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Great Expectations
by Tom Bianchi
Photos from Cambodian Emissary article.
Everybody seems to have them in Siem Reap. The hotel proprietor whose rooms have doubled from 50 to 100 in a single season. The telecommunications giants that are falling over one another so as not to be left behind in the boondocks. The gasoline companies that are opening new stations all over town. The entrepreneurs who are establishing restaurants from scratch. The banks from Phnom Penh that are inaugurating branch offices. The schools that are offering English lessons to provincial students.The national carrier that is adding new ATRs to its domestic fleet. Overseas travel agents who are looking for multi-lingual partners. What's happening? There's no doubt about it. Based on so many great expectations, Siem Reap, the Khmer cradle of Angkor War, is about to go "sonic" boom!
Yet it is a wonderful sleepy place, the speed in the surrounding paddies being no faster than the rice grows or the buffaloes plod. Making Siem Reap a provincial city of great contrasts. The phone beside the bed in the hotel room is brand new but don't expect it to be connected to IDD. There will be air conditioning but don't be surprised to discover that it's an old Soviet model without spare parts. There will be food but little of it Western - garlic bread is literally a whole clove of garlic on a pan-heated bun. Slide film is for sale but it can't be processed until you return to Phnom Penh (and then there is only one photo shop providing the service). You will be told by well meaning travel guides that you can use your AMEX card - they recognise the logo - but you can't, not in Siem Reap anyway. You want to linger longer but the clerk at the airline's local office refuses to change your booking without collecting a 5-10%' fee - no wonder the word "provincial" has several meanings! The whole town appears to suffer from chronic blackouts at night. Ah, how to meet the technically sophisticated expectations of the modern traveller in an outmoded world.
Surging commercial activity around the main entrance (the West Gate) to Angkor War makes it appear garish and inelegant for a world heritage site. Tourists are besieged by children selling buffalo bells, T-shirts, wind and string instruments, brass apsaras, and assorted picture-postcards hermetically sealed in plastic. Anything for a dollar. I told them that the gentleman drinking a can of soda-pop in the middle of a mid-sized group tour wanted to buy a dozen T-shirts and a like number of postcards for his nieces and nephews back home. Alas, the ruse didn't work. Not to break their hearts - so great were their expectations - and also to get the kids to go away, I gave in and bought a buffalo bell. Wrong move; straightway, the word was out that I was a soft touch! All with great expectations, 20 laughing children descended on me with every Cambodian handicraft ever crafted since Chou Ta-Kuan, a Chinese emissary, visited the renowned complex in 1296-97. Even if it spoils the view, one has to admire their industriousness, their "capitalist roader" tendencies. Besides, it isn't the children's fault that they are pushed into hawking gimcracks; it's the fault of their parents. (And who might their parents be? They are the adults who have something to do with Angkor War; for example, the grown-ups manning the site's inbound checkpoints and staffing the food stalls in the high-canopied woods--that's who!)
It's not commonly known that there is, in fact, a second route into the temple, a passage through a "grand" collapsed entrance. It lies across the east causeway and through - you got it! - the East Gate. Romantically, this is also known as the Elephant Gate. Quite high and without steps, it was designed for the king and his royal entourage. There they would dismount their elephants before entering the gallery on ceremonial visits, and mount their elephants when withdrawing. The causeway itself is not easily spotted unless you look for it - it isn't on the tourist route. But drive completely around the splendid, squarish moat once and you'll see it. Park your car and stroll across it. You will have a visual experience not unlike the one Henri Mouhot, the so-called "discoverer" of Angkor War although he wasn't, beheld in the 1860s. The regal gate is majestically tumbling down. Vegetation abounds. Birds call in the trees. The few souls whom you meet will be orange-robed monks strolling to the nearby pagoda. Here, the expectation is that you can let your imagination run wild and absorb a bit of the original grandeur of this Cambodian Wonder of the World in some semblance of bygone glory. (There's so little activity at the Elephant Gate that even the Dollar Children are not part of the natural ensemble.)
Back in Siem Reap seven kilometres down the road, Phoeung Chomnith at Angkor Tourism and Tea Franna at Diethelm Travel will tell you that the number of visitors landing at the town's miniature airport may increase 30,Yo during the 1996-97 high season. "Our North American and Western European visitors come whatever the political temperature, hot or cold," Phoeung Chomnith said. "They book a year in advance and show up exactly a year to the day later. But most of our East Asian brothers back off," he continued, "as soon as either prime minister, when driving home a point, says something the least bit politically ticklish or off-colour. The phone rings Monday; four aren't coming Tuesday. The phone rings again the next day; ten more aren't coming Wednesday. What a nuisance." He concludes with a sense of irony and expectation, "It's a blessing there are several races in the world that can afford to visit Angkor War." Tea Franna, his friendly competitor across the road, agreed with the view that Western visitors are more predictable. (For the record, 33,039 Japanese visited Cambodia in 1996. There were 260,489 international arrivals all told, 74% of whom were tourists. This figure represents an 18.6% increase over the previous year, 1995.)
