Cambodia, yesterday and today.

Staying longer in Laos that we expected, combined with our desire to be in the biggest cities possible to increase our odds of being able to watch the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game and Super Bowl on television, meant that we ended up giving Cambodia short shrift. We ended up spending only 11 days there, less time than we originally allotted. At first, I didn’t think it would matter much. But, like many people who visit parts of Cambodia other than Siem Reap, Sean and I both developed a fondness for Cambodia and were sad to go.

More so than most of its neighbors, Cambodia is a very rural country and a very poor country. It is impossible not to think of Cambodia’s history while you were there. Some people might think this makes Cambodia a sad place. But we found it to be anything but. Personally, I think Cambodia’s history is much of what makes it so special. A lot of countries have happy, friendly people. A lot of countries have good cuisine. A lot of countries have historical sites. But to have all of these things after what Cambodia’s been through just thirty or so years ago? Putting today’s Cambodia in context with yesterday’s Cambodia can really blow your mind.

The year I was born, 1979, the Vietnamese toppled the Khmer Rouge and ended 4 years of hell for the Cambodian people. That means every.single.person older than me and alive today in Cambodia lived through all or some of the Khmer Rouge’s regime. What was eerie was that we were more likely to encounter people younger than us rather than older. Those that were older have seen things you and I can’t even imagine. On April 17, 1975, after many years of civil war, the Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s biggest city by far and its capital with army tanks. The people of Phnom Penh were heartened by their presence; they were hopeful, believing this new government would alleviate the many problems the countries suffered during its civil war. But although there was no way of knowing at the time, this couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Instead, the Khmer Rouge turned the clocks back and declared it the Year Zero. The Khmer Rouge was determined to remake Cambodian society into a docile, rural, agrarian one. They rounded up the 2.5 million people living in Phnom Penh, killed certain intellectuals and former government officials right away, and made everyone else march into the countryside. The people still didn’t know what their fate would be. For some, they were taken to places like the Killing Fields, where they were separated from their families, photographed, and killed. For others, they were forced to toil away in the fields, given very little food, and indoctrinated against their old ways of life. Many died of starvation and diseases.

I believe there is no excuse for continued ignorance once you travel, in person, to another country. While we were in Cambodia, we tried to learn as much about its history as we could. Cambodia’s recent history doesn’t begin and end with the Khmer Rouge. There’s many facets: colonization by the French, a civil war, intense bombing by the Americans during the Vietnam War, post-Khmer Rouge control by the Vietnamese, starvation and poverty during the eighties, continued terror from afar by members of the Khmer Rouge hiding out for years, implicit acceptance of the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities by support for a Khmer Rouge backed government in the UN by the United States and other Western countries, more implicit acceptance of the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities by continued delayed trials of the Khmer Rouge and participation in today’s government by former members… It is enough to make your head spin, especially knowing that the United States’ own agenda made it get involved in ways most Americans don’t know or think about.

While we were in Phnom Penh, we visited the sites of the former Killing Fields and Tuol Soung Musuem, otherwise known as S-21, which is a former school turned into a prison by the Khmer Rouge. We watched a video about the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Siem Reap’s night market. (Incidentally, we were the only ones). We tried read up on as much history as we could on-line or in books. Learning in museums and books are important, but often, it doesn’t really sink in until you see a living, breathing reminder. There’s a lot of trees at the Killing Fields, at least where the Khmer Rouge didn’t clear them to make room for mass graves. One of the trees had a sign that said, matter-of-factly, This is the tree against which the Khmer Rouge used to beat children. The starkness and abruptness of that sign stopped me dead in my tracks, but it wasn’t until days later, when I saw a woman holding a baby next to a giant oak tree, and thought about what if that baby had been born thirty-some years ago, that I could feel emotion really well up inside.

We hired a guide to take us around the countryside surrounding Battambang. His name is Philay. In addition to showing us around in his tuk-tuk, he also was kind enough to retell his experience with the Khmer Rouge. He was living in Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. He told us, matter of factly, that the Khmer Rouge invaded his house and killed his father and brother, because they served in Cambodia’s military. Philay and what was left of his family were forced to march to the countryside like millions of others in Phnom Penh. He worked in the fields for many years, and due to lack of food and hard work under the hot sun, he got very, very sick more than once. His mother and one of his sisters died of starvation in the fields. After the Vietnamese liberated the Cambodian people, like many of the people lucky to still be alive, Philay walked across the entire country to return to Phnom Penh. Philay lived as a refugee on the Thai border for a time, and eventually returned to Cambodia, fought in Cambodian’s army , settled in Battambang, married his wife, and had children. Today, he drives a tuk-tuk around Battambang, a very competitive field, and on some days, he takes visitors like us out to the countryside.

A lot of visitors come to Cambodia just to see Angkor Wat, some of the most majestic ancient ruins in the world. Angkor Wat certainly is amazing, but I enjoyed our time seeing the living, breathing Cambodia of today in Battambang and Kampot much, much more. What was most amazing about Angkor Wat to me is that Angkor Wat is still standing today, despite Cambodia’s tumultuous history.

Cambodia may not be for everyone. It is true that Cambodia can be a little rough around the edges, that it isn’t as clean as Thailand or even Laos, that there are many pairings of creepy older Western men with very young Cambodian women, that there are a lot of poor people begging you for money. It is true that Cambodia has a really, really sad history, and it can be really, really sobering to learn about it. But outside of Siem Reap, a city where desperate people all clamor for the same dollars of the visitors who have so many more than they do, people are friendly just for the sake of being friendly. Tourism is a major industry in a country without many major industries, and is still relatively new, so while people try to make money through tourism all over the country, they also smile and laugh while doing so. Kids yell “Hello” in English and run around blissfully oblivious of yesterday’s horrors. People play quirky games like badmitton, hacky sack, and volleyball in public squares. Men crowd around televisions on the streets to cheer on their favorite boxer. Women, the older ones often dressed in printed pajamas, the younger ones often dressed in jeans, sell goods in lively markets. Good-natured NGOs cook up tasty fish amoks in trendy cafes, even in the smaller towns.

Yes, 11 days was entirely too short.

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