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And what a country! The sparsely populated Cambodian outback (50% virgin jungle) harbors 7-ft. cobras that drop in for dinner. There is also a viper called the Two-Step—it bites you, you take two steps and die. Bees the size of shuttlecocks kamikaze across the steaming landscape, and Cambodian cockroaches get so big they almost block traffic. Noonday temperature at Siem-reap, the site of Angkor Wat, averages 130°, and dysentery is so prevalent that it has given rise to a style of half-trot called "the Cambodian canter."
Chits for Everything. In the clean, graceful former French colonial capital of Pnompenh, women glide silently in their vivid sampots (floor-length sarongs), while pousse-pousses (pedicab taxis) clog the broad, tree-lined avenues. Orange-robed Buddhist monks contemplate under bougainvillaea and tamarind trees, watched by some of the mangiest dogs west of El Paso. From gardens gecko lizards cry "Gecko, gecko, geck-o"—and some consider this the nearest thing to logic one hears in Pnompenh.
After shooting a movie in Cambodia, British Actor Peter (Becket) O'Toole reported his typical tourist's reaction: "At 4 a.m., someone bangs on the door to deliver your laundry. 'Bug off,' I'd say, which is evidently Cambodian for 'Come in.' They'd come right ahead, with some paper to sign. Paper, paper, paper, sheaves of it. That's always a sign when a country's about to go to hell. Chits for everything."
Cambodia is not necessarily going to hell just yet, but most of Southeast Asia inevitably looks to Western eyes like Never-Never Land. During U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's latest visit to South Viet Nam, a Buddhist monk appeared at the American embassy, explained that he lived in a palm tree in a nearby province and asked to show McNamara the contents of a basket he was carrying. In the basket was a cat, peacefully suckling three hungry mice and a kitten. The monk explained that his mixed bag illustrated the ideal of universal tranquillity and symbolized the way to reach a settlement of the Vietnamese war. Nowhere is there more Buddhist talk of tranquillity and less practice of it.
The Chinese conquered most of the area before Christ was born and ruled it for 1,000 years before Columbus discovered America. When not battling the hordes from the north, the Indo-Chinese slaughtered each other. Burma carried out devastating invasions of Thailand in the 16th and 18th centuries; Thailand fought Viet Nam for control of Laos; both the Thais and the Vietnamese marched southward against Cambodia. In the 14th century, Thailand finally destroyed Cambodia's then-great Khmer Empire, and 200 years ago the Vietnamese overran Saigon—which was a Cambodian fishing village. The European colonizations beginning in the 17th century put a stop to the feuding. But in the years since the colonial bonds were broken following World War II, most of the old ani mosities have burst forth again.