“Bomb Craters”
July 5th, 2006
A VILLAGE IN CAMBODIA
We awakened June 28, 2006, with a long day of travel ahead of us, including meals in three countries: breakfast in Vientiene, Laos, lunch in Bangkok, Thailand — at the airport — and dinner in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The flight to Bangkok was uneventful, though I was surprised to see a fairway sandwiched between two runways. I wonder what the penalty is for hitting your golf ball onto the tarmac!
As we approached Siem Reap airport, a colleague told me to look out the window. I turned to the window and caught my first glimpse of Cambodia: a lush, green landscape pockmarked with small ponds. My colleague explained to me the ponds were bomb craters and that every year during the rainy season, the craters become fresh water ponds.
The bomb craters lent our descent into Cambodia an air of poignancy. I had visions of American and Vietnamese forces bombing Cambodian villagers, victims of so many tragedies. These visions lasted until the moment, just a day later, when our Cambodian guide — a former war refugee — told me that Siem Reap hadn’t been bombed during the war.
The city of Siem Reap is located in northwestern Cambodia, near the Tonle Sap, a huge and hugely important freshwater lake, just south of the ruins of Angkor. It is a major tourist hub and has grown rapidly in recent years.
We drove from the airport to our hotel outside the city center. National Road 6 was jammed with people on bicycles and motorbikes — the kind of scene that I had imagined experiencing in SE Asia before leaving for SE Asia. I don’t think I saw a single soul wearing a helmet, which is especially important when you have five people — including two children — and a chicken on one motorbike. Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan came to Siem Reap last year to promote a helmet campaign, but I don’t think he convinced anyone. Cambodians don’t like rear view mirrors, either. They’re considered ugly, and Cambodians almost always remove them from their motorbikes.
Upscale hotels have sprouted all along the highway to serve the more than a million tourists who visit Siem Reap every year to see Angkor, located just outside the city. We stayed at the Lotus Angkor Hotel, a beautiful hotel with nicely landscaped grounds.
THE LOTUS ANGKOR HOTEL
(I was greatly impressed by the long line of hotels. It reminded me of Orlando. I was less impressed later that evening when a Cambodian scholar told members of my group that many of the hotels were empty. She said that criminals and corrupt politicians use the hotels to launder money. I don’t know whether that’s true, though Cambodia has a reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in one of the most corrupt regions of the world. I spoke to a bellman at our hotel one night and he mentioned that a Cambodian politician owned the hotel, a “very nice man.” Interesting.)
We visited The Center for Khmer (Cambodian) Studies at the Wat Damank and met Director Phillipe Peycam. The Center is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization working to address what Peycam calls the “dire situation” in Cambodia today. Just how bad is it? Our local guide told us that
• the average per capital income in Cambodia is $350 a year,
• 60 percent of Cambodians are illiterate,
• 80 percent of Cambodians are farmers,
• just 4-5 percent of rural children make it to college,
• the government is unable to collect income taxes so it does not provide any social program, and
• there is just one public university in a nation of 13 million people. (There are a growing number of private universities, but Peycam said that many of them are diploma mills with no standards.)
The Center is trying to cultivate an academic culture in Cambodia. It operates a small publishing house, which produces publications in English and Khmer. It trains Cambodian scholars, hosts visiting scholars, sponsors research, and presents academic conferences. It has opened a small lending library available to scholars and residents alike. The library has 4,000 books in its collection, many of them written in Khmer. (Relatively few books in Cambodia are available in the native tongue.) It is the only library in Cambodia outside the capital of Phnom Penh. You can visit the Study Center’s website at www.khmerstudies.org to learn more or to donate a book.
Peycam joined us for dinner at a local restaurant — a trendy place that would not be out of place in Beverly Hills; a modern, minimalist joint with a young, all-male serving staff. Dressed in black with the top three buttons of every shirt undone. I didn’t see any Cambodians eating there, aside from two Study Center staff members in our party. “This is why people join NGOs,” a colleague commented. “They live in places like Cambodia and can eat out at places like this every night.”
