Three Rivers Dams (12)
In 1989 I flew to Banlung with a helicopter (see here). As far as I remember there was nothing there: a few indigenous people’s longhouses, a hospital with one patient but no nurses or doctors, a school with plastic flowers on the teacher’s desk, a bunch of soldiers who must have reached the age of 16 the day before I arrived and a wooden house where the governor treated us to the best meal I had during my one-month-long stay in Cambodia, with roasted piglets and all. It lasted two of the precious three hours we were allowed to spend in the provincial capital before flying back…
In 2001 it was an airplane which took me up to the North East. There was one guesthouse, maybe two, indigenous people being tricked off their land and red dust. Lots of it.
Now in 2013, it is a bustling city with a few wide tarmac lanes where motorbikes drive way too fast. The tremendous development of Ratanakkiri province can best be felt in its capital. A chunk of the wealth generated by the sizeable investments in the agricultural sector and its thousands of hectares of land concessions has trickled back into the construction of rows of chinese compartments, into cars, motorbikes, consumer goods, karaoke’s. Clearly, there is money around. Banlung has transformed into a real small city when it was a speck of houses in a sea of dust. The atmosphere is all about development. No wonder that few people in the city question the plans to build no less than 7 dams on the 3 tributaries to the Mekong. They need the electricity to run their fans and TV sets, just like the people of Phnom Penh, whining about the power cuts. They will also pay much more to buy the fish they are eating. And they will impose a radical change in the way of life of those, mostly indigenous people, living along the targeted rivers.
