Cambodia and Laos

[andsome]

As many of you are aware, my son has been on an extended holiday in the Far East. What follows is his last e-mail ,from there, he will be home on Friday next. It will be far too long for some, but others may find it to be of interest. So here it is.

Cambodia has the premier attraction in the whole of South East Asia and one of the top five man made wonders of the world. This is the massive temple complex at Angkor Wat which has been back on the tourist trail since 1987 when the UN managed to broker an end to the conflict with the Khmer Rouge.

This is a religious site dedicated to the complex amalgamation of Hindu, Buddhist, Animist, Confucian and Tao beliefs which ocurr throughout the region. One of the main things to understand about this is that it gives rise to a cosmology which is actually interesting. I dont wish to offend anyone, but an all knowing and all seeing perfect God with a white beard, a bad guy with horns and a trident and someone who got nailed to a tree when he tried to be reasonable with everyone is pretty dull stuff in comparison.

The main source of inspiration here and throughout India is the Mahabarata, an epic tale feauturing hundreds of deities in thousands of manifestations and their epic battles for domination. Rather than the simple, moralistic, black and white characters of the Bible, this epic tale features a host of complex and fallible gods, demons and humans. There battles can last for ten thousand years and are more likely to end because the main character gets drunk and goes off with a sexy woman rather than well errrmm getting nailed to a tree.

Angkor Wat is an attempt to model this massive body of belief, ie. the entire known universe, in a single temple complex that covers 50 acres acres of ground. The site uses the same tonnage of stone in its construction as that of the Pyramids. The key difference being that virtually every visible square metre has been dressed with elaborate and highly skilled carvings to illustrate some aspect of belief. This, combined with the fact that the many sections of the temple complex are completly surrounded by jungle and overgrown with the roots of enormous trees that can slowly strangle and break apart solid stone, make for days of interesting exploring.

My favourite part was the rendition of the Hindu creation myth. This has the sacred Mount Meru emerging from a sea of milk as the source of all human life. The Gods and the Demons form a pact that holds for thousands of years whereby they agree to alternately pull on the body of a giant serpent, in a sort of cosmic tug of war, which has twined itself around the entire mountain. The pulling causes the entire mountain to rotate which churns the milk up and after ten thousand years of this the multitudinous forms of life begin to emerge from the froth. At this point the pact breaks down and war commences. Mount Meru itelf is represented by the massive cental tower at Angkor Wat. There is then a 60m long frieze which records the very moment that life forms and the pact breaks down. At either end Gods and Demons hold the massive body of the snake and near the center, where the churning motion is greatest you can see the bodies of fish etc, being torn apart by the force of the current and the bodies off celestail nymps emerge from the foam.

The entire temple complex is surrounded by moats which represent the limits of the universe and every bridge over the moat repeats the creation myth with ballustrades formed by the Gods pulling on the snake body again.

Its a great experience to walk around and try to imagine yourself into this whole complicated belief system. As someone once taught me Science is limited and alternative philosophies are worth exploring....

Dont know if I'm imagining it but the Cambodian people just seem to be more outwardly happier than people in most countries I've been to. Perhaps its just because the recent horrors are so great that you half expect everyone to be walking around in a miasma of terminal misery and depression. Storeowners dont seem to have become resigned to the boredom of hassling tourists all day, every day, just to make a couple of dollars. You still get hassled, but even if your not buying, a joke and a chat seem appreciated.

One 14 year old girl I met was a waitress on one of the food stalls fronting Angkor Wat and seemed full of the joys of life. She is just at that time when she is starting to look a lot older and is attracting attention from her male peers (i.e. not me!). So after a bit of wiggling and flirty looks she asks me old I think she is. "Fourteen" I say, and she stops smiling and looks a bit crestfallen. "How old do you think I am?" I say. She looks me straight in the eye and says "You are an old man, you are 40 and you look like my father" and waltzes off giggling happily. I think that was my favourite moment so far. Surely even in a poor country like this a bit of wit and attitude can take you a long way?

Everyone has heard of Pol Pot and has a good idea of what went on under his regime and most tourists seem to make it to the Holocaust museum and take the time to read the horrific displays, that explain in more detail, this period.

What amazes me is the content of the visitors book at he end of the tour. British and Americans have filled the pages with John Lennon lyrics and hippy quotes about learning from the experience and trying to be 'nice' to each other in future. Backpackers in South East Asia seem to all have had their Lonely Planet guidebooks surgically sewn to their left hands and treat it as some sort of Charlie Brown comfort blanket. I can understand people back home not knowing the history of Cambodia but if people have bothered to make it this far why dont they open their bloody guidebooks to the history section and find out what actually caused what happened here?

Cambodia was a peaceful agrarian country until America decided it needed a good carpet bombing in the late 1960's. Nixon and Kissinger covered this up for a few years and when it was eventually reported in the press announced that no people lived in the areas being bombed. Perhaps they dont classify the half a million rural peasants who died during the bombing as 'people' but I'm sure most sane people would not make this distinction.

