The Sights of War
Around the world, scenes of destruction are evolving into tourist destinations at an unprecedented pace
BOKOR NATIONAL PARK, CAMBODIA -- In 1971, Lam Dao Hanh, who managed the casino at the plush Bokor Palace Hotel on top of a windswept mountain in southern Cambodia, sensed that the Khmer Rouge army was closing in. Using his car, he secretly transferred the hotel's stock of fine French wines and Champagnes to the basement of his seaside home in nearby Kep.
The wines turned out to be one of the few things to survive the murderous Khmer Rouge era. In 1982, when the Lam family was able to return briefly to Kep, they found all the town's 1,500 villas in ruin. The Bokor Palace was an empty shell. More than 10,000 people in the area had perished at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
Lebanon (top, left): An oil spill last month in Byblos after a power plant was bombed; and Ramiet Al Bayda Beach in 2004; Belfast (bottom, left): Donegal Square today, and the aftermath of an IRA car bomb in the '70s
Television screens these days are filled with images of destruction from fighting in places like Iraq and Lebanon. In the past, it has taken centuries for some of the burned and bombed-out structures to become beacons for visitors. But now some places are short-circuiting that process. From Bosnia to Rwanda to New York's Ground Zero, conflict has left its imprint and tourism has quickly followed.
Just 12 years after the remnants of the Khmer Rouge committed their last atrocity in the area -- kidnapping three foreigners off a train and killing them -- a steady stream of foreigners make their way here to see the impossibly romantic and mysterious Bokor mountaintop ruins, which include the summer palace of King Sihanouk, who abdicated the Cambodian throne just two years ago.
Other recent hotspots have followed a similar arc. In Lebanon, before the outbreak of war last month, the nation's tourism was on the rise. Visitors to Beirut could see sights devastated in the last conflict, the country's civil war, which continued from 1975 to 1990. Now, anyone who sees the devastation of the country on the nightly news could well wonder whether former tourist spots like Tyre could ever bounce back.
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Weekend Edition: Pursuits editor Ernie Sander discusses a new trend: modern-day ruins that have become tourist attractions.
Listen Now | RSS Feed | iTunes ArchiveIn Belfast, a bus trip known informally as the "terror tour" shows visitors such sites as the scenes of horrific bombings and a primary school whose outer wall is pockmarked by bullet holes. In Bolivia, the Che Guevara trail, partially financed by the British government, includes the schoolhouse where he was executed by Bolivian troops in 1967. In Rwanda, the Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali, Rwanda -- better known as "Hotel Rwanda" from the recent movie of that name -- now gets billing in some tour itineraries right alongside Rwanda's mountain gorillas. "You stay at the Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali," boasts British-based Rainbow Tours, "where Paul Rusesabagina saved 1,268 people from genocide in 1994."
Last year, I joined a group of Spaniards on a Palestinian-led tour of Hebron, the scene of one of the tensest conflicts between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The most striking moment came when we entered the Ibrahimi mosque to stand on the spot where Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler, shot into a group of Muslim worshippers in 1995, killing 29 and wounding 125. The Palestinians "want tourists to see what has happened there," said our guide, Abu Hasan.
What's Left: a church in Bokor (top); the view (above, left) from the Bokor cliffs, 3,000 feet above sea level; and Kampot, the town nearest Bokor National Park and its hill station
In previous generations, the transition from war zone to travel opportunity wasn't so rapid. The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but only in this decade, a quarter-century later, did tourism really start taking off. Part of the explanation was Cold War politics, which deterred Westerners, particularly Americans, from visiting Communist countries. Also, long-distance trips to places without a modern tourist infrastructure were still considered exotic.
One big difference in this era is the ubiquity of war footage on TV and the Internet. When the Israel-Lebanon war ends, the villages that have seen death and destruction will be familiar to many people. Recent experience suggests this piques interest in seeing those spots up close. The explosive growth of the travel industry has also played a role. There has been a huge proliferation in companies that run tours, with many of them increasingly on the lookout for edgy new destinations to offer their world-weary clients.
The conventional wisdom is that tourists want to escape from grim realities when they go on vacation. But the experience of Sarajevo -- which was under siege by Serbians in the mid-1990s during the Bosnian War -- shows that increasingly, there are exceptions to that rule. The Sarajevo travel agency Sartour offers six different tours that cover such things as museums, ancient history, medieval history and culture. But co-owner Mirza Turulja says that more than half his customers choose the tour devoted to 20th-century wars. The great monument for them isn't the cathedral or the venue of the 1984 Winter Olympics but the Vrbanja Bridge, where a young couple died from snipers' bullets in 1992, becoming among the first victims of the war. The couple are now considered martyrs, and people still leave flowers at the spot where they perished.
