Exploring Banteay Chhmar — a hidden Khmer Gem
For many tourists travelling in Southeast Asia, Cambodia remains a rushed stopover half way between Vietnam and Thailand: a few snaps at the majestic temples of Angkor Wat and long nights at the sandy beaches of Sihanoukville satisfy many a tourist’s thirst for adventure. But far away from all the splendour, in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold, the shy beauty of a forgotten temple and the gentle hospitality of Cambodia’s people are to be found.
The road from Sisophon to Banteay Chhmar is red and dusty: the lush, green rice fields and colourful Khmer houses, which guided my journey before, give way to a haggard landscape, only interrupted by occasional skinny palm trees and brown forests with crouching bushes. “The rainy season is taking its time this year to arrive,” the driver of my shared taxi explains in broken English, which puts an even greater strain on this poverty-stricken province in North-western Cambodia. Far away from Cambodia’s cosmopolitan capital Phnom Penh and the tourist centre Siem Reap with its majestic temples of Angkor, Sisophon is a dusty transit hub that rarely sees large groups of tourists and Western influence is scant, setting the tone for my onward journey.
I had continued my travels from bustling Phnom Penh to the sleepy colonial town of Battambang, where I spent a few days marvelling at intricate Chinese shop houses and ornate French colonial buildings, exploring the busy markets and wandering the tranquil streets, where NGO-run Cafés offer richly flavoured Cambodian coffee, before continuing my journey to Siem Reap. It was in one of those cafes, where one of the Khmer baristas told me about an intriguing place called Banteay Chhmar: a remote collection of villages, 170km Northwest of Siem Reap and close to the border with Thailand, and which hosts Cambodia’s second biggest temple complex outside of Angkor Wat. The largely un-deciphered forest ruin has yet to appear on the maps of many temple-hunting visitors.
The image of going off the beaten track to explore this intriguing and little-visited place quickly took hold of me and I rescheduled my travels. Where sophisticated tourist infrastructure is lacking, Banteay Chhmar CBT (Community-based tourism), a community-run initiative, has stepped in, offering homestays with local families, I was told. At only 7 USD, a one night stay with a Khmer family in Banteay Chhmar is easily arranged via CBT’s website. Aside from homestays and temple visits, CBT offers the opportunity to immerse oneself in the local community via individually tailored tours that include activities from trips to a close by Soieries du Mekong Silk Center, the sharing of traditional meals with the village’s inhabitants and small concerts of traditional Khmer music, among others.
Two breakneck shared taxi rides — including a fair amount of gesticulated negotiation in pseudo-Khmer — along gradually deteriorating roads later, I arrived at the palm leaf covered hut with adjacent library that is the English class room, office and dining room of CBT. It is an unexpected offering: the humble premises face a cluster of larger-than-life stone figures at the edge of a squared-off moat, and the water’s surface is curled by pink lotus blossoms, the entrance to the temple of Banteay Chhmar. When I arrive, a dozen or so schoolgirls are repeating English phrases after their teacher. At the sight of the intruder, they shyly giggle, only to be encouraged by their teacher to test their skills with me. Before we get a chance at joyful banter, That Sophal, the coordinator of CBT in Banteay Chhmar, ushers me out and invites me to hop onto his motorcycle to drop me off at my host family, only a few hundred metres away.
CBT Banteay Chhmar was started in 2007 with the aid of the French NGO Agir Pour le Cambodge (APLC). In cooperation with the Global Heritage Fund, a California and UK-based non-profit organisation that tries to rehabilitate the temple, and Siem Reap based NGO Heritage Watch, which helps in areas of educating the local population about the importance of protecting their Khmer cultural heritage, CBT has worked to enable local people living and working around Banteay Chhmar both acquire a deep understanding of the site and benefit from it economically and socially.
My accommodation for the night is a traditional wooden Khmer house, inhabited by a middle-aged couple, Sril Som and Khut Savuon, their curious toddler son and his grandmother, who cheerily invite me into their home. Although certainly adapted to a Western tourist’s expectations of comfort — the generous room and shared bathroom are spotlessly clean and there is a fan, mosquito net and electricity around the clock — the accommodation is humble and equipped with only the bare necessities. Still, with its generous veranda, well-lit rooms and dark timber, the house evokes an unexpected grandeur in this dusty town. Their colourful roofs and intricate pediments appear elegant and artful. But traditional Khmer houses, such as those found in Banteay Chhmar, are sturdy and strong, built on stilts to defy flooding and torrential rainfalls during the wet season.
From the outset, Banteay Chhmar is just one of many Khmer villages: a collection of houses along a dusty road, a communal market, a Buddhist temple, and a few stray dogs. But there’s much more than meets the eye. The village itself is not simply a group of families that have lived together for generations. In the civil war’s dislocation, which haunted the country throughout the 1970s, many came from elsewhere. Especially those families participating in the CBT Homestay Programme thus share a past that is determined by Cambodia’s recent bloody history: some, mostly middle class city dwellers, were relocated here in Pol Pot’s brutal attempt to reorganise Cambodia into a purely agrarian society in the 1970s. Others joined the community after returning from refugee camps across the Thai-Cambodian border in the early 1990s, when the Khmer Rouge were still holding strong ground in the area.
