Stop 11: Cambodia

Having blasted through Jon Swain's River of Time I now find myself in Phonm Penh, Cambodia. A capital city whose spelling defies reasoning, I was previously rather wary of this place. However sad (it is very) and traumatic River of Time is, it nevertheless made me look at old Indo-China in a different light. Those last days in Laos I forgot about my searing fever, forgot about delirious illness, dusty towns and the most foul, uncultured falang I had seen and focused more fully on the beauty, fertility and elegant grace of all around me. Many have fallen in love with this region, and it is not so hard to see why.

Flying into Phonm Penh at 7pm the city lights twinkling below me belie the atrocities this same city, country and people lived through only 30-40 years ago. In the year of my birth people were being killed, tortured, driven out of their own land. My taxi driver is just 4 years older than me and, upon my asking, says he was only very young when Pol Pot was in power. That his father, 2 sisters and 1 brother died under the Khmer Rouge regime is testament to the widespread effect of this movement that ended up abolishing markets, manufacturing, health care, education, culture, religion, the monarchy and the nation's currency, not to mention killing vast swathes of its citizens in addition to Chinese, Vietnamese and other settlers.

A city of sorrow that has risen from the ashes? More exploration is needed, but the profusion of beggars and terribly poor seen here outnumber those in Laos (perhaps because the truly poor there tended to be rural inhabitants) and I have only been here for about 2 hours...