The Cambodian Experience

---

Traveling in Cambodia has been an educational and emotional experience for us. It is by far the poorest and most rural (80% farmers) of the countries in which we will travel, but also has been one of the happiest times. Our Intrepid Travel guide, Bouna Leang, obviously loves his home country, and did an excellent job in explaining to us (without assigning blame) how Cambodia's recent history has crippled the people's ability to develop. So many causes: land mines (laid by everyone from the Chinese to the Khmer Rouge to the US) still cripple and kill hundreds each year, the government is corrupt, Cambodia's treasures like Angkor Wat have been sold to the highest bidder, and farm land has been sold to the rich throwing poor farmers off their land and sending them to the cities to look for work. We were told that young girls are frequently sold to pedophiles (mostly from Korea and Japan). One severely burned woman at Angkor Wat was offered free repair surgery by foreigners, but her parents were earning too much money from her begging and forbade the surgery.

We traveled to Tonle Sap Lake in the middle of the country to see a floating village (including homes, shops, church, pagodas and schools) passing "homes" that would not be fit to house a goat in Tennessee. No water, no sewers, no food, no clothing. The children wear rags and beg or try to sell anything they can find to tourists, often on behalf of their "owners" who may be parents.

We visited Angkor Wat, which is a true WORLD treasure, but is owned by one rich man. This may NOT be a bad thing, because it protects the site from exploitation by corrupt government officials. It is huge (when I can get access to a DVD player, I'll provide photos) and only partly reconstructed. Since parts were originally covered with gold and studded with jewels, thievery has created holes in the carvings all over the site.

We visited Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. It's a great example of what happens as a country develops, having luxury malls and homeless children on the same city block. Our hotel, the Fancy Guest House, was immaculate and well-run but located on a street near the main market. Homeless children pick up garbage all over the market and bring it to a vacant lot 100 feet from the hotel. They sort it (with bare hands) and sell any metal cans, etc. to buyers. They live (if you can call it that) on the sidewalk, playing cards and sniffing glue. If you think they would not steal anything you have, you're kidding yourself. It's survival! Our hotel's owners brought their motor bikes into the lobby, locked gates across the glass doors at night, and slept just inside the lobby itself. I don't know what would have happened if there had been a fire ... We'll recommend to Intrepid not to use it again.

We visited the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. If you visit, you MUST go there. It's a secondary school (S-21) that was converted into a prison and torture site by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s to take over and subdue the Cambodian people and establish a totalitarian state. supported by Vietnam and China. Like in Germany, the Khmer Rouge kept careful records, and black and white photos of the prisoners (including men, women and children determined to be enemies of the revolution) taken before and after death are heartbreaking. We then went to the Killing Fields, where prisoners from S-21 were taken to be killed and buried. Bodies are still being found, clothing taken from the prisoners before their murder is still stacked at the roots of trees, and a glass-sided pagoda contains FLOORS of stacked skulls as a memorial. We felt it would be disrespectful to take pictures, so you won't see anything on this blog.

We visited the beach town of Sihanouk Ville on the Gulf of Thailand, where we went to Sokha Beach. The Lonely Planet guide only mentions this beach as one accessible section of a privatized beach, but we had no trouble taking a tuk-tuk (motorbike attached to a 4-person carriage) to the luxury Sokha Hotel and walking to the most beautiful beach either of us has ever seen. The sand is clean, the waves are mild, and the water is like warm silk. The city itself is like most US beach towns, and one of the women in our group was mugged by a motorbike rider who tried to snatch her purse and dragged her along the gravel shoulder of the road. She ended up in the hospital for IV antibiotics, but is doing much better now. Intrepid did a pretty good job of making sure her insurance carrier got the information needed. I think it was Bouna's first experience with this, and he was very ashamed that it happened in his country. By the way, if you're thinking of visiting Sihanouk Ville, ignore the Lonely Planet recommendation for the Holy Cow Restaurant. We found the food to be skimpy and poorly prepared. The Sokha Hotel had white tableclothes, excellent food and reasonable prices. The beach restaurants were shaky in quality -- several stomach upsets the next day.

Cambodia is, without a doubt, the dirtiest country we've visited, and we were VERY careful what we ate. Even things like fruit were sold from the ground where you needed to walk over dead rats. On the other hand, we had a wonderful homestay with a Cambodian farm family. They had a small compound with three small houses set up for visitors. Tom and I had the "princess bed" (photos coming) which had a pink satin cover and pink mosquito netting. I was able to work with the women preparing dinner. Everything is cooked outdoors on small ceramic chimneys with wood fires. A wok was used to cook a stirfry with garlic, carrots, peppers and a huge pile of oyster mushrooms, while a chicken stew and rice filled out the meal. We ate on a platform of mats and used a small toilet house with the usual squat fixture. I'm getting used to them, but still prefer the sit-down fixture! By the way, we saw great signs at Angkor Wat that remind users to NOT stand on the seat of the western-type toilets, and found in a Phnom Penh toilet that women do, in fact, climb up onto the toilet to use it in the squat fashion -- footprints! (Back to the story ...) The farmer is 70 and his wife is 60; their daughter, niece, and granddaughters help with the cooking and care for the visitors. We have some definite city boys and girls with us, and I was tickled when I realize that the two cows and one calf were brought back from grazing and put into the stalls under their bedroom. This was the best part of our Cambodian trip.

The Cambodian people are working to develop their country against tremendous odds, and anything we as the rich citizens of the US can do to help make up for the chaos we helped to inflict on the country would be good. Tom and I were so taken with our guide, Bouna, that we've invited him for a visit this summer when his work schedule slackens during the rainy season. Tom went with him to the US embassy in Phnom Penh to find out what is needed to get him a tourist visa. We've helped him complete the paperwork, wrote a supporting letter, and helped him practice for the interview he'll have at the embassy before they decide whether to give him the visa. Right now, he's so excited and nervous he can hardly talk.

---