We stopped in Kuala Lumpur on our way home – yes, I instinctively referred to Bali as home! – and it was strangely nice being in a developed city. Comforting, even. I think I kind of miss the luxuries and the familiarity of Western cities.
It is even stranger being back in Bali. It feels like being home, but it also feels safe and emotionally neutral in comparison to Cambodia – no recent and tangible memories of death. Well, at least nothing comparable to the widespread genocide under the Khmer Rouge. Despite how safe and comfortable Bali feels, Cambodia lingers on my mind. I applied for a human rights education position with Live and Learn, an organization works to promote access to land and forests for the Cambodian people. I felt grossly unqualified, but I know that my heart is in it and that I could learn fast enough to fill the position.
I didn’t think it would be Cambodia that would shake the human rights activist in me awake again. But it has. In my last months in Montreal, running away from my responsibilities with Students for a Free Tibet, I thought I had lost the passion and the drive to do human rights work. My experiences in Cambodia proved to me that my passion is still there. Maybe all it took was a break and a change of scenery to make me feel it again.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
The darker side of Cambodia
On our second day in Phnom Penh, we decided to discover the history of the Khmer Rouge regime and headed to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. Tuol Sleng is where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned, tortured and executed thousands of people in buildings that used to be a high school. Walking into the compound that was so obviously a school, I was struck by how much this didn’t seem like one. There was no laughter or positive energy, just a tangible heaviness and a whole lot of barbed wire. Building after building on all three floors housed classrooms converted into torture chambers, mass detention rooms and solitary confinement cells in both brick and wood. The old gym structure for climbing ropes had been used as gallows where the Khmer Rouge would hang prisoners from their backwards-twisted arms. When they passed out from the immense pain, the prisoners would be revived by being dunked into terracotta pots of stagnant water, normally used as fertilizer on the nearby fields. Other rooms housed rows of bulletin boards of photographs of prisoners, each with an expression of horror, sadness and fear blatantly painted on their faces. The next room was full of implements of torture and gory paintings of how the Khmer Rouge tortured Cambodian civilians. The paintings were not very well done, but seeing the images of brutality that were described in the book I read by Loung Ung made it all sink in. The final room full of skulls and bones and pictures of the Killing Fields was too much and my eyes finally brimmed with tears. What would drive anyone to do something like this to fellow human beings? The last rooms of individuals’ testimonies were too much to bear – I had to get out. But being out, amongst the hoards of insincere tourists floating about, was nearly as unbearable. How could they be standing there, laughing, making plans to go shopping, when we had just seen such brutality? I just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.
On the surface, Cambodians come across as positive, friendly and easygoing, but it doesn’t take much effort to see the negative effects genocide has had on them. Everyone has stories from the war and there are amputees everywhere. Cambodians cannot escape their collective past, but they are living with it and trying to cope the best they can. Like the Cambodians have done for the past three decades, I had to continue with my day, albeit slightly more conscious of the possibility of evil in regular people but also of the beauty in the living. The folded paper crane I found sitting on a cold metal torture chamber bed and the frangipani flowers on a mound of stained and tattered prisoners’ clothing were powerful and touching reminders of the past and stand in my mind as a sign of hope for the future.
On the surface, Cambodians come across as positive, friendly and easygoing, but it doesn’t take much effort to see the negative effects genocide has had on them. Everyone has stories from the war and there are amputees everywhere. Cambodians cannot escape their collective past, but they are living with it and trying to cope the best they can. Like the Cambodians have done for the past three decades, I had to continue with my day, albeit slightly more conscious of the possibility of evil in regular people but also of the beauty in the living. The folded paper crane I found sitting on a cold metal torture chamber bed and the frangipani flowers on a mound of stained and tattered prisoners’ clothing were powerful and touching reminders of the past and stand in my mind as a sign of hope for the future.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Phnom Penh
We had the funniest ride back to Phnom Penh from the east. Over the course of the 10-hour trip, we must have stopped a million times, and for quite a few of them we were the last ones on the bus. At one stop the assistant to the driver came to get us at the bathrooms! And when we got on the bus the driver was jokingly shaking his finger at us. At the next stop we were standing around munching on fresh cashew nuts when he came up to us and pointed his finger to the bus as if it was time to get back on. I said “really?” and the guy starts laughing and walks away. As we were standing around, a group of boys came up to us, asking for money for food. One of them noticed Kendra’s tattoo and started laughing hysterically. He kept saying “cobra, cobra” – I guess he thought Kendra’s tattoo looked like a cobra. His hysterics got the whole bus laughing at us. On the bus, there was also an endless supply of Asian pop karaoke. They kept playing one awful song which had a couple phrases of horribly-pronounced English. Even though we moaned each time it came on, Claire and I learned the English parts pretty quickly and started singing along. The driver and his assistant started playing it on purpose just to see our reactions, and it got the whole bus laughing at us again! I swear, my family is a freakshow wherever we go!!
