In this part of the world privacy is not obtained through having lots of empty space around oneself. It has to be created in one’s head, or if you are fortunate enough to have a small room or house it can be there. I’m not actually sure privacy is an issue to Cambodians – I’ll have to ask. We, Anne and I , have a room to ourselves every night so far and are not suffering at all.
We are in Seim Reip, the place where Angkor Wat is located. It’s a tourist attraction – a famous 1,000 year old temple which is supposed to be the largest religious building/compound in the world. It is big, with a moat and lots of walls, steps, platforms all made of large cut stone. It all looks very old and darkened with mold and age. I don’t think it’s used for worship at all although there are Buddha’s all over the place and probably a lot of other idols and things that I don’t even recognize.
It took us six hours to get here from Phmon Penh which was a little more than 200 miles. We had a nice chartered bus (air conditioned) for roughly 40 kids, house parents and helpers and our party of six. This was not however, your common bus ride. In the states we have gas stations with restrooms and food service any time we want it. Here they stop every hour and a half near a field or ditch with bushes. That’s it. Watch out for ants and people with cameras. For lunch we stopped at a nice shady ditch and spread out a Cambodian feast. I started out with things I recognized, the rice and ginger chicken, and then grew bolder and tried the salty eggs and fish spread. I did not try the fermented fish and egg dish but it was obviously a favorite of some of the local people. Cucumber and oranges were good too.
I met lots of children on the bus ride and as the six hours unfolded different ones would come and sit near me and we would try to talk. They are full of shy smiles and readily take your hand or come for a hug. They know some English but I was always getting into words and subjects that they didn’t know how to talk about. The bus driver put on some Cambodian videos for them to watch. I would have turned one of them off if I’d had a choice – it was definite nightmare material for small children and of course they were all fixated on it. They also chose to show a Cambodian Charlie Chaplin of all things and some very strange music videos where men and women smiled at each other through the whole song and basically did nothing else. They seem to love slapstick.
Out the window in the city the biggest impression that stuck with me is that they need someone to come over and start some plastic recycling business. If they could figure out what to do with all the plastic trash they would have an endless resource. Trash is everywhere. Even very nice houses with clean space around them would be right next to a place with trash a foot deep. No garbage pickup I’m guessing. And all the animals are very skinny and hungry looking and are never on a leash or looking like they belong to anyone but themselves. Cities are quite crowded . The country was better with room around the houses for gardens in some cases. The cows had a little more meat on their bones and there was less trash. All the houses are up high on stilts because the areas where people live are regularly flooded. The houses in the country were mostly made of wood, no windows and sometimes no doors, and definitely well ventilated .
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