Discover Cambodia’s Beauty Despite Dark Political Past

Though still recovering from Pol Pot’s regime, Cambodia contains numerous sites and monuments worth traveling for.

Angkor Wat Reflection. Radek Kucharski.  CC BY2.0.

Cambodia is known for its massive and brilliantly crafted religious temples, vast untouched forests and vibrant city life. What some may not know is Cambodians have and are still recovering socially, economically and politically from one of recent history's most horrific events: the reign of the Khmer Rouge. 

Under the rule of dictator  Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge was a Marxist regime created in 1975. Whether from execution, starvation, exhaustion and disease, more than 2 million civilians died during the genocide. Despite the defeat of the Khmer Rouge on January 7, 1979 by the Vietnamese military, Cambodians struggled to regain their political and economic prosperity. General poverty rates have lingered around 35% which is a great improvement from the 50% at the initial end of the events. Those who experienced the genocide are now be in their 50s, and thus Cambodians are still living with the traumatic experiences they went through.

With that said, the Southeast Asian country has shown great perseverance and progress towards a bright future. Now, Cambodian citizens celebrate their traditional cultures and welcome outsiders to experience the atmosphere and history of their country. Here are a few of the most popular spots.

1. Angkor Wat

Said to be the largest religious monument in the world, Angkor Wat is a vast Buddhist temple that touches over 400 acres of land and comprises over 1,000 buildings. Cambodia is home to this cultural wonder of the world and is a destination that provides both visual beauty and an introduction to Cambodia’s rich history and culture. 

Angkor Wat has five lotus-like towers rising 65 meters up, being the first part of the temple visitors tend to notice. The awe-inspiring scenery continues with carvings throughout the inside of the temple. Celestial dancers, known as apsaras in Khmer (Cambodia’s national language), helped reintroduce Apsara dance in Cambodia. Carvings of war, spiritual journeys and everyday life explain Cambodia’s hardships and relationship with culture and religion. Ta Prohm, also known as the Tomb Raider Temple due to its appearance in the 2001 film, and Angkor Thom are other beautifully architected sights nearAngkor Wat.  

2. Banteay Srei 

Banteay in Angkor. Juan Antonio Segal. CC BY 2.0.

Known as the Temple of the Women, Banteay Srei is sacred in Angkor. Though it is much smaller in size than Angkor Wat, it contains some of Cambodia's most delicate carvings. Images of women holding lotus flowers and memorable stories of the Hindu religion are depicted here. Banteay Srei is still a place for women to visit and observe to feel inspired and appreciated, as well as a place where anyone can experience its beauty and history.

3.  Bayon

Bayon Temple Ruins in Cambodia. Uwe Schwarzbach.  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

This Buddhist Temple is home to 216 smiling, peaceful faces carved into towers. Numerous other carvings can be seen representing the experiences of the Khmer people. Bayon temple allows visitors to understand the goals and journey of the Khmer Empire and is a great temple to visit if you are interested in Buddhism and appreciating Cambodia’s past.  

4. Phnom Penh

Bustling Phnom Penh. Baron Reznik. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia andhome to vibrantly colored buildings, tight streets with motorbikes, friendly locals and more architectural beauty. A main mark of the Cambodian experience, Phnom Penh is affordable and easy-going—a great way to submerge yourself in the country's culture. here are some upscale restaurants and locations, but overall, Phnom Penh remains its gritty, lively and romantically chaotic self. 

5. Krong Siem Reap

Angkor Wat in Krong Siem Reap. Kim Seng. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Krong Siem Reap is another other major city destination in Cambodia. Krong Siem Reap is a staple of Cambodia’s religious history, being home to Angkor Wat, the ruins of Banteay Srei and Ta Prohm. Locals treat travelers as if they have been life-long friends, and travelers will get the chance to explore much of Cambodia’s Buddhist history as long as remaining respectful. 

Krong Siem Reap is also known for its exquisite food scene. Cafes offer coffee, teas and delicious local food dishes with some even offering vegetarian and vegan-friendly options. Restaurants to grab an authentic and budgeted meal are around every corner. 

6. Kirirom National Park

Kirirom National Park Rest Area. Arie. CC BY2.0. 

Located mostly in Phnom Sruoch District, Kirirom National Park is covered with deep forestry and high elevation. Kirirom, meaning “Mountain of Joy,” is loved for its high elevation pine forests and many glistening waterfalls. Along with vast, isolated hiking trails, the endangered sun bears, pileated gibbons and tigers can be found living in the forests. 

7. Koh Tonsay

Koh Tonsay. James Antrobus. CC BY2.0. 

Located on the country's south coast in the Gulf of Thailand, Koh Tonsay can be translated as “Rabbit Island”  and received its name because it houses the furry little creatures. It is a relatively quiet coast with a more rustic beach style. While tourists tend to visit other parts of the Cambodian coast more influenced by Chinese businesses, Koh Tonsay remains a sliver of true Cambodian land. It is not as flashy as some other beaches on the coast of Cambodia, but Koh Tonsay offers a unique and isolated beach experience. 