After the war ended in 1995, few tourists were seen for the next five years, says Tim Clancy, an American who lived through the siege and is now co-owner of Green Visions, an eco-tourism agency. But now tourism is increasing at a clip of 20% a year, with much of the business coming to the agencies that promote themselves on the Internet. Using donations and loans from international aid agencies, plus investments from overseas Bosnians, the existing hotels have been renovated and at least 10 new hotels have been built.
Why do some of these war zones -- even as little-known and remote as the Bokor Palace Hotel -- emerge from the pack to attract curious tourists? "It can be the history behind it, the association it has," says Rik Ponne, a program specialist for Unesco and an expert in heritage management. "Sometimes tourists will go to a site where nothing at all remains physically."
Cambodia is most famous among travelers these days for Angkor, the capital of the once-great Khmer empire. In 1431, invading Thai armies sacked the city. It took almost five centuries for the first visitors to arrive, in 1907. Today, the temple of Angkor Wat is one of the world's best-known tourist attractions.
But in Bokor, that cycle has been fast-forwarded. The trip up Bokor Mountain represents more than just witnessing a piece of history; it's also a delightful escape from the crowds that are now deluging Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh. In 2005, tourist arrivals to Cambodia grew 35% to 1.4 million, while American visitors soared 65% to 109,000.
Unlike Angkor, though, a trip to Bokor can't be done in five-star comfort. Only now is Kep, a pretty seaside town with 1,500 abandoned villas about 40 miles from the base of Bokor Mountain, beginning to revive, with a few of the villas being restored and two new little hotels to stay in, one French-owned and the other Australian. The French hotel provides lots of atmosphere and terrific seafood, but no air conditioning or hot water, with electricity only at night. The 20-mile ride up the mountain to the Bokor hill station, once a refuge from the heat for the wealthy during the French colonial period, takes two hours and is bone-jarring.
But what a ride it is. The deep, impenetrable jungle, with its vine-covered trees and huge ferns, occasionally gives way to waterfalls and to viewpoints looking out to the Gulf of Thailand.
If you arrive at the top during rainy season, as I did, you'll find yourself in what could easily be termed "a city of ghosts." It's appropriate that the 2002 Matt Dillon movie of that name was in part filmed at Bokor. The clouds swirl around the shells of a dozen buildings spread out over a couple of miles. The crucifix on top of the abandoned Catholic church pokes into the gray mist. Inside the Bokor Palace, it's still possible to walk up the stairways and to go from room to room, seeing what was once the casino, with a big fireplace at one end. The windows are gone, or else empty frames with a few shards of glass, and the fierce wind howls through the openings.
This spectral setting, combined with the fact that Bokor was the scene of some of the fiercest battles between the Khmer Rouge and the invading Vietnamese forces, have led Cambodians -- who mix their practice of Buddhism with a healthy dose of superstition -- to look upon the mountain with a considerable dose of apprehension. In Kampot, the town closest to Bokor National Park, I met a former Khmer Rouge soldier who had been stationed at Bokor, and he told me that "people believe there are ghosts on the mountain. If we stay on the mountain at night, we are afraid. No one goes there alone."
The soldier, like others knowledgeable about the history of Bokor, insists that the buildings weren't destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, but instead by the invading Vietnamese army, who carted off everything that could be moved, including all the wiring in the buildings, back to Vietnam.
The Bokor ruins, as well as the rest of the mountain, are now part of a national park, and every non-Cambodian visitor must pay a $5 entrance fee. Rangers are available for hire as guides for hikes on the few trails that penetrate the jungle. There are constant rumors that the government is about to lease the hill station to private firms, who will once again make it into a resort. But that seems an unlikely prospect, because of the hugely expensive task of rebuilding the road up the mountain.
That leaves only the memories of the past to bring the ruins to life. Lam Chan, Lam Dao Hanh's daughter, vividly recalls the scene at the Bokor Palace Hotel when she was 13 and her father managed the casino. (Her father died in 1974 of a heart attack.) "It was beautiful," she says. "They played roulette, and the hotel had a French cook. A lot of foreigners came from Hong Kong, mostly Chinese ladies."
