LTO Cambodia: Rain Drunk

Monday, October 11, 2010

Rain Drunk

Kampot - It’s raining. Hard. A standard monsoon-season rain in Cambodia. Mid-afternoon, sudden, intense and noisy, long in trailing off. First it came in opaque gray sheets, curtains of water sweeping across the city, after an hour or so finally settling into a nice moderately heavy downpour. Naked children danced and played in the flooding streets. From the balcony I watched motos and romuks battle the deepening waters in the central roundabout opposite my hotel. Rain affects Cambodian motorists like some kind of meteorological pheromone, sending drivers into a frenzy of wild and reckless behavior. The harder it rains, the more difficult it is to see, the faster and harder they drive. Motorcycles and Camrys dodge and weave around horse carts, rain-drunk children, stray cows and each other. Motorcyclists rooster tail through the flooded streets, one hand on the throttle, the other arm an eye shield to the rain, leaning forward into the spray as if to emphasize the rain induced need-for-speed. Speeding Lexus SUVs plow through the waters sending waves lapping up into homes and businesses. The storm is just now lightening into a boring gray drizzle. The floods are pulling back, depositing free-floating trash at the perimeter of the receding waters. Styrofoam, plastic bags and coconut husks. Children wander home. Traffic slows. Calm ensues.

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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.