The Phnom Penh Post
Monday, 08 February 2010 15:05 Steve Hirsch
WASHINGTON
EXPERTS testifying before a US government panel on Thursday described China’s relationship with Cambodia as part of a broader effort to deepen its influence in mainland Southeast Asia, and cited the December deportation of 20 Uighur asylum seekers – which came two days before the two countries signed aid agreements worth US$1.2 billion – as proof that the effort was working.
Speaking before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Donald Weatherbee, a leading American scholar on international relations in Southeast Asia, said China’s “accelerating” economic penetration of Cambodia was “a prime example of ‘RMB diplomacy’”, a phrase that refers to the Chinese currency, the Renminbi.
“In China,” he said, “the government of Hun Sen has an enabler, not concerned with issues of human rights, corruption, environmental degradation, the rule of law and the other kinds of nontraditional and human security issues with which Cambodia’s US and other Western [Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum] partners are concerned.”
Referring to the December deportation, he said: “Although both countries deny any connection between the signing of the economic package and the extradition of the Uighurs, it is clear that Cambodia was not going to allow its obligations under the United Nations Refugee Convention – to which it is a signatory – to put a shadow over the signing ceremony for the new agreements.”
The 12-member commission, established in 2000, submits an annual report to the US congress “on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between” the US and China, as well as providing “recommendations, where appropriate, to Congress for legislative and administrative action”.
Members are appointed by leaders in the US senate and house of representatives.
The hearing on Thursday, titled “China’s Activities in Southeast Asia and the Implications for US Interests”, was its first of the year.
Catharin Dalpino of Georgetown University told the panel that it was increasingly possible to detect “an emerging Chinese sphere of influence” in mainland Southeast Asia, especially in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, and to a lesser extent in Thailand and Vietnam.
She said China’s ties with mainland Southeast Asia had strengthened as the US, particularly under President George W Bush, focused on the region’s maritime countries, a trend she attributed in part to American emphasis on counterterrorism.
She also said that China was “adept” at exploiting differences in US and Chinese policies with respect to human rights and the promotion of democracy, citing Cambodia as an example.
“In Cambodia, when the West criticised Prime Minister Hun Sen for his part in the 1997 rupture of the government coalition, it put Beijing’s relations with the prime minister on a new, more positive footing,” she said, referring to the factional fighting between Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party and Funcinpec.
Bronson Percival, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic Studies at the nonprofit research company CNA, said ties between Cambodia and China were in part linked to defence agreements, calling China the “main patron” for the militaries in Cambodia and Laos.
However, he added, “Despite speculation that China would like to eventually develop a naval base along Cambodia’s coast, these security relationships are limited to the usual array of visits, training, and the transfer of unsophisticated Chinese military equipment.” China has reportedly been interested in establishing naval bases in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Thailand to protect shipping supply routes.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Koy Kuong on Sunday took issue with some of the experts’ assertions, notably the attempt to link the Uighur deportation with the economic assistance agreements. He said, as he has previously, that the Uighurs were deported for no other reason than that they had entered the country illegally and without documentation.
“No, it is not related to each other,” Koy Kuong said. “The relationship between Cambodia and China is apart from the deportation of the Uighurs.
The Uighurs in Cambodia were illegal immigrants, and Cambodia implemented the Immigration Law against them because they were illegal.”
He also said that Cambodia’s relationship with China was no different from its relationships with other countries that give economic assistance.
“Cambodia is a sovereign state, and China is also a sovereign state, and no one has influence over the other,” he said. “We treat each other equally.”
The US and Chinese embassies both declined to comment on Sunday.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ROBBIE COREY-BOULET
Monday, February 8, 2010
Yuon: What’s in a xenonym?
The Phnom Penh Post
Monday, 08 February 2010 15:02 Sophal Ear
A version of this article first appeared in Vietnamese in the online journal Talawas (Autumn 2009)
Someone once said, “To understand others, you must first understand yourself.” We believe that understanding the Khmer language alone and living in Cambodia is necessary but not sufficient to truly open up the Khmer soul to non-Khmers. Khmerness is speaking the language, understanding Khmer idioms, appreciating Khmer jokes and their nuances, and enjoying Khmer music and poetry. It is a feeling that resonates with Khmer people living in Cambodia. Being Khmer should not be synonymous with Pol Pot. The actions that Pol Pot committed are complete anathema to the Khmer soul. A Khmer is someone who is proud of the civilization that Angkor has left as its legacy.
