Pumpkins, Pagodas and Politics

“Pumpkin custard is off the menu”, the waiter at the smart restaurant in Siem Reap whispered confidentially. I settled for a trio of crèmes brulees - lime, ginger and lemongrass.

The Cambodia we experienced in two weeks in January was perhaps a trio of flavours - everyday life in the village, the highlife of towns and temples, and in the background the politics of a country so recently embroiled in catastrophic conflict.

Thmor Pouk is a large village with markets, schools, government offices, a hospital, health centre and pagoda. We had a dusty journey from the nearest town, Sisophon, an hour away on the main road (no tarmac yet).

Oly’s house is on the first floor of a traditional Khmer house, a little posher than most as his landlord is a village chief. The main feature is a tiled balcony, overlooking the street, from which we liked to watch Cambodian life pass by - children in their uniforms; women going to market; lorries collecting rice straw; numerous bicycles and scooters; and two stroke tractors, the universal utility vehicle of the countryside.

We went to the market where Oly buys his vegetables and fruit – pumpkin and little bananas are his favourite. He is the only barraing (foreigner) in the village, and has learned to speak good Khmer, especially for bargaining in the market and with tuk-tuk drivers in towns.

The village is dusty at this time of year, and smoky from cooking stoves, burning rubbish, and making charcoal - we saw many people wearing face masks. The rice paddies were brown and dry during our stay, but we did see green fields elsewhere in the country where irrigation was in place, and there are many banana and coconut palm trees in the village, so it is not short of greenery.

Cambodia is also noisy, and thankfully we were warned to bring ear plugs! Loud music woke us in the early morning, and there was karaoke in the evening, followed by dogs during the night and cocks the next morning! But we slept ok under our mosquito nets, which protected us from malaria – though dengue fever is more feared here, so we sprayed ourselves liberally with Modiguard during the day.

Although Oly is in a remote area he makes full use of modern communication - mobile phones are ubiquitous in Cambodia, as they are in most developing countries nowadays – and he even plans to bring the internet to his village, just as soon as he gets his dongle to work!

The hospital is a collection of single storey buildings with plenty of space. We saw the new children’s ward, financed by the US army, and a surgical ward being built. Oly and Alison, his nurse advisor colleague, were having an infection control drive during our stay, and we helped clean some rusty iron beds from the medical ward, which were then painted whilst the ward itself was washed down. We saw the new playground and flagpole, familiar to us from his YouTube videos! The site of the new vegetable garden looks fertile enough – getting it going will be another challenge!

Thmar Puok is in the north west of the country very near to Thailand. There were border problems while we were there, and Oly’s trip to the temple at Preah Vihear on the back of Sokpha’s moto had to be postponed. Sokpha, his Volunteer Assistant, is a charming man with three children, aged 40 he told us, so he was a boy during the Khmer Rouge years (1975-1979). Many died in the north west and there are several mass graves in the village. The area was also heavily mined during the 1980s by both the retreating Khmer Rouge and the advancing Vietnamese, and land mine removal is still ongoing.

The other aspect of rural life in Cambodia revolves around the water, and later in our stay we did an eight hour river trip from Battambang to Siem Reap, though villages dependent on the water. First there were houses on stilts backing on to the river, very low at this time of year. Families had their boats moored below and clambered up the steep banks on ladders. Diesel pumps brought water up long pipes to the houses. Other families lived on houseboats moored on the river. Later we passed a floating village where houses and shops floated on pontoons. Some of the fishing was large scale with big nets on a cantilever construction of long bamboo poles. The children were very adept at life on the river, balancing their boats with ease and sculling them standing up.

The river led into the Tonle Sap lake – really a vast inland sea - and we had a clear run across open water to Siem Reap. The natural environment of the region is very precious and we saw many birds, including pied kingfishers, bee eaters, swallows, egrets, herons, terns, cormorants and a pelican. The river was overgrown with water hyacinth in places – but it is a useful plant and is harvested by the river dwellers.

The temples of Angkor are unmissable in a visit to Cambodia and we spent our first three days in Siem Reap walking round a few of these enormous and impressive structures, built between the years 800 to 1400.

