After exactly three weeks in Phnom Penh, I still cannot say it is a beautiful city. There are glimpses - temple roof lines jutting above boring commercial buildings, the regal Silver Pagoda, lazy shaded chess games - but they are only glimpses. But I also cannot say this place is unpleasant or hideous. It just kind of...is.
This is strange. I am used to, and even relish, having clear and immediate reactions to places and things. Of course I nearly always let those snap judgments go, discarding initial feelings and thoughts about a new part of the world after passing more than a few days there. Surface gives way to depth, and usually I can find something to appreciate, if not genuinely admire, anywhere and in anything.
But Phnom Penh is an odd creature, a bit tough to wrap your arms around -- which is ironic given its puny feel. (I am amazed the population is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million.) Its greatest virtues are what it does not have: skyscrapers and buses. I'm usually a fan of both of these. So why is their absence here such a cause for celebration? Simple: without buses, the air pollution is tolerable; without skyscrapers, the scale of this crowded city is far more human and accessible than it would be otherwise. Low buildings matter, especially when lined with trees giving shade to weary pedestrians. Low buildings mean people seem a little bigger and a little more human. This is why people like to live in, say, Boston's South End and not its financial district, or Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood and not its towering, cavernous Loop.
"...in order for a street to convey a sense of space, the buildings must be no taller than the street is wide."
-from Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel
I moved from Chicago - full of skyscrapers screaming for attention, architects' wet dreams - to a city that was essentially straitjacketed, denied growth, from 1975 to 1989, when capitalism took a long sabbatical. Sure, it has big city stuff, like
embassies
a central government: two houses of parliament, motley crew of ministries
an international airport
a royal palace
a national museum
But it's not really a big city. People fly to Bangkok for heart surgery. That says it all. Along with public transportation and skyscrapers, Phnom Penh also does not have
many public green spaces (a common malady outside of Europe and North America)
pleasant sidewalks
buildings both modest and beautiful
(enforced) traffic laws
If Phnom Penh has dreams, they are a bit more grounded and basic than a soaring "freedom tower" or public music and theater festivals. People come here to work and make money. That's the best thing I can say about this little city: it lays bare, in a surprisingly palatable way (it is no Mumbai or Jakarta), why cities exist. In its own small and steady way, the city is prospering. Too much of that prosperity may be coming through tourism and garment factories, and too much of the money being made is not trickling down to the truly poor and the countryside. But it's still prosperity.
Impossible to believe that the city was almost literally vacant for four years, evacuated by the Khmer Rouge for fear of the bourgeoisie and former ruling classes.
Still, although tolerable, I need to get out of here, this little island of Cambodian prosperity. To see the "real Cambodia"? Not quite: It's just that I was born restless.
Last Saturday, within the yellow crenellated walls of Phnom Penh's sumptuous Royal Palace, I glimpsed a king. Sort of.
I consider myself a modern and democratic guy, more impressed by merit than bloodlines. I find the British monarchy boring - excruciatingly boring - all of the time.
So why did I gather with a buzzing crowd of (mostly Thai) tourists on the veranda of the palace's Throne Hall to catch a surprise glimpse of Cambodia's retired King Norodom Sihanouk? He was all waves, no speech, gravity clearly catching up with his stooped 84-year-old body as he pushed himself up the front steps of the private Royal Residence, which we could see into from the veranda.
Who cares about an old retired king who abdicated nearly three years ago?
Here's what's amazing about old King Sihanouk: He's one of the few landmarks that have made it through Cambodia's last 65 years, aside from the gracefully decaying French colonial buildings that pepper Phnom Penh. He is the royal red thread, the figurehead, the only idea that could hold together all that remained of this place after the invaders - the French, Americans, Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge - had finally left.
And yet, paradoxically, he is certainly the most complex political and public figure of Cambodia's modern history. It should be easy to be king, or at least good: you rule, people obey. But it was never easy for King Sihanouk, who was installed by the French in 1941 at age 19 and abdicated 14 years to later to dive into electoral politics.
