To put this in context, I had spent a month travelling through Thailand and Laos, just having a good time and enjoying a holiday. I left Laos, my favourite country, in early June and travelled into Northern Cambodia. Please excuse my lack of capital letters - simple pure laziness on my part.
Travel Diary: 12 June 2007
i'm still finding it hard that i'm not in laos, i'm missing it big-time. cambodia is in many ways so opposite, and the fact that it shares a border is weird; the people are friendly, but always in-your-face: yes, they're poor, and i don't blame them for a second, but i loved the dignified nature of laotians - i know between here and my hotel i will get offered a tuc-tuc, a motortaxi, a taxi, a tour, weed, opium, a prostute and even maybe ecstasy, cocaine - it goes on and on.
the area we have chosen to stay in is called 'lakeside''. its basically a chicken-coup of tourists ten-minutes outside of the centre, a 'haven' (a.k.a. shitehole), a zone, a precinct, a holiday camp - full of tourists, guest houses, overpriced western restaurants, 'massage parlours' (yeah, right), and of course the manditory eight-million tuc-tuc drivers / drug-dealers / pimps that line the streets 24/7.
the city itself is actually ok; it's cleaner than i expected (cambodian towns have a serious litter problem - there are rubbish dumps in the centre of most towns and rubbish lines the streets in most places), but, basically, poor asian countries simply can't do cities.
some people love it here; i met a dutch guy who's been here for two-weeks; getting trashed every night, partying, etc.....great, if that's what you want. but i don't, at least not at the moment. so this place to me is not cambodia, its a hole of westerners trying to get off their face, taking advantage of cambodia's relaxed laws (i.e. tourists are too valuable to arrest) and people.
today we visited S21 and 'the killing fields''. for anyone who doesn't know, for four-years 1975-79, cambodia was ruled (and yes, we did know about it, and no, it wasn't reported) by a lunatic maoist "dictator" (basically) who abolished money, split up families, banned interaction in general, and marched everyone into the countryside to work fifteen-hours-a-day on the rice fields. men, women and children.
anyone who was in anyway intellectual - and their entire families - were murdered or sent to S21, a torture camp where any information about relatives or other 'threatening' intellectuals were brutally saught. they photographed everyone who entered the camp (babies, women, the elderly, everyone); around 20,000 people. they would be tortured daily for anything between one and six months, before being sent to 'the killing fields', where they were blindfolded, their hands and feet tied, made to sit around a big hole in the ground and battered in the back of the head with an axe or bamboo. they would then fill in the hole. many people were still been alive when they were buried.
the khmer rouge killed around two-million people, and a further one-million died a a result of famine caused by the ruinous state the country was left in. it was the vietnamese who invaded and put an end to their reign. ourselves, the americans, the UN....nothing. hitler's holocaust doesn't really compare to what happened here.
the woman who showed us around S21 lost her father, four uncles, all her grandparents, her two brothers, her sister, her cousins and her brother-in-law. the population of cambodia was 7-million before the khmer rouge, and 3.5million a year after they were toppled.
sorry to rant on about this, but some of the images and the general history of cambodia over the past thirty-or-so years has absolutely shocked me, and unlike WW2, it was not that long ago. plus, we had a part to play in it, and we could have stopped it.
Travel Diary: 14 June 2007
i'm just finishing what has become undoubtedly the best two days of my whole trip, and it's come in one of my least favourite places.
a wicked, wicked canadian girl (alia) who i met at mama's on don det turned up the day before yesterday, and she mentioned that she had volunteered at an orphanage out-of-town the last time she was here. i jumped at the opportunity; i planned on using my tefl for good and volunteering in a school for a week or more during this trip.......but it hasn't happened.
in my defence, this trip is seven-weeks, and a whole week in a city would have forced me to miss out on so, so much. in some parts on laos i stayed in five or more towns in a week, met some amazing people and saw incredible things; although i would have loved to teach, it would have tied me down too much.
alia and i went to volunteer in the orphanage yesterday, armed with a few pound's worth of fruit as a donation. i was amazed by the place. the orphanage relies solely on donations; they are not, like many more central orphanges, sponsored and they do not receive money from charities or the government. i spent all my time talking with and teaching a young girl called Sri-Nung, who is fourteen and at high school. It costs her around $20 per month to go to school - cambodian schools are not free - and she has no family to support her.
the orphanage struggles to feed the children each month, let alone pay for their education.
