The first time I went to Cambodia, some eight or nine years ago, it was pretty sad. The country was still recovering from the years of Pol Pot’s insane Maoist tyranny, the subsequent Vietnamese ‘liberation’, and prolonged civil war. As far as most of the outside world knew, the Vietnamese were the bad guys, so foreign aid was limited to the trickle of subsidies from a Soviet Union in terminally ill health. When the Soviet Union finally went belly up in 1991, political compromises around the globe began to happen rapidly in some sort of inverse ‘domino theory’, Cambodia included. The Vietnamese left, and Cambodia was again ‘open for business.’ But wounds take longer to heal than political stalemates, and the scars still showed. Eye contact was difficult in a country that had attempted suicide. The Khmer Rouge were Khmer killing other Khmers, after all. The best and brightest were long gone, either to other countries or shallow graves, all for the crime of being city dwellers in a rural country. Cambodia is the greatest culture ever to arise in Southeast Asia, mind you, now reduced to one of the world’s thirty Least Developed Countries, an honor it shares only with Nepal in Asia, Haiti in the Americas, and most of sub-Saharan Africa.
That’s all changing. Unlike Myanmar (they should rename the country again, this time to ‘Bummer’), Cambodia is not digging the hole deeper and looking ever further inward. Sure, Hun Sen is a strong-man, a one-man party intent on holding power, but democracy takes time, and Cambodia is not ready; neither is Laos. Stability is more important. Even Thailand has severe growing pains, wallowing in the aftermath of a populist usurper and the ghost of army coups past, true democracy dependent on an educated populace slow to develop. But Cambodia is looking up, and it shows in the faces of the people. During my visit there last month, I saw supermarkets, new construction, and a vital tourist industry. Mostly, though, I saw happiness, and a fresh attitude. Entire families line the river in Phnom Penh until 9pm, buying and selling, and partying in general. This spills over into surrounding neighborhoods, and includes cultural events such as traditional music and dancing. Phnom Penh now even has an annual film festival. TV is the same, local programming with some interesting content. Things are looking up, way up, something that hasn’t been the case since the 60’s, when Cambodia rocked and rolled while Vietnam wept and wailed.
The 60’s were a golden age for Cambodian popular culture. Inspired by Dengue Fever, the musical group, not the disease, I went looking for a resurgence of this musical spirit. I found the spirit, but the music is still lagging, mostly copying Thai pop songs with new Khmer lyrics. There is some interesting folk music, though, kind of a Mali-like Cambodian blues which I’d like to hear more of. I think I will. The country is highly likeable, and much diversified from its previous reputation as a haven for degenerate recreational adventurers, both sexual and chemical. Cambodia has much more than that to offer, from the beaches of Sihanoukville to the tribal outback of Mondulkiri to the ancient cultural heartland centered on Siem Reap to the bright lights of the big city Phnom Penh. The language, both spoken and written, is eminently learnable for someone with knowledge of Thai, and indeed is something of a linguistic genome project, charting the mutations and deletions as one language is cross-bred into another, something that occurs more often with English nowadays. If it weren’t for the Khmer language’s love of consonant clusters and the Thai’s abhorrence of such, you might assume a common source for both. If there is one, it’s ancient.
Whether Cambodia’s the next Thailand or not, a tourist Mecca for millions, I wouldn’t hazard a guess, nor whether that’s a blessing or a curse. Thailand is not an appropriate role model for everyone, certainly, though its recent economic successes are notable, and the comparison is an obvious one. Laos, for one, seems unsure of itself in a post-Communistic world, except in that it’s NOT like big brother Thailand, brash and free-wheeling, in much the same way that Canada is not totally like the US, despite its closeness, and has no desire to be. Laos tends to follow Vietnam’s lead, a country with which it has scant genetic relation, but a significant political one. Cambodia is different. Cambodia predates them all, and in an important sense, spawned them culturally, taking over where the Dvaravati-era Mons left off in the creation of an empire that encompassed almost all of modern-day Thailand and Laos and much of Vietnam. Khmer ruins still dot that landscape and the roads are open, even if all the mines are yet to be cleared. They probably never will be.
Multiple land entries are now possible from Thailand in addition to the ones with Laos and Vietnam, including one possibility that includes a boat ride to Sihanoukville. From there it’s only a 3-4 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh. This might be preferable to the all-day bus ride to or from Poipet, through a nice, but uneventful, Battambang (there is a coconut shake there that is to die for, btw). This is no small accomplishment consider the riots in 2003 that destroyed the Thai embassy and Thai businesses in Phnom Penh. This occurred after an article appeared in a Cambodian newspaper accusing a Thai actress of insulting Cambodia by stating that she would only visit Cambodia when they returned Angkor Wat to Thailand. Ouch! Well, that may have been a fabricated story or a misinterpretation at best, but that didn’t stop Hun Sen from announcing that the little Thai cutie was not worth ‘even a blade of glass from Angkor.’ Though he may have had a point, this is not diplomatic, and major destruction ensued while the Khmer police looked on. The plot thickens. However bungled and misinformed the causes of this event may have been, the case of Preah Vihear (‘Pra Viharn’) is not. That set of ruins sits squarely on the Thai-Khmer border south of Sisaket in Isan, and for years was considered part of Thailand. That’s not surprising, considering that Thailand had previously occupied much of Cambodia, only relinquishing it as its punishment for playing footsie with the Japanese during WWII. When the International Court ruled in Cambodia’s favor in 1962, Thailand responded by closing the only access to the splendid, if small, set of cliff-top ruins. Only with the Khmer Rouge’s final surrender there in 1998 and the completion of a road from the Cambodian side in 2003 has tourist access become unlimited.
Despite the current thaw in relations between Thailand and Cambodia, Phnom Penh is still not the place to go for a quick easy Thai visa. I swore I wouldn’t talk about things like this in this space, but OK, maybe, later. Go check it out. If it’s not your cup of tea, then maybe it’s your cup of coffee. If you don’t like the local food, then maybe you’ll like the French bakeries. If nothing else, the ruins at Angkor are uniquely splendid, and if Cambodia is indeed your last resort, it may not be a bad one.