This is a man who allied himself with the Khmer Rouge - on two very different occasion - and is still dearly loved by his people. This is a man who has spent most of the last 37 years in Beijing, Paris and Pyongyang. He has good reason to fear Phnom Penh: a coup pushed him out of power in 1970 and abolished the monarchy, and when he finally did return to the city after the Khmer Rouge took control of the country in 1975, he was virtually imprisoned in his own palace until 1979.
At which point he promptly left, because the Vietnamese had invaded and installed a puppet government. Just a few years later, despite his own imprisonment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and the overwhelming evidence of their deranged mass murders, he once again allied himself with his former captors - from a palace in Beijing.
This is a man who tried to gain permanent asylum in the U.S. and France in the early 1980s, and failed. He settled on China and North Korea, strange bedfellows for a man who was pushed from power by communists supported by...China.
He did not want to go back to Cambodia, the country he was apparently born - and cursed - to lead. He got another chance in 1993, when the monarchy was reestablished. But he's never spent much time here in the last 14 years, preferring his palatial Beijing digs. Three years after "retirement," he barely visits.
And so it was was exciting and bittersweet to watch this small, eccentric old man - who spent as much time in the 60s making films as ruling his country - walk up the steps of the building in which he was once held prisoner.
He made it through the madness, the violence, he's the one red thread that holds together this country's shattered identity. But he doesn't live here. Had enough a while ago. To me, a symbol of a country cut off from its own past.
Americans are often accused of being geographically ignorant, culturally insensitive and politically naïve. And often, they are guilty of those charges.
But here in Cambodia, where U.S. dollars are accepted everywhere, if not preferred, it’s hard not to feel a bit self-centered as an American. I can buy, for example, meals, toothpaste and mototaxi rides with greenbacks. Cambodia’s official currency, the riel, functions as coins, although it is only issued as paper notes. 4,000 riel equals $1, so 1,000 riel is a quarter.
Today I exchanged a $100 travelers cheque for $98 in U.S. dollars (less the 2% commission). It’s great: I feel more at home than I should considering I’m almost exactly halfway around the world from home. There is no currency conversion acclimation period, that aggravating time after entering a new country during which you overspend because you don’t know how much you’re spending. So, as an American, I can’t help but like having a wallet full of dollars.
But it’s also very depressing for what it tells me about Cambodia: This country’s economy is, in classic UN parlance, a “Least Developed Country.” What does that mean? It means it’s extremely poor: the 2006 per capita income is $380, according to the World Bank.
This is not quite as bad as it seems, when you convert those dollars for purchasing power parity (i.e., what your money can buy you here). Then per capita income is $2,200, putting Cambodia at 178 out of 233 countries, according to a 2006 CIA report. Well, I guess it is about as bad as it seems. (Interestingly, the U.S. ranks #9, with $44,000 per capita.)
Even more depressing, last year the corruption monitoring group Transparency International said in its 2006 annual report that only 12 countries in the world are more corrupt than Cambodia, ranking the country 151st out of 163 country contestants.
Still, there’s room for hope: Cambodia’s GDP has grown over 10% for the last three years, and the percentage of those officially living in poverty dropped from 47% to 35% between 1994 and 2004. This is nearly miraculous considering the country was essentially in a state of war from 1970 to 1991. (I still cannot get my head around the endless and multifaceted violence that tore this country to shreds during those years.) And although there are no stock or bond markets here, the government is planning to open those in 2009 – and “de-dollarize” the economy soon.
So the fact that I can have a dinner of channa masala with rice and papadam delivered to my newsroom by a Pakistani man and pay a total of $4 is incredible. The same meal, which was top-shelf, would cost about $20 with tip in an American restaurant. People are moving to Phnom Penh from other parts of Asia to open businesses and make a bit of money. This never happened when the Khmer Rouge were in charge in the 70s, and when the Vietnamese occupied the country throughout the 80s.
