Do you know about Cambodia? James Buckley came face to face with the reality of life in Cambodia….. and it left a lasting impression!
I hardly expected a market to bestride the immigration depot but then, it was Cambodia. Everyone radiated purpose and the bustling piazza teemed with activity. Everyone was involved in the trade in one way or another and youth acted as no concession. Clearing immigration with our passports stamped and visas validated we piled into a minibus which by the sound of the floundering engine seemed to apologise for exceeding its use by date. The unsealed road rolled with mounds and gullies causing the bus to rear up and writhe as the driver attempted to skirt the most malevolent angles. The Speedo barely stroked 20kph the entire eight hours and with rucksacks piled five feet high in the central isle, there was scarcely room to crack an incredulous grin.
Ahead the road was fraught with obstacles all posing the distinct threat of rendering us by the roadside for the night – a prospect our driver had alluded to on more than one occasion. Ahead a vision of terror asserted itself: a bridge, or lack thereof. The thing was all but annihilated. Under a veil of darkness three men surveyed the damage with torches. The problem lay three quarters of the way along the bridge’s length. It was a jagged, gaping hole spanning half the width of the crossing on the right hand side. Unbelievably the decision was made to traverse it. Running along the middle was the main support beam.
The approach will be to cross the left side and balance all offside wheels on the exposed beam only just wide enough to accommodate a tyre. Imbued with feelings hanging somewhere between gratitude and outright triumph we landed victoriously and found ourselves in conceivable reach of Siem Riep. The city announced itself with invitations of smooth tarmac and in-filled potholes and hotels of immodest grandeur appeared among general dilapidation drawing a clear and unequivocal line between the decorous and the debased. That evening we perused the outdoor markets and it was here I realised how significantly un-Western Cambodia was.
Open sewers freely wafted their rank vapours, insalubrity a way of life and rats and cockroaches welcome guests at any mediocre establishment. Curious smells lingered in dense suspension and few seemed bothered that cats long deceased were rotting within inches of raw meat. I purchased a bottle of water from a woman who was teaching her son the rudiments of the trade. He could have been no more than five and barely had the dexterity in his fingers to produce the change from my 10,000 riel note. As we retired to our hotel room for the night raw twilight dropped gracefully over the horizon like an amber veil and the soft, warm glow deepened to darkness with the sinking sun.
The following morning we ventured out of Siem Riep to explore the Angkor temples – the surviving remains of the religious, social and administrative metropolis and spiritual heart and identity of the Khmer people. As we approached the main entrance tower to the Bayan monuments, adorned with intricate carvings and guarded by mystical stone beasts, it was apparent that we were entering an ancient civilisation, lost for over 100 years to the jungle’s bid to reclaim its territory.
And much of that enigma remains today. With its archaic galleys, deeply etched monarchic importance and threatening sandstone countenances suggesting admonition as much as an invitation to delve deeper into the mystery, there was a feeling that by some impalpable force we were being held at arm’s length from secrets we would never know. But that was partly what was so alluring about it: its charm, its curious oracularity and its inconceivable inordinacy.
Travelling from the temples to Siem Riep’s, Tonle Sap, Asia’s largest lake, we passed through a grid of crossroads – a phenomenon in themselves. Stop signs, traffic lights and road markings had no place here. Only one rule prevailed: small yields to big or else! A trip on a long-tail boat proved a tranquil end to the day until the reality of a near head-on collision care of our captain, tanked to the gills and displaying a certain savoir-faire for stalling the engine, manifested itself. As we moved to get out of the boat our inebriated driver stifled a series of garbled words through a slurry of burps and hiccups, which I inferred a plea for a tip, before keeling over the side and emptying an impressive volume of local brew and rice wine.
That night we were sitting at the bar of the guesthouse when the owner, Bee Bee came to join us. He is typical of Cambodian men: ebullient and exhaustingly orgiastic. Yet put a few beers inside him and watch the emotional side surface. Before long we found ourselves listening to a first hand account of the stultifying dictatorship of Pol Pot. He talks of how his father was murdered when he was just four because he worked for an opposing political party to that of Pot’s bigoted, would-be socialist totality.
Bee Bee has no memory of his father. As he wept he spoke of how his mother starved to death two years later off the back of the same totalitarian governance. Five yards away the seven male members of staff slumber on the stone-flagged floor that is their bed, sheltered only by a bedraggled mosquito net. Most of them are only slightly older than us, yet have all lost their parents to the genocide of the 1970s. All of them count themselves lucky to be employed at all. We implored that surely things are vastly better now than in the ’70s, but Bee Bee was not convinced.
He argued how corruption still exists at the highest level and is bitterly against the ruling Cambodian People’s Party because of it. As he struggles to continue he talks of the deep rooted hatred of all his neighbouring countries, particularly Thailand and Vietnam who have repeatedly attempted to occupy Cambodian land. Little of the foreign aid directed at helping Cambodia filters through to the people who really need it, swallowed up instead by avaricious bureaucrats. Bee Bee is fond of the new king who he describes as “kind” and “polite” but probes they might as well do away with the monarchy for all the influence it has.
Yet it is most humbling how a country brought to its knees thirty years ago and dragged by the scruff of its neck through years of inexorable tyranny and tight-fisted oppression has revivified an affirmation of itself. Cambodians are the most amiable and contented people with an infectious vitality and zest for life. They remain ruled by an iron fist and live their daily lives through corruption but refuse to be shackled by it. By Western standards Cambodia remains as iniquitous as it is impoverish yet Sokan, a fourteen year-old girl from Phnom Penh is thankful to be part of the new generation of youths born into a country where women are granted volition and a speaking voice.
Unlike most teenage girls in England who have long since abandoned dolls and tea sets for makeup and mini-skirts, the fourteen year old Cambodian girl is still a child and has little aspiration to be anything else. I’ve never before seen a smile which instils such a feeling of warmth and well being, such an inexplicable sense of verve as from a Cambodian child, as if all the world’s problems have been expunged from existence. As a nation they have so much to offer – they are rumoured to have the world’s most productive lake – they simply need a leg-up to hold their own on the world stage.
James has just spent six months travelling around the world and is busy writing about his travels. To reproduce this piece or for other articles, contact him by email