Siem Reap, Cambodia, March 29th 2011
I’m sitting in a branch of the fabulous Blue Pumpkin Cafe, reclined decorously on a white leather sofa, quaffing a perfect coffee and nibbling at an amazing fruit salad (banana, water melon, dragon fruit and pineapple), listening to world music whilst M and W (wearing his new sunhat – indoors?) companionably write their journals with me. WD has taken L out as his field assistant for the morning. We are watching the comings and goings of Siem Reap street life - pigs riding bareback on motos, Buddhist monks seeking alms, the busy procuring of business for the ‘Healthy Hands’ massage parlour opposite – apparently ‘massage’ here can mean a vigorous and health giving massage, the same with optional extras or overt prostitution, how confusing... We definitely seem to have reached tourist heaven here in Cambodia….
The contrast with India is profound. We have already exhausted Tom and Laura’s patience with our constant one-sided comparison score sheet. So this blog starts with an explicit disclaimer – we do realise our experience is an exceptionally privileged one, based on the inequity of our (relative) economic power and Cambodia’s disadvantage, the superficiality of spending time with expats and in tourist/NGO zones, our conscious switch into holiday mode (WD is wearing an Angkor beer T-shirt in an extraordinary lowering of his standards) and swimwear, and the weariness that accompanies 5 months on-the-go with children in India, however wonderful…
So…
Transport
Autos (even when converted to CNG) in India are noisy, polluting and alarming, whilst the tuk-tuks (trailers on the back of a motorbike) here are quaint, go slow and have plentiful space for a family of 5. They fill up with petrol out of whiskey bottles at proto-petrol stations, manned by young girls at the side of the forest (when this first happened, I assumed the driver was buying his hooch for the night). Distances around Angkor are large and tuk-tuks are not fast, so we have spent a big chunk of the last few days rattling for hours on a mission, less good for the WPs’ lower backs. WD had gone out on a bike for one day, but got extremely sweaty and lost down the long straight roads out of town and around the archaeological park, which didn’t encourage him to repeat the experience.
A minibus ride 5 and a half hours from PP to Siem Reap departs on time, has numbered seats (and people sit in their allocated seats or offer to swap us the ones with extra leg room!), the luggage fits in the boot (well nearly), the driver keeps to schedule with only a 15 minute stop (to drink Khmer coffee with condensed milk and eat lotus heads), we drive in AC comfort without loud music or video entertainment and are provided with lurid coloured sweet buns and water for refreshment. The bus is spangly clean. There is a notice clearly banning hand grenades, dogs and durian fruit – and all travellers appear to abide by such manageable dictats. At the bus stop, there are no touts and we are picked up by a fleet of complimentary tuk-tuks to take us to our guesthouse...All of this would be an unimaginable dream in India.
We haven’t travelled truck-class though: you see women stuffed tight into the backs of open trucks in their headscarves travelling back from their shifts at garment factories.
Traffic is relatively busy in cities and along the new National Highways out of PP. We have to remember that it’s coming at us from the opposite direction to home and in India, but it consists of relatively more bikes and 2 wheelers than the car epidemic of Indian cities and seems to move more slowly, so finding an interval to cross is easier. Horn use is far more reserved – for which I’m deeply appreciative – reflecting the politer, calmer character of these parts?
Noise
Cambodia seems so very tranquil. It’s an unfair comparison – the entire population here is 11 million (barely 2 million in PP), so the constant pressure for breathing space we’ve experienced in Kolkata due to the sardine density of the city is absent. Here, I’m aware of just how loud the Wolfgang are – a reversal of the Indian standard. Except that is when dining in the vicinity of loud American NGO women discussing the men in their lives (bosses and boyfriends): then I was caught between a grotesque curiosity and desire to interject with my own illuminating wisdom and the urgent need to push a mute button (too much detail).
There are no packs of wild dogs snarling and scrapping to keep us awake at night. Domestic animals as well as local wildlife faces a hard time keeping out of a cooking pot or frying pan or barbeque. Kim San’s (Jack and Charlie’s long-time nanny) dog disappeared and she looks sad when she tells us... Where are the cows, the monkeys, the shit-eating pigs? Out in the country maybe? Not in the city certainly.
