Cambodia

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it’s been a while. One more week in and a whole new bunch of stories to tell. We are now in Cambodia and have spent the last week experiencing a very different side of travelling. In stark comparison to Borneo’s natural splendor, Cambodia has plunged us into a cultural and historical tornado. We landed in the capital, Phnom Penh, and spent our first night in a small hostel called Top Banana. While checking emails on the rooftop bar, 4 Nigerian soccer players plonked down next to us and together we drank refrigerated red wine while they shared their stories about playing for a local Cambodian team in pidgin English. A little touch from home…(well sort of).

Nigerian Soccer Players in Cambodia

The next day, after a bone-jarring 9 hour bus ride, we arrived in Siem Riep. The road was tarred most of the way and followed the Tonlé Sap River passing flooded rice field after flooded rice field, myriads of grazing water buffalo and naked children playing in boats beneath their stilted wooden houses. It rained the whole way!

But luckily for us the rain didn't last and we were met the next morning with blistering sunshine and a new town to explore.

Our first day in Siem Riep came as a bit of a shock. Home to Angkor Wat, the 8^th Wonder of the World, it is also home to people impoverished and damaged beyond belief. Consequences of a country still coming to terms with over 4 decades of war and the nightmare that was the Khmer Rouge. Walking along the street, we met Mot Douk, a bookseller whose arms were blown off above the elbow in a landmine explosion when he was a child. (Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world and there are still parts of the country where it is unsafe to venture from demarcated paths.) As he held out his stump to shake our hand, another man limped past with a crudely made prosthetic leg, followed by a young boy leading his blind father from café to café asking for any kind of support. Children ply the tourist streets, many holding babies only a few months old, giving aggressive gut-wrenching pleas for milk formula and going so far as slipping their hands into yours and leading you willingly or unwillingly down the street to the nearest shop. 

Much has been written about the optimism of the Khmer people, in spite of their recent history. This is an understatement. The mere fact that these people are able to function AT ALL is miraculous and proof of the resilience of humankind as a species. 

In the afternoon, Pete and I caught a tuk-tuk to the Tonlé Sap Lake. Forgoing the $20 per person boat ride, we wondered along the banks when a voice from one of the floating wooden houses called to us: “Hello, where you from?” Five minutes and a wobbly boat ride later, we were sitting in a circle with the family. Pete surrounded by men being fed rice wine the same colour as concentrated urine from the bottom of a cut off plastic bottle. Me with the women and babies in the corner swapping white bead bracelets for red woven ones and rocking a sleeping baby in a hammock. After about 30 minutes of chatting, Pete was offered a full portion of cooked snake lying in a bowl of rice gruel. And here was our cue to exit! On the way back into town our tuk-tuk trailed behind an overloaded motorbike. On both sides of the bike, weighing the driver down were 2 massive bunches of ducks strung up by their feet…alive!!

Back in town, and suffering from a bit of culture overload, we wondered back to our hostel via a curry restaurant for some dinner and an early night before sunrise the next day at Angkor Wat.  

Flooded rice fields from the bus window

Tonle Sap water buffalo

Floating Villages

Out tuk-tuk driver, Tee

Anyone for a fish pedicure?

Enjoying the local beverages :)

Fast facts on Cambodia:

• It has one of the highest orphan and street child rates in the world.
• The Khmer Rouge managed to wipe out a 3rd of its population in its 3 year reign. That’s roughly 2 million people.
• It is one of the most recorded annihilations of our time and yet there is still not one single conviction to date. The criminals responsible for this atrocity are more likely to die of old age before they are convicted.
• The Tonlé Sap Lake is South East Asia’s largest lake. The Tonlé Sap River joins with the Mekong in the capital Phnom Penh. In the rainy season, the Mekong is so strong it reverses the flow of the Tonlé Sap River, making the lake one of the most bio-diverse lakes in the world, particularly for large water birds.
• At one point, the Khmer Empire covered most of Thailand and southern Vietnam. When the Thais sacked the capital they made off with most of the dancers, engineers, builders, etc. The affect this had on Thai culture can still be seen today. (Although, I don’t think you could dare tell a Thai person that!)