Travelling is for many synonymous with vacation and relaxation. But it can also be an opportunity to learn, and sometimes what you learn makes you look at the world from a whole new perspective. For us, this was Cambodia.
How many can identify Cambodia on a world map? How many can give a brief summary of the nation’s history? There are 193 UN member states and expecting people to know the history of all of them is unreasonable. Still, here in Norway history lessons are primarily about European history, as for most European countries. That is of course far from abnormal, what is closest to us has the biggest impact on our daily lives. At least that is how it used to be.
The world is a different place now. We have Internet, can communicate with more or less anyone at any time. Many countries have changed from being agricultural communities only concerned with providing food for its own people to modern societies with modern interests. We are deciding where foreign aid funds are going, our views on conflict like the crisis in Syria and the war on IS, we are voting for politicians that have their views on immigration and we have to decide how much we are importing and exporting.
All of this means that most people now more than ever have a greater need to understand more about our entire globe, not just a few neighbouring countries and whatever is on the news right now.
As we arrived in Cambodia we understood that we had missed a large part of the world’s history. The generation before us knows a bit more about the history of Cambodia in the ’60s and ’70s, but chances are that you are quite unfamiliar with this if you grew up in the ’80s or later.
Let’s go for a quick history lesson: Cambodia has fought wars for the majority of its history. It was under the rule of France as a colony, battled Thailand and Vietnam over its borders and was levelled flat by spillover during the Vietnam War. As a matter of fact, more bombs were dropped by the US in Cambodia during the Vietnam War than the Allied dropped in World War 2 combined. This alone should be enough to “earn” Cambodia a large mark in history. Unfortunately it was just the beginning of the cruelty this country has endured. In the ’70s civil war commenced and the pain and suffering this comes with became a part of the daily lives of the Cambodian people. In 1975 the war finally ended and the Khmer Rouge were victorious. People were happy and walked the streets smiling. This literally lasted only hours. Khmer Rouge, with Pol Pot as leader, was very eager to introduce new rules and political reforms. Pol Pot was a communist and was going to turn Cambodia into a communist state; not socialist, but communist. Most so-called communist states are socialist states striving to gradually become more communistic. Pol Pot skipped the whole transition and went straight for full communism. What does that really mean? Money stopped existing, people were moved from cities to rural areas to do agricultural work and all forms of personal ownership ceased to exist. Literally (not figuratively) over night.
Shortly after this followed a level of paranoia the world might never have seen a match for. First, all political opposition was removed. Then, a witch hunt for anyone who might be in opposition to the government began. Sadly, this was just the beginning; people with education were viewed as a threat and were removed. People with soft hands had clearly never worked manually in their lives, thus they were in opposition and had to be removed. It even went so far that people with glasses were viewed as a threat because they were associated with people with education, which again were viewed as a threat.
But what do you do with all these people? It was illegal to be in opposition to the government, but a confession of being a spy or traitor was needed for the state to legally be able to punish you. Therefore, prisons were made where prisoners were tortured and lived under terrible conditions until they “confessed” to their crimes and were executed. Out of the 8 million citizens of Cambodia at the time, almost a quarter died during the four year reign of the Khmer Rouge. The country was poor and bullets were expensive. Those sentenced to death were therefore executed in the cheapest way possible; usually beaten to death – after months of torture. Their families were never informed about what happened and people were dumped in mass graves. It was also common that the whole family was executed if one family member was found guilty, to prevent the rest from seeking revenge. And the whole family really meant just that; infants a year or two old were also killed if they were closely related to someone found guilty of conspiring against the government.
In 1979, 4 years after the terror started, Vietnam invaded Phnom Penh. Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot were forced to withdraw and the country could finally start to stabilise again.
Today, 38 years later, Cambodia is very different. Cities are rebuilt, people have substantially better lives and progress is going in the right direction. However, many are still living in poverty and lack basic necessities such as sufficient food and medical facilities.
Despite their history, the people of Cambodia are incredibly welcoming. They smile, are polite and look on the bright side of life, no matter how terrible it was in the past. Few others have been through more than the Cambodians in the last 50 years, yet few have made us feel more welcome than Cambodians.
So, after a long side track, back to travelling. A trip to a beach in Spain may not give you much more than a tan and a long bill at the bar; however, if you travel to a destination that is not listed on the top 10 tourist places you might have a chance to experience a different culture and get a new view on the world we live in.
History lessons cannot contain every single event ever, that’s obviously impossible. However, we feel that Cambodia’s history, especially from 1975-79 should be something everyone are aware of. At the same time, if this is added to the curriculum, something else has to be removed. Travelling enables you in a unique way to not only learn more about the world, but also to understand how it affects the world today and what you can do to improve it.
The people of Cambodia may also be a very good opportunity to learn how to phsycologically cope with horrific events. How can a people shaped by so much war and terror be so happy and have such a positive attitude towards life? Maybe they are grateful for the better life they have now. Maybe they have a culture oriented around positive thinking. We do not know, but what we do know is that there is a lot to learn from Cambodia.
Despite Cambodia being a much better place now than 40 years ago there is still plenty of room for improvement. If you break your leg as a tourist hospitals of “Western standards” are few and far in between. The locals are of course unable to pay for such treatments. Many have disabilities that could have been avoided if malnutrition and lack of basic medical facilities were battled. They need help and they deserve it. Reiselykke.com is a Norwegian travel website that has started money to build a hospital in Cambodia. There are also some very wise words on responsible travel written there. We recommend reading through it and supporting the cause.
Maybe you will not go to Cambodia, but somewhere else. We haven’t been everywhere yet, so we don’t know what’s out there. But we intend of changing that. Wherever you go, seize the opportunity to learn more about the world.
