Foreign cultures destroy Khmer culture!!!

It is hard for a country to forbid some of other foreign cultures to flow into their countries and makes some changes to those countries. Some of the countries satisfied with the foreign cultures to flow into their countries while others are vice versa. Similarly to Cambodia, foreign cultures have been long known to have spread to Cambodia since ancient times. There are a lot of arguments about the flowing of foreign cultures into this country that whether it develop or destroy Khmer culture. Although some Cambodians support foreign cultures to flow into Cambodia, there are still so many Cambodians oppose with this idea as there are many problems created in Cambodia nowadays by those foreign cultures.

Opponents claim that foreign cultures have improved Cambodia’s infrastructure. In this way, Cambodia’s traditional style of construction is not modern like other Europe countries at all. Therefore, Cambodia needs to follow some of other foreign cultures’ construction style and try to make or change it to become suitable with Khmer custom in order to make it becomes modern and suit with Cambodians interest. Supporters suggest that Cambodia need to have their own unique of construction style. If we just follow other foreign construction’s style and just a little bit of changes or sometimes no changes, there will be no identity of Cambodia’s achievement of construction style recognize by the world at all in the future. According to Son Souberg and Suong Leang Hay, there are lesser and lesser hotels and restaurants in Cambodia have a Khmer character ("Case study on," 1995, internet).Many of the developed countries used to have a very good infrastructure. It is essential for a country to have a good infrastructure as it can help to develop a country. EuropeAid wrote “Good quality infrastructure is a key ingredient for sustainable development” ("Infrastructure for sustainable," 2011, internet). Similarly, Cambodia traditional infrastructure is not modern and very good at all as nowadays. Most of Cambodia’s infrastructure buildings nowadays are built by mixing of Khmer and foreign construction style.

Opponents also point out that some foreign customs is easier to follow rather than Khmer custom. In this respect, Khmer traditional custom is very strict and hard to follow which is not much satisfied with many of Cambodians in this century at all because people in this century like to have their own freedom. Therefore, they think that Khmer traditional custom should makes some changes and not to be very strict. In contrary, supporters argue that it is not appropriate to mix other foreign customs with Khmer customs that it would messing up or destroy the whole Cambodia’s custom in the future. For example, the dressing in some of other countries, especially Europe, they like to wear sexy clothing while Cambodia traditional clothing custom is not allowed to reveal the body. We could see that many of Cambodians nowadays do not used to wear their traditional clothing anymore as they prefer foreign clothing rather than their own. According to Cambodia fashion, “The tradition of daily wear faded away with the commencement of the twentieth century” ("Cambodian fashion," 2011, internet). In the future, their traditional clothing will be mostly eliminated. This show that Cambodia’s traditional custom would be in danger as it could be eliminated at any time in the future if they still allow foreign culture to flow into their country without any strictness that can destroy their culture.

The final argument made by opponents is that foreign cultures can build a strong relationship for Cambodia with other countries. In this respect, it is easier to communicate or get along with other countries if we share the same or some similarities between cultures. The countries that have a unique culture from other countries usually meet with some popular problems like there are sometimes discriminants happen over this nation by the majorities. Therefore, Cambodia should allow other foreign culture to flow into their country as Cambodia traditional culture is unique with other foreign countries. However, supporters oppose with this point by saying that Cambodia traditional culture is very good that recognize by the world. There are no appropriate evidence that shows Cambodia traditional culture do not have a good relationship with many other foreign countries nor there is also no discrimination over Cambodia at that time.  

In conclusion, foreign cultures absolutely have made some changes to Cambodia traditional culture. There are some pros and cons for the flowing of foreign cultures into Cambodia. Otherwise, I think that foreign culture do not do any good to Cambodia culture at all as I could see Cambodia many centuries ago is a very developed countries but by the incoming of foreign cultures have destroy or messing up the whole country culture. Furthermore, there is a far gap between parents and children in Cambodia nowadays as the parents are likely to follow Khmer traditional culture while their children follow most of foreign culture.