Kathleen Jones Diary

Back in stormy, cold, wet England with only memories of Cambodia filtering through the jet-lag. It’s a wierd condition. You feel light-headed and slightly drunk. You lose all sense of time and your short term memory fails completely(never very good in my case!).

A centipede on a monkey’s skeleton in the rain forest.

Six people on a moto - yes, you can just see a bit of the head and one arm of the sixth person.

A boy asleep on a moto - you can do almost anything on a moto in Cambodia!

The ‘Fast Food Massage Special’ - do you eat it during, or have it smeared all over you?

Below - Cambodia’s answer to the economic crisis!

The landscape - which is very distinctive, dotted with villages of stilt houses.

And the poverty. Not the starvation level, life-threatening poverty I’ve seen in Africa, but border-line subsistence poverty. Life on the edge of survival. We met several people who are involved in organisations hoping to alleviate this by putting long-term measures in place. On man was raising the money to send Khmer teenagers to university - another running a project for the street children. This is called ‘Friends’ and they work with about 2,000 children in Phnom Penh, training them to cook and to make things that they can sell. These children can help to support their families without begging, and they get schooling too.

There’s a darker side to the children on the streets. China is building garment factories there now (we saw Debenham’s name tabs) and employing a lot of young Khmer women (cheaper than the Phillipines). Many of the women have small children but no child care. So their children are either lent, or in some case rented out, to begging organisations during the day. This is becoming more of a problem but there are people who think it too incredible to believe. They’ve obviously never read Dickens.

Now I’m in a mad whirl to get to Brussels on Friday for a day-school I’m tutoring on Saturday and I have to pack up myself and the house because I’m joining Neil in Italy for three months. The suitcases have hardly had time to cool! And the editor’s version of my Mansfield biography has just slithered down from the internet - 650 pages of alterations, queries and re-writes. It’s enough to make any self-respecting author turn to drink! Except that I’ve got no time just now to even open the bottle. Suddenly, watching the sunset from a hammock on the beach is very appealing!

When I’m travelling, I like to browse the local bookshops to see what’s on offer. Books are not big in Cambodia. There are one or two second hand european bookshops in Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap offering books that tourists left behind as well as guide books obtained in the same way. They also sell locally printed books - some of these are Cambodian and some are clones of books copyrighted elsewhere. The covers look the same, but inside they are badly printed on cheap paper and you know that the authors aren’t getting a penny from these sales. The Cambodian books have titles such as ‘They killed my Father First’ - this is a country that markets genocide as a tourist attraction.

The best book to make sense of Cambodia’s traumatic history is by William Shawcross. ‘Sideshow’ is the story of how Kissinger and Nixon destroyed Cambodia and lied about their actions. Cambodia was a neutral country during the Vietnam war having only recently made a delicate peace with Thailand and Vietnam. It had its own troubles with insurgents which it naively thought the United States would help it to control. The Cambodian leader Lon Nol had no idea of the real agenda. Neither did Nixon and Kissinger’s colleagues at the White House and the Pentagon. Their duplicity and the subsequent cover-up led eventually to Watergate. Kissinger - whose actions re-define the word Machievellian - was clever enough to off-load blame onto Nixon. Kissinger survived; Nixon didn’t, and neither did Cambodia or several million innocent Cambodians massacred in the carve-up. In the light of more recent history - George Bush and Iraq - ‘Sidehow’ is a chilling account of the abuse of power.

‘Stay Alive My Son‘ by Pin Yathay, is available from every street seller in every tourist location, though I doubt that the author makes much money from the poorly produced copies. The book is beautifully written by a high-ranking Cambodian engineer who first welcomed the Khmer Rouge as liberators and then suffered the consequences. His first hand account of the expulsion from Phnom Penh and the way his family were forced to march out into the countryside alongside hundreds of thousands of others, is utterly compelling to read. The villages, growing rice for subsistence, couldn’t support the huge numbers imposed on them by the Khmer Rouge and starvation became widespread. Pin Yathay escaped to Thailand, walking through the rainforest, but 17 members of his family died, including his children. They became his reason to survive. ‘Only through my survival would their lives have continued meaning ….. And there was another reason to survive - I wanted to tell the world what had happened, to testify to the Cambodian holocaust, to tell how the Khmer Rouge had programmed the death of several million men, women and children, how a beautiful, rich country had been demolished, plunged into poverty and torture.’Cambodia’s ancient history and archaeology should have generated a mass of books, but there are surprisingly few, apart from the guide books, and they are all expensive - prices start around $50. I started reading with the first diarists who visited the Cambodian court. A chinese emissary called Zhou Daguan was sent to Angkor by Kubla Khan in the 13th century and his account of what he found, ‘The Customs of Cambodia‘, is the best guide to how the civilisation functioned and what the buildings looked like in their original state. By the 16th century the cities and temples were in ruins and Cambodia was being fought over by its neighbours and the big colonial powers. A Spanish Dominican Friar, Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio, (A Brief and Truthful Relation of Events in the Kingdom of Cambodia) reported on its potential for conquest in 1598 to Philip III of Spain. Despite the kingdom’s reported wealth, it’s people, he noted, were ‘miserable and deserving of pity’.

