We've spent a few days in Seam Riep, Cambodia, which is not enough time to get a real grasp of what the country is like but enough to get a feeling for it. Our time here has been centred around seeing Angkor Wat which some of you may know as the ancient Hindu ruins of Cambodia and others of you may know it as the shooting location for Tomb Raider. As far as piles of rocks go, they are pretty incredible and being highly dedicated to no sleep at times, we were witness to both the sunrise and the sunset at ruins yesterday. Our favorite temple was overgrown with ancient mile-high trees and it made you feel as though you were discovering something for the first time (minus the tour buses and foot paths).
However, I tend towards modern history when it comes to where my interests lie, and Cambodia does not disappoint. The legacy of the Vietnam war in Cambodia and the subsequent terror of the Pol Pot regime in the 1970's are the kind of things history book authors lust after and that make humanitarians ache.
For those of you who don't know, the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot took control of Phnom Penh (the capital) two weeks before the Vietnamese Communists took Saigon. They quickly instituted their leader's harsh idealism of reverting the country back to a agrarian utopia. People were pushed from the cities into the countryside to work on farms and everyone considered an intellectual (ie. those who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language) was jailed and most were later brutally murdered and put into the mass graves now known as the Killing Fields.
The so-called Killing Fields are near Phnom Penh (about five hours away) but there is a small memorial set up outside Siem Reap and we went to visit it yesterday. It is situated in a Buddhist temple complex and consists of a medium sized stupa whose middle has been hollowed and left with tall windows. In the windows you can see a waist-high pile of skulls, bones, and clothing fragments that were retreived from the killing fields and brought to Siem Reap as a reminder of the atrocity. A nearby sign pleads for a donation asking you, the tourist, to help them build a proper monument memorializing the atrocity that the world stood by and did nothing about.
It was a little surreal to step out of the car at the monument and be surrounded by a hoard of small school children peddling postcards and bamboo flutes, these poor children are the legacy of Pol Pot's regime. We were uncertain as to whether they understood what the monument stood for but certainly it will be clear to them one day.
Not surprisingly, the great majority of people here are young. The same was true for Vietnam but you couldn't say in all honesty that to see an older person was rare. Here I think you can say that. Another legacy of this countries modern history is that Cambodia still suffers 100-300 injuries from landmines every month. They are literally everywhere and so are the injured. I think the statistic is something like one in 236 people in this county have lost a limb due to landmines, most of whom are children who mistake the mines for toys (and in some cases, stuffed animals or dolls were placed on top of the mines so that children would grab them and be hurt).
It's not an easy country to be in. But there are faint glimmers of hope that make you feel that Cambodia's future will be brighter. I'm off to look for some of those now.
tothesea,
k~*