重温战争
1971年的时候，Lam Dao Hanh还在波哥宫酒店(Bokor Palace Hotel)经营赌场。这座豪华的酒店坐落在位于柬埔寨南部的波哥山顶上。有一天，Lam Dao Hanh感觉红色高棉的部队已经很近了。于是，他用自己的汽车将酒店里存放的法国葡萄酒和香槟悄悄转移到他在附近白马市海边住所的地下室里。
后来，这些葡萄酒成了为数不多的侥幸躲过红色高棉大屠杀洗劫的“幸存者”。1982年，当Lam Dao Hanh一家匆匆回到白马作短暂逗留的时候，他们看到，镇子上原来的1,500栋别墅已化为一片废墟。辉煌一时的波哥宫只剩下一个空壳。当地有10,000多人死于红色高棉的刀枪下。
这些天来，人们在电视屏幕上经常可以看到伊拉克或黎巴嫩等地的武装冲突留下的到处残垣断壁的情况。历史上，那些战争遗迹往往要在几个世纪之后才会成为旅游景点。但现在，这个过程被大大缩短了：无论是波斯尼亚、卢旺达，还是发生“911”事件的纽约世贸中心，冲突或恐怖活动留下的痕迹很快就吸引著参观者纷至沓来。
红色高棉的残余武装最后一次施展暴行是在12年前，当时，他们在火车上绑架了三名外国人然后杀害了他们。然而，短短十多年之后，外国人就开始源源不断地涌向这里，前往波哥参观孤零零地留在山顶上的那些绝无浪漫和神秘可言的残迹，那里还有两年前刚刚退位的柬埔寨国王西哈努克避暑的行宫。
近来，其他一些旅游热点也是类似情况。比如黎巴嫩，在上个月黎、以战争爆发前，黎巴嫩旅游业正在日渐活跃。到贝鲁特游览的人可以看到上一场冲突──1975-1990年间的黎巴嫩内战──留下的破坏性场景。现在，人们在每天的新闻里看到这个国家遭受的破坏后也许很想知道，提尔等以前的旅游热点城市还能不能恢复过来了。
北爱尔兰首府贝尔法斯特有一个叫做“恐怖之旅”的巴士游览项目，参观者一路上可以见到曾经的恐怖爆炸发生地、一家外墙布满弹孔的小学校等“景点”。由英国政府提供特别资金支持的玻利维亚“追随切?格瓦拉”游览项目的景点中就包括1967年玻利维亚军队处决格瓦拉的那所校舍。
位于卢旺达凯加利的Hotel Mille Collines酒店和有大猩猩活动的卢旺达山区一起正在被越来越多的旅行者列入行程。在前两年获金球奖提名的影片《卢旺达大饭店》（Hotel Rwanda）中，这家酒店被称为“卢旺达大饭店”，此后，这个名字反而更为人所知。英国旅行社Rainbow Tours在宣传材料中说：你将在卢旺达凯加利的Hotel Mille Collines过夜，在这里，保罗?鲁塞萨巴吉纳(Paul Rusesabagina，影片的男主人公)1994年曾挽救1,268人躲过了大屠杀的劫难。
去年，我和一群西班牙游客参加了一次由巴勒斯坦人带队的希伯伦之旅，这里曾是巴勒斯坦人和约旦河西岸犹太定居者冲突最激烈的地点之一。最让我们感到心惊胆颤的是在我们进入易卜拉辛清真寺、站到1995年犹太定居者格斯汀(Baruch Goldstein)持枪向一群穆斯林朝圣者射击的位置的时候。当时格斯汀打死了29人，另有125人受伤。我们的导游阿布?哈桑(Abu Hasan)说，巴勒斯坦人希望人们看到这里曾发生过什么。
几十年之前，战争或冲突地区不会这么快就变为游客的目的地。越南战争1975年宣告结束，但直到进入二十一世纪、也就是在四分之一个世纪之后，这里的观光业才真正开始起飞。以前的这种情况在一定程度上是冷战政治的结果，东西方的对峙让西方人特别是美国人不敢到共产党国家旅行。当然，还有一个因素是，经过千山万水到没有现代化旅游设施的地方旅行在那时也会被认为是比较古怪的做法。
这个世纪以来发生的一个重大变化是，电视新闻和互联网使得战争的痕迹已无处不在。到黎以冲突结束时，那个遭受毁灭性打击的黎巴嫩村庄可能会为很多人所熟知。从近来的情况看，这会激起人们要近距离实地看看的愿望。旅游业的爆炸式增长对推动这种旅游内容也起到了很大作用。经营主题线路游的公司出现了巨大分化，许多旅行社越来越有兴趣开发一些有新鲜创意的项目，以吸引那些对平凡世界已感到厌倦的游客。
如果按传统观念来说，人们度假是想暂时逃离残酷的现实世界。而从萨拉热窝的情况来看，打破常规的事已经越来越多。萨拉热窝在上世纪九十年代中期的波黑战争中曾被塞尔维亚人团团包围。萨拉热窝Sartour旅行社提供6种不同的旅行线路，包括博物馆、古代历史、中世纪史和文化等内容。
