Impermanent Utopia A Cambodian tale of content change and instability
What comes to mind when you think of Cambodia? Is it Angkor Wat’s ancient civilization or the Khmer Rouge as just another human made disaster, based on idealistic ideas? Interestingly enough we can never avoid finding silent signs of ‘long time gone’ stories. Weather or not we are able to understand them is another question. It may just be a heap of stones, a pile of rubble perhaps, telling us some facts. Is it the stones that are so interesting or is it the people who left them behind?
When I traveled through Cambodia, I probably did what most people do first: I visited the world heritage site of Angkor Wat. Mesmerizing witnesses of a culture, which is incredibly enchanting. Especially since some of the old temple complexes still have gigantic trees on top, a leftover from the jungle that took over for about 700 years until discovery. Even though they are now trimmed back and have nothing in common with the jungle that naturally grew throughout Cambodia, it still makes us feel a bit like Indiana Jones. Most people just stop here and go back home after 3 days, but if you stay longer, you notice that there is a sad underlining of something else. You come across child beggars, people with their limbs missing, desperate attempts of natives to sell you ‘whatever’, and other signs of extreme poverty.
This becomes even more apparent when you travel further through the country. On my discovery tour the place where Cambodian’s recent history revealed itself the most was the small but currently reviving village of Kep.
Kep Sur Mer it was once called, back at the beginning of last century. It was founded by French colonialists who controlled the country from 1864 until 1953. Originally, Kep was an insignificant fishing village, but as it was soon discovered as a lovely spot with potential to become Cambodia’s playground for the rich and powerful. Tasteful as French people are, they snapped up the most beautiful spots and build themselves some grand seaside villas, overlooking the Gulf of Thailand.
In the following years up to the early 70’s the area was transformed into Cambodia's Riviera. The king and his family had (and still have) a property there, and so did many other well-to do and influential Cambodian families. During the 50’s and 60’s the style of the houses changed from formally colonial to up to date white concrete based villas, build by young Cambodian architects, who studied modern style buildings a la Le Corbusier abroad.
All this stopped when the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge marched into the city in the mid 70's. What followed was a brief time of horror and destruction: the residents were forced to leave or executed on the spot for belonging to the wrong side of the new system. The city itself was seen as a symbol of decadence and subsequently destroyed through fire and dynamite. The Khmer Rouge regime aimed to establish a county based on peasant-dominated agrar-culture and everything to do with city life, culture and education was systematically wiped out. The second wave of destruction came with the Vietnamese army in 1979. If there was anything left to take, it got stripped and decimated completely. However, the remained of these grand old houses are still visible along the beach road like haunted skeletons.
Nowadays the citizens of Kep are not much better off than one hundred years ago: the population is generally poor, relatively uneducated, and lacking in basic resources such as clean drinking water, safe sewage disposal, and electricity. Plus populations living in resource poor rural areas such as Kep have the lowest health status in the country. Most people do not own any land and consequently squat on the grounds of those empty burned-out villas, making a living on very basic needs.
For a decade nobody cared, but finally the rich and mighty are coming back. In recent years many of the seaside lots in Kep have been purchased and sold repeatedly by wealthy Cambodians and foreign real-estate speculators. The land has become more valuable by the day; hotels, shops and new private holiday homes are sprouting out like mushrooms. The hillside has already gained a tasteful collection of bungalow resorts overlooking the see and visited by expats. And over the weekends the usually empty beach is now flooded by families from Phnom Penh with pick-nick baskets, enjoying the local seafood delicacies.
What has not changed is the fact that at places like Kep the sharp differences between rich and poor in Cambodia is more obvious than elsewhere. A central market has opened in recent months in the shell of what had been the city's gambling casino. Even though the marked still has a long way to go and would not pass any kind of health, safety and hygiene regulations, it sells local food next to items like American toothpaste and Singapore beer for $1 a can. Nevertheless, most locals cannot afford to buy such novelties. The typical income per head is the equivalent of 60 cent per day.
Cambodia is a Buddhist country. One of the essential principles of Buddhism is the law of impermanence; all compounded and constructed things and states are subject to constant change. This applies to the whole universe, not just to Cambodia, of cause. People want to move on. They have to move on. However, the flux of it is unstoppable and may not need our desire for understanding.
© Astrid Schulz