Uploaded by rustycompasstravel on Mar 6, 2010
In the early 1960s, Cambodia's Norodom Sihanouk presided over a kingdom at peace. Its elites travelled to the seaside town of Kep for weekends of high living and gambling at the town's casino. Kep was the grooviest beach town in South East Asia and a homegrown architectural style of remarkable ambition was celebrated there.
By 1970, Cambodia's efforts to keep out of the ever encroaching conflict next door in Vietnam, had failed. The Khmer Rouge was gaining territory throughout the country. Kep's brief period in the sun was over.
While travellers to Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng museum get a sense of the sheer brutality of the Khmer Rouge, Kep's story is more subtle but no less powerful. This small town does not show the faces of the victims of the Khmer Rouge. Instead, the ruined buildings of Kep intimate a time of confidence and rich cultural aspiration that was comprehensively demolished with Pol Pot's rise.
The owners of Kep's mansions either fled Cambodia or died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia still reels from the impact of the Khmer Rouge genocide. The virtual annihilation of an entire class of professionals, academics, artists and leaders will take generations to heal. Their ghosts lurk in the ruins of Kep.
In this rustycompass.com Insights video, we meet with Dr Jean Michel Filippi and discover more about Cambodia's other ruins.
3 comments:
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you Khmerization.
Joyeux Noël & Bonne Année à vous Khmerization.
Is it true that Kep ows its name to the characteristic of its sea shore formation which the European called Cape ?
How long ago since the name Kep existed historically ? Far far away from Kep I noticed that in Malaysia, one state which is situated above the Singapore Island, called Johor. It was that region where during the pre-colonial era was so infamous by the infested pirates. Chowr samutr or simply Chowr was named by the Khmer for that place and since then it became Johor. My finding and inquiring tend to irritate the local but my purpose is simply historical name of places! If you have something true even it is not nice to say please share with me!.
The stubborn
PS. The smart ass Viet changed every names of every places they stole from neighbors so nobody can trace the origine of it in a long run.
There was a time when Cambodia was at the crossroads of international trade with Malay traders doing their commerce in the country and leaving behind words that are now part of the Khmer vocabulary such as "kampong" [landing place] and "psa" [market place, "pasa" in Malay]. I came across these words also while visiting Kular Lumpur [muddy river?]. As for Kep, I have no clue about its origin in terms of naming!
Yes, our Vietnamese neighbours are always several yards ahead in concocting up historical identity and evidence, and this in total denial of historical and scholarly records that are available to anyone to draw from in evidence.
Some of today's Vietnamese historians and scholars even question the fact that the Khmers had been the first to have settled in the Mekong delta known as Kampuchea Krom. It makes no difference to the Vietnamese that before Ho Chi Minh city became Saigon it was Prey Nokor in Khmer, and before Phu Quoc became Phu Quoc it was Koh Tral? They even changed the street names in Phnom Penh in the 1980s when Vietnamese troops were occupying Cambodia. The corollary of this deliberate distortion policy is to rewrite relevant and national identity in the minds of new generations of Khmers and Vietnamese and to sever the Khmers' emotional attachment to their ancestral lands whilst conditioning Vietnamese children's sense of belonging and ownership towards these places.
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