Udong and street children
Trip Start
Mar 18, 2009
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65
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Trip End
Feb 26, 2010
Udong,
Cambodia
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
On Tuesday we got up early and had breakfast in the Kiwi Bakery at the end of our road, picking up a packed lunch, then we hopped in a tuk-tuk and set off for Udong. The 45km journey was fascinating, and in a tuk-tuk we felt much closer to the surroundings than we would have from an air-conditioned mini-bus.
Passenger riding on the bonnet
We saw white UN tanks, a Muslim community (maybe ethnic Cham people), hay stacks and ox-carts, at times we could have been in the English countryside of 100 years ago (maybe a legacy from the Khmer Rouge's push for agriculture without machinery). The traffic is different from in Vietnam, we didn't see any tuk-tuks there, Cambodians also ride on open wooden trailers pulled by motorbikes, and crammed into mini-buses, even on the roofs of lorries – a worrying novelty for us. As in Vietnam we saw rubbish heaped beside the road.
We arrived at Udong and were immediately surrounded by 4 boys, all around 14 years old. We think they had seen up coming a mile off and they followed us all around the two hills acting as guides. Their English was very good and they seemed to know French and German as well – pretty impressive for kids who spend all day pouncing on tourists rather than going to
school.
Four Faces
From the top of the hill we could see for miles. Cambodia is a flat country and the only other hills were far in the distance. The landscape looked very dry considering that it's the rainy season and the kids confirmed that this was a bad year for farmers. Udong was the capital under several kings between 1618 and 1866. Various kings are buried here including King Monivong who died in 1941. The tombs are fairly impressive for modern concrete
buildings.
The trip was made worthwhile only by the tuk-tuk journey through the countryside – which took an hour each way, more than the time we actually spent walking round the hills. Predictably on the way down the boys started talking about how much school costs – is this why they weren't at school at 10.30am on a Tuesday we asked them ? Apparently they go to classes in the evening and pay $20 a month for English lessons. At the bottom of the hill they asked us for money and there was little we could do but to cave in, we gave them a dollar each, they wanted $20.
Stupa in Udong
Back in Phnom Penh, after eating our picnic, we headed to the Childsafe office on street 13 (opposite the yummy Friends restaurant which supports street kids) as I wanted some advice on how to deal with kids in situations like this morning. There wasn't much we could have done – apart from not give them money – but we had felt a bit threatened. Primary schooling is, we understand, free, but teachers of evening classes and for older children often ask for a contribution and often kids can't afford uniforms or bikes to get them to school.
There are as many as 20,000 kids living and/or working on the streets of Phnom Penh, and there are lots of initiatives to try and help them. The ChildSafe office does its best to spread the word and hands out little leaflets to tourists with top tips - the key is not to give directly to kids as this gives them an incentive to stay on the streets and out of school.
Shocking numbers of children are forcefully employed in the sex trade. I've just finished an excellent book by Somaly Mam 'The road of lost innocence' – Somaly was sold several times to brothels and she now works extremely hard to save victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation. It's a gut-wrenching read – but worthwhile, Cambodia has the highest rate of AIDS in
Southeast Asia and mostly due to prostitution and the sale of young girls (some only 6 years old). You can find out more atwww.afesip.org.
Rant over. For the rest of the day we headed back to Huxleys and sat on the balcony as a torrential rainstorm rolled in.
