Cambodia

There are two main events to Cambodia and both can bring you to tears, though for opposite reasons. In the modern times we are introduced to the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh where the bones on the victims are still scattered around excavated mass graves and the skulls are on display less we forget what exactly genocide means. “Should I show the pictures?” I ask then wonder why those who stay at home should be sheltered from this reality. It is like a repeat of the Nazi’s with the intellects, and past government officers along with their families first being imprisoned in S-21, where interrogation can mean anything an evil mind can imagine. It ends at the Killing Fields, not far from the city, then abandoned, where bullets were saved by using machetes. The Cambodia press this week ran an article of the identical thing happening now in the Congo. In Cambodia this happened in 1975 to 1979. Somebody hasn’t gotten the message yet.

The Killing Fields display sign says it best: “How hurtful those victims were when they got beaten with canes heads of hoes and stabbed with knives or swords before their last breath went out. How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands, brothers or sisters were seized and tightly bound before being taken to their mass grave! While waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.”

Six hours north (with a stop to buy fried grasshopper or tarantella snacks) is the town of Siam Reap, and where the capital is full of sadness and dirt, with the wide, hot roads full of scooters and road side vendors, this city is ablaze with fine hotels, spas, night life, and anything your wallet can imagine, with the price tag to match. Siam Reap is the gateway to the temples of Angkor Wat, a complex of ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples that take days to explore. While people know it from the scenes in Tomb Raider, I can only assure you that the movie can not do it justice and the beauty and silence of the sites (especially when you are not being bombarded with children begging you to buy bracelets or books, or groups of Korean and German tourists chatting away) is an experience I will always take with me. Taking a bicycle there on my third day, I followed dirt paths that took me to the Death Gate, where the lack of road kept all of the tourists away, and down to small villages of people who live in the shadows of temples, and in the darkened corridors of both Angkor Wat and Bayon without another person to be seen or heard. Like the Great Wall, it is possible to be alone in the world’s most trafficked sites.

So these two sides of Cambodia have made a new side, where children stop to wave at foreigners on the Mekong, where the kids selling on the streets speak five languages and are quick to join into your conversations and tell their own jokes, and land mine victims play the most enchanting music to make a living. Mostly, though, its where people are happy, generally, all around happy and glad to welcome you.