Here are the exerts from my recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. It was quite a life changing experience for a punter in the sunburnt land to see such abject poverty first hand. It really is entirely something else when there are grubby faced children begging you for a coin; as opposed to say, reading it on a blog.
There is a surreal buzz in the morning air. The routine of working life is stifling; it creates monotony where only the next task is real, where all else fades in the trailing urgency of appointments and goals. Sitting in the airport lounge, sleep deprived and waiting for the flight at five am allows me a rare moment of reflective contemplation.
It has been two years since I have taken a break. Last year I shattered my ankle before my planned overseas trip, and since then I had been grinding through my weekly timetable. For this trip I was joined by my three compatriots, an accountant, an engineer, and a financial analyst.
Our first stop was Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The flight itself was mundane, with mundane food and nominal service. As always the hours passed like early Mondays.
Our first stop was Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh was an eye opener, a resounding knock to our western sensibilities. The very moment we exited the terminal a group of men eagerly took our luggage without permission. Worriedly we followed them with alarming haste only to realise they were taking it to a taxi. The vehicle itself was serviceable, but it was without seatbelts, and for some obscure reason the owner’s five year old son sat with us for the trip. The child situated himself between the driver and me, in-between the gearstick. A quiet child, he regarded me with acute fascination throughout the journey. Our driver did not speak much English, but regardless provided the usual repertoire of questions and answers. Where are you from? What are you seeing? How long are you staying?
As we drove into the CBD, the sobering experience that is Phnom Penh began to unfold around me. What I recognized as the slums that often surrounded the cities of South East Asia was in fact the central district itself.
Phnom Penh was a city recovering from its holocaustic roots and as such a large rift between the rich and poor has developed. There lies not a single skyscraper to be seen and the streets are smothered with vendors and shanty stalls. Eventually our taxi pulls into the main drag of Tonle Sap riverside, said to be the most populous and prosperous area of Phnom Penh.
What lies before me instead is a scene from the derelict side walks of old Hong Kong. Endless stalls of two story buildings that conglomerate into one other stretch as far as the eye can see in rectangular blocks. The streets are filled with refuse and rubbish, and people clad in simple shirts and shorts litter the sidewalks. The hotel that had come so recommended was a street stall covered with tourism posters; it was little more than a converted apartment. The riverside so noted for its serene beauty is a mud choked slow flowing sludge of pollution and assailing aromas. Large wooden planks and piled refuse litter rows of street signs that segregate the Sisowath Quay from its bubonic estuary. For a moment I was lost in the hurtling hustle and bustle of the city, this was far beyond my wildest expectations.
The people make the city, and this is no different in Phnom Pehn. The nation has a large number of young people, but very little industry to support them. The economy is haemorrhaging due to the credit crunch, and tourism remains the city’ primary trade. Even so, the sheer boldness by which this pseudo capitalism manifests in a poor backwater nation is astounding to the uninitiated traveller such as my self.
Sex tourism is something that has long since been romanticised and criticized in western literature. A bastardisation of this phenomenon is child sex tourism, an industry predominantly existing in third world nations. The cause for this burgeoning bloom of decadence however; lies not so much in the lack of opportunity, education, or ethics in developing but rather with westerners consumers and their bulging pockets. It is tourists who find pleasure in the idle satisfaction in the inferiority of ‘native’ people.
There are seedy underbellies in every nation. Sociologically speaking it is not unusual to rationalise how low employment rates and rich poor divides lead to growing disparity of less scrupulous industries. Seeing it first hand however, is an exercise far more shocking than the novelistic pursuit of descriptive narratives.
It was expected that at some stage our cadre of innocents would run into some form of the seedier localities. What I did not anticipate however was finding it in broad daylight in the main thoroughfare, as laissez-faire as if they were selling hotdogs. We ventured past a local lounge where a group of men and women sat outside. There were three Caucasian gentlemen of advanced age slouching in mid-evening heat. Sitting beside them were two girls who looked to be in their teens. The men spoke with a Californian accent, and joke with each other jovially. One man had a hand on a girl’s thigh, while another casually stroked the shoulder of another. Averting my eyes, I felt a flush of mortification. The girls were clearly local, skinny, without brand name clothing, and had little makeup. They had stoic, bored expressions and did little apart from observing the street with a deadpan expression. As we passed the men carried on, the girls remained silent. I looked towards my companions to confirm my suspicions, and their expressions concurred with my conclusion.
