Cambodia Culture

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Each country around the world has their own culture, so they can live and work depend on their own cultures. Culture represents the nation. People can notice each other or know where they are from and who they are due to the culture. It includes language, tradition, custom, dressing and so on. Cambodia is also a country which has its own culture. The golden age of Cambodia was between the 9th and 14th century, during the Angkor period, during which it was a powerful and prosperous empire that flourished and dominated almost all of inland Southeast Asia.

However, Angkor would eventually collapse after much in-fighting between royalty and constant warring with its increasingly powerful neighbors, notably Siam and Dai Viet. Many temples from this period however, like Bayon and Angkor Wat still remain today, scattered throughout Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as a reminder of the grandeur of Khmer arts and culture. Cambodia's unparalleled achievements in art, architectures, music, and dance during this period have had a great influence on many neighboring kingdoms, namely Thailand and Laos.

Cambodia was destroyed in the end of 1970s, many people were killed and the culture was almost lost by Pol Pot regime. And then this country found peace again in 1998 every wars were end. Then the globalization and economic reform provides opportunity for the other nations to invest in Cambodia. When foreigners come to this historical country, they bring their culture, too. Flowing the foreign culture contribute advantages and disadvantages to Cambodian.

The first advantage is end Cambodian poverty. There are many organizations in the world that come to help Cambodian from poverty. For example, Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF) was founded by former film executive Scott Neeson, who traveled to Cambodia on holiday in early 2003 and found his life changed by the desperate circumstances and unlikely courage of Phnom Penh's most impoverished children. Today, he serves as CCF’s Executive Director, performing daily fieldwork and overseeing the operations of CCF’s various facilities [1]. This fund provides life changing education, nourishment and healing to vulnerable children from some of Cambodia’s most destitute communities. It helps poor people a lot.

The second reason is Cambodian people can get new things from them. When foreigners come to our country, they carry knowledge, experiences, and skill to share for Cambodia people to learn or observe to create. For instance, foreigners always shake hands when they meet each other for the first time, so Cambodia can absorb this style for creating when people meet foreigners (Makara, 2011). In addition, foreigners can bring modern technology. It is very essential for people to know the evolution of technology at overseas, so Cambodia can improve and get it to use instead of labor forces or can cut the time of working. They have enough time to relax.

Thirdly, foreigners wear fashionable clothes to visit Cambodia. With this regard, Cambodian people can learn about foreign designing, and also create them as Cambodian culture. For instance, people wear jean, T-shirt, shirt, robes, and so forth. Most important benefit is, when the foreign tourists come to Cambodia, it is the opportunity for doing business for running fast food restaurant like hamburger, pizza, sandwich, and other foreign foods. It is the chance for local people to earn their profit; plus the popularity of Cambodia will be spread.

On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages of influence foreign culture to Cambodian. This culture is not such pure as before. The first negative influence is Khmer culture will not exist in the world any more. Each culture is practiced by people. If Cambodian don't use their culture and use foreign culture, their culture will be dead in one day. Previously, the way people dress is in Khmer culture; there are no jeans, no T-shirts; there are only simple trousers or dresses made form silk. In contrast, nowadays people wear jeans, T-shirts especially girls they like wearing tight jeans or short skirts that Khmer culture doesn't allow to do like that. However, those are not completely their faults because they imitate that style form foreigners from a person to the other. As a result, foreign culture can kill Cambodia’s culture easily.