When the same dinner in this city costs 32,000 riel, I’ll be annoyed that the price has doubled. But I’ll be happy that Cambodia has a currency of its own, and that its economy is a little closer to those of rich countries.
Great glimpse of Buddhism in action today, as I ambled my way around Wat Phnom, the monumental temple which caps Phnom Penh's only hill.
A saffron-robed monk, maybe 25, opening a pack of cigarettes. I spotted the non-attachment infraction through a vihara window, and as I made my way along the temple's outer walkway I had to ask myself: Does he know I know he smokes? We made slightly uncomfortable eye contact after he saw me looking at his hands.
But a more interesting question is: Where does he keep his cigarettes? The robes that color this city so well must have furtive inner pockets...
Reminds me of a restaurant in Himachal Pradesh, the Himalayan Indian state. I was having lunch there last fall when a group of very young Tibetan monks walked in, sat below a TV and switched on a cricket match. Just like most young men in India, they were passionate cricket fans, yelling and cheering at the TV as the match continued.
And then the power went out. The monks were deeply annoyed. Thankfully, power returned in 5 minutes and they could resume their athletic addiction.
Both of the monks' addictions came to mind when I read this messages, spelled out with small stones beneath four bronze Buddha statues, in Cambodia's National Museum this afternoon:
YOU SHOULD ATTAIN CESSATION
But these are better:
YOU SHOULD ABANDON ALL DREAMS
YOU SHOULD KNOW SUFFERINGS
L'IGNORANCE EST L'ENNEMIE DE LA VIE
Clues you are living in a sham democracy:
-Party headquarters are fortresses, not offices. The ruling Cambodia People's Party's headquarter is about 1/4 a mile from my house. Its wrought-iron walls are 15 feet high. It is a compound. It is also orders of magnitude larger than other parties' headquarters, which are pathetically small. The size of each party's headquarter seems to correspond to how many of its leaders have been convicted of crimes in abstentia or attacked while assembling in protest. (There is an inverse relationship.)
-One of the two legislative branches is also a veritable fortress and is suspiciously close to the ruling party's headquarters. The Cambodian Senate, founded just 8 years ago, features - I am not joking - a driving range. You can barely see the top of the net behind the walls of the Senate's compound, which are 20 feet tall.
-Identical signs for the ruling party pop up everywhere, in the oddest of
places. It may be that the CPP inspires such extreme popularity that Cambodians feel the need
to post the baby blue signs with white lettering everywhere - next to
shop signs on busy commercial streets, above the entrances to
random side streets in and around the capital, and just about anywhere
else they might fit.
But I'm guessing it has more to do with fear and coercion. Maybe
I'm cynical, but when the ruler of a party destroys the forces of his
rival with tanks and guns, elections just might not matter. That
was exactly ten years ago, and Prime Minister Hun Sen hasn't looked back.
Cambodia is a parliamentary democracy in name only. My editor calls it a "one-party democracy," which is counter-intuitive at best, a contradiction in terms at worst. How about a "democratic dictatorship"? That captures the country's political mood well, I think: All the trappings of democracy are here - two legislative branches, a judiciary, plenty of media sources, a handful of political parties. But none of them actually matter, and all of them (even the few dessicated opposition parties, which the CPP probably keeps alive for their token value to the "international community") are subservient to the ruling party. The trappings really exist to keep the foreign aid flowing. And it is very, very substantial.
My favorite factoid about one-eyed Hun Sen, the CPP's leader who eliminated a rival party in a 1997 coup d'etat: He received honorary doctorates from two American institutions of higher learning: the Southern California University for Professional Studies and IOWA Wesleyan College. He is an educated man, all evidence to the contrary.
Yesterday I visited the most notorious Khmer Rouge prison -- Tuol Sleng, operated in a former Phnom Penh high school -- and then headed 15km southwest of the city to wander through dozens of "killing fields" collectively called Choeung Ek. It was my first direct contact with the remains of the Khmer Rouge, the regime which can claim the terrible honor of being the world's only ultimate communist revolution. Fortunately for Cambodians, the regime's revolutionary fervor proved its undoing, and the weakened and hallucinatory government was toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979 before the death toll exceeded two million.