Great expectations are also found on the nearby Great Lake more properly known as Tonle Sap. Looking straight from Biblical Egypt, the pencil-thin pirogue floats upon placid water. Standing, a mother and son command separate oars in the petite stern. Perched on the bow, the father dips his broad V-shaped net towards the shore. The mother and son manoeuvre their oars with precision that comes from experience. Likewise, the father aims his net with the skill of a fisherman who began his apprenticeship as a boy. With much manipulation, the net comes up empty. Undeterred, mother and son put their backs into it again, limber muscles and slim oars straining. The net is dipped again, raised again and found empty again. The pattern continues, tempo intact, half a dozen times. Then commences a great hopping of shimmering fish in the chocolatey lake as the net on the pole is raised, is drawn into a smaller and smaller loop, and its dancing contents, like diamonds reflecting the dazzling sun, are poured into an opening in the deck - expectations met, although the fish were not expecting this. Their expectations irrevocably boosted, the family was determined not to quit until the hold of their small pirogue could imprison no more. Perhaps they will add a second boat to the fleet next season.
The biggest gambler of expectations in Siem Reap is Singapore based Raffles International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DBS Land. It has taken on the far-reaching refurbishment and expansion of Grand Hotel D'Angkor. Built in 1929, closed since 1993, the hotel is expected to reopen, with 131 fully-restored rooms, in the second half of this year. Future phases of development will see 172 rooms added to the initial phase. Although this seems like an enormous number of rooms today, the tourism ministry predicts that Angkor War will host "up to a million visitors" annually come year 2000, earning the kingdom a neat US$400 million. Giving the country a trial run at such an optimistic target, the government has designated 1998 as "Visit Cambodia Year."It's sister hotel is the historic Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh. Neglected for years after being seized and abandoned by Pol Pot forces, in the late 1970s partially opened and then closed again in 1993, the hotel is undergoing a US$50 million facelift. Nearby is Raffles International House, a training centre and pre-opening office for the Siem Reap and Phnom Penh projects. All told, both hotels will employ a staff exceeding a thousand, 50%' of whom will have received training at RI House. According to Raffles, "position skills" are not the only ingredient to be stressed with its employees. It is equally important for them "to delight customers by knowing and meeting their expectations." Bricks and mortar go together easily enough. It will be fascinating to watch the non-Cambodian experts at RI House as they attempt to bridge the expected clash of cultures.
In a Phnom Penh book shop, were I expected, and found, newspapers, I read this in the day's Bangkok Post: Pointing out that the US purchased 1/3 of China's exports in 1995, Jim McGregor, Chairman, American Chamber of Commerce, argues that Beijing can ill-afford to underestimate the importance of its major trading partnerships, especially as it struggles to meet the soaring expectations of its vast population.
Cambodians, foreign investors in Cambodia, even Americans (chairmen of chambers of commerce and otherwise) and Chinese and Western Europeans and Japanese (all races, in fact) have them. Expectations. Everywhere. Not just in Siem Reap, although Siem Reap is an excellent place to observe the phenomenon because life in the northwest is typically a hand-to-mouth transaction. In the developed world, expectations are of a different sort, not usually about subsistence simply to exist. Expectations are so commonly met that they often go unnoticed. Trains run on time. Electricity seldom fails, even during hurricanes and blizzards. Children go to, and graduate from, college. Paychecks are automatically banked at the end of the month. In other words, the nuts and bolts of daily existence is taken for granted.
That is the expectation in the developed world because technology stabilises existence - smoothing out Nature's inequities (power stations provide affordable electricity to all), not to mention stimulating human ingenuity (witness the industrial revolution) - and has created what economists call economic surplus. It is wise to remember that there is little, if any, economic surplus in Cambodia. Expect that everything won't always work. At the same time, it's fair to expect that the Cambodians whom you meet will go out of their way to understand you and sooth your unfulfilled expectations. More often than not, they will bare their souls if you give them the chance. Which is another way of saying that in Cambodia it is expected that non-Cambodians will meet the unexpected. You might even see yourself as you were a century or a millennium ago. If that happens you will begin to appreciate the enormity of the development obstacles that confront Cambodia. Visit Cambodia. In addition to the national treasure, Angkor War, look closely at Siem Reap. Why? Because this town of enormous expectations is an eye-opening and even mind jarring experience. Fairly, the phenomenon could signify the outbreak of an economic reformation in bucolic Buddhaland.