Cambodia

When you spend only 4 days in a country you can't expect to get a whole lot of insight into it -  just another country checked off on your life list.  So Cambodia for us is reduced to just two things: Angkor and genocide.  The temples of Angkor are just as cool as you'd imagine - they don't disappoint.  The murder of over a million people for obscure (to me, and you too, probably) ideological reasons is no more comprehensible than it was before I arrived in Siem Reap, but it's a grim and timely reminder that when a deluded, hateful, anti-intellectual party gets its hands on the reins of government the consequences can be more horrific than our imaginations are capable of taking in.  

Angkor Wat seems more like what Versailles would be if it fell into ruins than it does like a ruined temple, as that word is understood back home.  It, and the dozens of other similar colossal structures in the area, are expressions of what must have been enormous government power at the time (about 1000 years ago).  I grew up influenced by a family prejudice against this sort of thing - throwing so much of society's effort into building glorious monuments. But I'm so ignorant of the circumstances associated with this particular society that it's easy to let go of that and just enjoy what they accomplished here, and it's pretty impressive.  It would probably be even more impressive if they had managed to invent, or import, the arch.  As a result of this oversight, there are no large rooms, but there are endless arcaded corridors with beautifully executed bas reliefs, ziggurat-like towers, reflecting pools and moats you could sink a destroyer in. Speaking of the bas reliefs: along with all the other Hindu imagery (yes, Hindu, not Buddhist: there have evidently been some changes around here in the last millennium) are thousands of apsaras.  What are apsaras, you may well ask. Apsaras are mythical dancing girls who wouldn't look out of place in a soft core porn flick from the 70s.  To use a modern term, these are the hottest thousand year old women you're ever going to see.  To be honest, the best single aspara I've seen is in the Met in NY, but what's so striking here is the sheer number of them.  Over 3000 in Angkor Wat alone, sporting 35 different hairstyles.  Makes you wonder what these people were thinking.  You won't find anything Iike it in the Vatican, or in Hagia Sophia, or even Versailles itself, for that matter.

We had a guide for our first day of temple touring, and he was the only Cambodian we managed to engage in a conversation about the Khmer rouge. We called him Sam, focusing on the only syllable of his name we could pronounce. My failing memory about this nightmare from the 70s manages to put a lot of the blame on America - for the secret war that destabilized the country; for the reckless diplomacy of Kissenger/Nixon; even back to the odious Dulles brothers who manoeuvred America into a reactionary posture on Indochina that was criminally insane, IMHO.  But still it was surprising to hear that Sam seemed to blame the Americans also, which put me into something of a defensive crouch.  Yes, we were culpable, but the actual atrocities were all carried out by Cambodians - no Americans in sight, and none pulling the strings, as far as I know.  Sort of like blaming Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh for Auschwitz.  Of course Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh are guilty for Auschwitz, and Kissenger and Nixon are guilty for the eviceration of Phnom Penh, but only because when you murder millions of people there's a lot of guilt to go around.  I'm in no position to lecture anyone about what happened in Cambodia, but I suspect that Sam, and by very weak inference, a substantial part of the population, has yet to come to terms with it.