tales from cambodia

We arrived in Siem Reap on Friday, and that night went to see Angkor Wat at sunset. It is an amazing place, and that first time was the most exciting. There were thousands of other people around, and seeing the outline of the Wat across the water (there's a moat around it) was very moving: it felt like an honour to be there, such a pilgrimage for so many. We were happy just to be there and so wandered around without a plan. It is huge, and there are many different areas, from the reliefs carved into outer walls to inner courtyards, higher levels, remnants of bhudda statues etc. All on a massive scale, making you wonder about their feats of engineering (how did they manoeuver the huge stone blocks?). The weather was cloudy so there was no big sunset, more a gradual change in light. But it was a special place to be.

We arrived in Cambodia by boat from Vietnam, travelling up the Mekong river to Phnom Phen and staying there for a few days. Cambodia itself has been interesting to visit, often sad. We have learnt a lot about the recent past – the civil war and then the terrible years under the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot until the invasion by the Vietnamese.

We visited S21, a former school that the KR used as their interrogation centre for 4 years. It was very frightening and eerie; little had changed from the brutal set up they had used. We also went out to one of the killing fields, where they had uncovered about 10,000 skeletons; the KR had taken people out here and executed them before shoving them in shallow pits. Today most of the bones have been removed and placed in a memorial shrine, and grass has grown over the empty pits. There is nothing much to say there, as you approach a great sadness. There are other fields in different parts of the country.

Most of all we are learning from people's stories; everyone you speak to lost family during those years, some were tortured themselves, almost starved and had to work in the fields; many many were orphaned. The KR killed everyone who was highly educated, whether lawyers, engineers, administrators or Bhuddhist monks. This has meant great problems down the line – how to rebuild a country when you have lost so much expertise.

Leaving PP we caught a bus up to Battambang, a medium sized town further north-west. We spent an afternoon volunteering in English conversation classes in a free rural village English school, which was great – fun to talk to younger people about their lives. Girls I spoke to were focused on their education – before boyfriends, thankyou! They wanted to learn English to become guides. Several monks came – they were just like other 20yr old guys, no different. I think I'd been expecting zen masters.

The school's director told us how both of his grandfathers had been executed by the Khmer Rouge in th 1970s (one had been a doctor, the other a police chief). The Khmer Rouge still controlled this area during the 1980s, and it was only in the 1990s that his parents felt safe enough to dig up the remains of one of the grandfathers and place his bones at a temple. They identified his bones by the clothes around them; for all this time they had remembered what he wore and where his body had been taken.

The next day we hired motos (i.e. motorbike + driver) and went out in the area around Battabang. The villages are a mix of permanent housing and grass/thatched houses. Most people are rice farmers. There were some Muslim villages, but the majority are Bhuddhist. Right now it is dry season, so the fields were hard, river was low and the roads were dusty. Some enterprising locals had planted vegetable gardens on the banks of the river – temporary one, until the rains came and the water rose again. We visited Wat Banan, an ancient temple rising steeply from the flat plains, and Phnom Sampeau, which is another temple, though not as old. Around Sampeau are limestone caves; the Khmer Rouge executed people above them and let bodies fall into them. There are skeletons there still. I couldn't stay in the caves long; it was a disturbing place. Not for everyone – there were some local people in one of the caves sitting around having their fortunes read from cards. Bizarre.

My driver had been orphaned during the Khmer Rouge years – some family members executed, others dying from sickness and starvation. Afterwards, when the Vietnamese came, he participated in two revenge killings against former KR officers.

People are rebuilding lives now, with a new generation who have been born after the war. But the past is still alive, still such a powerful presence here. There is a lot of talk of corruption in the government, and there is a visible gulf between the rich (in their lexus 4WDs) and the many many poor people. Most roads are poor, health services are limited and available on a payment basis (how much money do you have? Then this is what I can do for you), goods and services are expensive. Elections are coming up in a few months. I wonder if they will go smoothly.

dreams from saigon

Back to Asia, and back to blogging. This time from Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Only landed on Thursday night so I still feel alert to so many differences here, and ignorant of the city's own routine.

We've been spending time walking around, getting used to crazy traffic: there are hundreds of motorbikes and taxis and cyclos and buses and trucks on the roads, and initially it looks like they are driving every and any which way - whenever they want. Unpredictable, and close and sometimes alarming (combined with getting used to left hand drive cars on the right side of the road). But after a while out in amongst it you start to see a pattern in it all: walking out into traffic is a bit of a confidence trick, you have to walk with purpose as if there is a clear path ahead of you, and if you look like you believe it, the traffic will swerve around you.

We've also visited a few museums, local markets and tried some local dishes. It's so exciting and invigorating to be in Asia again; I'm loving it.

Today we left Saigon to explore old Viet Cong underground tunnels (at Cu Chi). Combined with visits to several other war-related museums, with very graphic information and photos from the Vietnam war (anti-american), I'm looking forward to having a break from the horrors of the recent past; they're giving me bad dreams. Tomorrow we're packing up our bags and heading to the mighty Mekong River.