It was the resulting civil war, that occurred as a direct result of the bombing, that led to Pol Pot and his rag tag band of mercenaries siezing control of the country. The west and the UN did nothing to prevent this. It took a Vietnamese invasion in 1979 to finally liberate the poeple from his atrocities.

The Vietnamese liberation of Cambodia, and the resulting cheering of tens of thousands of people on the streets, was actually recreated as the final scenes in the film The Killing Fields that Im sure most people have seen or heard of. These scenes were deleted from the final version of the film as the American government did not want the Vietnamese to be cast in a positive light....

Then comes the most amazing part of the story. The remnants of Pol Pots forces retreated to camps on the borders of Thailand and Cambodia where they received arms and training from the Britsh SAS, (under Margaret Thatchers enlightened foreign policy) and funding by the American goverment. For the next ten years the British and the Americans colluded in trying to return Pol Pot to power and insisted that the Khymer Rouge flag was flown at the UN to represent Cambodia.

Its just not good enough to arrive in Camboida and scrawl John Lennon lyrics in the visitors book. Pol Pot was funded and supported by our taxpayers money for years. If people who came here bothered to read something other than where the next bar is then perhaps we could start to persuade our governments to behave differently the next time we decide its a good idea to start a war in another country.........

Cambodia has a sort of Wild West feel to it that is hard to describe - it seems like everything and anything possible can happen here and does.

A Swedish guy called Beat Richter holds free Cello Concertos at the local hospital twice a week. When you get there he turns out to be the Director of the hospital and you quickly realise that he isnt going to play much Cello and instead delivers an impassioned lecture on the state of health care in Cambodia. All the state run hospitals are empty because the fees they charge are beyond the reach of the population. Even if you save enough to afford the fees then the staff will also need bribing as the government does not pay a living wage.

This situation is fine by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF as it disguises the extent of health problems in the country and makes the health statistics look good. I thought only Western corparations were content to set themselves meaningless targets and measurements to give the illusion of progress, but it seems the practice occurrs in the humanitarian organisations as well.

Beat raises 17 million pounds per year from private european donations to run three large private hospitals where the health care is free and the staff are payed a living wage. He uses modern western drugs and facilities. His hospitals have been inspected by western authorities and praised for the standard of care they offer. He saved 17,000 childrens lives this year.

Apparently WHO and UNICEF do not like this one bit as his hospitals are "not appropriate to the poverty index of the country". Which basicaly means that third world countries should have s*** health care. He is under pressure to use, in common with other third world countries, drugs that have been banned in the west for over thirty years as they cause liver damage. He is also critised for having brain scan equipment for diagnosing tuberculous tumors. Princess Anne as a UNICEF representative was recently here and a seven man WHO delegation visited his hospital for a week while staying in $300 per night hotel. At the end of their visit they roundly critiscised his policies then went home. You can get a room with air conditioning and satellite TV for $6 per night. He could have saved hundreds of lives if they had stayed at home, given him the money, and just slagged him off from the comfort of their own countries.

Beat asks all the older tourists to give cash dollars to his cause and all the young tourists to donate blood. All the fourty year old have to give blood and money! This is a fantastic success story and if anyone worries about giving money to charity and whether it will be actually used rather than wasted then just type his name into Google and find out how to make a donation.

On the downside some of the expats tell me that some of the Western people who work over here freely admit they are here to have sex with young children and noone seems to want to do anything about it. It seems he saves childrens lives for Western abusers....

That, at the end of the day, is my impression of Cambodia. It is a lawless, Wild West sort of place, anything goes if you know who to bribe - some of the best and some of the worst of humanity are living out their lives here.

Most tourists rightly avoid giving money to beggars and children in countries around the world. Children are usually being controlled by gangs and a lot of the money just gets used to fund drug habits etc. It seems to be different in Cambodia and I know I slagged off the 'Brat'packers previously but there are a lot of tourists here who are quietly buying people meals and slipping a few dollars to women with kids here and there. People dont talk and boast about it either which would happen in other countries. It is a surreal experience to leave a loud backpacker bar at 5 a.m and see many tourists, (we are all off our heads by this time!) discreetly slipping a few dollars here and there before getting a lift on the back of a motorbike to their dorms.

One Australian expat I talk to is in tears about the orphanage he is trying to run. All the Aussie raised money is used correctly and audited but thousands of dollars are being given by tourists and other sources and just goes straight into the pockets of local people who staff the orphanage. He has tried to change this and has been given death threats and asks me what he should do. I think death threats in most countries could be ignored but here a few dollars in bribes to the police to turn a blind eye and a bit more to the right person and he would be no more. Time to leave I suppose but what a sad waste of time for a dedicated man...