The Khmer have lived under threat of extinction (perhaps even saved by French colonialism), and who have witnessed the disappearance of Khmer territory to their powerful neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. This is the context within which we write.
As Ronnie Yimsut has elaborated in a 2005 online essay: “These [invader] perceptions about Vietnam are also quite valid, historically speaking. The so-called Kampuchea Krom (area in … southern Vietnam including Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong delta region), and the former “Kingdom of Champa” (area in northern Vietnam) are two historical examples of successful Vietnamese annexation and expansionism.”
Pol Kang wrote in a 2004 article, “During the period 1813-15, Vietnamese perpetrated the infamous massacre known to every Khmer as prayat kompup te ong. It involved the most barbarous torture technique, in which the Khmer were buried alive up to their neck. Their heads were used as the stands for a wood stove to boil water for the Vietnamese masters.
Let us consider only the issue of language and the word used by Cambodians for the people of Vietnam: yuon. This remains a bone of contention because many non-Khmer have argued that the word is fundamentally racist in common parlance.
The word yuon may have come from the word yueh, what the Mandarin Chinese call Vietnam, yueh nam. The word nam means south in Chinese. Yueh indicates the name of the people of that region. Therefore, yueh means Viet or Vietnamese in Chinese, and yueh nam means the yueh people of the south. In this case, south means south of China. South Vietnam pronounces it yeaknam.
Chou Ta-Kuan (Zhou Daguan), the celebrated Chinese ambassador to Cambodia in the 13th century, indicated in his report that there was already a large population of Chinese settling in Cambodia at that time. He said that the Chinese preferred life in the Khmer Empire because it was easier than in China. There were a lot of Chinese men marrying the native Cambodian women. The word yuon may have derived from the Chinese word yueh to indicate the Vietnamese.
George Coedes, an expert on Southeast Asia, found evidence of the word yuon inscribed in Khmer on a stele dating to the time of the Khmer King Suryavarman I (1002-1050). Adhémar Leclère, a colonial French governor of Cambodia who lived there 25 years, used the word yuon throughout his book Histoire du Cambodge depuit le 1er siècle de notre ère (Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1914: 99, 413, 432, 434, 435, and 469).
While yuon has been equated with the word “savage” by David Roberts in a 2002 article for the Washington Times, in fact, the word savage in Cambodian translates to pourk prey or phnong (which unfortunately also refers to an ethnic hill tribe minority living in Cambodia). Cambodians call Vietnamese yuon the same way they call Indian khleung, Burmese phoumea, French barang and Chinese chen. These are all xenonyms and Khmer transliterations.
When the Vietnamese sometimes call Khmer people ngoi mien (when they should use ngoi campuchia), this is inaccurate because the word mien is the name for a minority group that is not ethnically Khmer. According to the Mien Network (http://www.miennetwork.com/miencommunity/history.html), “The Mien are a sub-group of the Yao in China, and they originated from Southwest China. According to 1995 population figures published by the Tribal Research Institute of Chiang Mai, there are over 40,000 Mien living in 173 villages in Northern Thailand. Larger numbers are found in Laos (85,000) and Vietnam (474,000), with the majority still in China. According to the 1990 census, there are about 2.1 million Yao living in China.”
Thus, it would be like saying of an Englishman that he is Basque. The geography is completely off, but the possible connotation may be of a nation without a state. In the late 17th century, the Vietnamese court of Hue changed the names of the Cambodian princesses Ang Mei, Ang Pen, Ang Peou and Ang Snguon to the Vietnamese-sounding names of Ngoc-van, Ngoc-bien, Ngoc-tu, and Ngoc-nguyen, respectively. Phnom Penh is also known in Vietnamese as Nam Vang. Indeed, our venerated Phnom Penh noodles are otherwise advertised in Vietnamese as heu tiev nam vang.
