Friday, June 9: Cambodia through a Tinted Window

Yesterday we traveled the five hours from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. The road was significantly better than the “highway” from the border to Siem Reap, but we decided to save a couple of dollars and take the second class bus for just $4. It did get us there, but the bus was a rickety, packed, sticky contraption with an air conditioning system that completely failed to wheeze out enough air to do anything other than stir up the stuffy oven. However, the bus’s television worked well—so some sort of karaoke and a screaming Asian soap opera played at top volume the whole time.
Yet, these long drives have been my favorite part of the trip. They offer a real opportunity to get a feel for the country. The vast majority of Cambodians do not live in the city, so this is our real chance to get a look at what life is like. I sat for the entire drive glued to the window, my eyes hungrily seeking to take in the panoramic views before us. I was sitting with a British guy my age, and combining our tour book knowledge and collective musings, we did our best to understand as much as we could.
The bus made a couple of rest stops, one of which was at a very small sort of local market. We’ve seen every body part of every animal hawked on the street, and here was no exception, with what could have been a high school anatomy class project baking in the sun. In addition, an old woman had an enormous basket of fried grasshoppers. She offered them to me and my new British friend, but we couldn’t quite muster up the courage (next time, I promise!). So, she popped them into her mouth and gave us a huge grin. All across the countryside we see huge white plastic sheets set up in wooden frames to catch the insects. This is apparently a great delicacy and a wonderful source of income.
Most of the villages we passed were just small collections of hovels built on stilts above the rice paddies of fields being farmed. The standard “house” was a straw hut with either a thatched roof or just a large pile of straw. These ranged from lean-tos on the verge of collapse to fairly sturdy looking stick constructions. Cambodia is a tropical country with strong annual monsoons; I wondered how such dwellings fared in the storms. As if to answer my question, we soon passed by a village that had been completely destroyed. The shacks lay in shambles, straw strewn with reckless abandon. It is impossible to imagine what it would be like to have your entire village destroyed regularly but not even know what it would be like to have the resources to rebuild in any different way.
When villagers were especially successful, we saw the corresponding improvement in their living arrangements, with upgrades to wood plank dwellings with clay tile roofs. The most successful villagers could even place a sheet of tin across their roof. There were also a fair number of schools, English language centers, and hospitals set up. Almost nothing is free in Cambodia; the children in school don’t just have to pay for their uniforms, but they have to pay their teachers every day. If there isn’t money for the day’s lesson, they don’t go to school. A few of the hospitals were emblazoned with “USAID.” It was good to see the money making it out to such desperate people; I experienced a rare moment of pride in our American foreign policy. (As I post this, I just read about the Guantanimo Bay prison suicides and the pride has disappeared again…)
Yet, I do wonder how the money is distributed and what sort of oversight exists, especially for foreign aid. Cambodia is currently ranked as the third most corrupt country in the world. We heard countless stories of corruption. For example, the miserable road we were on from Poipet to Siem Reap is supposedly controlled by the same man who owns the airport in Siem Reap. He has delayed road work to encourage travelers to use the airport, where he collects a $25 departure tax. For a generally inexpensive country, there are odd instances when government controls have led to hugely inflated prices and that money is not going back to the people. Where does the $20 admission fee to the Angkor Wat temples go? The restoration is financed by foreign countries, and it doesn’t seem like the money is going to the staff. Cambodia’s Prime Minister is one of the richest men in the world. His source of income? Kickbacks from the aid funding Cambodia receives. So again, we’re back to wealth distribution. Cambodia’s currency is worth so little that when no alternative was present, Peter used it for toilet paper. In fact, almost everything is quoted in US Dollars. When you go to one of the country’s few ATM’s, crisp new American money comes out.
I’d love to be able to spend months just backpacking across the countryside. There were lots of little guesthouses everywhere; anytime an extra empty room was present the facility became a “guesthouse.” It would be so rewarding to just trek from village to village, sleeping in the guesthouses and talking to everyone I meet. Then, maybe, the joys and frustrations and troubles and triumphs could really come to life.
This trip we also have been traveling with large contingents of white people all the time. There is a backpacking vibe I haven’t felt on other trips—perhaps it is because we stand out as “white,” and though there aren’t necessarily more of any nationality here than in other tourist destinations, we just are more visible here. Also, I guess there are fewer potential routes for traveling or backpacking lodging, so we seem to follow the same trail, and it is not uncommon to run into the same people several days in a row from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City! Then again, it’s not like the locals are doing much of this traveling, so I guess it makes sense that the routes are dominated by foreigners. While it is frustrating to always feel like a tourist shuttling from “must-see” to “must see,” it is fun to form that immediate bond with fellow travelers, and we exchange favorite stories and compare itineraries. I love the instant camaraderie that can quickly become a friend and travel companion! That being said, it’ll be great to live in Vietnam long enough that I won’t be following DK’s “In 1 day” itinerary everywhere to cram in the top ten sites everywhere. I know how hard it is to become a true insider, privy to all the little realities of day-to-day existence, but hopefully I can get beyond the view from the bus’s tinted window.