Everywhere I went in Cambodia, I found a striking resemblance between several locals and some of my Tibetan friends back home. A man on the bus back to Phnom Penh reminded me so much of Rinchen, in build, the way he laughed and the way he tapped his foot as we drove, waiting anxiously for his next cigarette – the resemblance was so uncanny my sister and I kept giggling. And I think the guy knew that I kept looking at him. Our bus driver even reminded us both of Tawang, my boss at Shambala. There were others too who reminded me of Tawang’s wife, and our friend Tashi. Weird, but a very nice reminder of home! :) (HI to you all!!!)
Most of our time in Phnom Penh was spent shopping at one of the gazillion markets and eating – both of which totally satisfied the conscious activist in me. There are shops everywhere set up by non-profit organizations working for HIV/AIDS patients, landmine victims, orphans, etc. You name a social problem and there is an organization for it in Cambodia. Kind of sad, but the situation provides a million possibilities for a person like me looking for a job or volunteer opportunities. A couple of the restaurants that we went to were set up by an organization called Mith Samlanh (Friends), which has set up housing, health services, counseling, primary education and vocational training for over 1,800 street children every day. They have also set up two restaurants training older street children to be cooks, servers, and hosts, giving them the experience necessary to get permanent jobs in the growing Cambodian service industry. I was really inspired that there were such influential organizations functioning in a country with less than 10 years of relative stability. For more information about Friends, check out their website: www.streetfriends.org.
We also had a very interesting glimpse at the underbelly of Cambodia one evening. Lured by a flyer for “buy one, get one free drinks” at a romantically titled lounge, Bogie and Bacall’s, we found only a seedy hostess bar with black lights and awful fluorescent posters of the actors in their heyday. Nothing at all like we had imagined from the name! This was also the first time we had ever been in a hostess bar, which put the sex tourism we had heard about in Cambodia front and centre! After the owner finally brought us drinkable drinks, we ate sweet popcorn from a vendor and giggled at another crazy scenario we had gotten ourselves into! That evening also made the sex tourism more obvious to me for the rest of the trip. Almost every evening I saw at least one or two white men – usually not so attractive – with younger and quite pretty Khmer girls. Funny that it’s so blatantly obvious what’s going on, even to me!
Everywhere I went in Cambodia, I found a striking resemblance between several locals and some of my Tibetan friends back home. A man on the bus back to Phnom Penh reminded me so much of Rinchen, in build, the way he laughed and the way he tapped his foot as we drove, waiting anxiously for his next cigarette – the resemblance was so uncanny my sister and I kept giggling. And I think the guy knew that I kept looking at him. Our bus driver even reminded us both of Tawang, my boss at Shambala. There were others too who reminded me of Tawang’s wife, and our friend Tashi. Weird, but a very nice reminder of home! :) (HI to you all!!!)
Most of our time in Phnom Penh was spent shopping at one of the gazillion markets and eating – both of which totally satisfied the conscious activist in me. There are shops everywhere set up by non-profit organizations working for HIV/AIDS patients, landmine victims, orphans, etc. You name a social problem and there is an organization for it in Cambodia. Kind of sad, but the situation provides a million possibilities for a person like me looking for a job or volunteer opportunities. A couple of the restaurants that we went to were set up by an organization called Mith Samlanh (Friends), which has set up housing, health services, counseling, primary education and vocational training for over 1,800 street children every day. They have also set up two restaurants training older street children to be cooks, servers, and hosts, giving them the experience necessary to get permanent jobs in the growing Cambodian service industry. I was really inspired that there were such influential organizations functioning in a country with less than 10 years of relative stability. For more information about Friends, check out their website: www.streetfriends.org.
