Cambodia: riding elephants and dodging tuk-tuks

Cambodia was my favorite part of the trip. Before we went, there was slight fear and trepidation due to Lonely Planet quotes such as: Dangers and Annoyances: Armed robberies are fairly common, so we recommend you do not go out at night, and if you do, refrain from carrying bags or purses. Do not worry much, though, because statistically speaking, it should not happen to you. We took care to be back near our hostels each evening, and usually took a guide with us when we went out, so luckily, we escaped the statistic. Still, we faced plenty of other problems such as food poisoning, money flow issues and extortion, both from private enterprises and from the government. But all that aside, we had a great time. :)

Cambodia was my first real third-world country experience. It has the most corrupt government of any country I have seen firsthand (World Democracy Audit ranks it in the 20 top most corrupt states), evident in its flagrant extortion of foreigners, complete lack of infrastructure, neglect of historical and cultural sites, obvious misappropriation of funds etc. From the moment we landed in the airport and were charged a $20 entry visa to the moment when we faced another $25 exit fee just to leave the country, we found ridiculous taxes and charges attached to everything we tried to do. One might wonder where all of this government money is going? We did, and saw no evidence of it in our travels.


Cambodia is fairly impoverished, with more than a third of its population living below the poverty line and living on less than one dollar a day. Although we knew that we were supposed to be bargaining when shopping from markets, street vendors or street children, it was so hard for us when we realized that their starting asking price could be their day's wages as opposed to the price of a can of soda for us. Their own Cambodian riel currency is so devalued (and faces a near 20% annual inflation) that most people prefer to use US dollars. In fact, when withdrawing money from an ATM, you get back US dollars. However, they do not use US change, only bills. Often when paying for something in US dollars, we would get change back in both dollars and riel, where the riel was the small change (1000 riel = one US quarter). On a few occasions, I experimented with trying to use American coins. Even though I would point to the writing on the coins and repeat "America - America," the people would always just shake their heads and hand it back to me.

We landed in Phnom Penh late afternoon, but had hotel reservations in Siem Reap. The 190 mile road connecting the cities, one of the seven main roads in the country, is happily paved (the majority of roads in Cambodia are still gravel or, more likely, dirt). However, buses only make the trip a few times a day, and if we had waited for the next bus, we would not have left till midnight. Therefore, our only option was to hire a taxi. The trip took us 6 hours, which might sound like a long time until you realize that we were on a two-lane road after dark - a road which we shared with other cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, bicycles, pedestrians and lots of cattle. Topping speeds of 30m/h would probably result in taking out a cow or two, something frowned upon by the locals. Let's just say that the taxi ride to Siem Reap was very educational about life in Cambodia.

Our hostel in Siem Reap was very Western-backpacker friendly, with great food, bar area, movie nights, billiards tables, computer room and pool. The best part of the hostel, though, was Bob. Bob works the night shift, so he was the one who first checked us in and showed us our rooms. From that point on, he adopted us and went everywhere with us as our personal guide. We still do not know whether this is regular procedure or because we looked very lost and foreign or because he just thought we were cool people and wanted to hang out with us. Whatever the reason, Bob was very sweet and fast became our favorite person - we are now all facebook friends with him. :)



We spent our first day visiting the temples of Angkor. The Angkorian period began around 800 CE and lasted until the mid-1400s when Thailand invaded and sacked the capital. During the Khmer Empire, over 1000 temples were built in the area, the largest of which is Angkor Wat ("angkor" meaning city, and "wat" meaning temple). The entire land mass area of Angkor is huge and separated into different temple complexes, as each new Khmer king chose to build his own capital city and religious temples. The sites are each set off with giant city walls, and some even have moats. While the temples were originally built in the Hindu tradition, later kings rededicated them all into Mahayana Buddhism until settling into Theravada Buddhism. It is interesting to me how fluid Eastern religions are. We started off the day at Angkor Thom (c. 1180), the last capital of the Khmer Empire. The famous temple site here is Bayon, famous for its 200 ginormous "enigmatic" faces, which stare off into the jungle. I think it would have been so cool to have been a Portuguese or French explorer hundreds of years ago, and to suddenly come upon the faces, overrun by jungle vines and animals. We visited countless other temple sites that day, including Preah Khan and Ta Prohm (this is the temple where they filmed Tomb Raider).





