We decided to go by the Loney Planet Guide, and it recommended a bar called Sharkies. It was a favourite hangout for expats and tourists. Having walked for an entire day and tiring of the endless stalls we decided to have a night out. The cab to Sharkies was strangely expedient; all the drivers knew where it was. The bar itself however was worse for wear. It was old, dirty, and had noisy air conditioning. It had dying palm trees in pots the swayed as bamboo stitched fans swam lazily in circles. Looking around the bar, the reason why it was so popular became more evident. This particular location seemed to be filled with young women. It was also filled with foreigners, and they clearly were not here for holistic conversation and drinking. Everywhere I looked were women dressed to kill; dressed in such a way as to make no two shakes about the ply of their trade. I ordered Vodka on the rocks; the barista was as lousy as the atmosphere was sleazy.
“There are bars in Phnom Penh where not a single guest is under fifty or under fifteen stones.” was a common observation made about the sex industry in Cambodia. Looking around the bar, I see that single, overweight, middle aged Caucasian men form the majority of the clientele here. The girls would approach them, they would play some pool, some form of exchange would take place, and then the men would leave with one or two of the women in tow. As young backpacker seeming lads without money, we were largely ignored much to my relief.
http://www.expatrockstar.com/bar-review-shanghai-bar-phnom-penh-%E2%80%93-hostess-bar-in-cambodia/
Would know more about it than I do ><
Having quickly finished our drink at Sharkies, we decided it was time to leave and seek finer establishments that did not turn our moral sensibilities. Our next stop was a place called Iris, seemingly a nice little upmarket bar. There were a few well groomed young men at the door, and I fancied that it would be a sports bar or a more upmarket local pub.
Walking inside however revealed the place to be another cultural phenomenon unique to the Asian bar scene. Girl bars, also known as hostess bars, are a kind of establishment where girls employed by the bar will ‘accompany’ you as you drink in a bid to make you purchasing copiously priced beverages.
We had jumped from the frying pan and into the fire. Behind its heavily tinted doors and windows Iris was such an establishment. Flustered, we decided to stay and face the music.
Two black clad Iris ladies joined our table. We awkwardly drank our drinks. Too embarrassed to simply walk out and what little courage we had boosted by our light intoxication. We ordered double the amount of drinks, presuming this was protocol. Regardless of what we ordered for them however, the girls simply had water, tonic, or juice; certainly it would not do for them to be inebriated. It became painfully evident after a few words of conversation that the girls spoke no more English than ‘where do you come from’ and ‘would you like to have another drink’. The girl who sat next to me spoke a little Chinese, and I manage to siphon from broken syllables that the club was quiet because most of the girls are back in their home villages visiting family. ‘Why are you working today?’ I asked, but it was rhetorical. ‘Need send money family.’ She shrugs. I nod sympathetically, sipping my Southern and Lime. We sit in silence for a moment more. The music was poorly orchestrated, and obnoxiously loud.
After a good half an hour of embarrassing whispers and long dramatic pauses, we decided it was time to leave politely. However, a third girl joined us, and my companions and I were utterly flabbergasted by her appearance. Now note that earlier I had motioned that Cambodia has a sever problem in so far as child labour and sex tourism is concerned. The Iris club uniform was a small, form fitting one piece black dress cut with little modesty above the thigh. All of the girls wore this, and as petite, small figures it was a combination. This new girl whom came to our table however was even smaller, and by my estimate could not have been more than her teens. Despite having had a few drinks, this was rather sobering, as I had been considering the issue since our encounter with the white men and their girl friends a night ago. She poured me a drink; her hands were tiny and miniscule, dwarfed by my massive bear like mitts gripping the glass with a nervous swelter. Before we called for the bill, I asked her how old she was. ‘Twenty’ she replied demurely, to which my companions and I all answered with dubious nervous chuckles. We sat a moment longer, malingering, as though our seats were a slowly heating grill. The bill was a modest sum, less than twenty USD. As we got up from our alcove and made for the exit, I noticed several other customers around the club. One was an elder gentleman of advanced middle age. Seated with him was an adolescent similar to the girl who joined us. The man was red faced, leaning into her small body. He was soloing what seems to be an entire bottle of Whiskey; jackpot. The girl had one hand on his thigh and another around his neck but she kept her face away from his. The outside air was stale, hot, and sticky.