Moreover, while we call Chao Doc and Saigon (what is now HCMC) Mot Chrouk and Prey Nokor, respectively, this is the equivalent phenomenon in use when it comes to the word yuon, that of a xenonym in current use.
We surmise that confusion over the word yuon arises from the fact that the word Vietnam(ese) exists. The misunderstanding is that for Khmer people to opt for using the word yuon instead of the word Vietnam(ese) gives non-Khmer the impression that we are racists. To say this would be the equivalent of saying that anyone who uses the word Cambodian instead of Khmer is racist.
When we speak in Khmer, it is very awkward and does not sound right to the ear to use the word Vietnam, and even less so Vietnamese.
However, when we speak in English or French, it is more natural to use the word Vietnamese or Vietnamien, and it would become awkward to use the word yuon.
For example, if we want to say that “fishermen are mostly Vietnamese”, and both words, yuon and Vietnamese, are used in a Khmer sentence, the result would be as follows: pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè youn, or pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè choun cheat vietnam. It therefore requires more syllables to use the word Vietnam to describe the Vietnamese because we have to say choun cheat vietnam (literally National of Vietnam) to describe a Vietnamese person. We cannot say pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè vietnam because Vietnam is a country. In Khmer, the word Vietnamese per se does not exist unless one uses the word yuon.
It is rare in the Khmer language to have a racist word attributed to different ethnic groups. However, this does not mean that salty language does not exist. To the contrary, when wishing to disrespect someone, we add an adjective “a” in front of the word that we intend to use. If we say a yuon, then it is a sign of disrespect, but not necessarily a racist remark. To be racist requires that the following words be used: a katop (equating a Vietnamese to a diaper), a gnieung (a probable play on the common Vietnamese family name Nguyen) or a sakei daung (equating a Vietnamese to a coconut husk). Some might compare the word yuon to the word “nigger”, but that is too strong and ahistorical a comparison. In any case, to have called someone in 1860 racist for using the word nigger would be historically inaccurate. These were conventions then, and evolved out of fashion later.
The only basis to this is when, during the Lon Nol period (Khmer Republic 1970-1975), yuon was indeed used in a derogatory fashion during attacks on Vietnamese people. Thus, the word took on a negative connotation in the 1970s and was allegedly banned in the 1980s when Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam. Sour Vietnamese soup, samlar machou yuon, became samlar machou vietnam, but reverted to its original name in the 1990s. Of course, the Khmer Rouge also used the word yuon, as when they characterised the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) as yuon-TAC, an agent of the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian People’s Party. But again, just because the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Republicans hijacked the word does not mean it must now be abandoned in everyday language.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ alone and do not represent the views of their employers or the US government.
Sophal Ear is an assistant professor of national security affairs in Monterey, California. Kenneth T So is an engineer and Khmer historian.
Monday, 08 February 2010 15:02 Sophal Ear
A version of this article first appeared in Vietnamese in the online journal Talawas (Autumn 2009)
Someone once said, “To understand others, you must first understand yourself.” We believe that understanding the Khmer language alone and living in Cambodia is necessary but not sufficient to truly open up the Khmer soul to non-Khmers. Khmerness is speaking the language, understanding Khmer idioms, appreciating Khmer jokes and their nuances, and enjoying Khmer music and poetry. It is a feeling that resonates with Khmer people living in Cambodia. Being Khmer should not be synonymous with Pol Pot. The actions that Pol Pot committed are complete anathema to the Khmer soul. A Khmer is someone who is proud of the civilization that Angkor has left as its legacy.
The Khmer have lived under threat of extinction (perhaps even saved by French colonialism), and who have witnessed the disappearance of Khmer territory to their powerful neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. This is the context within which we write.
As Ronnie Yimsut has elaborated in a 2005 online essay: “These [invader] perceptions about Vietnam are also quite valid, historically speaking. The so-called Kampuchea Krom (area in … southern Vietnam including Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong delta region), and the former “Kingdom of Champa” (area in northern Vietnam) are two historical examples of successful Vietnamese annexation and expansionism.”