We ended our tour at Angkor Wat (c. 1150), perhaps the best preserved site. Originally built as a private mausoleum for King Suryavarman VII, after the king died, it fell into disuse and was replaced by Angkor Thom (built by King Jayavarman VII, whom we nicknamed Jafar, mostly because we could not pronounce his name, but also because we kept singing Aladdin - it all started with the elephants...). In fact, King Suryavarman died elsewhere, and for some reason, his body was never returned for burial. If I was the architect of Angkor Wat, I would have been quite put out. On the other hand, it does leave an incredible archeological site for the future generations to admire. Both the size and the level of detail in the stone carvings and decoration were inspiring. However, by this point in the day, it was so hot and we all felt completely drained. We spent a lot of time just sitting in the middle of the temple because no one had any energy to stand up and walk around. Angkor Wat is surrounded by a moat, after which you walk through the city walls into a large field, dotted by smaller stone structures thought to be libraries. The other secular city buildings inside the walls have long disappeared, as only the temples (and I guess libraries?) were built out of stone. Most of this area has reverted back into jungle, though restorers have cleared the front end into a level plain. Crossing the grounds, you reach the outer buildings of the temple complex which lead you into the main courtyard. At the heart of the temple is the central shrine, which as in all of the other temples, rises up to the highest point. These towers usually have steep, narrow stairs you must climb, representing the difficulty of ascending to the gods. It is actually fairly amazing that they let tourists crawl all over these temples, as there would surely be huge liability risks in most other countries. Rather than having tourists sign liability waivers before climbing up the massive rock structures, they instead insist merely upon a certain dress code. I had to borrow a sarong to tie around my waist in order to go up, for my shorts were too indecent. This was the only Angkorian temple in which we saw live monks scurrying around, so perhaps it is still in use and this is why they were more strict (Bangkok's temples had similar dress codes - at one of them, I had to borrow a shirt to put around my shoulders because I was wearing a tank top; it is very difficult to dress conservatively when the temperatures are so hot). The climb was worth it, though, as we had beautiful views of the whole area.










(Above: Charles and I mimicking a scary statue; monks)


We ended the day by riding elephants. Well, sort of. It was rather expensive to go for a decently long ride, so we decided just to ride them for a few minutes for the kodak moment (I know - we have become so Asian). All the same, I can now say that I have ridden an elephant. :)


The next day, we decided to be more low-key and relax. In the morning, Fonda, Kim and I rented bicycles from our hostel and went out for a ride along the canal (Kim - Yilan ETA who joined us for Cambodia). After that, Kristin and Kaitlyn joined us for a Cambodian cooking class. I learned how to make Cambodian spring rolls and pad thai - not that I could recreate them, though. The three ladies leading the class did not speak the best English, nor did any of the ingredients have English labels. A lot of our cooking involved them handing us unknown spices and sauces to dump in at unknown quantities. Still, it was fun, and we got to eat everything we made which was the best part of all. :) Oh and I might have failed to mention this previously, but Southeast Asia makes the best mango smoothies.












In the afternoon, Bob took us on another outing, this time to the Chong Khneas Floating Village in the Tonle Sap Lake (one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia during the rainy season) to watch the sunset. We took a boat ride out into the lake, passing by trees which Bob told us are entirely submerged during the rainy season. The village was comprised of hundreds of house boats, each individually moored (for some reason, I had envisioned them all tied together in a giant raft...). The town even included a floating church and an elementary school. When I asked Bob what happens to the children after primary school, he said that they would have to move to a nearby city in order to continue their schooling. Most families are never be able to afford this, though. Cambodia actually has fairly high rates of enrollment in primary school. The thing is, so many children have to repeat grades that the average time to graduate is ten years, and many kids will drop-out before then.










One of the more bizarre parts of the floating village were the small children in buckets or the children with snakes. Some kids would be rowed around by their parents in small canoes. When their boat pulled up alongside ours, the child would hop ship and walk up to us, trying to sell us drinks. Other children were more independent, paddling themselves about in large tin buckets with one arm while bailing out water with the other. The strangest of all, though, were the children with snakes. Small children, maybe six years old, would have these giant snakes wrapped around their bodies. Why they thought having a snake around their necks would make us want to give them money is beyond me. If anything, it just terrified us. Bob said that the reason the snakes did not hurt the children is because the parents found the snakes when they were really tiny. That way, the snake grew up as a pet in the family, domesticated. Now I do not buy this. People in America have attempted domesticating snakes or tigers or other wild animals with disastrous results. I would never let a snake drape itself around my five-year-old child's body!










(Above: snake on children; Below: Kristin and Carol with Bob, and Me with Fonda)










We left the next morning on a bus back to Phnom Penh. The most entertaining part about the trip was that at every stop, we were greeted by street vendors trying to sell us baguettes and brie. I take it they normally cater towards a European tourist population.

