Cultural Frontiers

Cambodia Determined to Find Own Route to Development in Preah Vehear

By Jody McPhillips
and Phann Ana
The Cambodia Daily

The border has stayed closed ever since.

Sure, tourists can get to the temple from the Cambodian side. But unless they rent a helicopter, they face a couple days of spine-jolting rides through former Khmer Rouge battlefields followed by a three-hour climb up a mine-infested mountain.

"The Cambodians and the Thais have argued over the Preah Vihear temple for years," says Long Sovann, second deputy governor of Preah Vihear province.

"The Thais were very surprised that we did not care" about the border closure, he says with a grin. "They are surprised that we are so strong and are working so hard on development.

"But if we don't take care of the temple, we are afraid the Thais will look down on us and our heritage."
Others are more blunt. "They are collecting money from our ancestors, and I don't like it," said Phnom Penh Governor Chea Sophara, who is sending men, money and equipment to Preah Vihear to build the new road.

Thai embassy officials declined to comment on the situation. PREAH VIHEAR is potentially a money machine second only to Angkor Wat, and both countries know it.

Before the border closed, despite few development or promotion efforts, the Cambodians and Thais were splitting annual ticket receipts of at least $130,000, with Cambodia getting 70 percent and the Thais 30 percent.

But Thai interest in the temple has always been a sore spot with Cambodia. The countries have feuded for years over who should control the site, which Thai soldiers occupied several times before the World Court ordered it returned to Cambodia in 1962.

The issue arouses strong passions among many Cambodians, who consider Preah Vihear an important symbol of Khmer sovereignty.

It doesn't help that most quarrels at Preah Vihear erupt between soldiers from each country posted at the border, who rarely wait for diplomatic instructions before reacting. Since the border was closed, gunfire has erupted at least once, although no one was hurt.

Twice during the past decade, the two countries have tried to cooperate to run the site as a tourist destination. It seemed like a good idea: Cambodia had no money, and Thai tourists were eager to visit.
The first attempt, in 1992, fell apart when the Khmer Rouge regained control of the mountain. The second lasted from 1998 until last December, but the relationship was always volatile.

Cambodian officials who work too closely with the Thais do so at their peril. When former Ministry of Tourism general director So Mara signed a joint-operation deal with Thailand last year, he was denounced by parliamentarians and fired, and the deal was voided.

Oblivious to the tension, tourists flock to Preah Vihear whenever they can. When it reopened in 1998, up to 30,000 people a day poured in. But unlike Siem Reap, which was initially developed by foreign companies (including many from Thailand), it appears that Cambodian investors want to develop Preah Vihear.

The Sokimex petroleum company is planning projects not only in Preah Vihear, but at the Sambor Prei Kuk temples in Kompong Thom. The Preah Vihear project would include a hotel, golf course and other facilities.

Sokimex president Sok Kong says his Preah Vihear proposal was submitted on Jan 15 to Prime Minister Hun Sen. ÒThe prime minister has agreed and sent it on to the Cambodian Development Council,Ó he says, declining to provide more details.

Cambodia is also seeking World Heritage status for Preah Vihear, which would typically involve strict controls on how the area could be developed. But World Heritage approval is likely several years away, and any development now would not be subject to such controls.

PREAH VIHEAR, which means sacred monastery in Khmer, was built over a span of about 300 years, starting in the late 9th century.

Unlike many Khmer temples, which were built by one king and then ignored by his successors, Preah Vihear was maintained and enlarged by many kings.

The mountain site itself was believed to be holy, seemingly designed by the gods to support the ascending series of stairs, walkways and structures which lie along a perfect north-south axis.

According to "Preah Vihear," a history of the temple by Vittorio Roveda, the temple complex was a monastery, which explains why the top-most sanctuary, on the edge of a cliff overlooking Cambodia, faces away from the view.

"The mountain was ascended because it offered spiritual rewards for pilgrims and provided the solitude necessary for religious meditation, not because it afforded spectacular views from its summit," Roveda writes.

He said that in 1018, the Khmer king Suryavarman I declared Preah Vihear to be the northernmost point of his empire, which stretched from Phnom Chisor in the south to Jayakestra (near Battambang) in the west to Isanathirtha (an unknown location that might have been on the Mekong River) in the east.

Some restoration work was completed in the 1930s, but the temple suffered during the prolonged years of war in Cambodia. The central tower of the main shrine collapsed long ago; the size of the pieces lying on the ground inside the enclosure indicate it was very large.

THE DANGREK Mountains run east-west along Cambodia's northern border with Thailand, a chain of steep hills that rise abruptly from a flat plain.

They form a rocky wall at Cambodia's northern edge. Preah Vihear is built on the edge of a 600-meter drop to the plains below. On clear days, the view to the south stretches to Phnom Kulen.

To the north, the mountain descends in a long, gradual slope into Thailand. Preah Vihear is not one temple but a series of elegant complexes linked by stone stairways and causeways. Its entrance is halfway down the northern slope, where a massive flight of stone steps beckons pilgrims to begin a climb towards the sacred summit.