Pol Kang wrote in a 2004 article, “During the period 1813-15, Vietnamese perpetrated the infamous massacre known to every Khmer as prayat kompup te ong. It involved the most barbarous torture technique, in which the Khmer were buried alive up to their neck. Their heads were used as the stands for a wood stove to boil water for the Vietnamese masters.
Let us consider only the issue of language and the word used by Cambodians for the people of Vietnam: yuon. This remains a bone of contention because many non-Khmer have argued that the word is fundamentally racist in common parlance.
The word yuon may have come from the word yueh, what the Mandarin Chinese call Vietnam, yueh nam. The word nam means south in Chinese. Yueh indicates the name of the people of that region. Therefore, yueh means Viet or Vietnamese in Chinese, and yueh nam means the yueh people of the south. In this case, south means south of China. South Vietnam pronounces it yeaknam.
Chou Ta-Kuan (Zhou Daguan), the celebrated Chinese ambassador to Cambodia in the 13th century, indicated in his report that there was already a large population of Chinese settling in Cambodia at that time. He said that the Chinese preferred life in the Khmer Empire because it was easier than in China. There were a lot of Chinese men marrying the native Cambodian women. The word yuon may have derived from the Chinese word yueh to indicate the Vietnamese.
George Coedes, an expert on Southeast Asia, found evidence of the word yuon inscribed in Khmer on a stele dating to the time of the Khmer King Suryavarman I (1002-1050). Adhémar Leclère, a colonial French governor of Cambodia who lived there 25 years, used the word yuon throughout his book Histoire du Cambodge depuit le 1er siècle de notre ère (Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1914: 99, 413, 432, 434, 435, and 469).
While yuon has been equated with the word “savage” by David Roberts in a 2002 article for the Washington Times, in fact, the word savage in Cambodian translates to pourk prey or phnong (which unfortunately also refers to an ethnic hill tribe minority living in Cambodia). Cambodians call Vietnamese yuon the same way they call Indian khleung, Burmese phoumea, French barang and Chinese chen. These are all xenonyms and Khmer transliterations.
When the Vietnamese sometimes call Khmer people ngoi mien (when they should use ngoi campuchia), this is inaccurate because the word mien is the name for a minority group that is not ethnically Khmer. According to the Mien Network (http://www.miennetwork.com/miencommunity/history.html), “The Mien are a sub-group of the Yao in China, and they originated from Southwest China. According to 1995 population figures published by the Tribal Research Institute of Chiang Mai, there are over 40,000 Mien living in 173 villages in Northern Thailand. Larger numbers are found in Laos (85,000) and Vietnam (474,000), with the majority still in China. According to the 1990 census, there are about 2.1 million Yao living in China.”
Thus, it would be like saying of an Englishman that he is Basque. The geography is completely off, but the possible connotation may be of a nation without a state. In the late 17th century, the Vietnamese court of Hue changed the names of the Cambodian princesses Ang Mei, Ang Pen, Ang Peou and Ang Snguon to the Vietnamese-sounding names of Ngoc-van, Ngoc-bien, Ngoc-tu, and Ngoc-nguyen, respectively. Phnom Penh is also known in Vietnamese as Nam Vang. Indeed, our venerated Phnom Penh noodles are otherwise advertised in Vietnamese as heu tiev nam vang.
Moreover, while we call Chao Doc and Saigon (what is now HCMC) Mot Chrouk and Prey Nokor, respectively, this is the equivalent phenomenon in use when it comes to the word yuon, that of a xenonym in current use.
We surmise that confusion over the word yuon arises from the fact that the word Vietnam(ese) exists. The misunderstanding is that for Khmer people to opt for using the word yuon instead of the word Vietnam(ese) gives non-Khmer the impression that we are racists. To say this would be the equivalent of saying that anyone who uses the word Cambodian instead of Khmer is racist.
When we speak in Khmer, it is very awkward and does not sound right to the ear to use the word Vietnam, and even less so Vietnamese.
However, when we speak in English or French, it is more natural to use the word Vietnamese or Vietnamien, and it would become awkward to use the word yuon.
