How Big is Siem Reap?

“How big is Siem Reap?” My father was buckling his seatbelt on the flight. I was ignoring my own lap belt in favor of superstition. Seatbelts on tiny Asian planes always seem to me more likely to jinx you rather than act as a safety measure. You know, if … say … the fuselage started to wiggle apart at 30,000 feet above the jungle – are you going to die feeling bitch slapped by irony?

“You mean how small is Siem Reap,” I replied. “It’s small. There’s one main street for bars – Pub Street – a medium-sized market and then a bunch of dusty side streets with little guesthouses. It’s going to feel smaller than Luang Prabang.”

Well, actually, that was Siem Reap. I spent nine days here in 2008, and I arrived yesterday to find a town so transformed, I couldn’t immediately distinguish Pub Street as we headed for dinner .. the sound of roosters entirely drowned out by the crunch of gravel under truck tires and hammers slamming into new electrical poles.

There’s often something disheartening about losing one of your favorite travel destinations to change. And we all want to get there first.

Cuba. Burma. Tibet. They are all on my short lists to visit (or re-visit in the case of Cuba) before everyone else shows up and ruins it.

But really, what is ruin and what is success? Why are you or I any better, any more entitled to go someplace, than anyone else? By going, I’m the one creating the town’s inevitable change from a place of mystery and wonder to a place that’s known, discovered, picked over and – in some senses – sold out. In fact, I’m the worst, given that I’m press, and thus by traveling, I convince others to come. (This is the reason I do not ever discuss my favorite NYC taco spot in any food coverage. Ever.)

But in the case of a town like Siem Reap, the change from unknown to known is a blessing for the people and a way out of poverty. If you know nothing of Cambodia’s history, the short of it is, a dictator named Pol Pot came to power in 1975, formed an army regime called the Khmer Rouge and killed three million people in a span of three years. It was one of the most heinous mass genocides in history. And it was recent. It was also kind of bizarre. Due to the Vietnam War (and Pol Pot’s sadistic creativity) the outside world didn’t realize what was happening in Cambodia until it was too late. It became a place cut off. Apart. Alone.

When my generation in America was watching Fraggle Rock, playing with Legos and pedaling Schwinns, the educated classes of Cambodia were being pulled from their homes in cities like Phnom Penh, marched out to the surrounding fields and slaughtered with blunt crop tools. The surviving uneducated classes, wives and children were rounded up and sent to work camps. The majority of those never came home.

It was 1991 before Cambodia received the U.N. for the first time. It was still unsafe to venture outside the main cities in 1995 – even if you were Cambodian – because the Khmer Rouge, still led by Pol Pot, held the borderlands near Thailand until 1998. When the regime finally fell, what remained was a country cut in half, its educated classes gone. To give you an idea, there were only 22 doctors left in the entire country at the end of the genocide. Those that survived the regime bear physical scars, as well as being handicapped mentally and emotionally. This agrarian farmland is still swamped with the blood memory of atrocious carnage, and anyone you meet in Cambodia over the age of 30 lost someone they loved in the “starvation period,” as they call it.

Our guide in Siem Reap is a man named Ratanak Khiev. He grew up just east, in the province of Kampong Thom. Today, as we clambored over temple ruins, he shared his own family’s story.

Ratanak’s father was a prominent math teacher, and his mother taught history.  Because they were educated, both his parents were jailed in 1976 when the regime took over. Young Ratanak was taken to a work camp, where he contracted malaria. Ironically, it was the malaria that saved his life. The Khmer Rouge tested experimental malaria vaccines on him and other sick children, and despite massive infections after being injected with coconut water and sugar solutions, he survived. His parents also survived and were eventually smuggled out by a friend who was working in the prison. Ratanak and his parents were reunited in 1979. Sadly, his four sisters and all of his cousins were not so fortunate. None survived.

Cambodians like Ratanak know what it is to relish the simplest pleasures in life, because they know how feels to lose them entirely. Waking up to a breakfast with your kids on a Tuesday. Watching a sunset. Laughing at a joke. A hot meal. A best friend. They know how quickly what you love can be taken from you.

Cambodia – a place that once ruled the world in the 12^th century – today, is one of the poorest countries on the planet. Things change. That’s life. That’s history. But to visit a place like this is a rare and unbelievable opportunity. There is so much happiness here for the joy of family and of life. So much joy for a fledgling (although still corrupt) democracy. There’s hope so thick in the air, you can’t help but swallow it – and be swallowed up by it all the same.

I’m going to be forever thankful that I got to see this place when it still retained a dirt-road, watch-out-for-that-chicken kind of charm, but to mourn the loss of cute dirt roads now paved, quaint candlelit markets now bathed by electricity, is a truly selfish practice. This town is the key to Cambodia’s future. Tourism is the force that will save its gracious, thankful people.

I say – Good job, Cambodians! Careful you don’t ruin your beautiful ruins in a haste to make up for lost time, but the world owes you a round of very, very loud applause.