where everything is $1), I boarded an old military patrol boat that now serves every function from patrol to rescue to carrying a roof full of people half a day along the coast. The next four hours proved to be some of the most memorable as I smoked some special Cambodian cigarettes provided by an African man who had just come from Nepal. Shortly thereafter, I found myself engrossed in a 2-hour interaction with a local Cambodian man who wore no shoes and spoke no English. We told stories and jokes, sang songs, I read to him, and we giggled ourselves through the coastal islands of the South China Sea having an experience too important for words to care. That smiling brown face and those inquisitive hands, their capacity for love and that man’s desire to seek, ask, and then love without the need to speak will forever be etched as a moment of true bliss in the memory of a simple country man.
At the port town of Sihnoukville (the main port used by the US to supply the Vietnam war and the secret one in Cambodia), I found myself lounging on sandy beaches and buying freshly cut fruit from children who spoke English, Japanese, and German, but had never attended school, and could not read or write. Their faces brought forth from me well-springs of unclassified emotion tasted in the salt, fruit, and beer.
From there we piled ten people on a small fishing boat outfitted with a three-horsepower engine (a lawnmower engine) and headed off to islands and isolated beaches facing the expansive China Sea. The fact that a ten-year-old kid was piloting our canoe through six foot swamping rollers on the open sea definitely contributed to the sense of adventure. The afternoon we spent snorkeling and sunbathing while a native Cambodian man (the sole survivor of his entire family who were all slaughtered by Pol Pot) cooked us all a very delicious fish dinner. Right then and there, staring at the peaceful, smiling man on the beach cooking my dinner was just one of the many emotionally overwhelming moments felt streaming down my face—squeezed from me by the grip of real, raw Cambodia.
From Sihnoukville on the coast our journey took us inward to the mysteries and histories of the infamous capital, Phnom Pen. During the war, Phnom Pen became a hub of activity, especially important for the war journalists because of the believed protection of the embassies and the comforts offered from within French-built hotels, the local prostitutes, and an abundant supply of the local favorite: Angkor Beer. The blending of cultures amidst such desperate times spawned infamous local pubs such as the Heart of Darkness (an actual place, very cool, named after the novella by Joseph Conrad) and the renowned (still operating) Foreign Correspondent’s Club. Out of Phnom Pen, and particularly the FCC, came some of the most important and influential wartime photos and reporting ever to have been seen and then shown publicly to the world. The reporters who lived and died there served to expose the war for what it really was and tangibly carried the horrifying images into the plush homes and serene lives of the First World. What they captured there, what happened, and who they became continues to hang there on the walls of the local pubs and is nothing short of emotionally captivating—enough to reduce a grown man yet again to tears over a game of pool and cold beers. Later that first night, sitting in the FCC as the sun cried out over the Mekong, the craziness of Cambodia possessed me and plunged me headlong into a thriving pit of humanity and scornful flesh amongst the turmoil of the Heart of Darkness, the things that haunt us, and the people who where there.
The Following evening I sat watching the sun and the fishermen of Cambodia cast their lengthening hues over the storytelling Mekong, listening to the enraptured conversations of young boys and wandering monks. The conversations that took place there were not mind-blowing or soul-searching. Instead they were serene and simply beautiful. That day I spent the last few hours of light surrounded by a dozen boys dressed in the orange flowing robes that symbolize Cambodia, all with questions and each with something to share. It was the first time I felt truly at peace, a moment not comprehended or contemplated; just a moment when I was truly there.
A few days later, out of Phnom Pen I flew to Siem Riep, which is a small development on the edge of the Tonle Sap. Siem Riep is the Auschwitz of Cambodia, home to the "killing fields" and a tangible despair. After a bumpy journey to the killing fields, I walked through the open pits of mass graves and realized that the crunching beneath my feet was the sound of actual human bones. In the truth of Cambodia there are no ropes, no guards, no cares. Even the clothes of the people who died here continue to be scattered around. You can bend over and pick them up and smell their putrid air. From a distance you can hear the yells and the screams of the nearby schoolyard. The sounds are eerily indistinguishable from the screams of those who died there. As I stood there in solemn silence, too moved and stunned to distinguish, the screams rushed in to fill the incomparable silence and took me back in time as if I were actually there. Then, within the lack of onlooking visitors and the emotion of it all are limp, one-legged reminders—people begging—of the mines my country left there. Therein lies yet another of Cambodia’s experiences to which I have no answers: the dilemma of what to do, what to give, and how to treat the sad eyes of the beggars that continually look at you and stare.
That afternoon I went to a nearby schoolhouse, a place with only two rooms and one teacher, where kids sang and danced in the traditional Khmer dress, and I cried and played with tears in my eyes after learning that $10, or the price of an average lunch in Japan (¥1200), is the difference between a kid going to school for a year and a kid playing in the street. Although this afternoon was perhaps the most important and fun of my trip, I am simply at a loss to describe it. It was simply wonderful, and the pictures from that day are packed with a variety of emotions and faces that want to care.
Siem Riep serves as the tourist hub of Cambodia, because the few who actaully come here simply fly in to see Angkor Wat and then leave as quickly as they came. Angkor Wat then, which serves as the heart of a dying empire, is exactly what it should be: a centerpiece of incomparable silence and beauty, and a monument to those who built it. Despite its impressiveness, its history, and its glory at sunrise, Cambodia left me with much smaller things that left much bigger impressions. The most interesting thing about Angkor Wat, besides the glory of the art and craftsmanship, is the fact that when they built the main complex they went all out. And when they built the other 299 complexes, they weren’t just screwing around. All in all, there are over 300 major sites at Angkor Wat, which means that if you walked all day for a month straight you still would not see it all. What hit me the most was the indescribable beauty of this little girl who stood barefoot with us watching the sun cast the last golden glow over the remains of something so serenely dying.
Leaving Siem Riep I opted to sit atop another old military boat down the length of the Tonle Sap. Like all things there, the journey began well before the daylight, taking us by pickup to the most insane fish market I have ever seen. It was a seething mass of competing boats, packed so tight what not even the water upon which they relied was visible. Just watching it made me tired, as does the memory now, yet the faces of the place just dealt with it with screaming, intense emotion, or hard stares. What I will remember of that day twenty years from now is the two old women I saw there and the pictures that capture them, because they are just two of a handful counted in the two weeks I was there (Pol Pot killed an entire generation, leaving Cambodia’s population almost entirely under the age of 40. Even now over 50% of the people are below the age of fifteen).
After returning to Phnom Pen for a full night’s rest, we headed off the following morning for the Cambodian border that lay seven murderous hours in front of us. The dirt road, which runs from one side of the country to the other, is an earth-jarring experience that I would only wish on the worst of enemies. The potholes encountered were so big they could only have been remnants of B-52 bomb craters. Seriously, you cannot fathom that a road can be that bad—at least I never did. It really is a work of art channeling you into spine-shattering spasms of disbelief and awe. You would think that a country with a large population of subsistence-based mouths to feed would find ample time and manpower to fix the only road. So goes the way of Cambodia, I guess. Needless to say, our mode of transport and our driver had about as much character as the road. Seriously, imagine a pimped out blue van (Beastie Boys meets Cheech and Chong and an Asian hooker), complete with fur-covered dash, dingle balls, furry dice, and a two-meter-tall Simpsons character crossed with a Cambodian crouched over the wheel and peering through some gold-rimmed Ray Bans, bouncing us across actual bomb craters—seriously dark-humor stuff.
Tune in next week for Part 3: Vietnam. -ed.
