Sink or Swim

Dr. Siri Paiboun's mother told him, "There's always someone worse off than you."  Siri adds, "unless you are Cambodian... "   which sounds rather harsh.  But in the 1970's, this was probably true.  We can't really discuss this with Siri since he is a fictional character of Mr. Cotterill's, but I think Siri would now agree that Cambodians have reached a better place on the road to a more hopeful future.

Long ago, in the older Vientiane, Laos, I remember riding our ponies to the fringes of town where there was a leper colony. What a strange term that is - as if the people with leprosy, missing fingers, toes, and parts of faces had chosen to explore and settle outside the city... Anyway, that was in my mind one of the definitions of true poverty.  Ceylon gave me another unforgettable visual image - the kids missing hands, standing begging on the street corners of Columbo.  Our taxi driver told us they were deliberately maimed to make begging more productive; that was 1970.   

Real poverty is here as well in Cambodia at the Tonle Sap Lake floating village of Chong Kneas, but there is change in the air.

I grabbed this photo from the web.  Chong Kneas is about 30 minutes south of Siem Reap, and is a floating village of Khmer and Vietnamese people.  There are about 170 villages like this on the vast Tonle Sap lake, with roughly 180,000 inhabitants.  Chong Kneas consists of about 5,800 people in 7 villages, according to the information in the tourist building where we got our boat.  

In the photo, you can see the river flowing into the lake in the distance.

 The ecosystem of this lake is unlike anything in North America.  Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, and shrinks and swells again according to the monsoon season.  During the dry season, as we are seeing it, the trees are showing more of themselves, and the stilt homes have more precarious porches.  No safety inspectors here, people need to use common sense. 

With the water low now, the pollution at the river mouth area is obvious.  Motor oil, trash, and a multitude of bacteria exist here, along with a paradise for bird life, 200 species of fish, crocodiles, turtles, and other reptiles.  The lake provides Cambodia with over half its fish supply.   Our dinner the other night probably came from here, which did make us think about the visible pollution.  Sometimes you just have to not think too much.    

                               

Dry season means some biking and soccer for the kids!  And here is the Chong Kneas school, reached by a ramp from the road.  It will rise considerably in the summer monsoon season.

Here the kids are hanging out during lunch break.  We stopped next door to get our craft, which will take us down the river through the village. We'll get to the lake eventually.  The journey takes a while during dry season.  The lake will grow from only about 965 square miles to an immense 4,630 square miles during the summer rains.    

The larger craft on the right is what we traveled in.  The surrounding small boats with families are plying their trade, which is based on the quest for the American dollar.    We were offered soft drinks, food, crafts, and photo opportunities with snakes.

The presence of the Catholic Church and Rotary Inter-national was a common sight.  There were Church store buildings and places of worship, all floating.  There were cemetaries also, on the low lying islands in the river.  They must be underwater half the year.
                                                                        On down the river, to the lake.  We stopped part way at a "buy stuff" double decker boat, and we had a good view of the neighborhood.






And here are the ubiquitous Coracle Kids.  Very deft they are with the steering of their bowl boats, while handling the snakes at the same time.. I wasn't sure if this child was giving us a peace sign, or asking for two dollars for the photo op.  Or is it two dollars to buy a snake?  Two dollars is a whole lot of money here... some of our questions are simply going to go unanswered, I think.  Like, how could we get a snake home?  Or is it supposed to be lunch?   




As we cruised down toward the lake, we had a chance to talk to our guides.  Over and over we heard that the number one goal was to get an education.  Learning English was seen as an essential step toward success, since that's the path into the tourist trade.  Cambodia's natural beauty and antiquity will make this nation's wealth grow.  Aside from the obvious attraction of Angkor Wat, there are also the beaches to the south.  This is an area I'd love to see next time!  Snorkeling and diving on the southern coast is a whole other world of potential for the nation.   Ecotourism in the northern forests will be one more realm of possibility, but only if the illegal logging devastation is controlled, and UXO and bandit danger are mitigated.  That takes money and time.  People are poaching illegal hardwoods because they need to feed their families, and Cambodia is still on that long road to recovery.

Did I mention the photo opportunity with crocodiles?




  Finally, we can see the lake ahead.  It's like reaching the sea.  The sky becomes vast, and we think about what a storm would be like out here.  How would these buildings stand up to a big wind?  

                                                                                  Here is our lunch destination, anchored at the edge of the big water.  If we'd gone on a longer tour, we would take off on that craft along the lake's north shore. 
It was nice to see the huge sky, and the air was clear of diesel.


 The view from the deck was beautiful.  We could see many family homes floating nearby,  taking advantage of the clearer water and fresh breeze from the lake.    As we had gotten to the lake, the restaurant craft was on our right - this cell tower was on our left.  Not many places had land lines, and electricity was often generator driven, but cell phones are everywhere.  Leaping over older technology makes sense here, and is a lot cheaper.





