In Ban Lung in the North of Cambodia, where I did the forest trek, I am now running out of money fast. The official currency is Riel, which come in multiples of thousands. But whenever you pay something worth more than one US dollar (4,000 Riel), payments are done in actual dollars. This is such an accepted practice that even the ATMs hand out Dollars in stead of Riels.
But not to me. Ban Lung has exactly one bank, and its ATM is only connected to the Visa network, not to MasterCard's. So now I have a useless bankcard and a useless credit card. Nice. Luckily I accrued quite a few dollars on my trip by exchanging local money whenever I left a country, and now, with my last few bucks, I buy a ticket to relative civilization.
From the mighty forests in the north to the plains of central Cambodia , I make a stopover in the capital, Phnom Penh . I arrive in the afternoon and leave early morning. I fill my time with having a nice noodle soup dinner, finding a bank, and sleeping. No time to see the city now, I have an appointment in Angkor Wat.
After another day in the bus, I reach Siem Reap, the modern day city next to the extinct Khmer capital of Angkor . After some confusing tuktuk hassling, I find myself in a decent room just outside of the busy center. I let my bag pack fall on the floor, sit down on the bed, and breath a sigh of relieve: no more buses the coming couple of days.
At that moment, a girl who works in the hotel walks through the open door of my room with a strangely metallic sounding plastic bag. She excuses herself, puts down the bag, takes out a key and tries it on my door. The first key doesn't fit. Neither does the second. When I ask her what she is doing, she confesses that the key for my room is missing. Apparently the last guest took it with him to his next destination. Her plastic bag contains about 150 contenders, but after a while it becomes clear that none of them will open or lock my door. She tells me it is no problem, and in the night her brother will come to fix the lock, but I don't feel like leaving my things in a room I cannot secure so I change to one of the rooms upstairs. It is less nice and doesn't have its own bathroom, but then it only costs four dollar a night.
In the evening, I walk towards the aptly named Pub Street, and after a short wait I meet up with Lenny, a friend from the Netherlands who is doing a Japanese style assault trip on the region, spending on average three days in each country. When he told me he would be spending three days in Siem Reap, I made sure I would be there during that time as well.
The next couple of days we spend by meeting for breakfast in the morning, then finding a tuktuk driver, negotiating the fare of the days ride, and being driven around the temples. Angkor is a huge area of temples, build between the 9th and 15th century a.d. It was the hearth of Khmer civilization, and was not only a collection of temples, but one of the worlds first metropolitan cities, with an estimated one million inhabitants in its heyday. Only the temples have withstood the test of time, and spread over a huge area these red stone houses of worship are rising up from the surrounding trees. The most famous is of course Angkor Wat, but there are many many more, some beautifully restored, some accessible but overgrown with trees in proper Indiana Jones style, and some still hidden under earth and vegetation.
It is possible to cycle around the temples, but because of the oppressive heat, we decide against it. Our driver knows his way around, and in three days we see most of the highlights. The driver only brings us to the temples, the walking and climbing inside of them we still have to do ourselves.
It is truly amazing to be here, especially in the parts where it is a bit more quiet. Outside of the main Angkor Wat temple, sitting in the shade of a crumbling wall, looking out from between the beautifully sculpted pillars to the enormous trees surrounding the temple ruins, you can almost imagine what an impressive sight this place must have been when it was still a living city.
Lenny flies on from Siem Reap to Kuala Lumpur. I take a bus, back to Phnom Penh. The ride takes just as long as the other way around, but this time it is more interesting because I meet a Cambodian English teacher who wants to practice. He is on his way to a wedding in the Capital, and tells me a bit about his life. He really likes teaching, even though it is not a very well paid job. As a government teacher in a provincial town, he gets a salary of around $80 a month. He supplements that with some income from private lessons, but after paying for his room, food and travel expenses, it is hard to save any money. He wants to do his master studies in Phnom Penh university, but he confides that he has not enough savings for it now. Maybe next year.
When he would work in a bigger city, he could earn more, and get paid more for private lessons as well. But those positions are for sale, you have to pay the selection comity $8000. The same goes for many government positions here, he tells me. All policemen gave bribes to get their jobs, and are thus almost sanctioned to extract bribes in return to recuperate their investment.
Cambodians, it strikes me, think a little bit different than I do.
"Can I have a bottle of water, please?" I ask in a small restaurant in Phnom Penh.
"Big bottle or small bottle?" The lady asks me.
