By Greg and Linda all mushed together as usual

Happiness is a core necessity in Cambodia (and perhaps most of SE Asia), why? Perhaps because approximately 95% of the entire region is Buddhist, and as a Buddhist one of your goals is to rid the world of suffering. Hence, if you are not suffering you will be happy. For clarification this is NOT a religious comment, Buddhist people mainly believe this is a way of life and not just a religion. We can’t forget our Declaration of Independence. Our founders thought it was important enough to make happiness part of the cornerstone of the country being built. Does “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” sound familiar? Actually, it is the only part of the declaration I can recall.

So to bring this full circle…we spent a few days in Bangkok, Thailand but left for Cambodia because we found out that our dear friends, Stacey and Tim, are coming to meet us. This made us very, very happy:). So, we are saving the best of Thailand for them. And since we are flying by the seat of our pants, one night at 7:30PM we decided to go to Cambodia. The next morning at 11:30AM we were boarding a Bangkok Airways flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. It’s crazy just writing that we are rolling from country to country on a whim…particularly because we are both such type A people (maybe because we are a cha cha changing). Everyone we have encountered has been soooo very happy or at least smiling. This makes us happy as well.

Cambodia, aka Kampuchea: meaning Golden Land…it was tweaked to Cambodia over the years due to the ease of pronunciation, but the word ‘Cambodia’ means nothing.

Let’s talk about bargains…$4 dollar entrees, $2 dollar tuk tuk rides (a three wheeled motorbike taxi pulling a cute little cart on the back)

Tuk Tuks

and people couldn’t be more polite and helpful. Yes, one of the poorest countries in the world but for us still unbelievable how inexpensive it is. Of course we Americans still paid a few hundred dollars a night for our hotel because we figured a $30 a night room would be disgusting. Wrong again, for $30 dollars a night you can get a room at a clean boutique hotel walking distance to town. Live and learn should be the theme of this trip.

Siem Reap, known for the impressive Angkor Wat (the largest religious monument in the world built in the 12th century) and other wats (temples) built between 800 to 1400 AD. Angkor means city in Sanskrit. We spent three days touring the sites by car, foot and bike. The wats were built for teaching and worship where monks and other religious leaders would spend their days. All stonework, primarily limestone, was built by thousands of workers with intricate detailed design work unmatched in today’s buildings. Temples tell stories; they are not just a structure. There are stories carved into the stone, many designs, different Buddha poses plus several facials expressions which all mean something. Even animal figures, such as snakes, have a story behind them. A 3, 5 or 7 headed snake (meaning water and protection, and is called naga) can be used by anyone as decor, but only the King can use a 9 headed snake as that number is reserved for only the King to infer class. You can find nagas in almost any wat. Colors all represent something as well. For instance the color gold in clothes represents wealth and prosperity whereas red represents luck. When burning incense, you burn 3 for Buddha. Why three for the Buddha? It represents the triple gem of Buddha (the enlightened), Dharma (the teachings) and Sangha (the community), which are the three things that Buddhists take refuge in and look to for guidance. So…everything means something! Back to the wats…it was thought these wats took up to 40 years to build. Many of the Inca buildings in South America took over 100 years to build. Conversely, our house addition took almost nine months and it was driving us crazy so imagine the patience and dedication the culture had to build something so massive and complex for its time.

It is all starting to make sense, the world that is. We feel like we are putting together a giant puzzle of history, culture and people! So cool, especially for us who like to over analyze anything we can.

After a long day of touring we head into town via tuk tuk and to our surprise the four or five square blocks where bustling right out of a movie scene. I really wanted to see the vision I created of a typical small Asian town, which I of coursed I developed by watching old Vietnam War movies, and I was not disappointed. The senses come alive when one experiences an event totally new and unrelated to anything in our past. Walking the streets seeing everything from local Khmer restaurants to TexMex to discos to Go-Go clubs to massage parlors to pizza joints to clothes markets to mini-marts all crammed into together with the streets packed with locals, expats and tourists alike.

