Sharing a meal with a Cambodian family almost always
involves spreading a few mats out on the floor of the living room or the
outside patio, a few bowls of rice, a bowl of soup, typically fish, and being
asked multiple times if you want more. This is the tricky part. If you say,
“It’s very good!” then they expect you to want a second and third helping.
Saying the food is delicious and then turning down another bowl is confusing.
So, you pretty much have to plan on that second helping, prefacing it with the statement
that its good, and then turning down the third round without repeating that it
was good.
The majority of our time in Cambodia revolved around family
time. Eating, chatting, eating some more, laughing, attempting to understand
Khmer, trying to make babies smile, and maybe eating some more. Every time I
turned around a new cousin was showing up to visit and of course eat. I
specifically say ‘cousin’ because for my husband’s immediate family, cousins
are all that’s really left. Many members of my mother-in-law’s immediate family
did not survive the reign of the Khmer Rouge. When I looked around the room
during many of those meals, I realized everyone over 50 had experienced those
terrifying years and survived it.
If you are not familiar with the genocide that took place in
Cambodia in the 1970’s, you should take a minute to look it up on Wikipedia or
Google it. I am not going to give a history lesson here, but I think it’s
important for people to understand how intense meeting this family for the first
time was for me considering the history and stories I have heard over the past
5 years. Also important to note, when we visited the prison camps and torture
camps in Phnom Penh, it was particularly distressing. My Mother-in-law did not
join us for those tours.
Aside from family time, we did visit a few tourist sites.
Apparently, Angkor Wat just isn’t what it used to be. When Ves visited many
years ago, you could rent a moto and drive yourself all around the temples and
ancient ruins. Other than the two most popular ruins, Angkor Wat and Angkor
Thom, there are many other sites definitely worth seeing that are spread out,
some more than 30 kilometers from Siem Reap.
Today, foreigners are not permitted to drive themselves
anywhere around Siem Reap, and especially not to or around Angkor Wat. So you
have to either ride a bicycle or hire a tuk tuk driver. Expect a bumpy, dusty
ride for both modes of transport. Considering all there is to see, possibly
requiring a minimum of three days, the cost of a one day ticket being $20, and
the tuk tuk driver being $15 for a full day (not including a tip), it’s a
pretty penny to see the 8th Wonder of the World. Oh, and none of
that includes a tour guide, if you want to understand what you are looking at
beyond that it’s a really cool, old stone carving.
Angkor Wat is magnificent. The sheer size of the various
temples is dumbfounding. Similar to visiting Machu Picchu, you walk around
completely baffled by how these giant stone blocks came to be a majestic,
functioning city. The moat surrounding Angkor Wat and the two reflective pools
inside are perfectly picturesque. It truly is a beautiful place to spend a few
days and I can totally understand why locals come here weekly for picnics and
evening strolls.
The other slightly disturbing aspect concerning future
visits to Angkor Wat involves the restoration currently taking place. Much of
the ruins are crumbling to the ground. I don’t just mean pieces of walls
flaking off; I mean entire sections of buildings falling apart. I’m sure the
recent influx of tourism to places like Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu plays a big
role in the demise of these ancient cities. But, I’m still not sure how I feel
about countries like Cambodia and Laos producing replicated versions of the
statues, temples, and sites, and attaching then them to the old. They might
have to come up with a new name for them; instead of ‘ancient ruins’ they might
be called ‘ancient/contemporary ruins.’
We also visited Battambang, which struck me as another
sleepy, riverside town. We rode the bamboo train, which felt like an
old-fashioned roller coaster ride, but I did appreciate the functionality of
it. Before it became a tourist attraction, it was mainly used to transport
foods and other goods between towns that fell along the old railway.
We spent a few days in Sihanoukville. This bipolar beach
town is filled with new resort complexes that are completely empty, and pre-war
hotels that are now missing windows and are covered in mold and vines. The
beaches however are still as lovely as ever.
Probably the most moving and memorable ‘must-see’ site in
Cambodia for me was the Killings Fields and the Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom
Penh. To put it simply, the Tuol Sleng Museum was formerly a high school that
the Khmer Rouge turned into a torture chamber and prison, and the Killing
Fields was one of the many locations where the regime executed the prisoners
and buried them.
The mood of both places was presumably solemn, I felt sick
to my stomach during the entire tour. Some changes have been made here as well.
The Fields recently added an audio tour included with the admission, which was
very informative, and the Museum has cleaned up the torture rooms and removed
some of the graphic photos I guess to make the tour a little less unsettling.
All in all, it was poignant, emotional, and very
informative. I learned so much about my husband, his mother, my new family, and
the often-sad history of Cambodia. Some of it wasn’t easy, some of it wasn’t
fun, but I am going home today with a new connection to a part of the world
that seems, and is, so far away from my little life in the States.