she is incredible: really beautiful, very well-spoken and so eager to learn. she told me that she could no longer afford to pay for her schooling though, and that she would have to leave after another two months. i was absolutely heartbroken. $20 per month. less than a fucking TV-licence, a teenth of weed or four pints.
fortunately, the orphanage has a website where people can donate. im not going to ask anyone to donate any money, but if you give money to any large-scale charities, i urge you to stop and discover a smaller local organisation where the money goes 100% to the people who need it.
me and alia decided to pay for her education until she finishes school in a few years. it'll cost us nothing, and it guarantees her future. her face when she was told was amazing; i've never seen anyone so happy, and i know it will be an image that will stick in my head forever. the kids are all so, so......i just can't put into words how they are. they're beautiful people, they've all been through so much - one hundred times what we will ever go through our entire lives - and it kinda makes me sick that it is happening; kids as good as this can't be educated because it is too expensive.
on the way home we stopped at a hospital set up by a german guy to give blood. it offers free healthcare for children in cambodia; the only one of its kind in the country, where healthcare is unaffordable to most people. there were over a hundred families waiting outside in line, along the road, and when we went in we walked through the 'waiting room' - hundreds more families with sick children waiting to be seen. it was one of the most incredible and haunting sights i've ever seen. alia said 'it makes you think, what would happen to these kids if this hospital wasn't here?'.
last night we went to 'the heart of darkness': a cambodian western bar/club. it was....weird. it was basically a western club, with the usual shite music (intermingled the the odd gem such as groove is in the heart), the usual shite people, plus, of course, old scumbag western men with young cambodian girls. im not exaggerating to say that i would be extremely happy to see all of the blokes who do this to be, literally, strung-up by their balls and shot in the knee caps. i really fucking hate them. they make me sick.
we had a good night though - i chatted for ages with the people we've been with the last few days - all of whom we met on don det, strangley - but we soon realised that it was ultimately a shithole and we left. when we walked out the door we were greeted by a warzone. beggars carrying babies, the usual million tuc-tuc drivers, drunk westerners - it was like union street on a saturday.
then today, hungover, we went back to volunteer at the orphange for a bit; i played football with the kids and spoke a bit to sri-nung, then on the way home me n alia asked our driver (we've been driving around on motorbikes, three to a bike, for the last few days - its a great way to see the city, and the sole experience of driving on the most INSANE roads i've ever seen - this place even beats india - is an interesting experience in itself) to take us to a swimming pool, as we were swimming in our own sweat (it's 40 degrees here). he took us to 'phnom penh water park'. it was the best $2 i've ever spent. it was predictably ramshackle, but great fun. its a real shame alia is leaving for vietnam tomorrow, and me siem reap; the saddest part of travelling is that you meet some people you just click with - people you just know you would be best friends with at home - then you have to say goodbye, forever. goodbyes really suck. and im going to have to say a load in the next week.
sorry this has been exorbitantly long for one of my emails. if you got this far, well done - and if you're at all interested in the orphanage, its website is www.lighthouseorphanage.or
Travel Diary: 17 June 2007
"its the end of something i did not want to end, the beginning of hard times to come, and something that was not meant to be is done, and this is the start of what was" (the streets)
im in a bit of a state to be honest; i have a lot to look forward to at home, but i am so in love with travelling. i feel too young to tie myself down for two years at university, even though im sure i will love the course, and the idea of staying in one place for that long scares the shit out of me...especially frickin plymouth.
i've had an amazing, amazing time the last seven-weeks, i've met people who have taught me so much, people who take my breath away, and seen places that do the same. yesterday i saw angkor wat, the world's largest temple and it was incredible. when, after getting home, will i get to see something that is even worth a patch of ground angkor is built on? answer: i won't. it's quite simple. will i meet people who make my hairs stand on end every day? no. i don't want to sound arrogant or like i'm complaining 'for the hell of it': a lot of british people are scum, and maybe that will be the hardest thing to deal with.
cambodian people have been through extremely hard times, and still are. the country is still reeling from the events in the seventies and it is going to take a long, long time to achieve anything resembling prosperity.
we met a cambodian man who called himself tony in phnom penh. he was the nicest, most genuine bloke i've met (although almost every cambodian person is the same); he works in a bar, run by an englishman, in the tourist-zone shitehole i mentioned. he works 60 hours per week, 3pm - 1am six days, then during the day he tries to get taxi fares on his motorbike. he earns $15 a month from the bar. he can't afford to pay to live anywhere and lives with a friend. due to the tourist boom, accomodation and land prices in cities have sky-rocketed in recent years, forcing many people into the countryside. some days he gets a fare, some days he doesn't. $15 a month.
