Land of Ghosts

Throughout our journey, we've been constantly aware of the weight of history and the pull of the past on daily life in Asia. For a couple of Americans, it can be hard to fully comprehend the sheer immensity of that past. For months now, we've watched while billions of people dutifully follow rituals and customs whose origins lie beyond the reach of recorded history, and in many cases even archeology. In some places, like India and especially Thailand, the past is embraced wholeheartedly and often incorporated into the onrushing future in innovative and even delightful ways. In others, like China, every effort is made to bury history completely beneath a facade of glass towers and cable modems, usually to no avail. Whatever their approach, however, the Asian societies we've visited share a palpable sense of momentum to match the depth of their pasts.

Not so Cambodia. On our admittedly brief visit, the place seemed crushed under the awesome weight of its own troubled history. Phnom Phen's main attractions are a genocide museum (once a high school, it held thousands of political "dissidents" during Pol Pot's regime) and Pol Pot's infamous "killing fields," relics of an insane social experiment in the 1970's that murdered a quarter of Cambodia's population.


A torture room in the Genocide Museum

Beyond the capitol, potholed dirt roads link desperately poor villages encircled by aging minefields. After the verdant green of rural Laos, much of Cambodia looked like a moonscape of red clay and fallow fields. Every bridge we crossed had been donated by a foreign government, along with the majority of the village wells and other basic infrastructure.

Crippling as the recent past is in Cambodia, ancient history is one of the country's greatest assets. The ruins at Angkor, once the capitol of the massive and prolific ancient Khmer civilization, are among the most impressive in the world. We arranged a reunion there with our wonderful friends Maca and Marcelo, the South American couple we traveled with across Tibet. They bring an irrepressible sense of joy to everything they do, and traveling with them again felt wonderful.


With Maca and Marcelo in front of Angkor Wat, the most famous of the ruins.


M&M in the tuk-tuk we toured in (a motor-cycle drawn carriage)

We spent four days scouring the ruins. Some have retained their original splendor. Others have been reclaimed by the jungle, creating a breathtaking interplay between architecture and nature.







The temples were built over a span of hundreds of years and dozens of rulers. One of the most interesting aspects was the gradual shift from Hinduism to Buddhism, manifested in the architecture and symbology. Today, Cambodians seem to worship Hindu deities and Buddhist bodhisattvas almost indiscriminately. Here you can see a Buddhist stupa and a Hindu shiva lingam in the same hallway.



After a long, hot day of sightseeing, we made it a habit to grab mango smoothies on the street. The store owner's daughter was a holy terror, but irresistibly cute. Maybe the future is bright here after all.