TRAVEL
A Marriage of Convenience in Cambodia
Notes from a trip to Angkor Wat in 1991
One piece of advice I’d been given about travelling in Southeast Asia was to always have a pack of cigarettes on hand. The offer of a cigarette went a long way towards greasing the wheels of bureaucracy and I expected a fair amount of grease would be needed for the next part of my journey. So, although I wasn’t a smoker, I bought two cartons of Marlboros in duty-free on my way into Vietnam.
I was keen to see Vietnam, but my ultimate destination was the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. This was tricky to get to in 1991, particularly for a shoestring traveller like myself, but I was determined.
Vietnam had invaded Cambodia in 1978 and ousted the Khmer Rouge who had taken over the country in 1975. In the three years they were in power, the Khmer Rouge killed between one-quarter and one-third of the total population of Cambodia.
They had continued to fight with the Vietnamese-backed government since then, but in 1991 the war was finally winding down.
Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s in Canada, Vietnam and Cambodia were regularly in the news. I became fascinated with the region — not just the wars and the genocide and the famine, but with the culture and history of…
