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Published: June 29th 2015
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I gaze out the backseat car window as I find myself gliding through the outskirts of Phnom Penh on my way to Kampot, a popular yet peaceful riverside town near Cambodia’s south coast. It’s only a 2-3 hour drive, and my mind certainly doesn’t want for stimulation as I find myself entranced by the lively scenes that pass me by. A street market spills almost onto the road, overflowing with baskets of fruits and vegetables. In the midst of it all, a woman holds a microphone and sings in Khmer, her voice so amplified that it transcends the car windows and surrounding area with ease. Her lilting tones only just start to fade as I pass by a lone street barbeque, ablaze with smoke and cooking meat. My view is temporarily obscured however by the passing of an open-air truck crammed full of passengers, most likely travelling to one of the nearby garment factories. This is confirmed when I eventually pass by said factories, witnessing lines of employees (overwhelmingly female) queuing up along the road side to pile into a steady stream of open-air trucks. I cast my mind back to a week ago, when I happened across a local article
that spoke about the dangers of this transportation for factory workers, and that many are advocating for the increase of the prevalence and affordability of buses as an alternate form of transport. Road safety continues on my mind as we are passed by a motorbike with 5 people piled on board, helmets lacking. Motorbikes are indeed the overwhelming form of transport in Phnom Penh, and while there’s a charmingly (though seemingly contrary) graceful clumsiness to the way they duck and weave between the chaotic stream of cars, tuk-tuks, and people, my heart can’t help but stop when I reflect on the potential dangers at every turn.
My spirits are lifted however as I notice two children happily playing with a make-shift skipping road, and another group of four crouching in a tight square, intensely engaged in a game that seems to resemble “rock-paper-scissors”. My corneas are suddenly smacked eye-on by a vibrant burst of colour as we glide past an extensive pagoda, monks in bright orange robes walking alongside the gold-spiked buildings. As we reach a dirt road however, the colours soften and "je vois la vie en brun", as muddy dogs and brown chickens respectively sleep and strut
through dusty streets.
Thus far, these sights also frequent the very heart of Phnom Penh, but I begin to register the slow fade of urbanity as my eyes are met with a pond, large patches of vegetation, several white cows, and, quite suddenly, a sweeping landscape of rice fields dotted with the odd palm tree. I am travelling with my academic supervisor, who works in the area of environmental science, and he informs me that, while farmers are allowed to farm rice here, none of the fields belong to them – all is owned by someone from the city, for the purposes of land speculation. It’s the rainy season here, he continues, and rains generally start in May. However, it is now almost the end of June and the rains have hardly arrived, so the farmers have adapted accordingly and employed drier rice crops. According to my supervisor, this area used to be submerged during the wet season, bursting with fish and was therefore a popular place for fishing. Times have changed however, and they’ve brought the environment along with them.
As we continue on, we drive through a stream of communities and villages, with a patchwork of
thatched rooves and old colonial-style tiles lining adjacent buildings. Power lines stretch tall from the fields as we pass an electricity sub-station, and the increasing number of palm trees vie with them for vertical supremacy; both lose out however to rolling mountains stretching to heaven on the distant horizon.
Horns beep and wind rushes as we continue on the road to the coast. Reflecting on all that I have seen, I am abruptly struck by an overwhelming feeling of gratitude at this opportunity and ability to soak up the ever-changing, ever-vibrant scenes that flick past me like snapshots on a roll of film. Travellers are certainly like children, in that everything is new and exciting, and sights, sounds and smells seem amplified to much higher degrees of stimulation. So often in our home-towns, we take for granted the landscapes that pass us by, starting at screens in our laps rather than at the moving pictures of life beyond. It suddenly strikes me that we should let ourselves be moved by such moving pictures, much more often than we do. When I return home, I hope I will be able to bring back with me this desire to observe the
world like a child; not just to look up and out at a superficial level, but to gaze through the surface of the landscape to discover its depth and appreciate its heart. I am here to study Geography, and this art of landscape observation is a core skill that those within the discipline must develop and cherish. But I hope that all people, from whatever academic discipline, culture, or place in the world, will never forget to rediscover the glorious child-like ability not just to look, but to see; and not just to see, but to marvel at what surrounds us, each and every day. It’s one of humanity’s most blessed and unique gifts.
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