If I recall correctly, the girl name was Donny.
As the night wore on, we came to know the lexicon of the local peddlers. Tuk Tuk meant if you wanted a taxi ride on a rickshaw. Shooting meant if you wanted to go to the local shooting range and fire some guns. Massa meant a massage at one of the hundreds of suspicious parlours in the area. Boom-boom meant if you wanted to venture to one of the local houses of negotiated affections. At each street corner we were beset by dozens of the men shouting a combination of each. At first we politely refused, but as the night wore on, we became deaf to these cat-calls, eventually not even turning a eye to look them in the face. They became invisible people, just a mere flavour of the locality, just as we to them are faceless tourists flowing with American money; here to exploit them, here to deride them, here to capitalize on their less fortunate existence.
The follow days we visited the sites of the some of the greatest massacres and horrors in recorded human history. The S-21 prison was a converted school where over twenty thousand men and women were tortured over a year and then put to death. The Killing Field was where these men and women were made to dig their own graves before been beaten to death with their own tools and dumped precariously into the pits. We visited these sad shrines of events past, of tragedies that we could not imagine. We met with the survivors; we walked on the very soil, and stood face to face with the skulls of those who had fallen in the Khmer Rouge’s murder of over two million Cambodians. It was surreal and unbelievable because this had happened in 1975. It was a time we associated with the Beatles, with music, with Rock n` Roll and modernity. To the people here however, it was a dark blotch in their history that no reparations can mend, that no success can wash away. The horrors of a time go by is etched into the very bones of those who live on, and haunt the lives of those that survive.
Days into our trip, the ecstatic fever of tourism was broken.
The next day we left for Siam Reap, where the ancient wonder of the world Angkor Wat was situated. It is a two thousand year old temple complex that marked the height of the Khmer cultural dominance.
When one sees a great majestic sight in real life, the physical presence to be there is much greater than the sum of its parts. The forgotten jungle temples of Angkor Wat are far beyond the mere post card images that iconically capture its more illustrious moments. From the temple approach, its immense size is illustrated by the gargantuan moat that covers its outer perimeter. A humming buzz of excitement and activity cover our entrance as the sight of its faceted towers comes into view. The outer gate is breath taking, towering over its visitors, as it would have in ages past. Worn and eroded fresco cover the outer walls, ironically displaced by endless stalls of vendors pedalling mundane tourist goods.
We enter the courtyard to arrive at a long lattice that extends from the moat to the inner sanctum of the Temple of the God King. On my right stands a pagoda where monks once washed themselves of worldly sins, on my left stands another pagoda where the King’s officials would purify themselves. Below both pagodas were two large ponds with reflective, perfect still surfaces where our guide tells us were the washing basins for commoners.
To read about history is one thing, to walk among the halls of history itself is altogether another experience. The chief fresco of Angkor Wat was the churning of the milk, a story of creationism as seen through the eyes of the old Thai God King that drew their inspiration form Hinduism. Through seemingly endless corridors these detailed frescos of obsidian carvings continued like a tapestry. The walls told stories long lost to modern Cambodia, of a time when its people ruled supreme among the tribes of subcontinent Asia. The temples were a remnant of a time of national pride and racial superiority. During the sixth and twelfth century the Khmer people were the most powerful and advanced nation in SE Asia. Their knowledge and kingdom were unmatched but for its powerful Chinese neighbour. They had conquered the Viet, subjugated the Thai, and flourished.