The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis before them, kept detailed, meticulous records of their victims, which were tortured and executed for crimes that most of the time they couldn't even conceive until forced into false confessions. The paper trail - including thousands of black and white photos of the accused - to me indicates the irony of true evil: those engaged in it do not believe they are doing anything wrong. That is the only way my disbelieving mind can comprehend terror and violence enacted on such a vast scale.
I hated feeling like a tourist as I slowly walked through Tuol Sleng's partitioned classrooms, glancing into brutally small makeshift cells and interrogation rooms that contained torture methods I'd rather not recall here. Technically, I'm not a tourist (I'm here on a business visa with a full-time job), but really, what else can you call a white guy with a camera in Asia shuffling through a museum?
Of course I hated taking pictures, but part of me wanted to remember in clear photographs what I was seeing. I know my natural tendency, perhaps the natural human tendency, is to forget what evil looks like. So I want to randomly encounter the photos to jog my memory, to make myself admit that my life has essentially been a walk in the park.
As I explored the two sites with other foreigners (and a few Cambodians), I realized that in making these sites so available to the public Cambodians risk typecasting their country as a perpetual victim of both itself and the rest of the world. Obviously, it's better to shine a light on the worst atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. But such public expiation must be painful for the many Cambodians still living who have their own memories of the late 1970s or lost loved ones during that time. Yesterday afternoon, my waitress at a noodle shop saw me reading the Tuol Sleng pamhplet that came with admission. She politely took it from me, saw the reproduced b & w photos of victims and said: "My father went there." No need to ask if he survived: only 7 of 20,000 prisoners did. She walked away after depositing my soup. I ate my lunch.
Americans generally know two things about Cambodia: 1) The Nixon administration bombed the hell out of it, at first secretly, from 1969 to 1973 and 2) The Khmer Rouge regime was really, really bad. And by bad, I mean genocidal. What they don't tend to realize is that the communist victory was in part caused by the U.S. military campaign, although its aim was nearly the exact opposite.
I was thinking about that, how the U.S. is directly (although not completely) responsible for creating the despairing conditions that the Khmer Rouge exploited for political gain, by the time I left the killing fields. Make no mistake, the Khmer Rouge created the soul-less society that allowed and encouraged indiscrimiate murdering. But indirect blame must be apportioned beyond Cambodia for those bloody years, to the Thailand and the UN and the US for doing nothing, and for Vietnam for waiting so long to intervene.
Worst of all, the Khmer Rouge era still hasn't truly ended. Cambodia's current and longtime prime minister was a Khmer Rouge cadre for years. And many of the regime's leaders are still alive here, working in the current government, although some are under house arrest. I don't expect much justice from the joint UN-Cambodian court which will begin trying Khmer Rouge officials later this year, supposedly. It's been delayed for years, likely because those running the country today are so afraid whoever is accused will testify against them. Today, 28 years after the Khmer Rouge collapsed, not one of the regime's leaders has been held accountable in a court of law.
How does a country come to terms with such an evil recent history when it is only partially buried in the past? All I know is it won't be pretty, no matter how many millions of dollars the UN throws at the problem.
Five days into Cambodia, the method of the country's roads has begun to rise out of their madness. Either that or I'm lulling myself into a false sense of security, my brain's pleasure center getting the best of my supposedly strong survival instincts.
I enjoyed the motorcycle taxi rides immediately, and felt far less guilty for them (no helmet, few traffic rules, and never a working speedometer) when I realized no other viable mode of transport is available to me. If I were a diplomat, I would have an armored black four-door Mercedes sedan with its own dutiful driver. But I am a lowly newspaper reporter (and an intern, at that), so I will settle for the strange pleasures of constant vulnerability.
Finally bought travel insurance yesterday. A better idea than relying on Phnom Penh's generally low traffic speeds (15-35 mph), which are apparently this country's only free form of auto insurance.