Pub Street = Party Street

The energy and curiosity can be felt as everyone jumps in and out of shops with beers in hand or just waiting in line for a street front seat to get a $3 for 30-minute foot massage. Of course we got one every night and one place even served us beers for free. You really can’t ask for more; a cold local beer called Angkor, a serious intense foot massage, and people watching. This perfect storm of relaxation drove us to extend one of the massages to a full hour for an additional $2 dollars. The night would not have been complete without a fish pedicure where you stick your feet into a tank and little fish nibble on your dead skin. Our feet sure are getting pampered.

Fish Pedicure!

The only sad portion of our visit to town was the begging. It was everywhere! A child around 6 years old begged me for milk to give his baby sister. He entangled my hands in to his and dragged me in to a 7-11 and wanted me to buy him a $17 canister of formula. He kept saying over and over, “baby needs milk” and I offered him a large jug of water that I had and he said, “baby don’t drink water, baby needs milk” and on it went. A random white guy in the 7-11 whispered to Greg that it is a racquet and that the kid returns the formula and the storeowner gives the kid a kick back and some other old rich man that manages this process makes the most cash. Now…who am I more disgusted with in this situation? The store owner, the kids parents (if he has any) or the rich guy that I’m told runs off in a nice car after gathering his profits from the overall scam? After Greg clued me in I pulled the kid out of site from the store owner and gave him a few bucks and told him to hide the money for himself (he put it in his sleeve) and that I knew he was lying to me and there was no baby and I knew he was working with the store owner. I know I shouldn’t have given him anything and should direct all funds to a charity that does not reward this behavior, but it breaks my heart. The next day we went to a “Restaurant” NGO called Sala Bai (http://www.salabai.com/html/index.php?p_lang=en) for lunch that teaches poor kids useful trades…cooking, handling food, serving, running a restaurant, and more. All great trades here for tourism! The problems all around are so massive it is daunting, but I always smile when I see a solid NGO that is helping.

The next few days consisted of a day hike to view more Wats and a holy river where locals carved figures and designs into the riverbed to bless the water…a really creative idea and something we have never seen or heard of before. The last day we took a bike ride, we had enough of wats for a bit and wanted to see how the people of Cambodia really lived. This was one of our most amazing days, we saw one of the poorest war torn (more on this later) countries of the world in its most raw form. Our guide, Bros, has a small piece of land out in the country so we were lucky to have someone who could show us around. The first make shift stop was to take a picture of a few small children (ages 2 and up) hanging out in front of the rice fields. We ended up asking them questions via Bros. It turns out that they had never seen a foreigner or heard of America. They took care of themselves during the day while their parents worked in the fields. Some were shy, some curious but all were smiling. You could sense the innocence of them being kids and at the same time start feeling terrible for their living conditions and tough future ahead. Bros explained that they don’t really know their ages since they are born at home thus there is no documentation. They knew their name and were able to say “hi” in English by the time we left. We didn’t quite get them on the peace or thumbs up gesture bandwagon but they loved looking at themselves on the camera after we would take a picture of them.

Exhausted and running out of time before leaving for a new city we wanted to see the floating villages on the Tonle Sap River. Cambodia is at sea level so every year most of the country floods during the rainy season. Some people have decided to live on the water; floating houses, stores, schools create a unique village that until recently lived off of the sea. The local community can still make a living fishing but many have opted for the easier task of begging. Ladies load up small children and even babies and pull next to tourists on long boats, grab on to the side and basically beg. They will grab a baby under ONE armpit; raise them into the air showing the baby to you to increase their chance of getting a dollar. One lady even came up with a half alive snake with his mouth taped shut that was wrapped around her 1 or 2 year old baby as she surely thought the snake would get our attention. Sad, inconceivable and any other word you can come up with. Once again, such a unique experience and glad we rallied to see it before hitting the town for dinner and another foot massage.