"A big bottle"
"We no have, only small"
..... right
"Excuse me, do you know the way to an ATM machine?" I inquire of a moto driver on a street corner in Siem Reap.
"Yes" is his reply
...
...
"Is it this way, or that way?" I ask after waiting for an eternity for him to tell me where to go
"That way" he points.
"Thanks..."
The next couple of days we spend by meeting for breakfast in the morning, then finding a tuktuk driver, negotiating the fare of the days ride, and being driven around the temples. Angkor is a huge area of temples, build between the 9th and 15th century a.d. It was the hearth of Khmer civilization, and was not only a collection of temples, but one of the worlds first metropolitan cities, with an estimated one million inhabitants in its heyday. Only the temples have withstood the test of time, and spread over a huge area these red stone houses of worship are rising up from the surrounding trees. The most famous is of course Angkor Wat, but there are many many more, some beautifully restored, some accessible but overgrown with trees in proper Indiana Jones style, and some still hidden under earth and vegetation.
It is possible to cycle around the temples, but because of the oppressive heat, we decide against it. Our driver knows his way around, and in three days we see most of the highlights. The driver only brings us to the temples, the walking and climbing inside of them we still have to do ourselves.
It is truly amazing to be here, especially in the parts where it is a bit more quiet. Outside of the main Angkor Wat temple, sitting in the shade of a crumbling wall, looking out from between the beautifully sculpted pillars to the enormous trees surrounding the temple ruins, you can almost imagine what an impressive sight this place must have been when it was still a living city.
Lenny flies on from Siem Reap to Kuala Lumpur. I take a bus, back to Phnom Penh. The ride takes just as long as the other way around, but this time it is more interesting because I meet a Cambodian English teacher who wants to practice. He is on his way to a wedding in the Capital, and tells me a bit about his life. He really likes teaching, even though it is not a very well paid job. As a government teacher in a provincial town, he gets a salary of around $80 a month. He supplements that with some income from private lessons, but after paying for his room, food and travel expenses, it is hard to save any money. He wants to do his master studies in Phnom Penh university, but he confides that he has not enough savings for it now. Maybe next year.
When he would work in a bigger city, he could earn more, and get paid more for private lessons as well. But those positions are for sale, you have to pay the selection comity $8000. The same goes for many government positions here, he tells me. All policemen gave bribes to get their jobs, and are thus almost sanctioned to extract bribes in return to recuperate their investment.
Cambodians, it strikes me, think a little bit different than I do.
"Can I have a bottle of water, please?" I ask in a small restaurant in Phnom Penh.
"Big bottle or small bottle?" The lady asks me.
"A big bottle"
"We no have, only small"
..... right
"Excuse me, do you know the way to an ATM machine?" I inquire of a moto driver on a street corner in Siem Reap.
"Yes" is his reply
...
...
"Is it this way, or that way?" I ask after waiting for an eternity for him to tell me where to go
"That way" he points.
"Thanks..."
Phnom Penh turns out to be at the same time hotter and cooler than I had expected. I felt the sweat running down my back whilst carrying my backpack through the streets towards my guesthouse. The first day I felt I had to get out of here right away, it was unreasonably warm, with not even the merest suggestion of a refreshing breeze. If it gets too warm, my brain stops working. I feel like a mountain troll in an Ankh-Morporkian summer (if you don't know what I'm going on about, go and read 'Men at Arms' by Terry Pratchett).
But I had to stop resisting the high temperatures, embrace the heat, stop my futile fight against it to be able to stand it. I also stopped walking around, and started to go to places on the back of a motorbike. By going about my way slower and taking more time to look around, I started to appreciate this city, with its many boutique restaurants, cool bars and a nice promenade along the river. In the evening I met up with Richard, with whom I went on the hike in the north of the Cambodia. In the evening, without the bludgeoning sun on my face and a cold beer in my hand, Phnom Penh wasn't that bad.
After Angkor Wat' s golden page of Cambodian history, I now took a look at a more recent, black page of the same book.
This city was completely emptied during the Khmer Rouge regime, a regime that envisaged a radical revolution to a purely self sufficient and agricultural society. The fact that many people were living in cities was to be remedied, all Cambodians were to work in the fields. The Khmer Rouge decreed that schools were to be closed, and money was abolished. Phnom Penh was conquered on April 17, 1975. Three days later, all of its citizens were evacuated to the countryside. Many of the city dwellers were later killed for 'sabotaging' the revolution by not being apt at working the land.
