Off East

We got up early to take the speedboat up the Mekong Delta from Chau Doc in Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. After 5 hours on the boat we finally crossed into Cambodia and docked at Phnom Penh.

As soon as we stepped off the boat we were mobbed by motorbike/tuk tuk/ taxi drivers. Some of them were really rude and quite aggressive but we eventually managed to find one who was friendlier. We came to learn that this aggression was actually desperation. With an average income of $2 a day, our fare was REALLY important to them and may have made the difference between their family eating that day or not.

After dumping our bags at our hotel, we set off to explore the city. What we’d read in the slightly outdated Lonely Planet painted a picture of guns, bag snatching, poverty and corruption so we slightly nervously took to the streets!

First impressions were of a slightly crumbling city on the river with some amazing old colonial villas alongside open sewers and children begging. It felt a bit edgy until you got the riverfront which was thick with restaurants and bars – most of which were hostess bars.

We went for a drink in one bar and had a constant stream of children selling books, people with severe physical disabilities and many people with limbs missing – which remained a constant reminder of the awful damage that landmines continue to cause in Cambodia.

It was REALLY hard to say no to everyone; particularly the kids who spoke brilliant English but buying from them only encourages them to work on the streets and makes them more vulnerable.

We visited one area of the city where Nokia had a break and street dancing competition which was really popular with teenagers and was quite funny to watch. Whilst at the market we had some street food but as we sat there a group of ragged children emerged from the shadows and nervously swarmed around the empty tables and the bins and picked through peoples leftovers and then disappeared as quickly and silently as they’d arrived. The poor little things were obviously starving. Some of them were as young as 5 or 6 years old. It was heartbreaking – and it was at this point that we realised that Cambodia was going to be emotionally challenging.

Later that evening, we got chatting to a young girl working in a bar and her story made me really angry. Again, this type of story would become familiar. Old Western ‘boyfriend’, young Cambodian ‘girlfriend’ being treated like some exotic commodity.

Feeling a bit depressed by what we’d seen of Phnom Penh thus far, we went and had a happy pizza (extra happy please!) and went to bed.

We spent the next couple of days exploring the city. It was seriously hot and soon as you stepped outside you were a big sweaty mess, so we hired a tuk-tuk one morning and went on a drive around the city. We crossed the river where no tourists go and by chance stumbled upon a harvest festival at a local temple. The Buddhist monks had been served food by the locals to say thanks and pray for a successful harvest. We were watching from a distance and before we knew it we’d been invited over by on of the older monks and asked to join them! He didn’t speak much English but did speak some French (which was their second language before the Khmer Rouge occupation which practically wiped it out) so as I dusted off some very rusty French speaking skills, he proceeded to explain the celebration to me. The locals insisted that we sat with them and ate their food and it was a really lovely cultural experience.

Phnom Penh is home to hundreds of NGO’s (Non-Government Organisations) from all around the world, who arrived to ‘help’ Cambodia during the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime over 30 years ago. Unfortunately Cambodia is still an extremely poor country whose people have pretty much been left to their own devices by a corrupt government. As I said earlier, the average daily wage is $2 per family. The majority of Cambodians still live by subsistence farming but tourism is growing and more people are coming to the cities to find the ’streets paved with gold’. Unfortunately, typically many people arrive in the capital city completely unprepared or in desperately vulnerable situations. This means that huge numbers of children live on the streets or are left to their own devices whilst their parents try and find work or more commonly, send their children out to work on the streets to fund their drug and alcohol problems. Sex tourism is still commonplace in Cambodia though efforts are being made to try and stop this.

There are a number of charities and NGO’s who work tirelessly to help the 1000’s of vulnerable young children and their families in Phnom Penh and we went to visit one of these projects to lend our financial support and to find out more about how we could help whilst in Cambodia. One of these projects is Childsafe and also the Friends project. We were really impressed by the work they do and met some of the young children that they’re trying to help in the city. It was a privilege to meet these people and to find out how we could become Childsafe travellers whilst in Cambodia.

Unfortunately Steve was really sick one day and was bedridden, so I took myself off to the Genocide Museum (recently bought by some Japanese investors who pocket all of the entrance fee!) which was the school in the centre of Phnom Penh that was turned into a prison where 1000’s of innocent Cambodians were taken to be tortured to confess to being spies/intellectuals/opposing the Khmer Rouge regime. After they had ‘confessed’ they were taken to the Killing Fields just outside the city where they were brutally executed by the Khmer Rouge. It was a sobering and moving experience and the full horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime suddenly became very, very clear. Whats more, this was happening the year I was born and as we were to find out later on in our travels, the Khmer Rouge continued to rule with terror in parts of Cambodia up until the late 1990’s. It was not ‘just’ the 4 years of horrors that I’d been led to believe it was. The poor, poor people of Cambodia.

We felt like we’d seen enough of Phnom Penh after 4 days and decided to move on. Next destination Kampong Thom.

Here’s a few photos: