I don’t know about you, but I can honestly say that if you asked me to recall names of places, historical facts or dig into my foreign vocabulary, I’d tell you to run to the nearest bookstore. Ask me to recall some incredible experiences I have had with locals, and I’d probably be able to talk for the rest of my lifetime.
In a previous life as a tour leader working for Intrepid Travel, I always endeavoured to build a connection between the locals and my passengers wherever possible. One of my passengers, Jen LaVin, has offered her experience of our time together in Cambodia. Although it was four years ago, Jen’s memory has been etched with the faces of a group of young orphans. When I first met these children, they had never been to a small island about one hour from Phnom Penh. Neither had I. So that made for opportunity… isn’t that what travel is all about?
Enjoy Jen’s etching…
This has certainly been one of the most remarkable 24 hours of my life. A day that could truly change a person. We’re in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a city I’m finding to be quite charming, with a faded French Colonial feel and warm people, very quick to smile. I didn’t feel this in Bangkok or in Saigon, so I’m pleasantly surprised to feel so comfortable here.
After a two-hour chartered boat trip up the Mekong, playing tourist for a while and checking in on the internet, our first evening in Phnom Penh, a small group of us from our tour group met up with our tour leader at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. They have a roof deck bar that overlooks the main street of the city and the Mekong—quite relaxing with pitchers of the local Angkor beer, but also quite sobering, contemplating all the horrors journalists must have witnessed during their time here. Our next stop was a local pizza place. I know, pizza in Cambodia…but it turned out that the place is owned by two people who have started a school in the back for orphans, so all donations and profits go towards the kids. And the pizza was actually good, even without making it ‘happy’ or ‘very happy.’
As if this weren’t enough, our tour leader surprised us and had arranged for the orphans to do a show of traditional Cambodian dances for us. Since the horror of the 1970s, Cambodian art and music are slowly being re-introduced into society. It is one of the foundations of this school/orphanage.
Seeing the children sing and dance in their brightly colored costumes was truly inspiring. I wondered if they understood the importance of what they were doing. At the end of the performance, we were invited up on stage to dance with the children. Needless to say, it was a very special evening. But it was only the beginning.
We began today at the genocide museum, Tuol Sleng prison, an old high school that had been turned into torture center S-21 by the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s. It’s very hard to put into words what we experienced there, in fact, not everyone in our tour group could even bear to stay the whole time. I was glad I had already seen The Killing Fields and read a fair amount about what the Khmer Rouge did there…made it a little easier. But it was still shocking. Only seven people survived the camp—the only ones still alive when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia. They discovered 14 corpses there when they arrived, people who had been tortured beyond recognition; these last 14 victims are buried in the courtyard of the high-school-turned-prison-turned-museum.
Our guide for the day was himself a survivor of the camps. He worked in the rice fields as a human ’scarecrow’ from when he was six to nine years old, separated from his family and living in barracks with hundreds of other children. He ended up losing his father and many of his siblings, mostly to illness as a result of malnutrition. Hearing his first-hand stories only made the experience that much more disturbing and real.
Our next stop was out a dry, dusty and bumpy dirt road to the local killing fields just outside of the city’s center, where we learned even more about Pol Pot and his regime from our guide. In a span of just a little more than three years, it’s estimated he systematically exterminated four million Cambodians, roughly half the country’s population at the time. Why? It’s not clear that anyone really knows. It is surmised that he wanted to create a utopian, agrarian society. But starving your workforce just doesn’t seem to fit with that model. I think he was just a nut job.
Eight thousand victims’ skulls are housed in a monument at these particular fields. And our guide was quick to point out pieces of bone and teeth still visible in the dirt on the paths we were walking on. One can’t stand there and not feel changed.
Amazingly, we learned that many who participated in the atrocities are still involved in the country’s government, some at the highest levels. While this seemed totally incomprehensible to us naïve Westerners, when asked how this could be, our guide merely smiled politely and told us that “forgiveness is one of the fundamental principles of Buddhism.” I found this to be one of the more enlightening lessons of the day.
In an attempt to lighten things up a bit, we headed back into town for an epicurean delight at a restaurant/school that helps teach local teens the hospitality trade in an attempt to keep them off the streets and off drugs. The service was amazing as they eagerly waited on us. And the food didn’t disappoint. There was also a very nice Western-style bathroom at the restaurant (a rarity along our route…) that was very fancy, complete with hand towels and walls plastered with anti-Dubya cartoons and such.
After enjoying our meal, our leader provided us with yet another very welcome surprise—Tina had arranged for all 21 of the orphans from last night to spend the afternoon with us. In local Tuk Tuks, we ventured out to an island not far from Phnom Penh. We made a quick stop at the local Central Market to buy some fruit, drinks and some balls and toys for the kids, and then headed across a bridge to a first island, one with lots of quite modern houses and restaurants, and then to a ferry to cross to a smaller island where most of the population weave silk under their stilt houses, sow their fields with water buffalo and live in unbelievably poor conditions by our standards, but fairly well by theirs.
Spending the afternoon with the children proved to be the perfect antidote to our depressing morning activities. The children were loving and kind and seemed genuinely happy to be spending time with us. it didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language. Most of them had never been on a boat before, making the simple ferry ride an exciting adventure; and all of us delighted in seeing their faces as jumbo jets flew low overhead—apparently an uncommon sight over downtown Phnom Penh.
You can’t help but worry what will happen to these kids, as many of them are too old to be adopted. We’ve already seen so much—kids with baskets of Xeroxed books for sale, shoeless kids carrying babies and begging for food or money, kids who know every trick in the book to try to guilt tourists into buying their wares. You have to wonder if they’re ever allowed to be kids. You wonder how much they really know about the world and all its possibilities. You fear for their safety and their future. But it did all of us a world of good to be able to give at least one afternoon of fun and joy to this particular group of orphans.
I found myself sad when we finally had to say goodbye, my hands uncomfortably empty with no little ones to hold onto them. But I also felt incredibly uplifted by the experience and eager to explore ways in which I could help these children and others like them.
It’s been an amazing day—to have witnessed firsthand both the worst and the best of Cambodia, both its horrific past and its bright future. It’s an experience that’ll be hard to get my head around, and one that I’m sure will stay with me forever.
(c) Jen LaVin
Feel free to sharemystory(at)worldjourneys.com.au.