There were several travellers tales published in the 17th and 18th centuries, recording the glories of Angkor Wat, but no one seems to have taken much notice until Henri Mouhot went there in 1859, recording his observations in journals and drawings - published posthumously by his wife. On the country itself he wrote ‘The present state of Cambodia is deplorable, and its future menacing.’ When he was taken to see the ruins of Angkor Wat he could not believe that he was in the same kingdom, but ‘transported as if by enchantment‘ and presumed the temple had been built by a lost civilisation. ‘What became of this powerful race, so civilised, so enlightened, the authors of these gigantic works?’ The temple itself he thought ‘a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michael Angelo …. is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged.’ Mouhot died in Laos, where he wrote ‘insects are in great number and variety, musquitoes and ox-flies in myriads. I suffer dreadfully from them, and am covered with swellings and blisters from their bites’. His last diary entries were written in a shaking hand. ‘19th Oct. Attacked by fever’. ‘29th Oct. Have pity on me, oh my God ……’

Mouhot’s book ‘Travels in Siam, Cambodia, Laos and Annam‘, began a craze for the ‘lost temples’. The French sent a research team out in 1866 to survey the sites, followed by archaeologists, keen to excavate. A Scottish photographer John Thomson also travelled there, publishing the richly illustrated and almost unobtainable ‘Straits of Malacca’ , and a young American recorded his impressions in 1872 - Frank Vincent’s ‘Land of the White Elephant’. Cambodia was by now a French protectorate, so most of those who wrote the records were French.
In 1816 Henri Marchal, the ‘father of Angkor’ became the curator of the temples after his predecessor was murdered by bandits. Marchal loved Cambodia and describes its landscape with passion: It has an ‘unrivalled charm…… either in the morning hours, when the sun begins to pierce the forest, or at twilight when shadows spread mystery over the palm-trees and the water gathers the last rays of the sun’. He spent almost the whole of his life there, dying in Siem Reap in 1970. But it was Maurice Glaize who wrote the famous guidebook ‘Les Monuments Du Groupe D’Angkor‘ first published in 1943 and subsequently updated. It’s available on the internet in English translation at www.theangkorguide.com

The Kulen hills are about 60 km from Siem Reap and apparently it was here that the Angkor civilisation began. On Phnom Kulen the Siem Reap river rises in a series of mysterious springs and flows down to the Tonle Sap lake and then on down to Phnom Penh to join the mighty Mekong. Without this supply of water to grow rice and other crops, the Angkor civilisation would probably never have developed.

We had a difficult journey on laterite roads washed out by the typhoon and still waiting to be repaired. Often we had four wheels in four different pot holes at the same time. It’s a steep climb to the top, slithering in mud and clunking the bottom of the car on ridges left by the torrents of flood water.
There are very early temples here, several hundred years earlier than Angkor Wat, though our guide wouldn’t take us, because the usual route was impassable and he wasn’t sure which of the other paths were free of mines. He did take us to a pinnacle of rock with a reclining Buddha carved at the top, which is a place of pilgrimage for Buddhists, though few europeans come here.
He also took us to the sacred springs where the water seeps invisibly up through the sandy soil into clear pools. Only a puff of sand at the bottoms shows where the water rises. Here, the river bed is carved with a thousand Yoni and Linga - the square with a round stone peg that represents the union of male and female in the Hindu religion. As the river widens and grows in strength, Vishnu is carved in the bed rock close to the waterfall, so that all the water that flows through the temples and into the rice paddies on the plains below, flows from Vishnu.

