Borders and Bitterness: On Thailand, Cambodia, and the Fruits We Claim

When the border moves in our hearts, the distance grows between us.

​Sometimes, late at night, I dream of durian orchards. The ground is soft but strewn with thorns—step carefully, or you’ll feel it. There’s a sweetness hidden somewhere, but always you risk the bitterness. Lately, as headlines flicker across my screen—war at the border, temples shrouded in smoke—the orchard seems less distant, and the thorns are real.

Thailand vs. Cambodia. I never thought I’d care so much about a line I can’t see on the ground, a line someone else drew a century ago. But here I am, reading about artillery fire and old maps. I wonder if anyone who made those treaties ever stepped barefoot on the soil they claimed or just drew lines from behind wide desks, their fingertips dusted with powdered sugar or chalk.

The stories say it’s about temples. Ancient stones, Prasat Ta Muen Thom. Preah Vihear. Names heavy with old prayers. In 1962, the court said “this one’s Cambodia’s”—but not the ground beneath it, not the road in. It never ends there.

It’s not just about lost stones. It’s about lost stories, and who gets to tell them. It’s about the feeling, standing on land your grandparents called theirs, but being told the map says otherwise. It’s about men in shirtsleeves on TV, waving documents, stirring up ghosts they’ve never met.

I’m haunted by images of evacuation camps—families clutching plastic bags, children squinting at noon sun. They aren’t fighting over temples. They want to go home.

I think about a line from a Thai film I saw (it stays with me, stubborn as a thorn): “In our struggle to claim what we believe we deserve, we may lose sight of what truly matters.” In “The Paradise of Thorns,” love was the orchard, but loss was the fruit. Here, too, I see leaders shouting about pride and ancient glory, and wonder if they remember how easily these orchards can burn.

When I hear talk of solutions—demilitarized zones, shared heritage, ASEAN mediation—I want to believe it’s possible. I want to believe in people wise enough to stop the shouting, to walk the orchard together and say: let’s make this fruit sweeter, for all of us. But history clings. Nationalism grows wild. And somewhere, some child is waking up from a dream of gunfire.

Maps don’t bleed, but people do. The border remains, drawn in dust and old ambition. Each side convinced they’re right. I wish, sometimes, someone would wake up from this dream—the one where history repeats itself—and look around with new eyes. Maybe then the fruit wouldn’t taste so bitter, even if we had to share it.

So tonight, as the news scrolls by and the orchard fades, I remind myself: these conflicts don’t belong to one side. They belong to all of us who inherit thorns and sweetness both, and must decide—each morning—what we’ll do with them.