Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
PAILIN PROVINCE
Pailin is best known for its gem mines, now pretty much exhausted, a surfeit of landmines
and being a refuge for Khmer Rouge pensioners.
During the civil war, the Pailin area's gem and timber resources - sold on international
markets with help from Thai army generals - served as the economic crutch that kept the
Khmer Rouge war machine hobbling along. In the mid-1990s, it was a staging area for reg-
ular dry-season offensives that overran government positions as far east as Phnom
Sampeau.
In 1996, the Khmer Rouge supremo in these parts, Ieng Sary or Brother Number Three
during the Democratic Kampuchea regime, defected to the government side with 3000
heavily armed troops. His reward was amnesty and free reign in Krong Pailin, a mini-
province carved out of Battambang Province to serve as a Khmer Rouge fiefdom. Only in
2007 were Ieng and his wife arrested for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He died
in March 2013, well before the completion of the trial. Ieng's son, Ieng Vuth, currently
serves as deputy governor of Pailin.
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Pailin
055 / POP 24,000
The remote Wild West town of Pailin has little to recommend it except a particularly col-
ourful hilltop temple. That said, the forested Cardamom foothills surrounding the city are
beautiful, just don't wander into them or you may literally be walking into a minefield.