Indeed, Cambodia’s recent bloody history is present throughout my journey across the country. It reveals itself not only in the official museums and killing fields sites in Phnom Penh and other big cities, which seek to keep the memory of the inexplicable brutality alive, but it is present in conversations with local people, at bookstands and the newspapers reporting on the still on-going Khmer Rouge trials. When Pol Pot came to power, he declared that the nation would start again at “Year Zero”, set about emptying the cities, abolishing money, private property and religion, and setting up rural collectives. Anyone thought to be an intellectual of any sort was killed. Often, people were condemned for wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language. Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres. Cambodia continues to recover from devastation wrought by more than a decade of civil war, which started in 1970, US-American bomb attacks during the Vietnam War and the gruesome Khmer Rouge reign, when an estimated one in four Cambodians died and nearly all aspects of Cambodian society were systematically destroyed. How long does it take to heal from a genocide?
I encounter another aspect of this dark chapter in Cambodia’s history, when I meet Kit Sokoun, the CBT’s English teacher and also my personal guide to the temple site. As we cross the causeway that separates the village from the vast temple complex and share a coconut — a sorely needed relief from the pressing heat of the afternoon — he tells me of his life, which is so emblematic for many of the small village’s residents. Born in Battambang, he spent the first years of his life in a refugee camp in Thailand, where his parents sought shelter from the relentless violence in their native Cambodia. He doesn’t speak Thai, as the Thai government back then did not make an effort to integrate or otherwise grant any rights/protection to those fleeing the violence. When he was six years of age, Soukon’s family decided to return to Cambodia, despite the persistently strong presence of the Khmer Rouge in the area around Banteay Chhmar. The continued violence made the already bleak economic situation even more severe and offered little prospect to Sokoun and his peers. The area only slowly recovered, even years after the Khmer Rouge were officially considered as vanquished. Only as part of CBT’s initiative to mobilise local people around the protection of endangered monuments, was he able to become an English teacher and tour guide.
As we enter the temple’s premises — with no other tourists around — Soukon speaks with passionate authority of the many unanswered questions surrounding the site. Banteay Chhmar (“Citadel of Cats”) is the ancient Khmer’s second largest stone construction and one of the largest Khmer complexes built outside of Angkor. An areal of eight temples deep in the Cambodian jungle, Banteay Chhmar was commissioned by the twelfth-century Khmer ruler Jayavarman VII — the king who linked Cambodia to Buddhism — as a monastic temple complex.
Even the archeologically uninterested traveller must eventually be captured by the charms of this slumbering monumental giant with its cracked archways and moss-covered walls, which give today’s visitor something of the experience of a 19th century explorer. The glory of Banteay Chhmar is its raw, unadulterated state: only 25 percent of the original structure are still standing, the remains have been reclaimed by trees whose roots wind around the stone like tentacles. As we stride over its fallen sandstone blocks, the temple ruin breathes a mysterious, mystical power. Impressive towers, raised up to reach the height of the tropical trees, carrying four faces of enigmatically smiling Buddhasatwas, watch over the vast sea of stones, among partly standing and rebuild walls, ornate porticos and bas-reliefs of mysterious dancers.
In the absence of World Heritage Status, the Culture Ministry in 2008 handed control of the temple to Global Heritage Fund under the lead of British architect John Sanday, the eventual aim being its inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Demonstrating that heritage sites can provide an income to local communities helps them to value it, an important step towards ensuring its survival, the GHF established a wide-ranging conservation, master plan and community development project at the site.
There will always be arguments over the impact that tourism has on historic sites and local people with the footfall in places like Angkor resulting in calls for tourist caps. But the GHF’s and the CBT’s approach is entirely focused on sustainability. While private businesses benefiting from tourist hotspots retain their profits, the CBT income from visitors is for the benefit of the villagers and, to date, has seen funds reinvested in initiatives such as waste collection, a children’s library and the opening of a local restaurant.
2015 saw a year on year increase in CBT tourists of 8 percent, and a 20 percent increase in total income. The project continues to grow and this, coupled with additional projects such as private guided tours with academics, helps generate the much needed funds to ensure the rich cultural heritage of Cambodia is protected for future generations and continues to have a positive impact on the daily lives of the people closest to it.
In the early evening, I spent a while lying in one of the colourful hammocks in the patio of the house on stilts. Wind whispers through the palm trees and treetops nearby and chases away some of the last heat of the day. The laughter of children playing in the patio of the neighbouring house softly disrupts the complete peacefulness of the situation. Older women, with their printed harem pants and wrapped skirts, colourful blouses and Khmer headscarves, go by their daily business, chopping wood, cleaning out the patios and preparing plugged chickens for dinner. The rush of the past couple of days, the many impressions and intriguing questions I absorbed settle down in my mind, finally giving me the time and space to put together an image of a highly complex and deeply moving country, which intrigues me in a way I haven’t experienced in many years.
The next day in the late morning, I set off in the direction of Siem Reap, the tourist capital of Cambodia, where I spend several days exploring the stunning temple complexes of Angkor, including the world famous Angkor Wat. The less than 24 hours I spent in Banteay Chhmar, however, staying with a local family, sharply contrasted with the rest of my experience in Cambodia. For once, it brought back the individual, unique experience, which travellers so keenly seek, and so rarely find in times of Instagram and eager travel bloggers. What’s more, my homestay gave me a rare glimpse into life for many Cambodians, through a program that’s locally managed and provides hosts with income. It may have been too short to look beyond the romance of the short stay and fully engage with the community — but it surely provoked a deep interest in this country and the desire to continue learning.
Info CBT: http://www.visitbanteaychhmar.org/
Cost per person for a one-night stay, accommodation with a Khmer family: 7 USD (1 USD of which is saved in the CBT’s local fund); meals and additional activities such as temple tours, visits of the silk factory etc are charged extra. An overview of current prices can be seen here: http://www.visitbanteaychhmar.org/prices-and-tours/
Donations: http://www.visitbanteaychhmar.org/about/support-us/