Anyway, our guesthouse here in Phnom Penh is a bit of a step down from previous accommodations. Corrugated tin walls and plasterboard section off un-air-conditioned boxes into cubes for two. The shower offers a quiet trickle of water but a ready supply of ants to share with you. It’s a little frustrating to not be able to find respite from the heat, but basically the rooms don’t matter—we’re not spending any time lounging in the rooms, and for $2.50 per night, the price can’t be beat! And after spending the whole day observing hovels without electricity, it seemed a bit duplicitous to be complaining about a lack of air-conditioning.
The guesthouse wasn’t the sort of place where you’d “hang out,” so we immediately set out to explore the city. Phnom Penh is an odd city, described in the guide books as an out of place big country town. The city’s history is fascinating, complicated, heartbreaking, and disgusting; control of the capital was passed from foreign power to foreign power with brief intermissions of despotic monarchy or the horrific Khmer Rouge dictatorship. The French influence is certainly evident; the city’s main streets are broad, tree-lined stately affairs lined by gorgeous colonial mansions where the foreign powers stayed. The street lining the river, home to the fancy restaurants and grand hotels now catering to corrupt national leaders and rich tourists, is a beautiful avenue. Huge traffic circles ring the city, and without any people or cars, this small quarter of the city could fit right into Western Europe.
Of course, as soon as you step off the few main boulevards, the roads become dirt again, the potholes are larger than most vehicles, and the scrappy stalls that serve as people’s dwellings, business places, and meeting points replace any sort of order seen on the boulevards. Here there is no order to the arrangements, the roads are not paved or even sort of smooth, and most buildings seem hastily erected. When the Khmer Rouge entered the city to “liberate” it from what actually was also a terrible regime, they were welcomed as heroes. A few days later, though, they made it clear that they intended to completely clear the city of people. Pol Pot’s weird ideology involved starting the whole country over at year zero so that he could begin with his “Super Great Leap Forward,” surpassing China and Russia in the speed of his socialist conversion. To do that he had to destroy any infrastructure that was existing in the country. He managed to do the destruction part, but not any of the rebuilding. The city of nearly two million people was reduced to a mere few thousand within a year of Pol Pot’s enterance to Phnom Penh. Only recently has the population climbed over a million again, and most of the buildings really are hastily erected as families moved back. Further, many of the new city dwellers were formally farmers, and they have brought their livestock, so seeing cows and chicken chilling in the street is not at all uncommon! The stately boulevards lasted about 3 blocks, and that was it.
Just a block off the river was a food market where the day’s fish catch was being hawked just as we passed through. One fish managed to leap straight out of its basket onto my foot—I think this startled me even more than Bangkok’s rat! The sun was setting and women began lighting candles as they squatted in the streets with their knives to begin skinning the fish promptly. Crouched over their little stumps, they knelt and chatted with each other while preparing dinner. The guts and blood just sort of flowed into the street and created a strong odor, but I didn’t see any sort of mechanism for cleaning up the mess by morning.
Dinner tonight was an extravagant affair, although it was a bit of an accident. For the first time we followed a tour book recommendation, opting for “moderate” prices to try the best food in town. We paid $12 each—an absolute fortune here—but the food was amazing and we had our very own team of servers just for our table. Khmer food is not quite as flavorful as Thai food, but it’s a whole unique blend of seasonings, and we have ordered five new dishes at every meal. We were joined by a number of geckos at dinner—they were all over the walls, ceiling, and floor. Maybe we’ve been here too long, but somehow it seemed perfectly normal and great free entertainment.
Jim and I finished the night by checking out Martini’s pub—the oldest and most famous “western style” bar in town. Really it ended up being a thinly veiled whorehouse, where girls, many of whom seemed like teenagers, were hired by old white men and taken back to their hotels. Over 40% of Cambodia’s prostitutes have AIDS and only recently have attempts been made to control the spread of disease. We left quickly, but we did finally find the courage to try a motorbike taxi for the trip home. This wasn’t entirely by choice. Phnom Penh is considered too dangerous to have a taxi service. Armed robberies are a very frequent occurrence, there appear to be few restrictions on carrying weapons, and apparently, sometimes the police are the actual culprits of the robberies, so taxis don’t chance it. To be honest, I think this was the only time I really have not felt safe in a city at night beyond the most well-lit areas—the whole city pervades a seedy, dark, and dangerous atmosphere. But to finish this obscenely long post, the two of us hopped on the back of a motorbike together and zoomed/teetered our way home!