Crossing Continents

I’m woefully behind on updates. Part of this is due to the fact that I have been unable to add more pictures to my flickr page, and therefore unable to post them here. I know most of you are only here for the pretty pictures, so I wasn’t going to waste your time with long text posts.

Unfortunately for you, I’ve been out of Cambodia for over a week and two countries now, so i have to get some thoughts out there before I forget them or they are blurred together with or replaced by new experiences. Hopefully I’ll get some pictures up from my time there and since soon. No promises.

 Cambodia was the most foreign country I’ve ever been to.  Very little about the country made sense to me. This is a feeling that is hard to justify, and even harder to explain, but even as I am sitting in Kolkata, India it remains true. I started in Phenom Penh, where I stayed with my friend Izzy for a couple days while I tried to get a Burmese visa. That didn’t work out, and didn’t look like it was going to, so I headed to Siem Reap, the jumping off point for the temples at Angkor. 

 At Angkor, I spent a couple of days exploring the temples with some other Americans I met along the way. We hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around the temples for the day. It cost 15 dollars for the three of us. The competition is so fierce, that tuk tuk drivers meet tourists at the bus stop and will often offer to take you to your hotel for as little as 1 dollar if you will consider hiring them for the temples the next day. I found out later, that we overpaid at 15 dollars, but I didn’t feel too bad, because drivers will often only get one day of paid work per month. Our’s seemed sincerely disappointed when we wanted to ride bicycles up to the temples the next day. More on tuk tuks later.

 Every exit from a temple is invariably greeted by the screams of children and women calling “you want cold water?” This was often accompanied by hordes of small children swarming around you and tugging on your clothing or arms in as pathetic a manner as possible asking you to buy from them. Many of them spoke better English than you would imagine, and could recite the capital cities of not just the most popular tourist countries, but as many as several states in the US. That’s better than I would imagine the majority of Americans to be able to do. The only thing I ended up buying was a pack of batteries for my digital camera. When I asked how much, I was told 8 dollars, a ridiculous sum. I offered two and eventually settled on four, still on the expensive side for a pack of double a’s. The little boy i was bargaining with informed me that they were so expensive because everyone selling inside the park area had to pay bribes to the police officers and guards to be there. I had no doubt this was true, because stories of corruption in Cambodia are rampant, and we had in fact been asked for money from a guard just moments earlier. Back at the tuk tuk, our driver confirmed the boy’s claim, but told me I should have paid closer to 2 bucks. 

This is the type of event that had proved formative. While I’m no stranger to living and traveling around corruption. (South America, the Bronx, NY City Council), Cambodians seemed very open to talking about, not only corruption, but all sorts of bad things going on in their country. Back in Phenom Penh, at the Tuol Sleng Prison where up to 18,000 people were tortured and murdered, during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, hauntingly simple photographs of the victims, many not older than 6 or 7 years old, were hung throughout the rooms of the former elementary school, the walls of which were still stained with blood. Here’s one example (it’s not my picture, i will try to put mine up soon):

The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and elements of the party remained recognized by the UN until 1991. During that time, 1.5 million people, or 1/3 of the country died. Many former members are still in power in some capacity, and former low ranking soldiers still form a good portion of the society. Still, Tuol Sleng prison was filled with Cambodian tourists confronting the reality of their past. Many had tears in their eyes, their children too young to understand just what the pictures on the walls, often of children their own age, meant. Many travelers I met had told me of their stories of chatting with Cambodians who openly speak of their horror stories. Izzy has a heart-wrenching one posted here. Nevertheless, the history is not taught in schools. It’s a dichotomous culture. One that will open up about the most dramatic things you could imagine, and at the same time keeping secrets inside that would tear most of us apart. My impression is that this is true of the society as a whole, as well as many individuals. I also find something strange about a city that’s two main tourist attractions are Tuol Sleng prison, and the Killing Fields. Something about their exploitation for tourist purposes seems sick to me, yet who am I to argue with tuk tuk driver’s who’s only source of survival is the money they make taking backpackers out to see these sites?

I guess I’ll leave this post there. If you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed.