Word: phnom-penh
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...Phnom-Penh opens its doors ever so slightly: Pompeii without the ashes...
...into the guest house where the visitors were quartered. Dudman and Becker luckily escaped the gunfire, but Caldwell was caught in his room and died there. Who the assailants were may never be known, but the Cambodians immediately offered their own theory. Said the Westerners' official guide in Phnom-Penh, Thiounn Prasith: "Our enemies know of the importance of your visit and wanted to show the world that Cambodia could not protect her friends...
...days before the killing, the touring trio found themselves constantly surrounded by official silence, subterfuge and surveillance. On foot, even in Phnom-Penh, they were usually flanked by two young men in khaki shirts with pistols tucked into their belts. Often they were not even allowed out of their guest house. On the road, their government-supplied Mercedes 200 sedan was always both preceded and followed by at least a carload of armed guards. Government officials explained that there was a constant danger of assassination attempts on Cambodian officials by "the Vietnamese and their agents" even in Phnom-Penh itself...
...looking workers feasting sumptuously in a factory canteen was described even by the sympathetic Caldwell as "a charade." On other occasions a searching question by the Americans would elicit a long response in Khmer that would then be interpreted by the accompanying official as "I don't know." Phnom-Penh, said Dudman, had "the eerie quiet of a dead place-a Hiroshima without the destruction, a Pompeii without the ashes ... My first impression was that the total population of the capital could not be more than a very few thousand. The usual estimate of 20,000 seemed high...
...desperate attempt to gain international support against such a Vietnamese assault that Cambodia last week embarked on its oddest scheme yet to end its self-imposed isolation: a twice-weekly six-hour tourist excursion from Bangkok to the exquisite Cambodian temple complex of Angkor Wat, 140 miles northwest of Phnom-Penh. The round trip, arranged in Bangkok by former Thai Foreign Minister Chatichai Choonhavan, costs an unproletarian $225. On the inaugural flight last week was TIME's Hong Kong correspondent, David DeVoss, who reported that "at first security was so tight, visitors spent most of the afternoon...