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I'm just back from my trip to Laos and Cambodia. It wasn't quite what I had planned, but I didn't in fact have any firm plans until after I arrived in Bangkok.

About Laos, go there. For some it may still be a bit on the primitive side but that is changing. There is more electrification and the main highway is a thing of beauty. Pepsi Cola signs are everywhere and the Vientiene tuk tuk drivers now offer girls as well as heroin. But I can honestly say that all the travellers I met on the road had only positive things to say of Laos. Nature is largely unspoiled and the Lao people are highly praised for their friendliness. I think this was my fourth visit to Laos, but only the first time I made it to the Mekong's 4,000 Islands, a beautiful and peaceful place - worth the week I spent there.

Entering Cambodia from Laos enabled me to see some of the more remote areas of the country like Ratanakiri. This was my third trip to Cambodia, so I visited a few places like this and Kep that are not so popular with tourists. Previously I'd seen Angkor Wat and like everyone else I was impressed. The carvings were excellent but I found the buildings oppressive. Most striking was the vegetation devouring the temples. It seems everyone I spoke to was in agreement here. But I noticed on this visit that creeping ruin is evident in many cities and towns. In Kratie for example, the buildings from the colonial era are all in stages of decay, with plants starting to take root in the plaster. It's makes a charming scene. In Kep, once a town where many French colonialists had seaside villas, I found ruins which I suppose are unique in East Asia. Under the Khmer Rouge, Kep was devastated and most of the villas were destroyed. Some were clearly once very substantial buildings designed after the Bauhaus school. It's the first time I've seen Modernism in such a state of ruin. It makes a strange and somewhat unsettling complement to Angkor Wat.

My time in Cambodia also gave me occasion to reflect of the disaster of the Khmer Rouge period. As a leftist, nationalist, and monarchist to varying degrees, the question of what went wrong and why has troubled me since my first visit. I'm a teacher too so I wanted to come to grips with what the regime - so many of its leaders ex-teachers - had done.

I haven't read this specifically in the history books I've come across, but it seems clear that the decision to evacuate Phnom Penh was a disasterous one that eventually lead to the downfall of the regime. The evacuation of the cities had been part of the modus opererandi of the Khmer Rouge and several cities in the east had been evacuated. The populations had been integrated with the surrounding peasants and some city dwellers were eventually allowed to return home. There is a rationale to the strategy, as they were afraid to "win the war in the countryside, only to lose the peace in the city." But the Khmer Rouge choked on the capital. American bombing had doubled its size with refugees to roughly 2 million. The Khmer Rouge simply weren't prepared to deal with the masses of displaced people.

The attitude towards the displaced, or "new people" of course only made things worse; losing you is no loss, keeping you is no gain, was the constant threat. There was much resentment towards those who had escaped the worst of the civil war and Pol Pot did nothing but fan its flames to intensify the revolutionary spirit. It's arguable that some of Khmer Rouge's projects (like irrigation) were worthy, but the efforts of all those "new people" involved in them were wasted. I gave up asking Cambodians to point out any projects of the Khmer Rouge. They left behind nothing of value. Within a year of attaining power, the incompetance, stupidity and violence of the regime led Pol Pot to believe that wreckers and enemies within were preventing the country from meeting the goals of its absurd 4 year plan. The party started to self-destruct and the intervention of Vietnam sealed its fate.

This brings us to the present. Hun Sen still maintains his role as the strong man, thanks to his part in unseating Pol Pot. But there are signs of his outstaying his welcome. Newspaper stories tell of the forceful eviction of Phnom Penh residents to the countryside. If history is repeating itself, these evictions, carried out under the banner of neo-liberal economics, are just a very faint echo of the fatal policy of the Khmer Rouge. But they certainly show the divide between a government of greed and the Khmer people.

The obvious lesson of Cambodia is that disaster will follow when power concentrates in a small group of isolated, secretive mediocrities who think nothing of using violence and fear to further an agenda of radicalism for its own sake. Fortunately such a combination of circumstances is rare, but to ensure that they don't recur, the public must at the very least, be skeptical of those in power.