Sihanoukville

Trip Start Oct 31, 2007
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Trip End Jan 07, 2008


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Flag of Cambodia  ,
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

We are in Cambodia! After one week on mostly sunny Koh Chang, the Thai island, we decided early Sunday morning to continue our travel to Cambodia, which involved in our case a 20 minutes taxi trip (in which they squeeze in up to 14 people) to the ferry, another 20 minutes of cross-over to Trat (the last bigger town before the border to Cambodia) and a shared minibus ride of one hour to Hat Lek, the border. At the border, we were immediately "greeted" by zealous Cambodian taxi drivers trying to get our business. The visa officers were actually nice and after 20 minutes of visa processing, we were being let into the Kingdom of Cambodia. The next morning we took the speedboat that took us in four hours to Sihanoukville, a fast changing and growing beach town on the South side of Cambodia. It's not as nice and super touristy as its neighboring Thai beaches yet, but you can feel that the locals are making efforts to get there. Cambodia is still recovering from the 30 years of civil war and the Khmer Rouge terror. People are so poor here and little children not older than ten years and younger are forced to work in the streets. There are a lot of beggars and the travelguides etc. tell you to not give them money or food, in order to "encourage" them to join non-profit organizations that help them to get away from the dangerous street life.
It's really hard to not give them anything and today I saw a very old beggar who really can't work anymore being chasen away by a French older tourist. I was so ashamed of this Frenchman, whose own people once occupied this country as a colony. He sat around with all his money, half-naked (by the way this is against the Cambodian culture) and told this old man in a very rude way to "go away". I now have always a bit of cash in Thai baht or US. Dollar in my pocket, as I decided to give something to those who are really not able to work anymore. 50 cents or 1 USD is a day's earning for most of them, if even.
Yesterday we had a grilled seafood platter for dinner (10 USD for king prawns, fish in ginger sauce, shrimps, etc.) and we felt very bad once we realized the children walking by looking at our table, staring at the food. So today we will have a bowl of soup for dinner ... It's a Catch 22: it's a country you don't want to waste your food (as someone will be happy to eat it up for you, if they even have the limbs to do so), and you feel guilty being a tourist, but on the other hand, they need (responsible, sustainable) tourism to recover from the years of wars.
This country has no social security system, most people's families have been destroyed and killed by the terror of the Khmer Rouge regime. Landmine victims can be seen everywhere on the beaches without limbs, like foot, leg, arm, etc. But most of them try to make their living by selling books to tourists. We just met such a book seller (he couldn't sell us any book, but we gave him two of our books so he could resell them), who had been walking on crutches (with only one leg left) up and down the beach all day. He had the nicest and warmest smile you could imagine, and we chatted a bit with him. I think the one thing everyone can do is to be at least nice and not to ignore them. You don't need to buy out of pity, but a friendly smile or a friendly No"thank you" goes a long way in this country.
Another thing is that most of them, the older ones as well as the younger ones, speak English very well (in comparison to certain parts in Thailand), which makes it easier for us tourists who are unable to say a word in Khmer/Cambodian.
People are very friendly and smiley, always trying to give you the best of service. I am sure it will take only a few more years and Cambodia will be doing better, social-wise and economically.
Tomorrow we will have to get up early to catch the bus that will take us directly to Siem Reap, where we will visit Angkor Wat, one of the seven world wonders, and other temples.
Ten hours of bus trip!
Talk to you all soon!!! Happy THANKSGIVING to all my American friends!
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