We also had a very interesting glimpse at the underbelly of Cambodia one evening. Lured by a flyer for “buy one, get one free drinks” at a romantically titled lounge, Bogie and Bacall’s, we found only a seedy hostess bar with black lights and awful fluorescent posters of the actors in their heyday. Nothing at all like we had imagined from the name! This was also the first time we had ever been in a hostess bar, which put the sex tourism we had heard about in Cambodia front and centre! After the owner finally brought us drinkable drinks, we ate sweet popcorn from a vendor and giggled at another crazy scenario we had gotten ourselves into! That evening also made the sex tourism more obvious to me for the rest of the trip. Almost every evening I saw at least one or two white men – usually not so attractive – with younger and quite pretty Khmer girls. Funny that it’s so blatantly obvious what’s going on, even to me!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
The dustier side of Cambodia
On the recommendation of friends, we decided to head out into the “wild east” of the country, along an increasingly bumpy and dusty road. Our first stop was in Kampong Cham, a sleepy town on the Mekong river. The wide waterfront walkway looked like the face of a town prepared for a boom in tourism that hasn’t yet happened. There wasn’t much to see other than a couple of temples (with monkeys!) which we avoided because we were all “templed out” after visiting close to a dozen temples at Angkor Wat (and because I still don’t like monkeys!!). The bamboo bridge across part of the Mekong was interesting – a shaky man-made structure built every year during the dry season to cross the shallow and un-navigable crossing to a large fruit bearing island in the middle of the river. It seemed like an aweful lot of work only to be washed away each year during the rainy season when the river swells to almost four times the size at which we see it.
At the end of the bright-orange-dusty and very bumpy road was Sen Monorom, set atop dry deforested rolling hills – hardly the jungle we had been told about. With our bags covered in the orange dust, we settled down two smartly dirt-coloured bungalows on the hills above town. In hindsight, our location was not so smart given the gusty wind, but at least we had solid windows unlike some of the other bungalows! I never thought I would be so cold in southeast Asia!!
The next day with a Cambodian Christian missionary and his two friends in the back of our truck, we set off on the even bumpier road to the Sen Monorom waterfalls. At his request, I posed for a picture with the Christian and his friends in front of the waterfall – normally something that I avoid doing. We exchanged e-mail addresses so I could send the photo to him, after which he called his wife on his handphone so that I could talk to her! In broken English, she managed to ask me if I was a Christian. When I replied “not really” I got a very sad “oh, sorry!”
A blind musician and his friend playing homemade instruments caught my attention next. They wanted to hear themselves so, surrounded by a couple dozen people attentively watching my camera, I videotaped them playing a song and then played it back to them. Kendra was on the other side of the crowd, similarly amusing some children by taking pictures of the group and then showing them. I think we must have spent close to an hour surrounded by Cambodians!
On the way back to the town, we stopped on top on a mountain and I was reconciled with my new Christian friend. He told us all about the deforestation of the mountains at the hands of large multinational corporations fed by the Cambodian government. He also told Claire and I his personal story of life under the Khmer Rouge. Claire and I have both been reading biographies of survivors from the war, but hearing it from a living, breathing survivor was so much more powerful. The emotion in the man’s voice was so captivating that we momentarily forgot the chilling gusts of wind blowing at us from all directions.
The next day, in our new Lacoste sweaters, purchased in the tiny town’s market, we set out on our elephant trek! Beautiful but very slow creatures. And not a very comfortable ride, but at least I can say that I did it!
At the end of the bright-orange-dusty and very bumpy road was Sen Monorom, set atop dry deforested rolling hills – hardly the jungle we had been told about. With our bags covered in the orange dust, we settled down two smartly dirt-coloured bungalows on the hills above town. In hindsight, our location was not so smart given the gusty wind, but at least we had solid windows unlike some of the other bungalows! I never thought I would be so cold in southeast Asia!!
