Kate Reavill - Cambodia - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Adapted from Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.

ISBN 978 1 78702 315 4

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

First published in Great Britain

by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd

59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440

www.culturesmart.co.uk

Inquiries:

Design Bobby Birchall

Printed in Turkey

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand. All Culture Smart! guides are available as e-books, and many as audio books. For further information and latest titles visit www.culturesmart.co.uk

KATE REAVILL is a Cambodia-based writer, teacher, and travel photographer. Originally from Leicester, England, she is a graduate of the University of Warwick with a bachelors degree in English Literature and trained as an English teacher at Oxford University. Kate has lived in Cambodia since 2018, after visiting the country on a month-long volunteer program, which precipitated a love and affinity for the land, its people, and their way of life. Today she is resident in the southern city of Kampot, where she teaches English and is an occasional presenter on Radio Oun, one of Cambodias national radio networks.

Say Cambodia, and often two associations come to mind: the lost glories of Angkor, and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Any understanding of Cambodia today must embrace both these opposites, as well as the changing attitudes caused by technological development and something of a demographic revolution.

Cambodia was the center of the Khmer empire, which from its capital at Angkor from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries ruled much of what is now Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. The ruins of the Khmers palaces, temples, and cities testify to their power, wealth, high culture, and engineering skills, and their abandonment and long obscurity provide a sobering example of civilizations fragility. That one of the worlds great civilizations arose here and left a heritage of such power and beauty is a source of great pride for Cambodians.

After the Thais captured Angkor in 1431, the Khmers moved their capital to Phnom Penh and maintained a precarious independencea situation exploited by Portugal and Spain, until the expulsion of the Spanish in 1599. From 1600 the Thais and the Vietnamese vied for influence over Cambodia, beset as it was by rivalry within the royal family. In 1863 the French established themselves in Phnom Penh and brought Cambodia increasingly under their control. While retaining the trappings of monarchy, it became virtually a French colony.

During the Second World War, the Japanese occupation demolished French prestige. After the war, Cambodian opposition and the conflict in Vietnam rendered the French position untenable, and in 1953 King Sihanouk declared Cambodias independence, but the troubled years that followed culminated in the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In the 1970s an estimated one and a half million people were killed by execution, starvation, and forced labor. Those who survived carry with them memories and guilt. Young people, however, know only what they may have heard from their families: the subject is not openly discussed.

In the years since, Cambodia developed materially at considerable speed, and with one of the youngest populations in the world, attitudes that have been adhered to for centuries have begun to shift. In 2021, Cambodia carried out the fastest vaccination drive in all of Southeast Asia, and the countrys close relationship with China has brought considerable and growing investment, but at a cost that makes some Cambodians uncomfortable.

Despite their traumatic past, Cambodians are courteous, hospitable, good-natured, and very welcomingand they love a good party! Before the coronavirus pandemic, tourism was thriving, and, thankfully, has begun to pick up once more. Visitors to Cambodia can look forward to meeting some of the friendliest, most down-to-earth and resilient people in the region. Take the opportunity to learn about their history, traditions, customs, and way of life, and your trip will be greatly enriched.