Archive & Chronicle: Kep, Journal of the White Ladies

“No, the white lady is not a mermaid, just one of the queens of Kep; and much of her memory, as well as part of her spirit and history.”

Dame Blanche de Kep. Photographie Christophe Gargiulo

Monday, April 21, 2020

The breeze is sea-breezy, the wind ocean-breezy, the white lady stands still and teases the horizon on her bronze pedestal, naked on her haunches, offering her forgotten modesty to the sea. In the early morning, the rising sun dresses her in orange that babble with ochre and red. On her white cement skin, it caresses her rounded forms. One could imagine her as a brunette or a blonde, one could dream of her getting up to go swimming before coming back to rest, or settling down again, facing the Gulf of Siam, between Indian or Pacific waves, depending on the angle. But do you know her true story?

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

There were three of them, in the same place, these naked ladies who had the audacity to offer themselves to the wind in their birthday suits... The first was standing up, already naked! She embodied, at the time of the protectorate, when Kep was a resort for the colonists, the beauty of French women, with their generous, undulating curves, ample breasts and wide hips, voluptuous hips and thick thighs. Far from today's anorexic supermodels, the women were proud to be well-rounded, overflowing with life and sensuality. But in 1954, independence sounded the death knell for the beach, and it disappeared, only to be resurrected a few months later. But what happened after that?

Wednesday, April 23, 1954

After the nation was restored!

They went there en masse, on the orders of the new Cambodian governor, Nou Sothea, who was taking over from Jacques de Lavandières, former administrator of the Province of Kampot. Originally from Aix-en-Provence, he had lived in Paris for many years before finding this lucrative position in the tropical sunshine of this privileged little seaside resort in Southeast Asia.

Nou Sothea, meanwhile, had studied in France at the University of Assas Law School. At 35, he was one of the youngest senior officials in Cambodia and a brilliant representative of the administrative intelligentsia. He proudly wore his small rectangular glasses. Discreet and almost taciturn by nature, he was nonetheless a fervent supporter of his country's post-independence renewal, inspired by the hopeful leadership of His Majesty Sihanouk.

The workers demolished the statue conscientiously, throwing the rubble into the nourishing sea and delicately scraping the ground until everything had disappeared, leaving nothing but a thin layer of dust. A page was turning...

Friday, April 25, 1954

Yesterday was the Miss Kep pageant! The prettiest Khmer girls and women in the region paraded along the beach. Dressed in sarongs or as Apsara goddesses, in peasant garb or rock 'n' roll dance outfits, in short, straight or pleated skirts, with shirts open to the wind, on the fine white sand of this artificial beach made by and for the elite, they paraded as if they were all the lovers of the universe, the mistresses of divine grace. It was a mixture of gentle insolence and reborn pride... Under the low sun at four o'clock, twelve beauties walked and danced to celebrate independence. The members of the royal family stood and applauded or waved, hands clasped, as the sirens passed by. The elders of Indochina were there too, with their local wives and children: most of them had not changed their habits and continued to go about their business. There were farmers and rice growers, sailors and sailors' wives, officials and administrators, but also market gardeners, doctors and nurses, representatives of all the ministries, and patriotic and romantic songs were sung for Monseigneur Papa, for His Majesty Sihanouk, who embodied the regained freedom...

Saturday, May 26, 1954

The artisans are at work. They have received precise instructions from the government and the governor directly. The new statue must be an ideal representation of the Khmer woman. Everything from before must be forgotten; the West no longer exists, it was just a long incident, an accident of history. Everything must disappear. Every last detail linked to the past must be erased. It is tabula rasa in every sense of the word. The statue must be sculpted as “an absolute marvel, seated facing the horizon, with very fine features, round eyes open to Asia and its rice fields, to the ocean and the sea, to the mountains in the distance and to the islands dotting an infinity of waves as they caress the shores,” according to the Minister of Culture.

Sunday, May 27, 1976

It is raining a monsoon of bombs, the sky is gray and smooth as a rocket, lit only by sad and fleeting lights accompanied by explosions and detonations from bombs, those that American B-52s spew from the sky onto the ground, and on the torn earth, those from flamethrowers, heavy machine guns, old rifles, and Chinese or Russian pistols that fan the embers in the destroyed nights. Khmer Rouge, Viet Minh, and Viet Cong, Khmer Issarak and Royalist troops, Pol Potists and Thais, Lon Nol loyalists and child soldiers, Cambodia burns in every sense of the word. Kep, close to the border with Vietnam, like Kampot, was completely destroyed very quickly, and a rocket, perhaps a grenade, we will never know, reduced the second white lady to a pile of rubble.

Monday, August 20, 1992

The sea rages around its small islands of stone, trees, and marble, but it always washes up on the beach at Kep, a few meters from the roots of coconut palms and frangipani trees. The sea couldn't care less about the Paris agreements and the UN squatting in the region. The sea couldn't care less about international and deadly domestic quarrels, politics, power, and corruption, because it is the sea that dominates the earth, with its majestic waves and huge waves that slap the coast. It is the sea and the mother of the earth, controlling the ebb and flow of our little universe. And today, she smiles with a hint of foam as she caresses the new statue with her spray, her mist in infinite droplets, this statue that is half fig, half grape, or rather half prohok, half durian.

The transitional authorities wanted to split the difference, and the result is surprising, representing a very Khmer approach to the middle way: a voluptuous Western woman's body and an Asian face, a balance between Kep's past and its present, since Kep is still a small remnant of the resort it once was, a rather prosperous province thanks to its fertile land, the sea and its islands, pepper and durian. It's decided, Kep will rise from its ashes, and Khuon Bounna and An Sothea were chosen to create the new sculpture!

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Monks climb the statue of the white lady to drape it in orange cloth and cover part of its nakedness, one day her breasts, one evening her buttocks. Their ochre robes stand out against the rising sun in a cotton-wool sky. It is the soft glow of dawn stretching across the clouds, and “Srey Sor” stands out in the flamboyant forests.

My bottom is warm on the sand. However, all that's left in my plastic cup is the water from the melted ice cubes in my latte.

I allow myself a slightly mischievous smile as I watch the storm over the northern part of Phu Quoc Island, just opposite, which was Cambodian not so long ago...

I cast a nostalgic glance at the roof of the old king's cottage, which protrudes from the hill opposite, visible from afar, and which I loved so much up close before the authorities closed it to the public.

I look at her nostalgically, this White Lady, trying to penetrate her innermost thoughts, or imagining her only as a goddess frozen in salt under the scorching sky of the Orient, or a sailor's wife who waited too long for her husband's return, never to come back, swallowed by the ocean on a stormy night. I look at her with love and decide to tell her stories...

Monday, April 21, 2020

The breeze is sea-breezy, the wind ocean-breezy...

(This is a work of fiction based on real events. A timeless stroll: some dates are imaginary.)

Kep, April 37, 2025

P.S. You will sometimes see local residents coming here to make offerings to the sea, under her protection: she is also respected by some as a Neak Ta, a protective deity.

Emmanuel Pezard