For example, if we want to say that “fishermen are mostly Vietnamese”, and both words, yuon and Vietnamese, are used in a Khmer sentence, the result would be as follows: pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè youn, or pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè choun cheat vietnam. It therefore requires more syllables to use the word Vietnam to describe the Vietnamese because we have to say choun cheat vietnam (literally National of Vietnam) to describe a Vietnamese person. We cannot say pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè vietnam because Vietnam is a country. In Khmer, the word Vietnamese per se does not exist unless one uses the word yuon.
It is rare in the Khmer language to have a racist word attributed to different ethnic groups. However, this does not mean that salty language does not exist. To the contrary, when wishing to disrespect someone, we add an adjective “a” in front of the word that we intend to use. If we say a yuon, then it is a sign of disrespect, but not necessarily a racist remark. To be racist requires that the following words be used: a katop (equating a Vietnamese to a diaper), a gnieung (a probable play on the common Vietnamese family name Nguyen) or a sakei daung (equating a Vietnamese to a coconut husk). Some might compare the word yuon to the word “nigger”, but that is too strong and ahistorical a comparison. In any case, to have called someone in 1860 racist for using the word nigger would be historically inaccurate. These were conventions then, and evolved out of fashion later.
The only basis to this is when, during the Lon Nol period (Khmer Republic 1970-1975), yuon was indeed used in a derogatory fashion during attacks on Vietnamese people. Thus, the word took on a negative connotation in the 1970s and was allegedly banned in the 1980s when Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam. Sour Vietnamese soup, samlar machou yuon, became samlar machou vietnam, but reverted to its original name in the 1990s. Of course, the Khmer Rouge also used the word yuon, as when they characterised the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) as yuon-TAC, an agent of the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian People’s Party. But again, just because the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Republicans hijacked the word does not mean it must now be abandoned in everyday language.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ alone and do not represent the views of their employers or the US government.
Sophal Ear is an assistant professor of national security affairs in Monterey, California. Kenneth T So is an engineer and Khmer historian.
Finding real beauty far away from Angkor Wat
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A structure related to the Central Sanctuary of Prasat Preah Vihear stands at the edge of a cliff. (Photo Source: Shanghaidaily.com)Beijing, Feb. 8 (Shanghai Daily) -- Bus trips, motorbike adventures and hikes. When you travel in Cambodia, you need more than a pair of sturdy shoes and a guidebook. You also need determination, persistence and a discerning eye that can discover the real beauty.
Just as Angkor is more than its wat, so too is Cambodia more than its national pride Angkor Wat. Far more than that, indeed.
This Southeast Asian country can be an adventurer's paradise, if you are tough enough, physically and mentally.
Leave behind touristy Siem Reap where the magnificent Angkor temples are and venture further to the far-flung areas and mountains, and you will find nature and history telling a different story.
That amazing story, however, comes at a cost - most of the inspired temples, lost to all but the intrepid for decades, are tucked away well off the beaten track; some so far away that there's hardly a road you can track.
Prasat Preah Vihear (Preah Vihear Temple), in northwestern Cambodia's Preah Vihear Province, is a sublime spot but is only for those with a serious thirst for adventure. The vast area borders Thailand and Laos to the north, much of it heavily forested and extremely remote.
It's all about location, location, location - a mountain temple perched precariously atop a cliff-face on the Thai border.
In this tough but rewarding two-day trip on rough, dusty roads, you will see the real life of ordinary Cambodians - harsh, bitter yet vibrant.
My pilgrimage began with a two-and-a-half-hour bus trip from Siem Reap to Anlong Veng, a transfer where I stopped over to get fully prepared for the next day's odyssey.
For almost a decade this small town was the ultimate Khmer Rouge stronghold: home to Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ta Mok, among the most notorious leaders of Democratic Kampuchea.
Today Anlong Veng is a poor, dusty place with little going for it except the nearby Choam-Choam Srawngam border crossing, which takes you to a pretty isolated part of Thailand. The average visitor will find little to see or do here, but for those with a keen interest in contemporary Cambodian history, some Khmer Rouge sites are an important - if troubling and enigmatic - part of the picture, through which you can feel the pain and tears the people once suffered.