8. Bousra Waterfall 

Bousra Waterfall. Lucien Tan. CC BY-ND 2.0.

Located just outside of Sen Monorom, the Bousra (also spelled Bou Sra and Busra) waterfall is a three-level natural wonder offering viewing platforms at different heights and access to its base, where visitors can get misted and explore the powerful waters.

Haleigh Kierman

Haleigh is a student at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A double Journalism and Communications major with a minor in Anthropology, she is initially from Guam, but lived in a small, rural town outside of Boston most of her life. Travel and social action journalism are her two passions and she is appreciative to live in a time where writers voices are more important than ever.

Residents of Phnom Penh’s Floating Homes Evicted 

In preparation for Southeast Asian Games, Cambodian government officials have mandated the evacuation of floating homes on the Tonle Sap River, displacing hundreds of families. 

 A floating village in Phnom Penh. Anne Roberts. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

Cambodia's capital city of Phnom Penh has experienced turmoil over the past few weeks following the sudden eviction of the city’s iconic floating homes. 

Floating villages have been an integral part of the culture and lifestyle in the community of Phnom Penh for generations, and many homes have been passed down through ancestry. Each individual home is made primarily of wooden planks and hand-built bridges that interconnect the platforms. Many even have small boats on the river alongside their homes to make travel amongst the homes easier. Their location on the banks of the Tonle Sap River, one of the most productive freshwater ecosystems in the world, provides access to around 150 different kinds of fish and allows residents to make a living from fish farming.

The evacuation notices were issued by the Phnom Penh Municipality after it received multiple complaints about litter and sewage polluting the communities. The city is set to host the Southeast Asian Games in 2023 and is currently undergoing a clean-up campaign to prepare the community for the surge of tourism and press that will follow. Rather than investing money into the communities to clean and rebuild this part of the city, the government decided to get rid of them altogether. 

A boat on the Tonle Sap River. Ec Perez. CC BY 2.0

The evacuation of these communities was sudden and gave families little time to relocate, not to mention that many did not have a place to relocate to. The pandemic has not made any of this easier, as moving around puts the citizens at risk of spreading or contracting COVID-19. Furthermore, the closure of Cambodia's shared border with Vietnam leaves them with fewer relocation options. 

This situation sheds light onto the large-scale infringement of citizen rights that is common in cities preparing to host large events. Whether it be the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil or the Tokyo Olympics, many cities have sacrificed the well-being of their citizens for the preparation and funding of events. While hosting globally-recognized events is an exciting opportunity, it often comes at the expense of the very people that live there. Citizens are often permanently displaced by the construction of stadiums and plunged into poverty while the host cities pour money into refurbishments and the beautification of the city. 

While the evictions are still underway, many citizens of Phnom Penh are now in search of unoccupied land and job opportunities in order to compensate for the stability that they have lost. 

Zara Irshad

Zara is a third year Communication student at the University of California, San Diego. Her passion for journalism comes from her love of storytelling and desire to learn about others. In addition to writing at CATALYST, she is an Opinion Writer for the UCSD Guardian, which allows her to incorporate various perspectives into her work.

Altered Photos of Cambodian Genocide Victims Spark Outrage

Too often history is viewed as an element of the past—chains of unchangeable events that can be analyzed and nothing more. However, it is important that victims of past atrocities are honored, a lesson in which modern media has fallen short. 

Unaltered photos of Khmer Rouge genocide victims at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Christian Haugen. CC BY 2.0.

With the advancements of the digital age, the culture of media has grown ever more rapid, often leading to negative consequences. In a recent incident, history itself took center stage as one photographer’s actions sparked massive outrage among victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide, which led to the deaths of more than 2 million Cambodians in the late 1970s. 

Vice published the work of photographer Matt Loughrey, who edited photos of victims from the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh taken minutes before their executions. Loughrey has been accused of editing the photos so that they show smiling faces, creating waves of backlash for the photographer. 

Torture room. Timoluege. CC BY-NC 2.0. 

Upset relatives of the photographed victims stated that Loughrey’s work was of horrible judgment, citing his acts as degrading the dignity of the victims. Cambodian officials too were outraged upon seeing the photos; the country’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts threatened legal action. In addition to insensitive alterations of the photos, the Vice article misidentified one of the victims, publishing incorrect personal details. 

Victims’ skulls. istolethetv. CC BY 2.0.

Others have declared the actions of Loughrey to be crimes against history itself, stating the alterations to be offensive to truth. 

VICE has since removed the photos, citing errors in the company’s editorial process. 

The Bigger Picture 

Beyond the first waves of anger resulting from this incident, larger lessons have been learned by all involved. Primarily, the incident has brought to light a flaw in the way people view history; although history is an analysis of past events, it must be equally weighted against potential consequences for the victims themselves. Second, it highlights that history is not always entirely of the past—there are still over 5 million Khmer Rouge victims living, along with millions of other descendants and close community members. Third, it brings up the question of what should be considered acceptable when it comes to altering representations of history. Is there wiggle room for subjectivity, or should all journalistic representations be as objective as possible? 

