Cambodia: “Kingdom of Wonder” (and sometimes… I wonder why?)

I have landed in Cambodia and I’m settling in to life here with only a few hiccups and sputters. Mostly, I am adjusting to what it means to exist in a truly undeveloped nation. Cambodia is at once dusty, humid, smelly, eager, humble, changing, struggling, corrupt, resilient, naïve, gracious, polite, frustrating and loveable. 

I am living in a communal house run by the PEPY organization (an NGO that runs tours in order to support education and schools in rural Cambodia). Downstairs is the office and upstairs are the dorm-style rooms. It’s a tad claustrophobic, but makes life much easier.

 

My first few weeks here have been taken up in the NGO work-wise with mostly administrative tasks, such as organizing shipments of books for classroom libraries for children, editing newsletters, writing recommendation letters for Cambodian staff and organizing a blog between Nepal and Cambodia for the English students at the school.

 

I have also managed to finagle my way into teaching about 10 hours a week - 6 a.m. morning classes and 6 p.m. evening classes Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday (yes, ouch) - at the Australian Centre for Education. How an American has managed to slip her way into an Australian organization with my “Americanized” pronunciation, slang and absence of the oxford comma is beyond me, but I am happy that I will be able to afford to eat while I’m here.

 

The first night here I joined my fellow housemates, we headed out towards town (about 3 kilometers away) and I got a taste of Cambodia in the dark. The first thing that struck me was the traffic – the main rules being: there are no rules. As we rode our bicycles out to the main road along our dirt side road, we bumped over potholes and veered out of the way of approaching tuk-tuks, motor bikes, cars and bicycles, who were also trying to avoid the potholes.

 

When we got to the road, it was good to see that Cambodians drive on the right… well, in theory anyway. As one gets onto the road on their bicycle, they will typically ride along the left side of the road until there is a short break in oncoming traffic, at which point they will veer across the lane to their right, in front of the oncoming traffic, and (hopefully) make it to the right side of the road, at which point they will slowly work their way to the side by dodging the trucks, tuk-tuks and motor bikes that are driving behind them. This feat would be impossible in the US, where drivers pay less attention to other cars on the road than they do to their current cell phone chat, but, in Cambodia people miraculously PAY ATTENTION!

 

As we rode through the town that night, I took note of the smells (mostly sewage and burning trash, but also delicious soups, noodles and rice dishes sold in the little shops). We also passed massage parlors (mostly legitimate), fancy hotels, street stalls selling food, fruit vendors and weary backpackers strolling around the city, being accosted by tuk-tuk drivers (“hey, lady/guy, you want tuk-tuk?” is a phrase heard about 20 times a night by foreigners in the city).

 

The next morning, we joined a PEPY tour with two Australian girls and made our way out to the countryside outside of Siem Reap in the early morning air. As we rode we saw the ice salesmen stopping by homes to carve off a block of ice for the household (clean, factory-produced ice is a wonderful holdover from the French colonial times). We saw women lighting incense to place in front of their Buddhist mini-pagodas (a Cambodian and Thai household staple) and heard loud Khmer techno blasting out of the event halls where weddings are celebrated.

As we made our way into the countryside, we saw lotus flower paddies spring up on the sides of the road and ate fried bananas and drank the juice out of freshly-macheteed coconuts.

On our way back, we dragged our bikes back over the boulders placed in the section of road where the dirt had washed away and came back into town to our house to wash the dust out of our clothes (a daily ritual) and join the team in the office where the house geckos chirp and run along the walls.

 

My next week in Siem Reap was highlighted by a trip to the PEPY Chanleas Dai School, about 1.5 hours from town by truck, where we painted classrooms and I taught a last minute English class to eager 12-15 year old students. How different these students are from Japanese or American students, I thought to myself. There was no trace of the spoiled, haughty or jaded behavior one can expect from children in more developed countries. If only we could import good behavior to places that have running water, electricity and modern medicine, I thought!