The story of the churning of the milk is one such epic. Long before time, and the existence of humans, the world was but a primordial soup. This was the milk of life, and existing above it were the Aspara (Gods), and the Asura (Demons). The God Vishnu saw to it that churning the milk would produce the elixir of life. However to churn the milk, the Gods needed the help of the demons. Vishnu then recruited the demons who eagerly agreed in order to have half the elixir. Thus, with the Mandara Mountain as the apex of the churning rod that encompassed both sides of the world, the Asura and the Aspara set about churning the milk. As the sea of life turned and boiled, it produced many more life forms and people that populated the world. When success was imminent however, the God Vishnu reincarnated himself as a beautiful and seductive Sharqi (dancer). Her dancing was so alluring that it was said the Asura was enthralled and mesmerised by her beauty. This was then the Aspara took the completed elixir of immortality, and broke their promise of giving them half. Enraged the Asura were, they were no match for the Aspara whom drank the elixir. This is why to this day, the Gods reign over the Demons and between them exists a hatred that spans the eons.
With this epic in mind do I walk the hallowed halls of Angkor Wat. The narrative plays before my eyes with incredible detail. Each character is differentiated by small details such as the face, the eye shadows, the clothing, the equipment, and their gestures and poses. The work extends forever, round and round the vast expanse of the inner temple. Hours later, we were still in the same temple and this was but one of a dozen such epics that await my sojourn into the ancient history of Angkor Wat. For the Khmer, a people whose entire existence until recent times were filled with tales of banishment, suffering, losses, civil war, and colonisation it was a glorious time to reflect upon. Walking here during Khmer New Year surrounded by the smiling faces of locals who wonder in amazement at the sights of the temple; I cannot help but feel an immense sense of pride for having witnessed the greatness of an ancient people.
The second leg of our journey took us from the city of Siam Reap where Angor Reap was situated to the neighbouring nation of Vietnam, famed for its fierce spirit of independence, national pride, and fast developing capital. Our first stop in Vietnam was Saigon, now called Ho Chi Min City in memory of the man that liberated Vietnam from a hundred years of oppressive French colonisation.
The city itself was an immediate breath of fresh air from the oppressive poverty of Cambodia. Wealth was immediately apparent in the infrastructure of the city itself. The streets were equally chaotic, but it was wide and clean. Retail shops that catered not to tourists but the locals proliferated from small strings of shopping stalls to large towering shopping centres. The people that meandered the streets look busy, walked with purpose, and few lingered with expressions of resignation. As I gazed from the glass panes of our bus, I saw school children by the throngs in their red scarves. Large and well furbished kindergartens abound every few blocks, and parkland populated with locals. Sport was prolific in every field I saw, and young and old enjoyed games of badminton and a local version of kick the sack.
Saigon was a place where great history took place. Occupied by the French for over one hundred years, the beautiful architecture of ages past was perfectly preserved through the town hall, the opera house, and the post office. Tall arching spires that soared through sublimely chiselled vaults, with cherubs that adored each facet and corner. The city also had a darker history however, and this we saw in the war museums and the Cu-Chi tunnels. Few can imagine what life was like for the US troops whom had to fight the natives. As a student of World War II and a romantic that was long obsessed with US propaganda as depicted through films and novels, it was enlightening to see the war from the Vietnamese side.
Drunk with the success of their military success in WWII the US did not anticipate that badly armed Vietcong troops would prove to be an able opponent. However, what they had not realised was the spirit of a people fighting in their own homeland, and that every bomb scouring the jungles was a direct attack against the very nation and nationality of the Vietnamese people. The war was quickly drawn into the one of the most protracted battles of all time, and the US lost more men and money than the entirety of their losses in World War II combined. The Vietnamese meanwhile fought on doggedly in trenches, in tunnels, in jungles and in mountains, denying every avenue to the foreign invaders. Finally, the US had lost too much, and the population back home baulked at the savagery and losses sustained for a nation that only wanted to be rid of its western patriarch. Even though the Vietnamese had lost ever major battle, the US was defeated. Saigon was liberated, its puppet government dissolved, and Vietnam was one.
This patriotic narrative stirred even the vigour of a visitor such as my self. The museum was superbly orchestrated, with hundreds of graphic photos each with a little narrative attached. Shells, ordinances, and weapons used in the war were on display. The experience was saddening but enlightening look into the life of a people’s struggle for independence.
