Cambodia: Country of Contradictions

Hi all! So as many of you know, I am home now from my adventure :) But the adventure hasn't ended. I'm still growing and reflecting on this amazing experience I've had.... and one of the ways I'm doing that is through continuing my blog that I never finished.

So...let the adventure continue!

****P.S. We were all sharing photos on my trip, (and even my camera at one point), so not all of these pictures are mine. I would like to credit my lovely friends and my program leader Jaci for many of the "people pictures" in this post!

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October 23rd - 31st, 2017.

Cambodia.

How can I even begin to explain Cambodia? From the moment we started to descend in the airplane above Phnom Penh, I knew we were entering a place wholly different from anywhere we’d been up until this point.

Unlike Bangkok, there were no high-rise buildings, and the city was relatively small, stretched along the muddy brown Mekong River. There was no urban sprawl either, it was quite clear where the city ended and the wild, lonely swamp-land began.

We spent our first couple days in a hotel in the city center, which turned out to be a little more city-like than I had expected. Many of the buildings and hotels in the area sported neon lights that glowed with a vengeance all night long.

The streets bustled with plenty of modern restaurants – many of them serving western food rather than Cambodian. And there was a beautiful cobbled square with pigeons that one could have found somewhere in Europe.

But there were also darker sides to the city. There were the small children who accosted us at every restaurant and street corner, trying to sell us bracelets out of baskets they hung around their necks.  

There was the unsettling number of old, white, men everywhere you turned, pointing to the prevalent business of sex tourism in Phnom Penh.

And then there was the Cambodian genocide. We spent an entire day visiting the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, learning, and hearing first-hand about the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge towards the Cambodian people.

The two sides of the city, dark and light, were tangled up in a web so complex it was impossible to separate them.

      Madi, Anna and I on the riverboat.

So while we took a peaceful riverboat and viewed the city skyline by sunset, I couldn’t stop thinking about the millions of average citizens, who one day in 1975 were forced to flee from the city on foot and were worked to death in camps in the rural parts of the country. The Cambodian flag, which fluttered gently on the prow of the boat, made me think of the bits of clothing that I stepped over in the killing fields. Bits of clothing, and bits of bones—that are still surfacing after 40 years.

But when I walked through the Tuol Sleng prison, past cell after cell, and the metal beds with the indents of the people who were tortured in them, all I could think of was the fact that on the other side of these cold brick walls, life today goes on. 

The Tuol Sleng memorial prison

The blood on the walls spoke of unimaginable suffering…… but it also mirrored the red costumes that the dancers wore at Cambodian Living Arts, where today, young students are carrying on the traditions of Cambodian culture.

We visited Cambodian Living Arts on our last day in Phnom Penh. Tucked away in a narrow, terraced office building off of a busy street, it was like a quiet gem in the heart of a noisy and and conflicted city. The organization was founded by a man named Arn Chorn-Pond, who, having lived through the Khmer Rouge regime as a child, had witnessed first-hand the systematic killing of nearly 90% of Cambodia’s artists. Arn wanted to pass on the traditional music and dance of Cambodia to the nation’s youth, before they were lost forever.

After watching a performance done by some of the young artists at the organization, we got to learn a group dance.

On our 4^th day after arriving in Cambodia, we drove six hours north to Siem Reap. Once we got outside the city, it was amazing how rural everything was. There were fields of water lilies…….palm trees….houses on stilts. The houses were similar to those in Thailand, but there was definitely a more foreign feel to things.

We made a pit-stop at a roadside market along the way, and selected a couple particularly large spiders from the assortment of fried creepy crawlies as snacks for the road. I used my status as “Vegetarian” as an excuse for not eating any of those hairy legs. . 

After we finally arrived in Siem Reap, and had dinner downtown, we decided to walk around.

Downtown Siem Reap was definitely the one place during our trip where I felt most like a tourist. My friends and I were literally treated like walking bags of money. If we so much as stopped to look in one of the shops selling batik pants, silk scarfs, and souvenirs, we were immediately accosted by at least one of the many shop employees.

           

This is how a typical encounter would go:

My friend and I walk into a shop.

Shop employee #1:    “Lady, what you like to buy?”

Me:    “Nothing. I’m just looking.” Walks further back into the shop, and pauses to look at a rack of skirts. 

Shop employee # 2:   “You looking for a skirt? These are very nice ones. How about this skirt? You buy this skirt."

Me:   “No thank you.” Walks quickly away. Makes the mistake of fingering a magnet with the Cambodian flag on it. 

Shop employee #3:     “You want souvenirs? Jewelry? Here lady – you buy this!”

Me:     “No thank you!” Ducks in-between a rack of dresses in an attempt to escape. 

My friend:     “Emily, where are you??!”

Shop employee # 27:    “You pay me and I tell you where your friend is.”

Needless to say, we quickly lost our appetite for shopping, and retreated back to our hotel empty handed.

After only the first night, I started to feel a little disenchanted with Siem Reap. It was hard to explain, even to myself. But I was saddened by how tourist-y it was, and I found myself yearning for a more culturally enriching experience.

Angkor Wat, which we visited the next day, was definitely more tourist-y than I had pictured also. But the temple complex was absolutely amazing.

Angkor Wat is actually a whole complex of different temples, which includes not only Angkor Wat proper (the largest and most iconic one), but also others such as Ta Prohm, the "giant tree-root" temple.

 We came back to Angkor Wat twice more. Once to see the sunrise.......

.....And once on bikes. 

      Jaci, Anna, Will, and I

The biking that we did around the temples was definitely the highlight of the week for me. It was hot, dusty, and exhilarating to navigate the weaving and chaotic traffic on the way to the temple. But once we were there, it was peaceful peddling around the temples through the majestically tall, silent trees. 

As our week came to a close, I felt all mixed up inside about Cambodia.  Thinking about the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide, I felt chilled, like there was a giant, invisible shadow over the country.  Cambodia may have overcome its violent past, but it can never forget. And thinking about how tourist-y Siem Reap was, with its western restaurants and massage parlors, I felt saddened. I felt like Cambodia was wearing a mask…. losing a part of its culture in the name of making profits off of western travelers. These two aspects were very much a part of Cambodia’s identity. But I felt like something was missing.

On our final night in Cambodia, I got a glimpse of that missing piece. Our wonderful guide, Bun, took us to his house (which he has turned into a homestay) for dinner. 

                                   Bun explaining about the history of Angkor Wat

It was on the outskirts of Siem Reap, but was a world away from the shops and restaurants in downtown. Many of the neighborhood children came over, and gave an informal singing and dance performance on the porch. We mingled with the tourists who were staying there, danced with the children, and joked around with Bun. It felt like a true community. 

As it got dark, I went up to the deck with Bun to interview him for my media project. And as we sat there, I realized that what I had been missing in Cambodia was the people, and the community. It was harder to find this here, because we were visiting for such a short time, and weren’t staying with host families. But this was the missing piece—the “real” Cambodia just under the surface. It was the Cambodia of family, and schoolchildren. Of people—just people—just friends. And as we sat there, Bun called out across the swamp in front of his house…. called out to say hello to some friends. They were but small, dark shapes wading in the water, with bobbing lanterns. They seemed to be fishermen. Despite the distance, they shouted hello in return.