Non-governmental organizations are active in almost every poverty stricken country in the world. They became popular in the 80s when rich countries grew tired of sending money to corrupt government leaders. NGOs are generally free of corruption and do a better job of getting services to local people. They are sometimes controversial, though. Government leaders sometimes accuse them of meddling in politics and pushing “Western” values.”
After dinner, three colleagues and I jumped off the bus and walked through the entertainment district. I’ve walked this street before — in Key West. Lots of honky tonks with guys signing American oldies. The bars cater to tourists. Like everywhere else, prices are listed in American dollars. I walked into one bookstore and every book was written in English. I walked into another bookstore and every book was in French.
My colleague Dennis and I decided to return home, leaving two colleagues behind. We reconnected with a tuk tuk driver who had greeted us earlier and kept an eye on us all night hoping to earn $2 taking us back to our hotel. We got into the pedicab and the driver asked us if we wanted to go “see some girls.” Dennis said that we just wanted to go to the hotel. The driver said it would only cost $4 for him to take us to the girls. Dennis said we just wanted to go to the hotel.
After a brief, animated exchange, the driver pulled out into the street, into the dark, headed for the hotel … we hoped.
We traveled through downtown. After a few minutes, I realized that we were back on the main road heading toward the hotel. (As a general rule, I think that you’re pretty safe getting into a tuk tuk. Governments depend heavily on tourists. I imagine that it would be a pretty serious crime to assault a tourist, though it probably happens from time to time. In Laos, we heard talk of a “purse snatching” along the river the day that we arrived in Vientiene.)
When we arrived at the hotel, the driver again approached Dennis and mentioned that he could take us to see the girls. Out of curiosity, Dennis asked “how much for the girls?” The driver responded with a question of his own: “You want boom-boom, quick-quick or all night.”
Dennis: “Boom-boom, quick-quick.”
Driver: “$20”
Our interaction with the tuk tuk driver gave us a brief glimpse into the global sex trade. Men from all over the world travel to places like Cambodia and Thailand to “see the girls.” That explains the growing incidence of AIDS in the region and explains why hotels in China and Thailand leave condoms in guest’s hotel rooms. (To put that $20 in some context, please remember that that the average Cambodian earn less — according to our guide —than $1 a day. Is it no wonder that the sex trade is big problem?)
We got up early the next day for a day of adventure outside Siem Reap. We drove through the city, past the Old Market and the Old French Quarter, and onto an ornery dirt road. We watched a poor city melt into the even poorer countryside.
We continued our pilgrimage to Phnom (“hill”) Kulen for some time. Agriculture land gave way to jungle. Beautiful, yet deadly. The Khmer Rouge (the “red” or communist Cambodians) used the Phnom as their final stronghold for decades after losing power in 1979 and the land still contains hidden landmines. We stayed on the main road.
Phnom Kulen is considered a sacred mountain in Cambodia. From here, in 802, Jayarvarman II declared himself a Hindu god-king and proclaimed independence from Java. That kicked off the four century Angkor period that produced Cambodia’s most famous temples — made of sandstone from Phnom Kulen.
We stopped along a river running down the mountainside, delivering “sacred” water to the countryside. The water is considered sacred thanks to carvings commissioned by Jayavarman II. He diverted the river and ordered his craftsman to carve hundreds of phallic images — shiva linga — into the riverbed. More than 1200 years later, you can still see the linga, visible as bumps in the riverbed.
Fifteen yards down river, Jayavarman again diverted the water. He then ordered his craftsman to carve into the riverbed an elaborate rendering of the Hindu god Vishn laying on the serpent Ananta.
We continued to the summit of Phnom Kulen to visit Preah Ang Tho, a 16-century monastery. There is a small village near the entrance to the monastery.
Preah Ang Tho is famous as the resting spot of a massive, reclining Buddha carved into a large boulder. Visitors must climb a long flight of stairs to see the Buddha which is housed in a small building perched atop the boulder — like a hat on a chubby man.
We drove back down the mountain and stopped at spot along the river to eat lunch. Residents and visitors alike walked into the water and stood under the waterfalls for a cool, natural massage. You are “blessed” to stand in the sacred water, so I put on a pair of swimming trunks and jumped in.
Entry Filed under: Freeman Fellowship
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