Laura and Tom complain about the constant noise of construction around their house. PP definitely is a city that is changing week to week: their road was dirt track when they moved in, the old wooden villas of the city are coming down to make way for flat developments (for expats), or rarely renovated with taste and style to become boutique hotels (we enjoyed swimming in the beautiful Villa Lanka garden with its still, green pool).
There is a very powerful political elite here, repeatedly voted for by the electorate, perhaps in exchange for the last decade’s stability and relative peace. The NGOs despair of the human rights abuses (the land rights of the poor, in particular, are trampled) and the limited democracy and impossible corruption and lack of impartial law or effective judiciary. We hear about the central pressure for a ‘Development’ agenda – meaning shiny modernisation, buying into global capitalism for the wealthy elite, opening up of new markets for foreign companies, ‘creating capacity’ and demand (for what? – anything, it seems), rather than health, education, jobs, food... Longstanding floating villages are evicted to build hotels with river-views, casino resorts are blasted into mountain-sides and ‘concessions’ granted within apparent impunity inside protected National Park areas, vast ports and dams planned, endangering the fishing and estuarine ecology. I’m reading of similar sagas in India in Arundhati Roy’s ‘Listening to Grasshoppers (Fieldnotes on democracy)’, so these themes are certainly not limited to Cambodia.
People don’t shout: losing your temper will result in a loss of face, so should be avoided at all cost. People smile as they tell you terrible things (our guide describing the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge at the S21 museum) which is more than disconcerting. I’m sure these cultural behavioural differences which make the country so much more tolerable to us on a superficial introductory level after India, make it impossibly hard as you try to get to know and understand people. Pretty much everyone of the WolfP’s age or older inevitably has a story of suffering and loss (and sometimes complicity), except these are rarely told – and you can only speculate as to the state of the nation’s psychological health.
Tourist experience
Forget Angkor, forget Khmer culture – for our kids, the Dr Fish foot massage was the highlight of their trip to Cambodia so far... They sat with their feet dangling into a tank of callous nibbling minnows (not piranhas, but a local slightly less voracious local variant). L enjoyed the experience so much that she wanted to come back with her swimming costume so she could get even closer to the little fishes.
I didn’t do the fish pedicure but I did go to the Bliss Spa for ‘beach-ready’ waxing and I had my hair cut and high-lighted by a Parisian stylist – ‘because I’m worth it’. This may confound those who were betting I’d come home with dreads or at least some permanent matted bits. Whilst I was at it, I also took the children for haircuts. W got to sit on a high stool with built in racing car wheel and watch cartoons whilst his haircut was underway, so he was happy. L wanted her hair even shorter, but the Khmer guy refused to go as short as she wanted as he thought ‘it wouldn’t look nice for a girl!’ Actually our children are causing some degree of gender confusion here – ‘A boy? A girl?’ – but when they’ve got it straight they appreciate them big time ‘Cute Boy!’ and, unlike India, appreciate the girls too M’s age flummoxes all since she’s taller than most adults here already. The hairdresser managed to get L's hair cut straight and layered it through which looks really good on her. M wondered about extensions.
Thank you Nick and Kerensa and Annabelle for all your recommendations – they’ve been marvellous with the sole exception of the Dead Fish Tower. Maybe the name should have given us a clue or maybe the complete emptiness of the saloon – but what was obviously once a thriving and cool bar and restaurant, was now definitely a dead squib, with the crocodile sold off and the waitresses having to take turns to do the dancing. The waiter returned to tell us we couldn’t have shrimp in our dish as they had no more left, but was desperate for us to return the next night but the sympathy vote was not enough to draw us back I’m afraid...
The Angkor experience is streamlined – dollars are removed seamlessly for laminated passes (happily the children were free) with photos done digitally on the spot. It’s a commercial operation despite being a UNESCO World Heritage site (with a Vietnamese company holding the current contract to run things), and very little of the tourist dollars make it back into local development. It’s all very slick compared to Agra (which must be the obvious comparison), and yes there are bus loads of tourists (currently mainly Japanese and Korean) but they do melt away given the vastness of the site and if you don’t follow the obvious schedule.
