Cambodia: between mistery and the unknown

Apsara, Khmer deity. Cambodian postcard (Yela)

Map of the trip (click to enlarge)

Text and images: Juan Carlos

-Soup, not meat? - the woman with a round face and Asian features who attended the restaurant, where we ate dinner every night, asked us.
-Soup!, no meat! – we nodded as every night.
Due to our local language lack of knowledge, to be vegetarian travelers in this country requires extra efforts to be understood in each meal time, maybe that's why in places where we had achieved that feat, we had no more choice than to become regulars.
That night (like all the previous ones) the restaurant was full, mostly young people, members of a more globalized generation and that on the surface, appears to have no traces of what their parents had to live.

Cambodian woman

During the second half of the 70's Cambodia experienced one of the most brutal genocides in human history. In this country, as in many others, there was a constant struggle between those who sought that the status quo of the colonial period would continue vis-á-vis the wishes of those who sought to impose a less polarized and fairer society through a socialist revolution. To their misfortune, in neighboring Vietnam war was also out of control; only that there, the native country was faced against the most powerful military force of the time which came to invade from thousands of miles away. That war took over, the harsh and difficult times experienced in Cambodia, and catapulted them into chaos. The brutality of war gripped the minds of participants, leading them to commit such violent events that today are impossible to discern when the owner of the place, then being only a girl, comes and asks with a smiley face: Soup, not meat?

While we ate, we discussed the peculiar visions that this country had offered: motorcycles, hundreds of motorcycles, thousands of motorcycles ... perhaps millions. We wondered: what it would be to live in such a small country with neighbors who seem to constantly threaten sovereignty? It seemed curious to observe how in this society, the U.S. dollar and Cambodian Riel are used in parallel in every exchange of money.

Chaos vial

Ahh! Finally the ingredients, with which the guests prepare soup to their taste, arrived. The procedure is the same for everybody: everyone picks ingredients up, and so the order in which they are added to the pot with boiling soup in the center of the table, on a tiny gas burner; a popular and economic way families or groups of friends choose for their daily dinner. In the atmosphere a very special relationship between people and food is noted.

Collective transport

Upon entering the Khmer Rouge triumphantly the capital, the urban population was forced out to the fields, to work the land. The educated and religious classes were annihilated, the rest lived very precariously for up to four years in cooperatives, producing and eating the most basic food, which necessarily had to create a particular vision (for these times) to interact with food. This stage ends when Vietnam (after winning their war) invades Cambodia on the pretext of ending the genocide that was submitted to the people of Vietnamese origin living in Cambodian soil.

Clockwork orange

Nothing better to accompany this dinner than a beer, which though not so cheap (compared to food prices) is made good with quality, the name? Angkor. Of course, just like bars, restaurants, hotels and shops, that name resounds for all that has quality and pride.

Angkor Wat

For hundreds of years the Khmer empire was the light and glory in Southeast Asia. Just seeing the ruins of Angkor Wat one can imagine the magnitude and strength of that empire. Difficult to explain briefly what these monuments and ruins speak about the brilliance of the human spirit. The term “the world´s largest temple” is not sufficient to capture its greatness. See it to believe it, to live it in order to tell it. Pride, not only for the locals, is what this place was created; a world heritage site that now, a thousand years later, is the best pseudonym of quality that can be given to a good beer.

We ask for the bill. Outside on the streets, the same motorcycle river flowing endlessly. Another day in Cambodia, one less day of the trip.