Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Cities are appealing for lots of different reasons. Some are interesting for their art or history, some because they are the seat of political power, others because of the nightlife or the wildlife. Today we are in Cambodia. We are docked in a town called Sihanoukville, named for the former ruler, Prince Norodam Sihanouk. Despite the absence of any glitz or glamour here, I found today’s trip ashore one of the most interesting of the whole cruise. Immediately following the Vietnam War, a branch of the Communist Party led by Pol Pot came to rule here. His bizarre construction of Marxist-Maoist-Stalinist thought held that Cambodia should be for the Cambodians only. Professors and even schoolteachers were considered as intellectuals spreading foreign, non-Cambodian ideas. They were executed. Artists and business owners were executed for the same reason. So were physicians, nurses, high school graduates, students, mechanics, and even people who wore glasses. Radically atheistic, the regime assured that priests and monks suffered the same fate. Pol Pot’s agrarian ideal emptied the cities and forced everyone, even people untrained in agriculture, to work on rural collective farms. Out of a population of 8 million people, some 2-3 million were killed by execution, starvation, overwork, or poor medical care. The horrific reign of terror lasted 3 years from 1976-1979. An account of this nightmare of Cambodian history is recounted in the motion picture, The Killing Fields. Pol Pot has taken his place in infamy, along with Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and other genocidal psychopaths.

Today was given to an extremely interesting visit to Sihanoukville. Please forgive a comment that makes me sound more like a tourist than a traveler when I say that the part of Cambodia we saw today was very crowded and definitely dirty. The odor of the city woke us early as we sailed into port at about 5 am. I do not say these things as an insult, but merely as a report. Travelers much more seasoned than I am have suggested that when one comes to Cambodia, one should not try to avoid the stench, but should rather breathe deeply so that they quickly become “nose deaf.” There is a reason for the odor, though. The fact is that Cambodians catch, kill, cook and eat any creature that does not eat them first, even insects. And we saw no stray dogs.

Today, however, I was more interested in watching the people. There are very few old people here. Virtually everyone we saw here today was under 40 years of age. What I saw today was the remnant of a nation whose government attempted to murder it. Now less than 4% of the population is over 60 years of age. I noted many, many children in town today. Some were quite young, hardly a year old, working with mom in the market, hanging on to a motor scooter, even walking with other children with no adults to be seen. Kids in Cambodia grow up fast. They really don’t have any choice. I did not see or hear one child crying today. My guess is that babies here learn quickly that crying does no good. Cambodians learn very early that life is tough. And so are they. Still, despite the harsh realities of recent history, Cambodians have their hopes and aspirations. They smile graciously at us foreigners with our flashy clothing, loud voices and expensive cameras. They still go to the temple to pray. They work hard. They scrap like junkyard dogs to earn a living. They raise their families on meager incomes, and teach their children in temples and in schools. And some of them dream that maybe—just maybe—their children can live in a Cambodia that is better than the furnace out of which their own hard lives were forged.Read more