The river falls off the edge of the rocks at Phnom Kulen into a pool below, sending up clouds of spray. Local people come here to swim in the sacred water. Neil went in, but I hadn’t brought my swimming costume and there were too many people around for skinny dipping - the Khmer are a very modest people.

There were stalls everywhere selling incense, lotus flowers, food and chinese medicines. Under the trees, at a little distance, were two men with a freshly cured puma skin. I managed to get a photograph which has gone to the authorities in Phnom Penh. Big cats are almost extinct in Cambodia.
On another stall you could buy jars of yellow liquid with a cobra and a large scorpion pickled inside. Behind them were two small elephant tusks, which made me very sad. The stall holder wouldn’t allow me to photograph these.

On the way back down the hill, in the afternoon, we visited another early temple complex - the tenth century Banteay Srei ‘Fortress of the the Women’. It was probably called that because of the numerous female deities carved on the walls here - Parvati, wife of Siva, is represented in several of her incarnations as well as Lakshmi. There are also lots of carvings of the Apsaras - heavenly dancers who were created when the Naga snake was twisted to churn the ocean of milk. The temples are surrounded by a moat and it’s a serene and beautiful place. The carvings are unusually delicate and intimate and the whole temple complex has an atmosphere of spirituality I didn’t find in many other places. Banteay Srei is 30 km outside Siem Reap, so there are fewer tourists here, which may have something to do with it.
The temple was founded by the guru of an early Angkor king and is associated with Siva the ascetic - here pilgrims came to learn the journey from materiality to the Universal Soul. Music, dance and art seem always to have played a big part in the life of the temple - even Siva is seen dancing in the carvings. This is definitely one of my favourite places here.

One of the disadvantages of Siem Reap is the level of tourist hassle - probably inevitable in a town where everyone depends on it for a living. Everywhere you go you’re assailed by people calling ‘Moto! Moto! Tuk-tuk! You want massage sir/madam? I sell you something - good price!’
Every temple complex has its satellite village of stalls selling food and souvenirs. Many of the vendors are children. As soon as they see the tuk-tuk draw up they descend like a flock of brightly coloured birds clutching scarfs, cold drinks, hats, and T-shirts calling and shrieking ‘You want scarf madame? Two dollars!’ ‘You want bangle? Ten bangles one dollar!’
Some of them have a more oblique approach. ”My name Nom, what your name?”
”Kathy.”
”Kassie? You buy cold drinks only from me - you remember my name Nom.”
It’s an order not a request, and - smiling broadly - she’s still on the selling pitch. ‘You buy scarf? I give you three scarfs five dollars. Best price from me.’
I’ve learnt the Cambodian for ‘No, thank you’, but whichever language you say it in they follow you, still calling until you reach the policeman at the gateway who inspects your pass. But you can still hear their voices. ‘Kassie, I remember you. You buy only from me when you come back!” And when you do return an entire flock of children runs towards you, all laughing and shouting ‘Kassie, Kassie, you buy only from me!!!’
Nom, like her friends Maria and Tao, is about eleven and doesn’t go to school (schooling has to be paid for in Cambodia). She’s acquiring a very different education - the art of getting tourists to part with their cash. She can sell you anything in four languages. Inside the temples there are other children - girls of six or seven lugging infant siblings with huge, bush-baby eyes and solemn faces. They beg for money or sweets and biscuits. Some of them are orphans from the many orphanages around Siem Reap.

Older children, who sneak in through the ruined walls, sit in the shrines and will begin to talk to you if you linger, and tell you the history of the temple. They will also take you to see carvings you might have overlooked and tell you something about their lives. They don’t ask for money, but it’s understood that if you let them do this, you have to give them a couple of dollars for the service. This, rather sad little girl had a raccoon.

You can’t help wondering what the future holds for these young people; it surely has to be better than this.
(All the children in these photographs were adequately recompensed for the photo-sessions!)

Sihanoukville is almost as far south as you can get on the coast of Cambodia, facing the Gulf of Thailand and just inside the hook of land that belongs to Vietnam. The town was named for King Sihanouk, an astute politician who managed to survive the Khmer Rouge and was invited back afterwards to become a constitutional monarch in an attempt to unite the country. During a filmed interview he said that he always regretted sending the brilliant young Pol Pot to europe to be educated. Like most Cambodians, he never anticipated what was to happen. The scars of it are still apparent and not just in the missing generation of people. Samnang is a popular male name for young people around 20 - it means ‘lucky’. A lot of women of a similar age are simply called ‘Srei’, which means ‘female’.