On a peaceful lakeside site, Ta Mok's house (admission US$2) is a Spartan structure with a bunker in the basement, five childish wall murals downstairs and three more murals upstairs, including a map and an idyllic wildlife scene. About the only furnishings that weren't looted are the floor tiles - on these very bits of ceramic, the men who killed 1.7 million Cambodians used to plan offensives, pass death sentences, and joke with friends.
From the turnoff to Ta Mok's house, my local driver/guide Noon (who speaks English) drove a further 7 kilometers north to Tumnup Leu, where a right turn and 400 meters brought me to Ta Mok's grave.
"Mind your feet and closely follow me, if you don't want to lose any part of your body," Noon warns, referring to a nearby minefield.
The tomb has no name or inscription of any sort, but this doesn't seem to bother the locals who stop by to light incense sticks and - in a bizarre new local tradition - hope his ghost grants them a winning lottery number.
The real challenge presented itself when early next morning we hit the road heading to Prasat Preah Vihear. The transport situation was as dire as the state of the dirt road, with through-traffic virtually nonexistent.
Before getting started, Noon suggested I wear a mask. I didn't put it on until half an hour later when the dust and dirt were everywhere in the air.
For the next two and a half hours, my eyes didn't open for even a minute. The dust went all the way through the mask - into my eyes, nose, mouth and ears. My hair became sticky, face turned brownish, hands got dark. Even worse, my clothes, trousers, scarf, bag - everything exposed - were covered all over with thick dust.
I became a "dust girl."
When we finally reached the foot of the mountain after the non-stop bumpy journey, Noon and I changed to a bigger, more powerful motorbike (rental US$5) for a hair-raising, 20-minute ride up gradients of up to 40 percent.
I held on tight to Noon to keep from falling off. My heart was racing.
But the moment I got off the motorbike, stood on the mountain top, and took in the panorama, I felt that all the hardship paid off. I was overwhelmed by the satisfaction of knowing that I had completed a modern-day pilgrimage almost the equal of one undertaken at the height of the Angkorian empire.
The views are breathtaking: lowland Cambodia, 550 meters below, stretching as far as the eye can see, with the holy mountain of Phnom Kulen looming in the distance.
For generations, Prasat Preah Vihear has been a source of tension between Cambodia and Thailand.
During my recent visit soldiers holding rifles were everywhere: patrolling or standing guard right on the border or around the temple. Flags of both the United Nations and Cambodia flapped high in the wind.
"Just two weeks ago, there was a big fight right here on the border," Noon told me.
That's maybe why very few people want to come here - even if they want, they are most likely to think twice, for the journey and for their own safety.
"You are the only tourist here in two weeks," said one stationed soldier among a group who gathered around looking in curiosity and surprise at me. "Very few people come here, not to mention women; you are probably the first one.
"The whole journey up here is very hard, not everyone can make it, you are very brave and strong-willed," he added.
The most dramatically situated of all the Angkorian monuments, 800-meter-long Prasat Preah Vihear (admission US$5) perches high atop the south-facing cliff face of the Dangkrek Mountains.
The height of Angkorian architectural audacity, its foundation stones stretch to the edge of a precipitous cliff. Breathe in the views as they are simply enormous.
Prasat Preah Vihear, an important place of pilgrimage during the Angkorian period, was built by a succession of seven Khmer monarchs, one of them being Suryavarman II, builder of Angkor Wat, which is also why in some aspects this mountain-top temple is similar to the "mother of all temples" in Siem Reap.
Like other temple-mountains from this period, it was designed to represent Mt Meru and was dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva.
Start a visit at the monumental stairway, if possible from the bottom (near the market and the crossing from Thailand). As you walk south, you come to four cruciform gopuras (sanctuaries), decorated with a profusion of exquisite carvings and separated by esplanades up to 350 meters long.
At the entrance to the Gopura of the Third Level, look for an early rendering of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, a theme later depicted awesomely at Angkor Wat. The Central Sanctuary and its associated structures and galleries, in a remarkably good state of repair, are right at the edge of the cliff, which affords stupendous views of Cambodia's northern plains.
Completing my pilgrimage with a deep breath, I looked into the distance, feeling my body and soul never before so closely connected.
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