The land around the temples is rugged. There are no real roads, just forest tracks, for about 20 kilometers on the Cambodian side. On the Thai side, a modern highway runs nearly to the temple entrance.

A small stream 100 meters north of the entrance marks the official border, which writhes like a snake through the mountains, prompting frequent arguments between the countries as to exactly where it lies.

The current dispute involves the stream and a small Cambodian market community located in a small area between the border crossing and the temple steps. The vendors, many of whom migrated to Preah Vihear since peace returned to earn a living selling to the tourists, were in the habit of buying food and water in Thailand, since the nearest Cambodian town was 20 kilometers away.

"There is a problem with the sewage," Êsays a Thai border officer posted at Preah Vihear, who asks that his name not be used. He stands at the chain-link gate through which tourists used to pass, but which is now kept locked and has been newly surrounded with razor wire.

"Waste water [from the market] is getting into Thailand, and five Thai villages downstream are upset," the Thai guard said. He claims the Thais want the market closed so the two countries can plant a "friendship garden" at the temple entrance. He also says the Thais would like the Cambodians to pick up the trash that blows around the entrance.

"We asked them to solve this problem. If they solve it, we will reopen the border," he say as he hands a small Cambodian boy money to buy him cigarettes at the offending market.

Cambodian border police don't buy this story for a minute. They are convinced the Thais ultimately want to reclaim the temple as their own, a charge the Thai officer rejects vehemently.

"No! No! It is a Khmer temple! The Thai people, everybody, knows this temple belongs to the Khmer nation," the Thai guard says.

The Cambodians say the Thais had hoped they could starve out the vendors by cutting off their food supply. They say they intercepted radio transmissions in which they heard Thai soldiers asking: ÒAre those Khmers dead yet?"

"They are very tricky,"ÊUn Radin, a commander with the Cambodian border guard, says with a bitter grimace. "You can't believe what they say."

PHNOM PENH Governor Chea Sophara says he was furious when he heard about the stranded vendors. He won't say who issued the orders, but he swung into action, hounding wealthy contractors and businessmen for contributions and convincing 66 city employees that they wanted to relocate to Preah Vihear province for an unspecified period to build a new road.

He concedes it could take two years, maybe longer. "They are volunteers, doing this just for food and 5,000 riel (about $1.25) a day," he says. He claims all money to pay for the project is being raised privately, and that he can't say how much it will cost.

Asked if Sokimex plans to contribute toward the building of the new road, Sok Kong says, "We must. We have to cooperate with that." But he would not say how much he would donate.

Chea Sophara has personally promised to feed the mountain's 650 residents for up to five years, and has already had drawn up elaborate plans for a new village, complete with market, school and hospital, to be located about one kilometer from the temple entrance.

"It will all be Khmer style," he says proudly, right down to the trash cans.
The trapped villagers say Chea Sophara has saved their lives as well as their livelihoods. Oeun Borith, 37, sells soft drinks in the marketplace. "Before the closing, I had between 400 and 500 customers a day on the weekends,"he says. "Now there is no business."

Choy Lim, 49, is one of the residents who says she heard the sneering radio transmissions about "dead Khmers."

"We have not died yet," she says. "And we will not die, because our government is giving us rice and fish and petrol. [The Thais] can come to see if they don't believe me.

"Life is a little bit harder than before, but we will not die."

THE JOB is huge. The Khmer Rouge occupied Preah Vihear from 1975 until the war's end, burying thousands of landmines all over the mountain before defecting to the government in 1998.

Today more than 50 deminers from the Halo Trust are working to clear them away. In the past six weeks, teams have found more than 100 mines close to trails and walkways at the temples.

Other deminers are examining the route for the planned new road, which will pass through scrublands south of the mountains that remain littered with rusting tanks and military vehicles, the detritus of heavy fighting between the Vietnamese-supported government forces and the Khmer Rouge.

Sra'em village lies about 30 kilometers south of the temple, just north of an area called the Death Field because so many Vietnamese and Cambodian soldiers died there.

Thong Chan, a 60-year-old former government soldier, remembers it well. The houses in the village are only a few years old, because the Khmer Rouge torched the entire village in the final days of the war.
"We will be very happy to have the new road, because it will make it easier for us to get to the provincial capital, to Anlong Veng, and to the temple," he says.

The road will extend 113 kilometers north from the provincial capital of Tbeang Meanchey to Preah Vihear. At least 22 kilometers are believed to be mined. There are no roads over the last 20 kilometers to the mountain, just dirt trails.

The crews have completed about 10 kilometers of the new road, moving at a rate of about 200 meters a day. They hope to reach the Sen River by Khmer New Year in mid-April, says Chea Sophara. A 100-meter bridge is currently being constructed over the river.

Ting Samon, deputy chief of the Phnom Penh municipality's road and bridge unit, doesn't know how long the project will take, saying it depends on how much equipment and supplies are donated and whether machines break down.

He brushes aside the idea that it could be difficult for his crew to leave their homes in Phnom Penh for a long, hard, dangerous job, with no end in sight.

"We are lonely here without our families," he says, "but we are staying until the job is done."

Photo by Sok Sam Ath for the Ministry of Tourism