Our restaurant kitchen on the boat.  I have a feeling this is where we caught that bug, but there's no way to know.  Could have been anytime in the last week, really.  The food was nothing to write home about, so I won't.  We were just more tourists to these folks, a universe away from their reality, and we all knew it.  A bit humbling.

On the way back I snapped a few more shots.  The embankments along the river farther inland were perfect for motorcycles, and we saw a lot of them.  The motorbikes were more important than stable walls, evidently - without transport, you can't get to a job in Siem Reap, or a clinic.  And who has money for both gas and building materials?

As we disembarked from our river craft, this group of young fellows were hanging out having lunch and a few beers.  They were amused by us, and a bit derisive, I suspect.  It was clear from watching our uncomfortable guide that these guys were making a few jokes at our expense, but we took no offense.  It's got to be really weird to have tourists from another hemisphere come to see your village as if there is something strange about it... if I were in their shoes, I'd probably be resentful and bitter.   After all, most of those bombs laying about the place were made in the good ol' USA.    But astonishingly, the general Cambodian attitude seems to be forward looking, positive, and hopeful, at least as far as this naive American can tell.  We were only communicating with those who had learned some English, of course, the people actually doing better economically now.  So I don't really know the attitude of the tens of thousands still impoverished.  But hope is in the air, and God knows Cambodia deserves it.

This final shot from the coach ride back reminds me of my school bus ride to K6 in Vientiane, back in the day.  Rice paddies and haze, where water meets the sky.

Siem Reap - Apsaras and Wireless

After a long couple of days of activity, we were ready to explore town a bit, and find a good dinner.  There were plenty of tuk-tuk drivers ready to take us from our airport road hotel, a ride of about 5-10 minutes.  $3.00, not bad!  Our driver told us we should be visiting "Pub Street" - that's where all the tourists go.  Aptly named, this area was a few blocks worth of bars, cafes, shops, and great small eateries.  Free wireless internet service was abundant.

At the upper left of this Pub Street shot, notice the ad for "Free Apsara Dancing"  - Neil Gaiman fans, maybe the gods are still here after all...enjoying the air conditioning.

Fish pedicure opportunities were everywhere.  This photo is from National Geographic, a wonderful shot that captured exactly what we saw.  Musicians playing for change to support families devastated by UXO explosions were juxtaposed with these Americans, Australians and Europeans who still had their feet. 

Garra Rufa fish in tanks nibble the dead skin off of one's feet, a delicate massage that feels great after you get over the tickles.  There was a free pond of these little guys at our friends' hotel, and I tried it.  Tickles like crazy, and the laughter makes you feel as good as the massage.



The streets were jammed with motorbikes and tourists strolling around through the alleys.  We had an excellent meal, and walked over to the Night Market across the river.


The Night Market area here looks newly built, and has much more expensive shops - we knew we'd come back the next day to compare prices with the older Psar Chaa market. 



Being very close to Chinese New Year now, there were many Asian young people exploring Cambodia.  Many of them sported expensive shoes and handbags, and we were all targeted by the people begging at the open restaurants.  The gulf between people here seems not to be so much an East/West division, but about poverty and wealth, and about whether one has lived through the war, or never experienced that particular hell. 

"Siem Reap" is "Siam Defeated" in the Khmer language.  Named after a Khmer victory against the Thai in the 1600s, Siem Reap is the gateway city to Angkor Wat, and it's just north of the immense Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. The French colonial influence is clear here.  Great cuisine, colonial homes and hotels, and a pleasant river-front market make this town attractive to tourists world wide, now that war has ended.

Coming back the next day, we explored the market area downtown. Here, folks hanging out on the shady bridge over the Siem Reap River.Several foot bridges take you across from the old Psar Chaa market to the new Night Market with more upscale shops.


Inside the huge Psar Chaa market, a warren of stalls under a warehouse-like ceiling, we saw... stuff.  Lots of it.  Trinkets of ceramic, wind chimes, pots of every kind,  hats, clothing, handbags, jewelry, housewares... you could live in there for a year on about a hundred dollars.  Because this was a food market too; meat, vegetables, bread, you name it.

The smell in here was a bit overwhelming.  We were not tempted to try this food, not even a little bit.  I'm sure, with enough antibodies, we would be fine, but I think we'd have to live here for a while.

Jules was on the lookout for a gold chain for her daughter.  The gold and gem business was doing well here in the market - we found a whole wing devoted to gold, gemstones and silver.  We didn't know enough to be sure what was good quality and what wasn't, but certainly the prices were generally a LOT lower than anything in the West.  Here is the woman who fixed the gold chain to the right length.










Time to get the heck out of here, and find the sunlight again!   We didn't want to have to buy more suitcases to bring home more stuff!  I don't think Jules bought the hat, but the Euro fellow did.



Strolling around the river area, we saw the most amazing variety of life in Siem Reap.  


Construction was taking place, roads were paved, banks and hotels and restaurants were springing up along the wider streets.  There are some wider boulevards, French influenced, which give these areas a peaceful, roomy feel.














And then there are the shops along the road where manufacturing is taking place.  If the tag in your shirt says "Made in Cambodia", it could come from one of these shops.  These young men and women were working long hours.  We'd see them sewing away in the morning, and the shop would still be open at 9:00 PM when we rolled home.