Food
Fruit! Exotic fruit! We’ve hit mango season here so are thrilled to be eating these every day, the orange juice dripping down the children’s chins. But let’s not forget rambutans, dragon-fruit, milk fruit, jack fruit, durian, rose apples, longans, pomello, passion fruit, sweet limes, as well as the everyday delights of pineapple, watermelon and fun-sized bananas. Fruit in India is never this good – neither the variety nor the quality.
[W: I loved the fruit like mango and apple. They have plastic fruit which looks just the same and the grapes are rubber with water inside so they feel squashy and sometimes they burst. The mangos are delicious and I don’t think that we’re coming back to India in time for the mango season. I don’t mind because it was the mango season in Cambodia so I’ve eaten loads and loads here.]
Baguettes and pork, spag bol with minced beef, raw vegetables and salads with proper dressing, grilled fish, prawns the size of my index finger, cheese (feta, hallumi, cheddar, blue cheeses) – all the things that we’d been indefinably missing... Plus new food - bowls of clear Khmer noodle soup – with coriander, basil, chilli, lemongrass, lime leaves and galangal - to refresh, rehydrate and make you sweat some more. And Amok (a local baked fish curry) made by Kim San that is so delicious that even the more suspicious members of the family tried and devoured it. And we’ve eaten out so well, as well – from amazing Japanese at a place called Yummi, where everyone ate and loved the spare ribs and sushi, to delis serving fantastic salads and sandwiches to exceptional coffee shops (both for the coffee and the children’s play areas that are almost standard).
We denied M the chance to win her donkey dare when the fried tarantula and cricket was extortionate at the bus stop – sorry, my love!
After increasing despair of wanting to eat anything on the menu in India, it’s a total and unexpected calamity of choice here. We went to the Lucky Supermarket and found that Weetabix cost $7 a packet, so imported foods remain expensive but the variety available... As WD declared, we’ll have to go back to our rice and watery dal diet in the mountains next week, to atone for all this amazing eating.
Handicraps
Whilst not as clichéd as the Indian equivalent (think mirrored cushion cover, Kashmiri ‘pashmina’, dancing Shiva carving and bong), we have realised that one way and another, we’ve seen quite a bit of the Cambodian Craft pantheon (think silk cushion covers, checked scarves, gecko lights and soap stone Buddha heads) over the last few years with lovely presents from family and friends who’ve been here. What’s different though is the penetration of NGO effort into empowerment and development through handicraft or service industry or music or other imaginative variants. You can go to cafes rehabilitating disabled Cambodians through patisserie, listen to buskers (all amputees seeking a ‘dignified life’) playing Khmer music around the temple sites or buy quilts made by abused women or orphans’ artwork.
Even amongst the children on the street, you see few beggars, most are hawking postcards or bangles for ‘wun dull-haar’, some evidently smart (one recited every British PM back to Jim Callaghan for us and would have gone further I have no doubt) and claiming to need the money for schooling.
Only in the further temple sites, did one sense a degree of desperation in the clamour among the village women waiting at the exits for you to buy from them but even then the sassy sales and chat was very different from the relentlessness and shouting of the same Indian scenario. I realise I could not stay long in SE Asia for fear of a total collapse in my self-esteem, when these same ladies yell at me across car parks, “Come and visit my stall, I have good clothes and extra-large sizes for you!” Maybe the pitch needs refining but again Cambodia is anticipating my needs...
At the top end of the market, Artisans d’Angkor have a fine line in taking you on a tour around their workshops (where they are re-invigorating craft industries such as stone and wood carving, silk weaving and painting, lacquer work and silver plating) that all but died during the 1970s and 80s, ensuring the survival of local skills and providing many with a livelihood, ending at the fabulously classy and expensive shop. We went out on a trip to their silk workshops to see the silk worms munching mulberry leaves, the cocoons being boiled to extract the raw and fine silk, spinning, dyeing, and ultimately weaving on hand looms. I have refrained from buying silk cushion covers as I know Keith (our cat) would just vom on them at home, so the death of so many silk chrysalises and the pain-staking labour of so many people would be pointlessly in vain.
Toilets
Cambodia is soooo clean. Almost every toilet we go into is pristine with liquid hand soap (our Indian marker of a posh establishment) and fresh towels, with the very worst we’ve experienced here not so dissimilar to the good to excellent standard in India. And no one demands money off you to use them although a tip is appreciated. How our expectations have been reset... Laura says Cambodians are very clean, washing at least twice a day (any less suggests an active psychotic illness) with an absolute abhorrence of body odour.