The main things I had wanted to see in Phnom Penh were the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields. I would never say that this part of the trip was "fun" or "enjoyable," but it was powerful and one of my favorite things that we did. Despite having read about the genocide before, I did not remember most of the details, so it was an intense experience to relearn the history while standing in the places where it happened. Unlike the Holocaust where you understand it as ethnic cleansing and a systematic societal brainwashing of hatred, the Khmer Rouge created a chaotic society of terror overnight, mass-murdering thousands of its own people while thousands of others died of starvation and disease. In essence, they tried to create a more extreme version of China's Cultural Revolution, eliminating their entire intellectual class and emptying all major cities to force the people into an agrarian society. During Pol Pot's reign, 1.7 million people of the 8 million population died - or about 21 percent of the total population. Khmer Rouge took over a high school on a quiet residential street in Phnom Penh, turning it into the S-21 prison camp (now the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum). The school was surrounded by barbed wire, and the classrooms converted into tiny cells. The prison was used to interrogate and torture an estimated 17,000 Cambodians. Today, one of the three buildings is filled with picture after picture of the murdered victims, including hundreds of pictures of young children.










The Choung Ek Killing Fields lay a few miles outside of Phnom Penh and have today been converted into a memorial for the victims of the mass graves. A commemorative stupa stands in the middle, holding the sculls of the victims. One of the grave sites contained the bodies of hundreds of women with their babies. The tree next to it is called the "Killing Tree," because it is where soldiers bashed babies before throwing their corpses into the grave.









(Pictures: stupa filled with human sculls; pits from the excavated mass graves)



The following is a poem by Sarith Pou, displayed in the S-21 prison.

The New Regime

No religious rituals.
No religious symbols.
No fortune teller.
No traditional healers.
No paying respect to elders.
No social status. No titles.

No education. No training.
No school. No learning.
No books. No library.
No science. No technology.
No pens. No paper.

No currency. No bartering.
No buying. No selling.
No begging. No giving.
No purses. No wallets.

No human rights. No liberty.
No courts. No judges.
No laws. No attorneys.

No communications.
No public transportation.
No private transportation.
No traveling. No mailing.
No inviting. No visiting.
No faxes. No telephones.

No social gatherings.
No chitchatting.
No jokes. No laughter.
No music. No dancing.

No romance. No flirting.
No fornication. No dating.
No wet dreaming.
No masturbating.
No naked sleepers.
No bathers.
No nakedness in showers.
No love songs. No love letters.
No affection.

No marrying. No divorcing.
No marital conflicts. No fighting.
No profanity. No cursing.

No shoes. No sandals.
No toothbrushes. No razors.
No combs. No mirrors.
No lotion. No make up.
No long hair. No braids.
No jewelry.
No soap. No detergent. No shampoo.
No knitting. No embroidering.
No colored clothes, except black.
No styles, except pajamas.
No wine. No palm sap hooch.
No lighters. No cigarettes.
No morning coffee. No afternoon tea.
No snacks. No desserts.
No breakfast [sometimes no dinner].

No mercy. No forgiveness.
No regret. No remorse.
No second chances. No excuses.
No complaints. No grievances.
No help. No favors.
No eyeglasses. No dental treatment.
No vaccines. No medicines.
No hospitals. No doctors.
No disabilities. No social diseases.
No tuberculosis. No leprosy.

No kites. No marbles. No rubber bands.
No cookies. No popsicles. No candy.
No playing. No toys.
No lullabies.
No rest. No vacations.
No holidays. No weekends.
No games. No sports.
No staying up late.
No newspapers.

No radio. No TV.
No drawing. No painting.
No pets. No pictures.
No electricity. No lamp oil.
No clocks. No watches.

No hope. No life.
A third of the people didn't survive.
The regime died.

The last day in Phnom Penh, we visited the Russian Market and walked around a few parks before attempting to go to the airport and leave the country. We nearly did not make it out, for as we had not previously realized there was an exit fee, many of us found ourselves illiquid. We came up with all sorts of schemes - such as pooling our money to buy a tuk-tuk and set up our own business - trying to figure out how to come up with the money. Luckily, we managed to get out without committing any felonies, but it was funny that we did not learn our lesson from Singapore. Looking back, Cambodia was about twice as expensive as all of us had thought, perhaps because we kept getting ripped off everywhere we went... It is just so draining to always have to bargain for everything you want, whether it's food, a tuk-tuk ride or buying souvenirs. I like people to be honest with me and to tell me the price up front. Sometimes, it is just not worth it to argue with people because spending the extra money spares yourself the headache. About half of our group was especially happy to return home, as they had become progressively ill from the food on the trip. Kristin and Kaitlyn spent the majority of Cambodia feeling terrible, and then Charles, Carol and John came down with something the final day. I guess I have a pretty strong stomach.









(Above: riding in a tuk-tuk; wearing our t-shirts which read (in both English and Cambodian) "NO! I do NOT want a tuk-tuk!")

We flew back to Bangkok to spend one more night there before flying back to Taipei and on to Kaohsiung, making it home for the Chinese New Year.