We found it difficult to conceive of the skill and artistry that went into these carvings – made in situ and carved once the walls had been constructed. It was like a combination of building the pyramids followed by multiple unknown Michelangelos carving these intricate and lively scenes of battle and everyday life.

The setting for Ta Prohm was spectacular with the much photographed trees that have taken over some of the buildings – Oly treated us to a viewing of Tomb Raider one evening! Particularly special were our visits to Banteay Chhmar, another hour or so along the dirt road from Thmar Puok, where the temple is right in the jungle; and to the delicate carvings of Banteay Srei, and the carved riverbed at Kbal Spean.

We could get as close as we liked and in some of the temples we just scrambled over fallen blocks at will to see the carvings. The Apsara dancers are perhaps the best known carvings, and we were able to see a live performance of this traditional art Siem Reap. There we also visited the National Museum, a fine, modern collection that really helped to explain the temples, religions, and early Khmer history.

You have to work out the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism to understand the history - the kings who built the temples switched between these religions and in some ways merged them, and became god-kings themselves. The temples are religious buildings, but the wonderful bas-reliefs commemorate earthly struggles as well as the gods.

Buddhism remains the official religion in Cambodia. Every community has its pagoda and orange clad monks are a frequent sight. Young men are expected to spend time as monks. They are greatly respected and rely for their food on the community. Many households have a spirit house in their compound, surrounded with flowers. Chanting from local wats is another early morning sound we heard.

Whilst in Siem Reap we also gained some insight into Cambodia healthcare, with visits to Swiss cellist Dr Beat Richner’s fundraising concert for the Kantha Bopha hospitals, and the Japanese funded Angkor Children’s Hospital - and we enjoyed discussing how they fit (or don't) with the government healthcare system.

We also had two full days in Phnon Penh, enjoying the luxury of the Pavilion’s swimming pool and the tour-guiding skills of Katja. We enjoyed visiting the Royal Palace and the National Museum, an impressive 1920s terracotta building with a fine collection of Angkorian sculpture.

We saw the Mekong for the first time, sharing a sundown drink overlooking the river with Oly’s colleague Jerker, a Swedish professor of obstetrics. He is guardedly optimistic about the future of maternal and child health in Cambodia, the area that VSO volunteers in Cambodia focus on. We also met his wife Vathiny, a Cambodian doctor whose story is told in Red Lights and Green Lizards, an absorbing account of VSO health work in Cambodia in the early 1990s.

The next day Katja arranged for us to have four cyclos all day, one each, and we had a wonderful time being pedalled through the busy streets of Phnom Penh. But this sunny day included the darkest moment of our Cambodian visit when we went to Tuol Sleng museum, a former school was used by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1978 as a ‘security prison’, where thousands were detained and tortured before being taken to the Cheong Ek Killing Fields to be brutally killed. The ranks of photographs of the prisoners, the cells in which they were held, and the instruments of torture are all there.

We read some English language newspapers in Phnom Penh which we thought were well written – some news from international sources – and were very informative about the ongoing War Crimes trials in Cambodia. One trial has been concluded so far. It is a lengthy but, we think, necessary process, and has taken over 30 years to bear fruit. A form of truth and reconciliation process is also needed, and we saw an engrossing film called Enemies of the People, made by a courageous Cambodian journalist, Thet Sambath, whose objective is just that - to tell people through real interviews exactly what happened. He was at the showing of the film at the German Cultural Institute, and answered questions, saying he is making a further film in which he would try to explain why these things happened. We found it difficult to match this recent history with the friendly and smiling Cambodian people we met during our visit.

But Cambodia has to move forward and still has political problems of corruption and nepotism – though this is not unique in the modern world. And it is very dependent on outside aid through NGOs and international organisations – we observed the imposing headquarters of the World Bank on Norodom Boulevard (interestingly just round the corner from the North Korean embassy).

So many memories as we said good bye to Oly and Katja at Siem Reap airport. It is a small, charming airport where you still walk out on the tarmac to catch your flight, and where the young man in Monument Books wished me a Happy Chinese New Year with a broad Cambodian smile, as he sold me my western ‘catch up’ newspapers - and a copy of the Phnom Penh Post.