Well, this got a little behind. My apologies. We are currently in Mahajual, Mexico, staying with a friend who has been in the southern Yucatan for 10 years where he is putting together a 10 unit development on an incredible piece of beachfront property purchased about 15 years ago. More about that later.
So I am going to try to catch up a little piece at a time. The last post was about Suan Sati the yoga/meditation retreat that truly was a high point of this year of travel. But we did get to Siem Reap, Ankor Wat, and Cambodia. Siem Reap is a Cambodian city of about 140,000 people. Around Siem Reap is 400 acres of Ankor Wat, translated as "The CIty of Temples", where Hindu and later, Buddhist rulers built over 250 temples between 1100 and 1400 AD. These folks took temple-building to another level. The original (and namesake) temple of Ankor Wat took about 35 years to build with an estimated 300,000 slaves. And for the next couple hundred of years each Khmer ruler built more temples. They built to honor the gods, serve as burial locations for the rulers, honor dead kings, you name it. The Khmer empire was rich and powerful and at its peak and the temples were built as a reflection of that weath and power.
Ankor Wat was abandoned around 1430 when the Khmer empire collapsed from an invasion. So you have a huge pile of rock slowly deteriorating. And then, in 1860, a French naturalist, Henri Mahout, who was tracing the tributaries of the Mekong River at the time, happened upon the temple area. Slowly, Ankor Wat become known. Restoration work goes on today but the complex is so vast that there are acres of hewn rocks waiting to be placed back in the temples. It is a huge jigsaw puzzle and daunting undertaking. And underfunded in this poor country. Many countries around the world have contributed to the restoration work. The understanding of Ankor Wat is evolving with increasingly sophisticated tecniques (including LIDAR). But walking the complex for three days is jaw-dropping as you contemplate the incredible size of the buildings and the manpower required to construct these temples.
Cambodia - the saddest country I have ever visited. The Pol Pot period resulted in the deaths of nearly of quarter of the Cambodian population (1.5 to 2 million people were killed) between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge were trying to establish an agrarian socialist utopia. If you were a teacher, lawyer, government worker, spoke other languages -- you were "re-educated" - sent to the country labor camps and often killed for your education or skills because you did not fit the "ideal" of the farmer. Our guide in Ankor Wat told us his father survived the killings because he was a blacksmith; apparently he fit the agrarian model. He was not well educated and obviously worked with his hands. But every time his father talks about the Pol Pot period, he cries because he lost so many family members and friends to the killings. If you want a sense of the incredible cruelty and rigid ideology of the Khmer Rouge, watch the movie "First They Killed My Father". Chilling.
Our guide was well educated and circumspect in his criticisms of the government but he made it clear that he, and others of his generation, thought it was time for new leadership. Hun Sen has been the Prime Minister of Cambodia since 1985. He is an absolute dictator in a sham democracy where the opposition party has been banned. The sense I had of the Cambodian people is that they were kind and worked hard but there is a hopelessness in their existence. Layered on top of the genocidal Pol Pot era is the lack of any political power and absolute control for so many years by a small ruling elite with tight control over the media in the country. I came away from our 4 days in Cambodia with a deep feeling of sadness. I know that is a very short time to assess an entire country but I do not think I am far off the mark here.
Having said that, we are glad we went to Siem Reap. The ruins are considered one of the "7 Wonders of the World". We stayed at the Mane Hotel in downtown Siem Reap and were upgraded from a single room to a 2 bedroom, 2 bath suite. Very nice. The hotel staff was incredibly attentive and the food was good - we did eat in the restaurants as the street food looked dicey. If you are in Southeast Asia, and have a few days, Ankor Wat should be on your itinerary.
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