Same same but different
Trip Start
Mar 03, 2005
1
13
80
Trip End
Apr 08, 2006
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Saturday, April 9, 2005
It started quietly enough, sorting out a few admin issues at the school (ACE), and finding some time to do a little siteseeing. Nearly a month in Phnom Penh, and I have now see two tourist attractions! I'm ripping through them! Thankfully, the second, being the National Museum, didn't leave me with an awful feeling in my gut like the last, Tuol Sleng S-21 prison. The National museum is a large open air museum housing thousands of sculptures from the Angkorian period from all over Cambodia. Obviously the temples, notably those at Angkor Wat are the main drawcard for the country, but I thought it would be interesting to check out these sculptures and get a bit of info before I went temple spotting. It was quite interesting here, especially seeing the size of the ancient Khmer empire and reading about how it has shrunk to what it is now. As of today, having been in Cambodia for a month, the total number of Angkorian temples I have seen is: 0.
To say the weekend before classes started was huge would be an understatement. On the friday night I went to a party at a bar called "Elsewhere" with Matt and Shirin. Elsewhere is my favourite place in Phnom Penh (along with Beoung Kak Lake) to sip on a cold Angkor Beer. The bar is on the ground floor of an old French Villa, looking onto a huge garden with palms, lounges AND a swimming pool! I met a bunch of people here, including some young Aussie expats working here as part of the AYAD program, which is the AusAID program I seriously thought about joining before I went down the teaching path. It was a big night! And somehow I managed to get myself off the hammock to do it all again the next night at Phnom Penh's first ever drum n bass! This was great, although much more low-key than the party at Elsewhere. I think drum n bass is a little too hard-core for the Khmer people! Afterwards we went down to a very dodgy seedy bar called "Heart of Darkness". Everything about this place was wrong. The motos. The grotty westerners. The hookers. The BAD dance music. The general vibe. I don't think we spent more than five minutes there before heading home!
The week at work has been fantastic. I've got six classes to take, ranging from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate. Four of the classes are a lot of fun! The students are chatty and friendly and the hour and a half flies by. Although the students in the other classes just refuse to talk! I find this strange, considering I have three "Level 5" classes, and two of them are fun with talkative students, and the other is a real struggle. My upper-ints are my favourite bunch, and I've got them reading Dracula for a bit of a laugh! So that's work. 22.5 hours of classes a week, with saturday arvo and sundays completely free. It's all been very overwhelming this week, and I've been rushing around like a madman trying to figure out what I'm doing! However I'm sure it'll settle down to some degree once I become a bit more comfortable. The other teachers are generally pretty cool, although there are one or two I'm not so fond of. I never thought I would hear a conversation about comparitives and superlatives digress to extra curricular activities in Bangkok so suddenly!
Living in Cambodia
I've been here a month now, and things are no clearer about this country than they were on day one. I've written a little about things I've seen here, but there is so much that I can't put into this journal. One thing is that there is never a lull in conversation. You can spend three or four hours talking with friends about Khmer people, and what has happened and is going on here, and always come to the same conclusion - that there are no conclusions! For starters, the Khmer's obsession with money. Never have I been to a place where the people will go to such extroardinary lengths for money. Simply being a foreigner will give 90% of Khmer's multiple reasons to try and extort money from you. When Matt and Shirin went for their border run the other week, they were asked to pay some money that they weren't supposed to pay. As most people would do, they refused to pay! So the immigration officials didn't do anything. In the end, they had no choice but to pay. Matt, as I'm sure many many travellers have done, pointed out to the officials that by not ripping off foreigners, Cambodia will get a better reputation, and more people will come, bringing more money. The response was plain and simple. "I won't get any money if that happens."
That's just one thing. Then there's the mentality. I mean, the Khmer Rouge didn't just commit genocide - they did something much worse than that. The term people use here is "intellectual genocide". Any Khmer person who'd ever thought about anything was blundgeoned to death by one of their fellow country men. You guess that would instill some pretty negative thought in the mindset. Twenty five years down the track and any successful business or restaurant or guesthouse here is Western owned. There are very few Khmer restaurants. If you want local food, you need to go to the street vendors. We figure that there is just SO MUCH opportunity here for people to make things better for themselves, but, they just don't seem to want to do anything! They seem content to live their own simple lives, and instead try to get money from people by whatever means. I've asked a number of my students why they're stuudying English, and it seems to me that 95% of them have this blind hope that it will make things better for them somehow. Only one student, out of over 30, has told me that he wants to start a business, and make money for himself and his family.
Our conversations go on like this for hours. We talk about what we've seen, what we've heard, and we just end up shaking our heads.
The other day as I got a ride to the riverfront to meet my new Aussie friends, my moto took an alternative route to avoid the traffic. He took me through Phnom Penh's equivalent of Gagebrook. The slums. Apartments I'm told go for $8 a month. This place was like NOTHING I've ever seen. I'm going to ride out there when I have some time to get some photos.
Speaking of time, the Khmer New Year is next week! The whole country has a holiday from the 13th until the 17th. Perfect! It's been building up for a few weeks now. There is this vibe in the air that I can't describe. People are dancing in the streets after dark. These little street parties are everywhere! Years ago, Khmer's used to wash there face to clean off evil spirits at the end of each year. Now they run around and throw waterbombs on each other! It's hilarious! While I have five days off work, I'm resisting the urge to go on another side trip. Instead I'm going to check out some sites within a day of the city. The locals head back to the provinces, and I'm told Phnom Penh is very quiet during the week. This will be a nice change!