Our next stop was to travel north into the heartland of Vietnam where the Communist Coalition had its primary base of operations. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, and though it pales in wealth to the busting metropolis of Saigon, it makes up for it with its beautiful landscaping and rich cultural roots.
The primary destination for our trek was Sapa village; a mountainous region famed for its preserved ancient agricultural practices.
The Sapa mountain of Hanoi, Vietnam is home to 39000 villagers belonging to 48 different tribes of people. Bordering the outskirts of Yun Nang province in China, it sits comfortably as a verdant valley of tiered rice fields.
Starting from our hotel, we were immediately greeted by the native women of the mountain town. They wore colourful clothing stitched with hemp; a primary navy blue presided over by flowery patterns of yellow, red, and green. Headscarves are common on the elder women, while the younger girls wore their long hair unbound. We were a group of seven, but we soon attracted a group of no less than a dozen of the local folk. Walking among them as we descended into the steep mist mantled top of the Sapa valley was an experience words could barely do justice.
Imagine this: Parting the rocky cliffs to find a valley as deep as your eyes can see span across from one horizon to another. A hundred plots of tiered and tiled rice fields cascade from the top of mountains in every shade and colour. The yearling rice sprouts bore the tender emerald mantles of spring. The verdant vitality of the fields was amazing, awe inspiring, and for but a moment all fatigue washes away, leaving you with a sense of idyllic pastoral vigour that played the heartstring. All through the three hour long trek this view pervaded your senses, the smell of fresh loam, the flowing water, and finally the cascading cacophony of the waterfall that skirted your home stay mountain hut.
The trek was relatively simple at first, with slippery rocky steps going up and down a large cut path. As they day wore on however and we veered off to the smaller trails used by the villagers, it became a cross country marathon that spanned rivers, waterfalls, mossed stones through rocky stream beds, and steep bamboo forests with jagged cuts of wind torn stilts.
I must admit that I was not physically available for a trek of this magnitude. It was only by virtue of the locals who aided me on numerous accessions, holding my hand through treachery crumbling outcrops and melting rice fields that I was able to finally make it to our home stay. When they finally approached to sell us goods that they had prepared, I handsomely paid half a million Dong without recourse. I would have given them as much for thanks regardless of the trinkets involved.
Rest came bidden and eagerly, and we woke to the sound of the waterfall crashing ever harder as misty mountain rain showered our corrugated roof. I have seen much in my life, but this was incredible by far.
The home-stay offered to us was from a local family belonging to the Red Dzao minority people. It was a simple two storey building constructed from bamboo and roofed with thatch and pieces of corrugated iron. It was the most secure building in the village, as the owners had intended it for foreign guests. The walls were woven bamboo, and as the night raid pelted the soft thatch roof droplets of moisture formed upon the inner walls. Despite this however our stay was exceptionally comfortable, the air was crisp, clean, and it was a pleasure to draw deep lung fulls of the mountain air. The scent of cascading water, fresh loam, and dew collected upon the rice fields pervaded the morning. I was utterly seduced by this idyllic setting, and mourned that the rain cut short our trek as it made the muddy mountain trails suicidal for inexperienced tourist trekkers. Nevertheless, Sapa was the last great location of our journey.
While many other locations were compressed into the short sojourn of us foursome travellers; few remained as vividly in my mind as those I made mention.
This journey was more educational and life changing than my dozen semesters at university. To read about poverty and to see poverty are entirely mutual experiences. To be surrounded by begging children, muddy faced, wild haired, grubby handed, to be in the presence of history, to see into the empty eyes of those that died to tyranny, to walk on the very bones of holocaust, to stumble knee deep in the slosh of ancient fields … this was our journey; the very definition of unforgettable.
Eat Drink Man Otaku MAY 2009
auce, hungrily jamming wads of tomato and basil coated carbohydrates down my pie hole.
As such for a mere $13 - $15 AUD, it’s quite a decent bang for buck. The shop settings are simple but effective, clearly catering for middle class faire and families. The waitress was quite attentive and friendly for a family restaurant, and even made some recommendations and stopped for a chat.
