New Years Eve in Cambodia

Siem Reap has become in recent years a booming tourist town. Most of the visitors are Koreans and other Asians in tour groups. Westerners tend to be the young backpacker type.

Just in the last few years a nightlife has sprung up in Siem Reap centered on what is called Pub Street. On Dec 31st I went there for a late dinner with a large group of American scholars. By the time that we finished, the street was packed with tons of tourists.

Siem Reap is not New Orleans, and Pub Street does not have the drunkenness of Bourbon Street. It does not have the debauchery of some areas of Bangkok either. Hangover III will not be located here.

Some women in our group had their feet cleaned of dead skin by carnivorous fish. I first heard of this process from a blog post of Mrs. Pommer when she visited Japan.

In the footsteps of Angelina Jolie

Angkor Wat gets almost all of the attention as the most prominent of the Cambodian temple sites. But Angkor Thom is larger and just as interesting to me. Dozens of other temples grace the countryside, many quite exquisite.

The crowd pleaser, however, is Ta Prohm. It alone has not yet been fully restored. Trees grow up among the stones of the temple to lend the site a forbidding, romantic look.

To some extent the look is created. The trees have been trimmed and managed for effect going back to French colonial times.

The effect is magnificent. Ta Prohm has many different surprises and discoveries as one moves from one space to another. Most of the Cambodian scenes from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider were filmed in this evocative location.

Music from the disabled

There are still many people each year who die because of the Khmer Rouge and the wars of the 1970s. They are the victims of the land mines that have never been removed.

The government has done a great job in removing almost all of the mines, but still I keep very much to the paths. No wandering in the woods for me.

As I approached one of the temples, I heard wonderful Cambodian music being played by a small band. Only when I had stopped to listen to them did I realize that each of the musicians was missing a limb. All were victims of land mines.

Each year about 200 people die in land mine accidents. FOUR PERCENT of the entire population is missing a limb from a land mine explosion.

I liked their music. I bought the CD. I did not even try to haggle down the price.

Thinking about people over the age of 50

In genocide studies scholars talk about people as being perpetrators, victims, rescuers, and bystanders. Any one person can cross into different categories as their situation and their response to events shift.

In the genocide of the 1970s, just about everyone in Cambodia was either a perpetrator or a victim or both. Kids as young as ten were used by the Khmer Rouge as informants, camp guards, soldiers, and even executioners.

The vast majority of Cambodia was born after the genocide. High birth and death rates and the genocide itself has led to a very steep age pyramid here.

The government of post-genocide Cambodia has used a great many Khmer Rouge officials in order to run their offices and such. They really had little choice since those who were even just literate were massacred. General amnesty was granted to just about everyone associated with the genocide. Just a handful of the highest officials are on trial for crimes against humanity right now as I am on my travels.

So when I see a group of older men wearing government uniforms taking a break from their official duties, I wonder what they were doing during the 1970s.

I must say that being in a country in which so much atrocity has occurred relatively recently is getting to be quite creepy. Reminders of the violence are everywhere.

Below is a painting showing both the beauty and the violence of Cambodia.

Buddhism today and yesterday

Many of the archaeological sites that I have visited date from about 1000 to 800 years ago. Many were built by an ambitious king who had converted to Mahayana Buddhism.

In the centuries that followed the people of Cambodia converted to the more monastic form of Theravada Buddhism. In this later form temple worship is not emphasized, so the Buddhist tradition continued but the construction programs did not. The kings found other ways of displaying their might.

Everywhere in Cambodia are signs of their Buddhist tradition. Countless times during the day people greet me with a slight bow with palms together. Small Theravada Buddhist shrines are everywhere.

Saffron-robed monks walk freely about. The younger ones texting on their cell phones like any group of young adults. In the temples themselves the presence of the monks, who are tourists much like ourselves, literally adds color to the gray and brown stone.

In each of the temples that I have visited are Buddhist statues added in recent years for private devotion. Occasionally Buddhist elders are there to pray with visitors and to provide blessings and fortune telling.

So within the stone temples of ancient empires are the living reminders of a vital and thriving religious present.

Ground transportation

When I passed through immigration at the airport, a driver was waiting for me to take me to the hotel. What he had was not a car or a van (like I expected) but what is known here as a tuk tuk. Think of a two-wheeled motor scooter pulling a two-wheeled canopied cart behind it.

Tuk tuks are the major form of transportion in Cambodia. Renting one is easy, and these are the only form of transportation that I have used since arriving here. Getting a driver and tuk tuk to take you to all of the temple site for a full day costs about $25. I've been sharing mine with two or three other people.

No seat belts, not much stability, and traffic of all sorts in the road makes for a dangerous ride.

Angry birds

One thing that amazes me about the developing world is the dominance of certain kinds of American culture. Clothing styles among the young people in particular often has English writing or US referenced graphics,

At each site that I visit is a mob of youngsters trying to sell books, postcards, and all sorts of trinkets for one dollar.

I do not purchase anything because a pamphlet in my hotel spoke about these kids as being on the fringes of a human trafficking network at worse and exploited at best.

One of the kids was wearing an Angry Birds tee-shirt. Since I happened to have my iPad out taking pictures, I flipped to the Angry Birds app and went through a few levels with her looking on.

She obviously had little knowledge of what was happening with the game. She kept saying " angry birds" over and over again as my great aim smashed those pigs to smithereens.

So much for being a cultural ambassador for the United States.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

One of the ways that Angkor Wat became known to the world was through an Angelina Jolie adventure film, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

The woman who popularized Angkor Wat.

One of the major action scenes takes place at the Ta Prohm temple.