 

After our short stint at the school, we returned to Siem Reap and continued to settle in to town. Administrative tasks for PEPY and procuring paying work at ACE have taken up most of the last few weeks.

Last weekend we took a bike trip out to Angkor Wat temple (the main reason for the tourist mecca that is Siem Reap). About a kilometer outside of the temples, we were flagged down as foreigners and ushered through the station where the Sokimex corporation  - a petroleum company – also in bed with the Cambodian Finance Ministry - rips off visitors to Siem Reap by forcing them to pay exorbitant fees (very little of which actually returns to the upkeep of the temples or the well-being of the Cambodian people). Such is the nature of the abundant corruption in Cambodia.

The temples and carvings therein were definitely beautiful (after I stopped seething about the $20/day, $40/3 days pass money going into Mr. Sokimex’s pocket). And, one of these days I will go back to see the remainder of the temple buildings, but for now I’m over the tourist bug.

 

After returning from the temples over the weekend, we came home to a mostly empty house again (much of the staff is working full-time out at the school to lead trips from Dubai) and life returned to “normal.”

Yesterday I taught my first 6 a.m. class and 6 p.m. class (with a 9 hour work day in between). The morning was rough – waking up at 5 a.m. has never been my strong suit (especially if I have to speak coherently an hour later), but the bike ride over to the school was interesting.

As I rode along, I saw the world that exists in Cambodia just before sunrise – a dog peeking his head out of the Cambodian People’s Party headquarters gate, bullfrogs singing in a chorus on the river, an old man outside his little shop slapping himself to wake up, Cambodians doing calisthenics en masse in a fancy western restaurant parking lot, dead pigs tied to the back of motor bikes on their way to market, neighbors lighting their little trash piles outside their homes and food stalls just opening for the morning rush.

 

And now we come to the best part of dragging oneself out of bed at 5 a.m. – the Cambodian students. The adults are even better than the kids! In Cambodia, they answer you! They try to understand you! They are polite, kind, thankful and eager to learn! Dear LORD, and all this at 6 a.m.

 

Many of the students go to 6 a.m. classes Tues-Thurs-Sat because they have to work from 8 a.m. until late. Plus, 6 a.m. is not considered late here. In Cambodian culture it is considered lazy (or so I read) to wake up after the sunrise.

 

At 8 a.m. after the class was finished, and the echoing chants of Future forms (will, going to, to be + -ing, might….) slowly dissipated in my brain, I made my way back to the PEPY house to begin my other job. The rest of the morning consisted of getting t-shirts and marketing materials printed, then trying to figure out how to get them “shipped” to the Dubai tour at the school in the back of a random taxi heading for the Thai border.

 

And alas, that afternoon my digestive system caved and shouted loudly, “oh no, you didn’t!” I was felled by the mighty monster of dirty food – oft times known as Montezuma. As I rolled around in my bed in cold sweats with agonizing cramps in my abdomen, I thought about the 2^nd class I was supposed to teach that evening – this class was more than 2 hours - and wondered: do they sell adult diapers in Cambodia?

 

After a painful and uncomfortable few hours, I took some medication, begged a ride to ACE off a co-worker and hoped for the best.

 

As the class started, the room was spinning and the cold sweats had not yet stopped, but it turned out that “No Dia” effectively tames Montezuma’s fury and by the time we had finished with our future tenses, adult diaper fantasies were a thing of the past.

 

I hope to finish this week off strong with Thursday and Saturday classes, and then our offices will be closed for a week for Khmer New Year! This means that myself and some of my office mates have time to travel. We’ve booked cheap flights to Malaysia and will be relaxing Kuala Lumpur-style (which I’m HOPING includes cocktails with good ice, clean pools and more modern roads) very soon.

 

Signing off from Cambodia in the first of many blogs to come. If it was challenge I was looking for, I’ve found it. I know that my time here will test the limits of my temper, my patience, my caring and my education. I know also that all I learn and experience will haunt my dreams for years to come.