Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But there was something curiously abstract about the freedoms we enjoyed. No matter
what we and our Khmer colleagues wrote, little seemed to change. The rich and powerful
remained a law unto themselves, as they had been for as long as Cambodians could re-
member. Businesspeople seized land and evicted the inhabitants. Forests and natural re-
sources were sold to Chinese and Vietnamese firms for massive sums. A man like Chhouk
Bundith could shoot three young women and then brazenly flout the authority of courts
that had never been free from political control. The human rights groups had their own
name for all of this. They called it “impunity.” But the word was so frequently deployed,
and so bleached of cultural and historical context, that it soon lost much of its force.
Most Cambodians lived in a very different world than the one we inhabited in Phnom
Penh. Four-fifths of them still lived in the countryside, a sodden green land of rice paddies
and sugar palms, where they fished, raised crops and animals, and got on with things
as best they could. Village life was organized around the local Buddhist
wats
, brightly
colored temples where people gathered on festival days to light incense and pray to their
ancestors. Though Cambodia's official religion was Theravada Buddhism, it intermingled
with a host of other ancestral deities and animist guardian spirits. In front of nearly every
Cambodian house, even the poorest, there was a small spirit-house where people made
regular offerings—fruit, raw meat, cans of soft drink—seeking to propitiate supernatural
beings who were believed to have a strong say in worldly affairs.
At the same time, billions of dollars in international development aid had done little to
improve the lot of ordinary people. Life in rural areas remained a struggle. Only a few
households had access to electricity, sanitation, and clean water. Two in five Cambod-
bottom reaches of the international rankings, inviting comparison with the states of sub-
Saharan Africa and blown-out Stalinist relics like North Korea. The farther from major
roads people lived, the poorer and more isolated they became. With each bumpy mile,
life reverted backwards in time. In some places things seemed like they hadn't changed
in centuries.
But everywhere in Cambodia, even in the remotest areas, there was one constant pres-
ence. Prime Minister Hun Sen loomed over his country's political life. His name was at-
tached to thousands of schools, often built with the donations of friendly tycoons. He was
a frequent fixture on radio and TV, giving long and sometimes outrageous speeches which
would insult political opponents and recount tales from his rural upbringing. In power
since 1985, Hun Sen was modern Cambodia's longest-serving leader, a rugged survivor
who had passed through repeated cycles of history. In the 1970s he fought for the Kh-
mer Rouge, rising to the rank of regimental commander before defecting and becoming a
member of the Vietnamese-installed government that replaced Pol Pot in 1979. Over four