We love the picture diagrams explaining that western style toilets should not be squatted on (see W for an illustration, in the previous blog entry).
Hassle
ATMs emptied of dollars by Vietnamese on a widespread currency exchange scam is about the extent of annoyance we can think of....
Climate
We had been warned by a number of people that we would melt in hot season temperatures and humidity. Not so. Actually we have brought unseasonal cold and early ‘mango showers’ and much of our time over the last week has actually been spent beneath overcast skies, and feeling cold (yes, we have even had goose bumps away from the AC), shivering in the back of tuk-tuks or sheltering from the wind. I hadn’t packed warm layers, not anticipating this climatic aberration, blamed variously by locals on the Japanese earthquake/nuclear accident, or their traditional enemies, the Thais or Vietnamese. M has bought a gorgeous fair-trade cotton krama with her pocket money, after extensive deliberation (those who know her, will know she finds spending money extremely difficult). She wraps herself artfully in this to keep warm.
The first few days in PP, there were tremendous thunderstorms and the kids rushed out, shedding all their clothes and inhibitions (not that my offspring appear to have many of these) to play in the rain – wild Bacchanalian scenes of naked children riding round the garden on trikes in the dark, beating each other with wet banana leaves! M was heard to crow triumphantly, “At last, I’ve seen Jack naked!”
The Wolfgang’s education
So have we got beyond the simple equation that Cambodia = temples + Khmer Rouge legacy?
Well, the crowning achievement of Khmer culture, Angkor Wat, definitely lived up to our expectations. We spent days seeing top temples, identifying Hindu deities in another context, climbing temple mountains (well the WolfPs at least, children under 12 were not allowed up much to M’s disgust – WM braved her fear of heights to achieve the glorious views and 15 minutes’ peace!), exploring jungle temples overgrown with trees and creepers. WD is reading Cambodian histories and comparing/contrasting the Temple City here with India....Sadly he has an esteemed colleague who covers South East Asia, so the possibilities for career expansionism in this direction are limited.
As far as the children’s broader education goes, we’ve discussed copyright and intellectual property (there is no copyright law here so everything from Crocs to academic guidebooks to DVDs is knock-off), Genocide (and how it differs from Genesis, bland prog-rock band or the first chapter of the Old Testament), land mines, conservation issues and sex workers...Buddhism too, in a small way – L was worrying about how you reach enlightenment and WM still doesn’t understand what it is that is reincarnated, if there is no soul (central Buddhist tenet).
WM and WD have had to confront their memories of Blue Peter Special Appeal to (as-then) Kampuchea – saving milk bottle tops to help starving children in 1979 (remember doing ‘Cambodia tummies’, anyone? I know it wasn’t just me!) and we’re sure that the Blue Peter team went intrepidly to the Killing Fields, bravely exposing the horror of stacks of skulls and femurs to our 10 year old selves, as the images are burnt deep. The WPs went to the S21 Genocide museum (but left the children behind) in Phnom Penh. Still unsure about how these sorts of memorials should relate to the tourist industry (especially the ubiquitous souvenir shop on the way out?) but... Apparently the Government did close down a Khmer Rouge-themed café that sought to provide an authentic labour camp experience for the discerning tourist.
WD: All this novelty makes our far too brief visit to Cambodia rather wonderful. But the downside is that we’re not feeling quite so enthusiastic about returning to India, even if only briefly. M has been telling us off for being critical of India, so we must behave and try in future blogs to be more appreciative of Mother India. All three of children are delighted that India won the Cricket World Cup (beating Sri Lanka) so we know where their loyalties lie. Fortunately Cambodia doesn’t play cricket (luckily) – volley ball being their national thing. However, we’re going back to a new part of India, to the Himalayas, which we’ll endeavour to see with fresh eyes. We’ll be back to Cambodia too. As Laura advised M, it’s always worth leaving something you want to see to bring you back next time – and there’s a few branches of the Blue Pumpkin we haven’t yet visited (and buns on their menu not yet tested) and some temples for WD to visit, and lots more river-swimming and whole regions of the country to explore....
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