Cambodia

Cambodia was not on our original itinerary, but when we learned tickets from Bankgkok were only $90 round-trip, how could we miss this opportunity to visit the ancient temples of Ankor Wat? Actually, Ankor Wat itself is only one of hundreds of Khmer temples in the area known as Siem Reap up near the Thailand border.

We first spent a couple of days exploring the dusty city of Phnom Penh, best known to us for the thousands of murders enacted upon its citizens by Pol Pot and his regime during the late 1970s. Today the city is trying to recover, and there's clearly many new buildings popping up all over the place, although we wonder whether the impact of the current financial crisis in the area will slow things down a bit. Even in the capital city, there are far more motorbikes than private cars, and more dirt roads than paved ones.

After some debate and discomfort, we decided to visit both and the Seul Slang prison the Killing Fields. Not very pleasant places. The prison used to be a local high school, but Pol Pot turned it into a prison where thousands and thousands of "enemies of the state" were tortured and incarcerated. Later, its inhabitants were carted off to the Killing Fields, a nearby fruit orchard where the prisoners were murdered and buried in mass graves. Simply being educated - knowing how to speak French - wearing glasses - was enough to label someone a dangerous enemy of Pol Pot's vision of a Maoist-style agrarian socialist society, and then the entire family would be thrown in the prison and subsequently killed. Sorry to share such ugly history with you, but it's quite true, and shocking that it occurred as recently as it did (1975-1979). During this time period, about 22,000 were killed in the prison and Killing Fields, and millions of other Cambodians died from starvation. Many of the people we met had lost family members to the death camps and to hunger and overwork. I was embarrassed to find out that the US supported Pol Pot and his regime, despite his tactics, because he was an enemy of our then-enemy, Vietnam. Finally, Vietnam defeated Pol Pot and put him out of power. Amazingly, he has never been tried for his crimes, and is still living in Cambodia, on the border close to Thailand. As best we can find out, his own party has put him in jail, and they continue to fight in what's basically a civil war against the current government.

Our next stop would take us much further back in history, to the 9th-12th centuries. After an 8-hour, dusty ride in the back of a pickup truck along with 6 other local travelers, we arrived at the small city of Siem Reap (pronounced "See-em Ree-ep"). I had already named Phnom Penh "Dustiest City in the World," but Siem Reap is a close contender! Now we were eager to find out if the famed Ankor Wat would really be worth the money (entrance passes, visas, airfare, etc.), dust, and time! Fortunately, we were very soon able to confirm that Ankor was worth just about any hassle we would have had to go through to see it. Our motorbike drivers picked us up at 5:30 in the morning so we could arrive before dawn. We hopped off the bikes in front of Ankor Wat itself just as the early light was beginning to reveal the carved stone towers and animals along the causeway and moat around the temple. It was eerie, in a wonderful way. We crossed the causeway and entered the first gate. Beyond stretches a huge expanse of grass with some smaller outbuildings, and ahead is the main temple building with its distinctive towers that can be found on the Cambodian national flag. It took us four hours just to explore Ankor Wat, with its beautiful carvings and many galleries to get lost in.

Later, over the next three days, we would visit more than a dozen temples, dating from different time periods. The architectural styles changed over time, as did the religion being honored; it was not uncommon to turn representations of Hindu gods into Buddha figures, and vice versa. Needless to say, our entry passes ran out before our curiosity, and it was time to return to Thailand.

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