但Sartour合伙人Mirza Turulja说，他的一多半顾客都选择了以二十世纪战争为主题的线路。对这些游客来说，最壮观的纪念物不是萨拉热窝大教堂或1984年冬季奥运会场馆，而是Vrbanja大桥：1992年，一队年轻夫妇在那里死于狙击手的枪下，成为那场战争最早的一批受害者。人们后来将这对夫妇视为烈士，现在还有人会向他们的受难地献花以示悼念。
美国人提姆?克兰西(Tim Clancy)说，在1995年战争结束后的5年里，很少能看到游客。战争期间他一直在那里生活，现在是生态旅行社Green Visions的所有者之一。但现在，旅游者以每年20%的速度增长，在网上进行推广的旅行社都迎来了很多业务。靠著国际救援机构的捐款和贷款，加上海外波斯尼亚人的投资，现有旅馆都重新进行了装修，而且至少有10家新旅馆已经建成。
为什么有些战区──甚至是像Bokor Palace Hotel那样知名度很低、又偏僻的地方──会脱颖而出，吸引大量好奇的游客呢？联合国教科文组织(Unesco)的项目专员、遗产管理专家里克?彭(Rik Ponne)说，这与其背后的历史和给人们带来的联想不无关系。有时游客会参观一个片瓦无存的地方。
如今，柬埔寨在游客中的知名度最高，原因就在于吴歌──曾经辉煌的高棉王国的首都。1431年，入侵的泰国军队洗劫了这个城市。然后经过了大约5个世纪，直到1907年才有首批游客来到这里。现在，吴歌窟是世界上最知名的旅游胜地之一。
但在波哥，这个周期大大地缩短了。到波哥山旅行不但可以看到一点历史，还能够有幸逃离人满为患的吴歌窟和金边。2005年，到柬埔寨的游客数量增长了35%，达到了140万，其中美国游客更是飙升了65%，达到109,000人。
与吴歌不同的是，波哥旅游区可没有五星级宾馆。现在这里只有距离波哥山脚下40英里左右的海滨小城白马市正在修复，在1,500栋被遗弃的别墅中，有一部分正在装修，两座新建的小宾馆开张营业，一座由法国人所有，另一座由澳大利亚人经营。那座法国宾馆很有情趣，海鲜也相当美味，不过仍然没有空调和热水，并且只在晚间供电。上山20英里便是波哥避暑山庄，这里曾经是法国殖民时期众多官员的避暑地，行车大概两个小时，道路崎岖，有些颠簸。
不过这段车程绝对是难得的体验。深邃的丛林，挂满藤蔓的树木，数量庞大的蕨类植物，偶尔也会有瀑布映入眼帘，还能远望到泰国湾。
如果你像我一样在雨季登顶，你一定能够感受到传说中“鬼城”的味道。2002年马特?狄伦(Matt Dillon)的电影《魅影危程》(City of Ghosts)将部分场景选在波哥拍摄，这真是再合适不过了。云雾缭绕，几英里之内的十几幢建筑若隐若现。废弃的天主教堂上，十字架刺穿迷雾。在Bokor Palace，你仍然可以步行登上楼梯，在众多房间中进进出出，想像著这个昔日赌场的繁华。窗户已经不见踪影，有些空空的窗棂上还残存著几片破碎的玻璃，在这空旷的房间里，猛烈的风一阵阵呼啸而来。
这样一个令人毛骨悚然的场景，再加上波哥曾经是红色高棉与入侵的越南人几次交火的地方，使得怀有佛教信仰和迷信思想的柬埔寨人对波哥山产生了莫明的恐惧。在距离波哥国家公园最近的贡布市，我遇到了一位曾经在红色高棉服役的军人，他后来就留在了波哥。他告诉我，“人们真的相信山上有鬼。我们在山上过夜的时候都会很害怕。没人敢单独上山。”
这位军人以及其他很多人都对波哥的历史了如指掌，他们说，这些建筑并非被红色高棉破坏，罪魁祸首是入侵的越南军，他们抢走了所有能够拿走的东西，包括建筑物上所有的架线。
波哥遗迹以及山上的很多地方如今已成为国家公园的一部分，每位非柬埔寨人到此观光都要买一张5美元的门票。你还可以雇一些护林员当导游，在这样一个丛林密布、仅有几条小路的山上体验登山的感觉。这里不断有传言称，政府可能要把这座山承包给一家私人企业，将它再次开发成景点。不过目前看来这种可能性并不大，因为重建通往山顶的道路一定耗资不菲。
只有过去的美好回忆能让这片废墟重焕生机。Lam Dao Hanh的女儿Lam Chan仍然对波哥宫酒店的繁荣景象记忆犹新。当时她还只有13岁，她的父亲是这家赌场的经营者。（她父亲在1974年因突发心脏病去世。）“当时真的很美好，”她说，“人们玩著轮盘，酒店里有丰盛的法国菜。很多外国人从香港慕名而来，其中大部分是中国女人。”
Mary Kissel