Families combined work and play - these were some proud parents!




Here are a couple of photos of food on the street - nuts here.  I remember betel nut being chewed by so many people in Laos back in the day, but I didn't see so much of it now.  I'm not sure what kind of nuts these were.



And whatever this was on the roaster (a pig?) it didn't run fast enough...



Some of our ASV alumni had also made the journey to Cambodia.  Jack and Kathy, Jill, and Karen were here as well. Karen was housed in our hotel on the airport road, while the others had a really swell place in town by the river.  It had an excellent restaurant, and we gathered for a great dinner there before our last big day in Cambodia.  

Jack was planning to rise at O Dark Thirty to go birding at the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary, an important breeding ground for large water birds at Tonle Sap Lake.  Jules and I will go to Chong Kneas, a floating village at Tonle Sap not far from Siem Reap.
But first, we celebrated being here!


The Cambodian Real - dollars usually worked well too, with Reals for the "change", since they were worth less than a dollar.

Tomorrow, on to the Floating Village, where this meal became a distant dream.

It's Not an Adventure Until Something Goes Wrong

The title is a quote from Jeff Johnson, in the documentary 180 South.  If you haven't seen it, it's the ultimate adventure story.  

So, of course, something did go wrong.  The sun was now slanting glowingly through the trees, quite beautiful really, except that this told us we were late getting going on the return journey.  Another 15 km back to Siem Reap.  
And my bike had a flat -  no spare tube, no pump, no patch.  Next time, I know what to bring.

Chan Mol had friends at Roluos, and we had a quick rescue.  Just a short distance to the roadside bike fixer's house.  Here's the young man who did the repairs.  Older than he looks, he's 12.  
The cost?  One dollar.  We bought bottles of water also, trying to spend more to justify all the help we were getting.



                                                                   
















While we waited for the new tube to be installed, Jules took the time to record Chan Mol's story of the war years.    He believes he was born in 1979, which would make him now 33 years old.  This seems about right.  He has been working a lot, supporting several younger siblings to keep them in school as well.

When he was around 13, while Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army was fighting a running battle with the Vietnamese, Chan Mol remembers his father and the other village men taking the 50 head of cattle to pasture, moving them from one grazing spot to another.  One day, the men heard gunfire and artillery exploding near their village.  The fathers went back to the village to try to help, instructing the older boys to stay out with the cattle, away from danger.

The children hid in the jungle.  They had no food or water, and after a night out, they went to a friend's farm where there was some corn.  They had been told by the men to stay out, and wait for the fathers to come out to get them.  The armed factions had been placing landmines all through the area for many years, and the men were worried that the kids would hit them trying to return on their own.
Finally, the men came out and found the kids and cattle.  They all went back to the village, now that the soldiers had left.  The men sent the cattle first, and stepped carefully in the cow's tracks.  Roads were especially dangerous, and not all the cattle made it.
Gathering firewood was the most dangerous of all tasks in the village due to the landmines and other unexploded ordinance.  
The village had caves nearby to hide in when bombs or shelling threatened.  During some months, Chan Mol remembers not being allowed to go to school, or help his father outside the village with the cattle, but had to stay in these makeshift bunkers with the women.

Chan Mol was happy to talk about these things, but when we asked if he has had to tell this to many tourists, he said that tourists don't usually ask.   

And then, my bike repaired, we hit the road again.  
First, we took a look at some of the shops outside the Roluos ruins.  Here craftsmen and women are creating masks and puppets from leather that are sold at Angkor.  The tourism industry has created many jobs in this, and a lot of people with disabilities are creating art.

A scale model of Angkor Wat, on display to walk around and check out.

Whole families are working on leather crafts, first drawing the designs and then punching the leather with holes along the lines.  These become Shadow Puppets, and other designs.



                                 

As we pedaled back in the early evening light, we saw several games of volleyball going on.  Chan Mol said this sport is really catching on in Cambodia.  It takes only a net, a ball, and a little flat land, and maybe a few beers.

It was just about full on dark when we got back to Siem Reap.  And it seemed like we took a new route in - it took forever.  We wound quickly through many streets, filling up with streams of cars, tuk-tuks, motorcycles, other bikes, and buses spewing exhaust fumes.  Nobody ever stopped, and traffic lights were largely ignored. Nobody ever went really fast, either, thank goodness.  At one point, almost to the bike shed, we had to cross about 6 lanes of traffic.  There was no crosswalk, and so we learned the technique we called "Rock in the River".  We had Chan Mol upstream, then Jules and I.  We crept slowly into the moving traffic, heading diagonally a little downstream and toward the opposite "shore".  As long as we never stopped, the traffic would just part around us as we moved.  We stayed predictable, and everyone knew how to handle our little bike raft.

This long day at Roluos didn't end here. After thanking Chan Mol for an unforgettable, incredible day, we got cleaned up and went to town.  Time to find some dinner, a beer, and a fish pedicure!