Kep

Kep is an unusual little forgotten seaside town. There were more people in this region once, but now they are mostly gone. Along the corniche of what was once a prosperous resort area are the burned out hulking remains of villas and houses of the Phnom Penh elite and others who were prosperous enough to afford property here. This was once one of the swankier destinations in Cambodia or of all French Indochina for that matter.

Now there are squatters in all of the fifties and sixties era buildings with lean-tos, hammocks strung between neo-classical columns, cooking fires on top of Frank Lloyd Wright inspired roofs.

Some houses look burned. Others look looted. Still others look systematically destroyed, whether that was gradual or sudden is uncertain, and nothing behind the concrete fencing is intact in many instances. There are bullet holes in some walls and houses, fading spray-painted For Sale signs on others with dubious telephone numbers.

The jungle has reclaimed much already too. But you can still imagine a time of balconies and verandas and weekend parties overlooking the water and the spectacular sunsets from distant times now gone forever.

It was the days before the US carpet bombed the crap out of much of eastern Cambodia in an effort to eradicate the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And it was also the days before the Khmer Rouge punished and then killed anyone with an education or with property or, later, anyone at all really.

The people have not returned except a few. And the few who have "returned" didn't live here before. So the town is still ghostly and unfinished and sickly. Like a small shoot growing out of a huge, long fallen tree. It's quiet here, very quiet, but it's not the quiet of peace and tranquility, it's the long uncomfortable quiet of turbulence and of anger. Of war. And of death.