Cambodia – Siem Reap – November 12 – 17, 2002

Arriving safely in Siem Reap, the town close to Angkor, we headed up to the top of one of the earliest ruins for a sunset view of Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat is the best restored of the ruins of Angkor. It was continuously occupied from the 11^th century, being down to only a handful of monks when it was rediscovered by the French in the 1700’s.

L That evening we saw a traditional Khmer dance.

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We had heard about Cambodia – how it was completely lawless, unstable and that the two most populated areas, around the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap and in Phnom Penh, were dangerous and you could hardly expect to keep your wallet for the trip. What we found in Siem Reap was a group of people who were friendly and kind, and who were very poor by any standard. And they are destined to stay that way… The end of the civil war in 1999 brought peace, but only enough so that the hotel companies abroad were willing to rebuilt their hotels, and build new ones, since labor is so inexpensive here. Siem Reap has a dozen huge new hotels going up, each with several hundred rooms and expecting to attract 5 star clientele. The population in the city has swelled to 500,000 and the infrastructure is racing to keep up with the pace of development.

Khmer dance was re-born after Pol Pot killed 3 milllion Cambodians, about 1 in 4, only when the one old woman who survived the killing fields and knew the dance forms came forward to teach them to a new generation. This country is pulling itself up by its bootstraps.

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