The next day with a Cambodian Christian missionary and his two friends in the back of our truck, we set off on the even bumpier road to the Sen Monorom waterfalls. At his request, I posed for a picture with the Christian and his friends in front of the waterfall – normally something that I avoid doing. We exchanged e-mail addresses so I could send the photo to him, after which he called his wife on his handphone so that I could talk to her! In broken English, she managed to ask me if I was a Christian. When I replied “not really” I got a very sad “oh, sorry!”
A blind musician and his friend playing homemade instruments caught my attention next. They wanted to hear themselves so, surrounded by a couple dozen people attentively watching my camera, I videotaped them playing a song and then played it back to them. Kendra was on the other side of the crowd, similarly amusing some children by taking pictures of the group and then showing them. I think we must have spent close to an hour surrounded by Cambodians!
On the way back to the town, we stopped on top on a mountain and I was reconciled with my new Christian friend. He told us all about the deforestation of the mountains at the hands of large multinational corporations fed by the Cambodian government. He also told Claire and I his personal story of life under the Khmer Rouge. Claire and I have both been reading biographies of survivors from the war, but hearing it from a living, breathing survivor was so much more powerful. The emotion in the man’s voice was so captivating that we momentarily forgot the chilling gusts of wind blowing at us from all directions.
The next day, in our new Lacoste sweaters, purchased in the tiny town’s market, we set out on our elephant trek! Beautiful but very slow creatures. And not a very comfortable ride, but at least I can say that I did it!
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Cambodia pics
Originally uploaded by jspan.
Finally, some photos from the first leg of my trip to Cambodia: Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Happy New Year from Cambodia!
Sorry for the lengthy delay... there was an earthquake in Taiwan on Boxing Day that knocked out the internet in most of southeast Asia!! But all are safe here... we were not on a plane that crashed or a ferry that sank!
I've spent the last 4 days bumping around Siem Reap and the nearby Angkor Wat temples on electric bikes with my family. This is the first Buddhist country I've visited and I'm really enjoying it. It is also the first country I've visited with a very recent history of war. Today we visited the landmine museum, which was truly an eye-opener. There are still millions of landmines planted in the country side and nearly everyone here has a memory of the atrocities committed up until the official surrender of the Khmer Rouge when Pol Pot died in 1998. The country has been open to foreigners for less than 10 years, and you can feel it in the interactions with local people. Tomorrow we're setting off for eastern Cambodia - a boat ride up the Mekong river, jungle hikes, and rides on elephants.
I do hope that you are all well. I wish you the best of luck, love, health, peace, and success for 2007. And I do promise to post more pictures when I get back to Bali in about 2 weeks' time.
Until then, enjoy the following drink... I swear to god it's a real drink. I found the recipe the week after I had my REAL monkey bite!!
Monkey Bite Iced Tea
3/4 oz. tequila
3/4 oz. white rum
3/4 oz. Myer's rum
3/4 oz. vodka
3/4 oz. cointreau
3/4 oz. Jack Daniels
3/4 oz. gin
4 oz. apple juice
Cheers!!
I've spent the last 4 days bumping around Siem Reap and the nearby Angkor Wat temples on electric bikes with my family. This is the first Buddhist country I've visited and I'm really enjoying it. It is also the first country I've visited with a very recent history of war. Today we visited the landmine museum, which was truly an eye-opener. There are still millions of landmines planted in the country side and nearly everyone here has a memory of the atrocities committed up until the official surrender of the Khmer Rouge when Pol Pot died in 1998. The country has been open to foreigners for less than 10 years, and you can feel it in the interactions with local people. Tomorrow we're setting off for eastern Cambodia - a boat ride up the Mekong river, jungle hikes, and rides on elephants.
I do hope that you are all well. I wish you the best of luck, love, health, peace, and success for 2007. And I do promise to post more pictures when I get back to Bali in about 2 weeks' time.
Until then, enjoy the following drink... I swear to god it's a real drink. I found the recipe the week after I had my REAL monkey bite!!
Monkey Bite Iced Tea
3/4 oz. tequila
3/4 oz. white rum
3/4 oz. Myer's rum
3/4 oz. vodka
3/4 oz. cointreau
3/4 oz. Jack Daniels
3/4 oz. gin
4 oz. apple juice
Cheers!!
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