We’ve been staying in a small ‘unit’ built in the back garden of one of the more affluent Khmer families. We have one room with a bed and a wardrobe, an alcove with a sink and a small toilet with cold shower hose. A door opens onto a space at the back big enough to put a clay cooking pot. There are large earthenware jars to catch rainwater from the roof to use for cooking and flushing the toilet. The room was previously occupied by an entire Khmer family.

Up and down the road you can see the evidence of Cambodia’s ‘disappeared’. Elaborate wrought iron gates and fences guard plots of land swallowed by jungle. These were once the homes of the wealthy middle classes purged by Pol Pot. Only some of the plots have been re-occupied - our landlord Ba Om was one of the lucky ones. Some of the vacant plots are being re-developed for blocks of flats.

The city’s rich now live on the hillside overlooking the bay. Their houses are painted and gilded like temples and guarded by electronic gates and men in security uniforms. They drive around in SUV’s with tinted glass windows and without number plates because they’re rich enough to pay for anonymity.

Sihanoukville is a mixture of squalor and five star hotels with immaculate palm fringed beaches. There are no pavements and the streets are lined with stalls selling banana fritters, squid on skewers, cigarettes, cold drinks and eggs ‘with chick still in’ - a local delicacy! You go everywhere on a moto; if there are more than two, you take a tuk-tuk.

Sihanoukville in the rain!!

Electricity goes on and off here - it fried my lap top on the second day and Neil’s notebook is looking rather sick and has probably caught something contagious from the internet. This is Virusville.

The market is one of Sihanoukville’s experiences. I really liked the fish section - apart from the smell. There are vats of crabs, cat-fish swimming in tanks, bowls of silver fish on ice.

The market is crowded with beggars - mostly with missing limbs. This isn’t just due to landmines, but to accidents with tools - pangas or mattocks. Even the smallest wound invites infection in this climate and without antibiotics people regularly lose feet and hands to gangrene. There are several charities here helping the disabled to earn a living with more dignity. There is a ‘Massage by the Blind’ parlour and you can go to performances by the ‘Limbless Orchestra’. It all seems very odd to someone from a country obsessed with politically correct language.

There are lots of Khmer places to eat - breakfast at the ‘pork and rice’ is a must - but you are also invited to sample ‘Grumpy Dave’s Sausages’, or eat in the many Pizza houses springing up alongside the French, Italian and English restaurants beginning to cater for the growing number of european tourists. No visit to Sihanoukville is complete without a visit to the Snake House Restaurant, with a snake under every table and a crocodile on a lead in the middle. The menu is in English, Khmer and Russian, which gives you a clue to the ownership.
There’s a seedy side, inevitably - all day bars with very young Cambodian girls being plied with drink by elderly european men. I didn’t see any bars for elderly european women, but I suspect even that could be arranged at a price.

The Cambodian Daily, as well as reporting the Maldive Cabinet Meeting, also revealed that the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, has just borrowed $500 million from the Chinese government. Large parts of the country have been sold to wealthy government officials, the Chinese, Russians and even the Gulf States.

Not even the islands are exempt from this sell-off. A few months ago notices began to appear in the village and round the shore line warning that the land was now the private property of an investment company, nominally Cambodian but with unknown origins. Companies within companies like Russian dolls.

Here on the mainland the effects of this development are everywhere - huge hotels and holiday complexes going up along the beaches and the communities who lived there until the bulldozers moved in are living in tent villages, waiting to be moved on yet again.

I went to visit a gigantic hotel complex owned by a Russian oligarch who is currently in prison on charges of paedophilia and his assets frozen. He is building a vast marina, hotel and apartments as well as a bridge to one of the islands where more apartments are being built.

The Cambodians take the protection of their children very seriously and have no desire to go the way of Thailand. Notices, in English and other european languages are everywhere, warning of the penalties.

The main political party here is the Cambodian People’s Party and the country is effectively a one-party democracy. So much so that 60% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote at the last election. The population is overwhelmingly young. I’ve seen only two grey haired people since I arrived. Everyone is under 45.