On to Phnom Penh, which Greg can’t spell no matter how many times I tell him how to…it’s a total mental block, the capital city. The riverfront is the main area for restaurants and bars with a two-mile strip filled with tourist and every type of imaginable food. Just one block inland the real Cambodia glows like the full moon we saw last night, which is a big day for Buddhist, so many monks were out and about. Street markets for blocks with “locals only” food that looks delicious but we can’t eat it, as we westerners don’t have the enzymes in our stomachs that are needed. A real shame since we walked and watched the live fish being filleted and live chickens being plucked and butchered so you know its fresh. However, I (Linda) have been eating less and less meat, and this is yet another reason why. It’s a difference ballgame when you see it all live. Later that night as we walked home, we saw many locals pulling up on mopeds (like a drive thru) to cut a deal to take home a chicken straight off a coal burning rotisserie or some fish fried with a chopstick through it so you can eat it like a popsicle.

We wrapped up the day touring the Grand Palace, sipping on coffee street side and walking in a loop around much of the city. We strolled by independence square where lots a low intensity aerobic activity and ad hoc dance classes were taking place. The classes are a meshing of our aerobics and Thai Chi, really neat to watch and would probably be a big hit for the older crowd in the US.

A visit to Cambodia would not be complete without going to the “killing fields”. A site dedicated to the education of the genocide between 1975-1979 where a Hitler like leader killed 25%, approximately 1,700,000 of his own people.

those are skulls on each level inside

Imagine loosing 1 out of every 4 people you know starting with your family. The new regime that was battling for power (the Khmer Rouge) believed education, materialism, capitalism….all needed to be destroyed so society could be pure which means everyone would just be farmers. America was backing the previous government and once it pulled out of Vietnam a few years earlier this radical regime was able to topple the weakened government. America didn’t have the appetite to step back into the region to stop the genocide even though it was our former partner in the war being destroyed methodically and brutally. Fifty years after the holocaust it happened again, and it is still happening in parts of Africa. This reminds me of a statement a professor made while we were in Israel a few years ago…the statement was very powerful and I would like to think it is something we can live by. He said, “We should never be perpetrators, victims or bystanders.” This just speaks to how history can repeat itself if no one keeps up with history or wants to hear the lessons learned. The same horrors can happen all over again if we chose to be bystanders. If that’s not enough, we realized Cambodia was the most bombed country in the Vietnam war, yep Cambodia was bombed by the US more than Northern Vietnam because the famous Ho Chi Minh trail went through Cambodia and was a major supply line for the north. Additionally, about 10 million land mines were planted in the country. Forty years later people are still getting injured or killed every month from stepping on land mines. Cambodia has one of the highest amputee rates in the world (estimated around 40,000). There is a great movie that speaks to the Khmer Rouge regime time period called “The Killing Fields” and Linda is reading a book on the Cambodia Khmer Rouge genocide called “The Lost Executioner” by Nic Dunlop, if anyone is interested in learning more about the country.

We also need to mention the political protests that we witnessed while walking the streets in Phnom Penh. The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) had promised to hold protests every day until Hun Sen, the Prime Minister who has been in power for over 28 years, steps down or calls for a new election. We were stared at quite a bit as there were maybe only two other white people in sight, but it was awesome how people caught our totally American faces and gave a little “yeah!” fist pump to us. As if to say, “We are fighting to be on your democratic program.” We also saw a protest tuk tuk go by with an American flag and a UN flag. Very touching to be a witness to democracy in the making. Many of the protesters had headbands on that said “Long Live Democracy”.

Last note is on the mopeds, just when we thought we saw “crazy shit” in Africa with mopeds Cambodia has taken it to a new level. Just a few sightings to give you a feel:
– 5 people one moped; father and mother with a kid standing in front at the fathers legs plus another kid in-between the parents with the mother holding a baby.
– A lady breast-feeding on the back while another lady drives.
– Three people on bicycles holding on to the back of a moped to get a ride, all while the driver is weaving in and out of cars in serious traffic.
– Mopeds so weighed down with cargo tied on to all corners it would give Fred Sanford’s junk truck a run for its money.

We are so glad we came to Cambodia and can definitely see returning, it is one of our most favorite raw countries along with Ecuador and Tanzania. The common theme with all of these countries is the fact that they are all still in their infancy, and the positive attitudes of the people is outstanding. Off to chill in the mountains of Thailand in need of reenergizing so we will be at our best for our dear friends Stacey and Tim when they arrive.

For Photos: – Siem Reap and Phnom Penh