Amid the turmoil and animosity between the opposing sides of this conflict, some light still remains. The incident stands as a crucial reminder for everyone that the analysis of history can be as much a weapon as a tool. It remains up to the media, and their audiences, to use the past appropriately.

Ella Nguyen

Ella is an undergraduate student at Vassar College pursuing a degree in Hispanic Studies. She wants to assist in the field of immigration law and hopes to utilize Spanish in her future projects. In her free time she enjoys cooking, writing poetry, and learning about cosmetics.

My Unconventional Cambodian Christmas

Megan participated in the 2013 PEPY Ride by PEPY Tours. She and her group biked through Cambodia, from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, and this her story.

The route

Christmas for me normally consists of the following things: flying home to good old England, walking through the door, receiving a suffocating hug from my parents (suffocating is, of course, meant in the most affectionate way possible) and then eating. The eating generally doesn’t ever stop, just ebbs and flows like the tide. So when Christmas 2013 rolled around and I found myself facing a 1000km bike ride across Cambodia — and a whole lot of rice — needless to say I was ever so slightly nervous.

Maybe you’re wondering what on earth drove me to forego the usual food-based festivities in favor of risking a month of inevitable, interminable muscle pain. The honest answer is adventure. I wanted to see something new. To smell something new. To taste something new. But when I signed up for the PEPY Ride XI, I never imagined that, above all of the things I just mentioned, I would feel something new. And that something, whatever it was, has more or less changed the way I look at the world and all of the funny, strange, sad, glorious, confusing and downright brilliant things in it.

Megan's group in action

A 1000km bike ride is in itself one such downright brilliant thing; getting up before the crack of dawn, hopping on the bike and watching the world wake up is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s like looking at hundreds of different photos for less than a second at a time-the split second you whizz past someone, you get this teeny, tiny snapshot of their life and it’s pretty amazing. Sometimes it’d be a gaggle of kids messing around on the way to school, sometimes an older chap watching us with great bemusement as we blitzed past him, waving and grinning like lunatics, or maybe a group of men herding ducks into a roadside stream (yes, you read that right, duck herding).

Whoever it was, one thing is for sure: Cambodians like to say hello to people on bikes. Every day, and I really mean every day, as we were cycling merrily along, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a couple of kids would suddenly come racing out of thin air and ambush us, screaming 'hellohellohellohellohellohello.' This would start a kind of chain reaction and the next half hour would pass in a frenzy of shouting and waving, which is quite dangerous on a road full of potholes. 

But potholes aside, traveling through a country by bike is a very unique experience. Of course, there were times when I debated whether or not it was possible for just my rear end to die, independently from the rest of my body, such was the level of numbness, but there is really no comparison to the feeling of freedom you get from cycling. We saw corners of Cambodia that are more than a world away from our normal lives, corners where the tourist buses or the hoards of backpackers that come with them can’t get to.. Nothing against backpackers, but sometimes it’s nice to escape the masses.

Megan's group

Ok, a three week bike ride is indeed a rather incredible feat, but was it really a life-changing experience? I can almost smell your scepticism! The truth is, it really was. Not in the “I’m going to sell all my worldly possessions and wander the world, touching the lives of everyone I meet” kind of way, it was quieter than that. It wasn’t so aggressively do-goody. It just kind of made me want to smile more. I don’t know about other people, but I am definitely guilty of letting the little things stress me out too much in my so-called normal life.

Sunrise in Angkor

Spending three weeks in one of the poorest nations in South East Asia, with its unfathomably devastating recent history, certainly shook me up and made me realise that I have it pretty good. All the daft little problems which I worry about suddenly weren’t problems anymore. What’s the use in using all that energy on something that, in all likeliness, won’t change, no matter how much you kick and scream and tear your hair out? Cambodia is a country on the mend, or at least that’s the impression I had, and sometimes it was all too easy to forget that behind the smiles, many people have seen more ugliness and pain than you or I could ever imagine. Yet, despite the horrors this country has lived through, it seems to radiate an energy and spirit like no other place I’ve ever visited.

I think it’s easy to become disillusioned with the world: You watch the news and you feel a bit hopeless because really, how on earth can you help? To be honest, I don’t know the answer to that question. But Cambodia gave me hope for, well, hope. I know that sounds horrendously schmaltzy, but I can’t describe it in any other way. After seeing all these incredibly cool and inspiring projects, only someone with a heart of stone could refuse to be touched by the optimism. There’s always going to be good and bad in the world, for sure, but now my eyes and heart are more open to the good stuff.

Find out more about how you can participate in a PEPY Ride here!

Megan Skinner

Meg is earning her keep as a freelance English teacher, translator and interpreter in the tropical climes of Northern Germany. As exciting as the world of patent translations is, her mind often wanders to adventures in more exotic locations. Or food. Or both.