Cambodia: The Empire, The Horror and The Lexus Redemption

If you look at a map, Cambodia is second to last in the competition for Southeast Asian coastline, and coastline usually correlates pretty well with prosperity. Cambodia, once home to a massive empire, then victim to horrifying auto-genocide, is notionally a poor country but as you ride around the capital you wouldn't know that, it seems like everyone drives a Lexus SUV.

We traveled from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap via boat which was far more comfortable than a bus and at 24 knots actually took about the same amount of time:

The bizarre looking boat from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, very pleasant ride

Along the way there are floating villages. We saw children splashing in the water and generally enjoying what looked like a very different upbringing than I (Bill) had.

Floating villages outside of Siem Reap

The Empire

The Khmer Empire ran from 802-1431 CE and encompassed most of Southeast Asia. The wealth reaped from the empire fed the construction of what is the world's largest religious site, Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat, the largest and most visited of the Cambodian Temples

Technically speaking Angkor was the name of the ancient capital city this sits just outside of modern day Siem Reap. Each of the many temples have individual names like Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, etc. Hindus and Buddhist both worshiped in these temples but eventually Buddhism became the dominant religion although Hindu influences remain. The site has some 72 major temples, Angkor Wat being the largest but even the "small" temples are close to the foot print of Saint Peter's in Rome and Notre Dame in Paris.

The smaller temple of Baphon, much smaller than Angkor Wat

The larger temples seem to go on forever. The odd thing about these temples is that they weren't meant for large congregations, so the spaces and passageways are small and almost claustrophobic, especially when hordes of tourists are packing in.

A shrine at the center of one of the many temples we saw, crowds like this were thankfully rare.

These sour looking guardians lined several of the causeways to the temples

Many of the temples had moats, not sure why but if you're going big you might as well have a moat, and then when you make a bridge/causeway across the moat you should line it with scary guys like above.

Many many faces on the Ankor Thom temple, really impressive.

I found the faces on the temples to be amazing, while not all the temples had faces many did, and they were sort of half smiling like they had a secret.

Many of the carvings are hard to make out but these dancing ladies are hard to misinterpret

One of the things that makes Angkor so interesting to see is that some of the temples have been abandoned for centuries and the jungle is gradually reclaiming them. Massive trees crop up out of the temples in many places. It makes for something that looks like an Indiana Jones movie, and are in fact used in several other films.

In the end Nature will take it all.

Entry way to one temple is taken over completely by this tree/strangler vine

Eventually the Khmer Empire fell and much later Phnom Pehn became the capital of modern day Cambodia.  I am making huge generalizations here but we were shocked to see so many SUVs running around Phnom Penh, along with many other hallmarks of prosperity. Perhaps my bar is too low but: paved streets, traffic lights, lavish palaces, and nice hotels on the cheap!

Cambodian National Museum in Phnom Penh

With all that praise said, the capital city only has a few attractions that are must see. The royal palace is quite nice and makes for wonderful pictures. The king still lives in the Palace, even while tourists run around with selfie sticks although his section is cordoned off. One of the craziest things was a temple in the Palace that had a floor made of silver ingots. About 8 inches square they weigh a few pounds each, in addition there were several Buddhas made of solid gold. Quite the display of opulence for a country where the average person makes less than $1000/yr. The National Museum is decent too but Phnom Penh's other main attraction is much darker.

The Horror

Cambodia was in a precarious position after the Vietnam War in 1975. They had reasons to be paranoid as the Vietnam War spilled over into their country. The US dropped a tremendous number of bombs on Cambodia and had some secret bases within Cambodia that were doing all kinds of secret things. After the US left, Cambodian paranoia was harnessed by the Khmer Rouge and it's unknown leader Pol Pot.

Khmer is the word for the Cambodian people, Rouge is Red, so the Khmer Rouge is the Communist party of the Cambodians. There are communist parties all over the world so what's the issue? The difference here is that their leader, Pol Pot, saw the "great leap forward" that Mao tried in China, which led to the death of some 50 million people, and thought, ah, we can do much better.

Through sheer charisma Pol Pot was able to start a popular revolution with the ultimate goal of everyone being farms workers. No more of these aristocrats living off the hard labor of the peasant class. So after gaining military strength in the countryside, the cities were taken by force and evacuated. Hospitals, factories and schools all shuttered. Everyone was forced to go work in the fields. It sounds crazy but it's just the start of the crazy. Days later cities with millions of people are ghost towns.

Cambodians were tortured in this school which was turned into a prison, hung from a gallows and waterboarded in sewage. Graves are in the background. 

After the evacuation of the cities, Pol Pot, still unknown to most of the country, merely just pulling the strings from behind a curtain, had to rid the country of any outside influence. Torture was used to force completely false confessions of conspiracies and co-conspirators with the CIA, KGB and who knows what other organizations. After the confessions, the confessors were taken out to what is now called "The Killing Fields", brutally executed with whatever means were at hand, typically a blunt instrument to the skull, and buried in shallow graves.

A few of the many skulls unearthed at the Killing Fields nearby Phnom Penh, most show signs of violent deaths

Co-conspirators were then dragged in and went through the same process. The first to be brought in were the intellectuals: doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and anyone with glasses... Pol Pot had the twisted idea that organically the farmer's ingenuity would somehow magically do all the things that happen in the cities, medicine, education, manufacturing... of course this didn't happen. Living standards got worse and worse and the dwindling modern resources became more and more scarce. This process continued for years in what is now called "Auto Genocide", a population killing themselves off. The scale of death and suffering didn't give any pause to Pol Pot. Out of paranoia he invaded Vietnam and his forces were quickly vanquished although remnants loyal to Pol Pot roamed the jungle for decades and the Khmer Rouge had a seat at the UN for decades as well.

The Killing Tree where children were bashed to death

Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979 all for the poorly thought out vision of Pol Pot. Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is where you can see the genocide museum along with the killing fields where the executions took place and where the mass graves are located.

Memorial Stupa to the victims of Cambodia's genocide, it is filled with bones of the deceased.

The exhibits  at the Killing Fields memorial were very plain and I didn't see any agenda other than to try to tell the rest of the world that bad leadership has dire consequences.

The Redemption

With such a dark past it was encouraging to see that Cambodia seems to be doing well. The capital is bustling with activity and there appear to be some significant signs of wealth, we saw luxury SUVs everywhere, Lexuses to be exact. This might just be a product of the circumstances but at least someone is doing well in Cambodia. We hope that the prosperity makes its way to the rest of Cambodians that are driving the local version of a tuk-tuk that is nothing more than a trailer attached to a motorcycle.

Our typical mode of transport in Cambodia, they called it a tuk-tuk but is really just a trailer and motorcycle.

While in Siem Reap, we took a "tour" of the countryside on quads or 4-wheelers with our friends, Dylan and Lauren that we met in Nepal.

Intrepid riders of the Cambodian country side!

We just happened to cross paths again in Cambodia again, and got to have dinner with them several times. Riding quads was good fun. Kenzi had fun waving at the kids along the way and I had a good time splashing through this ditch they filmed us driving through.

We also partook in the "Fish Spa" where fish nibble away at the dead skin on your feet, it was something that got outlawed in the US about a week after someone started selling it but in Cambodia they're not shackled by regulations or norms about sanitation, so here we are getting our feet nibbled on by fish. It really tickles at first, but you get used to it after about 30 seconds.

Me trying to get over the tickling fish...

For some reason they prefer my feet... 

So tourism has become a big part of Cambodia's economy and hopefully that will continue to be the case. We really enjoyed our short time in Cambodia and there was so much we didn't do.

Next up: Thailand!