Government office. If it looks just like a temple, that's because it was. I'm certain the Khmer Rouge converted it to an office, and since all sacred objects inside it were destroyed, it's still used as an office. Communists did this everywhere. They blew up churches or turned them into offices, gyms, community centers or assembly halls. During the Spanish Civil War, Commies used churches as toilets. Orwell talks about this.
Yesterday, I hired a 59-year-old tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Lam. In the army from 1987 to 1992, he fought alongside Vietnamese against the Khmer Rouge. He was active in this, his home province, and near the Thai border.
Mr. Lam was in college for three years, studying history.
I asked him if his village, just east of Siem Reap, had hotels. Laughing, he said no. I then asked if he knew of anyone in his village with a room I could rent for maybe five days. He also said no.
4 comments:
Not in Vietnam. The Vietnamese communists did not blow up any churches or temples even during the most violent periods of their struggle, as far as I know.
In 1995, as I was marveling at some temple in Hanoi, a local friend told me, "You don't know how many temples they destroyed." In Saigon, I saw a Chinese temple that had been cleared out of nearly anything valuable. Granted, these were not major temples.
At a centuries-old temple in the north, I was told by a Buddhist nun that the statue of the thousand armed buddha was a fake, with the original sold to a Taiwanese collector.
The Khmer Rouge blew up Phnom Penh's beautiful cathedral. The Vietnamese Communists didn't destroy any historically significant church or temple, so I do see your point.
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