LTO Cambodia: Pa Cha

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Pa Cha

Crematorium at Wat Ounalom, next to Phsar Kandal off of Street 154, now gone.

Cambodian Buddhist tradition is to cremate the dead. Major Buddhist pagodas in Cambodia often have a traditional crematorium (pa cha) on the grounds. Over the last year most of Phnom Penh's crematoria were shuttered and demolished. After many years of planning, the city implemented the closure of the crematoria within the city, citing air quality and traffic control reasons. (See 'Municipality prepares to move cremations outside the capital.') As the city has developed and filled in, many of these crematoria were within a few tens of meters of restaurants, schools, businesses and the like where wisps of smoke drifting by were less than welcome. The crematorium pictured above sat at the back of the Wat Ounalom pagoda grounds and was something of a minor landmark, overlooking the market intersection of Street 13 and Street 154. It was demolished earlier this year, now an empty lot within the pagoda grounds. For most of its existence it sat opposite the site of the old French prison T3, which was demolished several years ago.

2 comments:

UnknownNovember 4, 2010 at 6:34 AM
And gone with them is the source of many tasteless jokes about barbeques. More seriously, the staff of the crematoria were a special cloass of monastery servant - or maybe not servants at all - who will now be unemployed. Perhaps you could investigate this for us? I really am very hazy about the details, but was told about this way back when the closures were first announced.
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Casey Nelson (pseud.)November 5, 2010 at 5:44 PM
Very interesting thought. I also noticed that other related businesses - the hearses and the coffin maker next door have moved away. I will try to learn more about the people who tend the crematorium within a pagoda and report back.
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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.