this is just one story but i know there are a million others. its the hardest thing to see; the nicest people in the world, people who are just incomparable to kind of wankers at home who are quite happy to not work, not go to school and enjoy pay-outs from the fucking government. those people are not worth the shit on a cambodian's shoe.
last night we went to a concert / talk by a swiss who calls himself beatocello. he has lived in cambodia for many years; he was here during the khmer rouge days, although he escaped, working as a doctor in local hospitals. the khmer rouge killed almost every doctor, nurse and anyone trained. there were 953 doctors before the khmer rouge: 50 survived.
beat spent many years pioneering for a better healthcare system in cambodia; it had been completely destroyed in the seventies and even now, hospitals are destitute and too expensive for most people to afford. he opened cambodia's, and south-east asia's first hospital to offer free healthcare to children. there are several epidemics in cambodia; two-thirds of people have tuberculosis, which severely weakens the immune system, encephalitus, hepatitus, polio, dengue fever and malaria effect around 75%. his hospitals are supported by voluntary donations and aid from the swiss government. the guy is a hero. before his hospitals (there are now three), the death rate for children going into hospital was 85%. in his hospitals it stands at 1.5%. they have modern western equipment and the staff, of which 99% are cambodian, are well trained....and well paid.
princess anne, the spokesperson for the world health organisation, visited his hospitals last year. beat was seeking more funding from the WHO and, more importantly, funding to stop an epidemic of dengue fever that he foresaw would occur in the wet season. the princess stayed in the most expensive hotel in cambodia - $350 a night. she said, publicly, that 'cambodia shouldn't have such modern healthcare and that the healthcare 'did not correspond with the economic reality': i.e. poor countries should be denied good healthcare. i.e. hundreds of thousands of people should be allowed to die. if i ever meet her, i will go against all of my morales and punch the stupid bitch in the face. this sort of ignorance is totally insane. if one man can build and maintain three modern hospitals purely from aid and donations, why can't more be done? one american couple, after seeing his show donated $1 million on-the-spot.
anyways, on a lighter note, we wet out on the piss last night, had a wicked time but ended up geing very messy.... we danced to the spice girls, trance and worse then a mate colin ran away for no good reason when the police turned up (they came for two cambodian girls who were going off-on-one)....he turned up a couple of hours later, claiming that he had been "jumping over fences''... me, nick and colin sat in the hotel smoking spliffs and being a state until 9, hence now i feel like a pig shat in my head. its horrible to think of it as the last of my trip, though. really horrible. roll on paying 3 quid a pint.....not.
Travel Diary: 20 June 2007
hi,
for various reasons this past week has been one of the worst ever, but the past seven weeks have been the most life changing weeks ive had yet. it doesnt seem like seven weeks ago i was sat in heathrow airport. now im in amman, turns out my 8 hour wait i was expecting, and had mentally prepared for, has been replaced by a free sweet hotel for the night - well i say night, but my body clock is totally screwed, apparently its 7 in the morning here but i actually have no idea.
i arrived at bangkok airport two hours early with a belgian guy called Johean; sound bloke. We got some grub and ended up chatting abotu cambodia and its people and how we both felt about going home, particularly about the people. He told me a story about when he went into the middle of nowhere in south-eastern cambodia and stopped on a bus to have a piss. He met two thirteen year old kids who spent all day, every day, carrying sand in buckets up two-hundred steps up a mountain to help build a pagoda (a kind of temple). they were thirteen, they'd never been to school, and they did nothing but welcome him and test out their english. Johean's cousin is fourteen, and when he comes round to visit all he complains about is his lack of a playstation. if he doesn't get to play on it he kicks up shit.
going back to what im going to feel when i get back, im going to be mainly angry. angry that kids at home, kids who will become adults and be much the same, don't realise how fucking well lucky they are and how hard it is for some people. the thing is, cambodians aren't starving; they are not desperate, and that makes me think about those who are. why don't they teach culture in schools? i just can't imagine ever wanting to bring up kids in a country like that.
we ended up chatting for a while then i looked at the clock and realised it was 10.50: my flight was at 11.15, his was 11.25 and we hadn't been through security or immigration. shite.
we raced through the airport like loons, got stopped by security for having an aeresol in my bag, and made the flight by one minute. what a crazy end to my trip.
hadn't ended though; now im sat in jordan somewhere in a hotel killing time before my flight.
fortunately, home alone 2 has just started so my next two hours are sorted.
over and out x
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