At the end of the day the place is just too wild and lawless at the moment but it sure does contrast with the UK - a place where if you stub your foot on the pavement you can sue the local council for thousands of pounds in compensation. A place where you can have an Antisocial Behaviour Order placed on a neighbour who plays music too loud. A place where if you dare to go on a package holiday in Spain and there is a cockroach in your hotel the BBC will make an hour long 'Holidays From Hell' documentary about your nightmare experience. A place where people are prepared to pay money to go on holiday in Centre Parks, where every minute of every day can be planned to perfection and even the temperature is controlled to within a degree. If you ask people why they go there thay claim it is because they have children, as if it is their children who have lost all lust and zest for life.....

There must be a middle ground somewhere. Does anybody know where it is?

Laos I suppose is one of those obscure countries that I guess many people have heard of but thats probably the extent of their knowledge. Again the 20th century history of this country defies belief. Another Buddhist country peacefully engaging in an agricultural economy that is thousands of years old. Apparently there is a saying that the Vietnamese plant rice, the Cambodians care for the rice and the Laotians listen to it grow. Something like that anyway - but what the saying is trying to convey is the incredible laid back nature of the Laos people. Their festivals last for weeks and are intended to keep the whole world in balance.

Of course the Americans decided that this country was also due a good carpet bombing. Not only did it need a good carpet bombing but it needed a carpet bombing the sheer scale of which is unknown by any other country in the history of the world. The Americans flew a bombing mission every six seconds for ten years - something like 600,000 missions. The tonnage of ordinance dropped on the country is greater than all the bombs dropped on all countries during WWII. Of course no 'people' were living here either - so thats all right then.

People are still dying every day when unexploded ordanance goes off on land they are trying to farm. America promised aid money when they eventually decided to stop the bombing and have so far contributed 0 dollars....

I guess by now (if you are still reading!) I must seem like some sort of madman but all of this is readily checkable on the Net....

Words fail me to describe the gift America sent the Laotian people. Shock - amazement - disbelief - I dont know what it is. In the Royal Palace in Luang Prabang there is a piece of moon rock sent by Nixon upon cessation of one of the most mindless act of warfare in the whole sad history of mindless acts of warfare. I did not have a pen so will have to paraphrase - something like - 'this gift is sent to the people of Laos in the spirit of international solidarity and world peace'.

I give up.

Really I do.

Mike

[Gandalph]

Very interesting reading through that andsome. I know how he feels and the way his is thinking. I myself was in Borneo, and Malaysia in general for three years in the sixties due to my Army service and I can honestly say that you do get your eye's opened and the brain starts to work overtime when you see the way the local people live.

[popeye]

I was there as well.

[Gandalph]

I was there as well.

I was there from January 9th 1964 to November 28th 1967. When were you there popeye. My Home base was Minden Barracks, Penang Malaya. My operational bases were Tenping, Sarang (RAF Kuching) Sarawak, Borneo and other places in and around Borneo that I cant mention.

[popeye]

Main Base was Singapore.

[djohn]

I've enjoyed reading your son's emails andsome, very interesting and well written if a little anti American. I wish him a safe journey home and I bet you will be pleased to see him. :)

Well what a small world. I too served in Sarawak, Borneo [Jungle training] and spent most of my time based at Changi, now a war memorial and cemetery. Did a short tour in Crater - Aden [Now the Yemin] this was during the mid to late 60's, over several short tours of 4 to 6 months each, came back in 69 to go over to a place not far from our shores that I would rather not talk about. Anyone with military service will know where I was in 69.

[Edit] My apologies andsome for allowing this thread to go off topic, just that I found it interesting for two other forum members beside myself to have been out in the far east all in the same time frame and in places similar to your sons adventure.

[djohn]

Ark Royal! You must have known my wife's brother popeye, he was serving on Ark Royal right through the 60's! :)

PS: So did my nephew as a Royal Marine Commando from mid 69 to 70 something, then he moved over to the S.B.S and I think it was the H.M.S Royal Devonshire.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Thank you for publishing this, Andsome. It is widely unknown (or ignored) that more than three decades after America's "mission of peace" to South East Asia there isstill so much suffering among the population. I have seen similar things during my travels in Viet Nam, where still thousands of deformed babies are born due to the Agent Orange the Americans dumped all over the country.

[andsome]

I've enjoyed reading your son's emails andsome, very interesting and well written if a little anti American. I wish him a safe journey home and I bet you will be pleased to see him. :)

I agree that he sounds more than a little anti American. I can assure you however, that he is extremely well read. You can guarantee that any figures given have been well researched. He actually loves America as a country, having visited it several times, once for a six month holiday. He has made several permanent friends with whom he keeps in touch. What he has an absolute dislike of is American government policies, especially in places like the Far East. He is also not over keen on many British policies in these places. You should hear what he thinks of the worship of the dollar by the American government, especially people like GWB, who are quite happy to see the world suffocate in the filth and pollution being produced by American and Chinese industry, and Americas rejection of the Kyoto agreement.

As you say, it will be great to see him again.

[dadyassa]

Well written email, i know the feeling. :thumbup: