LTO Cambodia: A road in Prey Veng

Friday, July 26, 2013

A road in Prey Veng

CPP logo

This month, five years ago I drove out this same road in Prey Veng province on my way to Mesang district. This particular stretch was a red mud nightmare, deeply rutted and almost impassible in parts. Today I was surprised to find it paved and smooth, 40+ kilometers of it. Impressive...as was the massive CPP campaign parade that passed us on this road deep in the countryside. The new road must be of great benefit to the villages it connects together and to the main road. I was somewhat less surprised to see CPP campaign signs with pictures of Hun Sen juxtaposed with the new road. So was the road built by the state or the party? Hard to tell. This is how the CPP provides for its rural constituency - roads and sewers and other services ordinarily provided by the state, but apparently raining down from the party like gifts dropped from heaven by a devata. And the countryside has traditionally given its votes back to the party in appreciation for such patronage. Democracy feudal-style. Still, I wondered if the fear generated by land grabbing, and the larger youth and the factory worker vote, and the continued lack of development in health, education and poverty reduction, and the seeming generalized desire for change might offset the new road this election. Hard to tell.

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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.