Phnom Penh became became the home to a gruesome detention center. In this former school, political opponents, innocent civilians and even cadres from the regime that had fallen from the extremely paranoid leadership's grace, where tortured and detained. Practically all of them where pressed into signing fake confessions, taken to a nearby field, and murdered, their bodies dumped in mass graves.
Both locations are now chilling reminders of these atrocities. Especially the Killing Fields are deeply impressive because of the level of detail given, and the pieces of disintegrating clothing, teeth, and bone fragments that still come to the surface whenever it rains. You actually see this laying on the ground while you walk between the trees, each of the dozens of depressions in the ground another mass grave.
All over Cambodia, in sites similar to this one, between a quarter and a third of the entire population was murdered. All intellectuals, teachers, researchers, journalists, and ethnic Vietnamese where prosecuted. Monks where in danger, as was anyone who read books, or wore glasses. The country was effectively left without its intellectual layer.
In 1979 the recently reunited Vietnamese army came into the country to rid it of the Khmer Rouge's horrors and to install a new government more friendly to Vietnam. They liberated the capital and most of the country, with the Khmer Rouge fleeing to the remote north-west where they maintained a guerrilla base into the late 90's. Because the government was backed by communist Vietnam, it was not recognized by many western countries. Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge held Cambodia's UN seat until 1993. Pol Pot, it's leader, died in 1998, and a year later the surviving leaders finally surrendered and the Khmer Rouge ceased to exist.
Sitting on the back of a motorbike riding the dusty road back to the city, I realize that, although Cambodia is probably the poorest country I have been to in this region, and it has big structural problems like corruption and devastation of natural resources, it has come a long way from those dark times already, and will hopefully continue on this path for a long time to come.
But I had to stop resisting the high temperatures, embrace the heat, stop my futile fight against it to be able to stand it. I also stopped walking around, and started to go to places on the back of a motorbike. By going about my way slower and taking more time to look around, I started to appreciate this city, with its many boutique restaurants, cool bars and a nice promenade along the river. In the evening I met up with Richard, with whom I went on the hike in the north of the Cambodia. In the evening, without the bludgeoning sun on my face and a cold beer in my hand, Phnom Penh wasn't that bad.
After Angkor Wat' s golden page of Cambodian history, I now took a look at a more recent, black page of the same book.
This city was completely emptied during the Khmer Rouge regime, a regime that envisaged a radical revolution to a purely self sufficient and agricultural society. The fact that many people were living in cities was to be remedied, all Cambodians were to work in the fields. The Khmer Rouge decreed that schools were to be closed, and money was abolished. Phnom Penh was conquered on April 17, 1975. Three days later, all of its citizens were evacuated to the countryside. Many of the city dwellers were later killed for 'sabotaging' the revolution by not being apt at working the land.
Phnom Penh became became the home to a gruesome detention center. In this former school, political opponents, innocent civilians and even cadres from the regime that had fallen from the extremely paranoid leadership's grace, where tortured and detained. Practically all of them where pressed into signing fake confessions, taken to a nearby field, and murdered, their bodies dumped in mass graves.
Both locations are now chilling reminders of these atrocities. Especially the Killing Fields are deeply impressive because of the level of detail given, and the pieces of disintegrating clothing, teeth, and bone fragments that still come to the surface whenever it rains. You actually see this laying on the ground while you walk between the trees, each of the dozens of depressions in the ground another mass grave.
All over Cambodia, in sites similar to this one, between a quarter and a third of the entire population was murdered. All intellectuals, teachers, researchers, journalists, and ethnic Vietnamese where prosecuted. Monks where in danger, as was anyone who read books, or wore glasses. The country was effectively left without its intellectual layer.
In 1979 the recently reunited Vietnamese army came into the country to rid it of the Khmer Rouge's horrors and to install a new government more friendly to Vietnam. They liberated the capital and most of the country, with the Khmer Rouge fleeing to the remote north-west where they maintained a guerrilla base into the late 90's. Because the government was backed by communist Vietnam, it was not recognized by many western countries. Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge held Cambodia's UN seat until 1993. Pol Pot, it's leader, died in 1998, and a year later the surviving leaders finally surrendered and the Khmer Rouge ceased to exist.
Sitting on the back of a motorbike riding the dusty road back to the city, I realize that, although Cambodia is probably the poorest country I have been to in this region, and it has big structural problems like corruption and devastation of natural resources, it has come a long way from those dark times already, and will hopefully continue on this path for a long time to come.
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