After the exhilaration of Borneo, we hopped on two planes and landed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. We expected Cambodia to be quite a different experience, given its recent history, but we were eagerly anticipating it because we had planned to meet Madhavi's good friend from high school, Maggie, and her significant other Matt, who are both living there in the countryside doing NGO work. We were excited to spend time with them, and we knew it would be such a privilege to see a new country with people who understood it from the perspective of many months actually working there. We were naive enough to agree to a tuk-tuk ride from the airport into town, which meant that we sat in a carriage attached to a scooter with a horsepower engine (there is no missing number) and chugged along anemically for the 6km ride. It was actually a nice way to see the city up close, including all the items for sale inside every shop and all the interesting people walking by (in both the backward and forward directions). And, hey, we saved 2 bucks!
We arrived at our guesthouse by the lake, where we were given a giant room with A/C and French colonial trimmings for $15 a night. As we ventured out, we were surprised that this country, which until 1998 was considered too dangerous to visit and is among the poorest in the world, was already so full of young tourists. We would later realize that many foreigners are expatriates doing NGO work here, like Maggie and Matt. Our alley was quite backpackery but pretty cool nonetheless, with a laid-backness that distinguishes Phnom Penh from its bigger, richer, wilder cousin Bangkok. We walked down a random twisting alley through a poor neighborhood where we saw kids running around mostly naked playing soccer with old sandals, men and women playing cards with the same flair that we saw in China, and women painting their toddlers' nails. We were immediately struck by how warm and inviting Cambodians were towards foreigners and how particularly loving they were with their families, especially children. That combined with this particular neighborhood scene reminded me of Andhra Pradesh and some of the impoverished areas of Hyderabad..
That night we went to Fed Ex to pick up the Persian-English dictionary my mom sent me (I'm desperate to learn as much as possible before we get to Iran), then we made it out to the riverside in the center of town and were blown away by how lively it was with thousands of people (mostly Cambodians) crowding the sidewalks. The next day we met up with Maggie and met Matt for the first time. They took us to Rondeng, a hip restaurant (which is an extension of a local NGO for street kids) with excellent local dishes including fish amok, which combines coconut milk and lemongrass to delicious effect. They told us about the work they are doing helping those with HIV (Maggie) and children who are trafficked for sex or illegal work (Matt).
To finish the obligatory food talk, the next two days we would treat ourselves to some of the best international cuisine we've sampled anywhere, from the rooftop of a fantastic Mediterranean place called Tamarind (awesome lamb shwarma) to Pop Cafe, a phenomenally good Italian restaurant run by an Italian expat and his Cambodian wife serving up unbeatable home-made Tagliatelli pasta with salmon and a light cream sauce and other wonders that brought us back the following weekend - sometimes you can't resist. These are restaurants we would have known nothing about if weren't for our friends taking us there (we would have probably just stuck with Cambodian food, which is excellent in its own right).
The best part about dinner, though, was our company. Maggie, Matt, and the handful of their friends that joined us for dinner were so interesting, all doing noble work for and with impoverished and victimized Cambodians while not taking themselves too seriously (in fact they were refreshingly candid and even self-deprecating). The rooftop dinner at Tamarind stood out as we sat out on a perfectly humid night with four engaging people for over three hours and learned so much about life in Cambodia that we never could have fully appreciated otherwise. Such as...the peculiar hierarchy and even egomania of the NGO community, the pathetic and sad opportunism of Western men who transform from relative outcasts in their home countries to virtual Gods with women half their age and none of their wealth, and lighter topics such as the identity of all those wonderful tropical fruits that you see everywhere in this part of the world. That particular night we also went to a really fun nightclub mostly patronized by Cambodians where we danced past midnight - maybe the third time on our trip abroad that we've joined the hip and beautiful who do such things routinely.
Lurking in the background, hidden but at the same time eerily exposed ("need a tuk-tuk to the killing fields"), is another Cambodia.
It is a history that, considering its scale and gravity, we've heard far too little about - I was certainly quite ignorant about the details until this visit. From 1975-1979 the regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, purporting to roll back the clock to some agrarian utopia, systematically tortured and killed teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and anyone else who had been "tainted" by a higher education (wearing glasses was enough to warrant a death sentence). We visited their most notorious torture prison, S21, and its associated "killing field" called Cheong Ek. What we saw, read, and heard was so horrifying, so cruel without limit, that I cannot and would not describe it in words written or spoken. It shocks you into numbness, and you feel guilty that you aren't crying at every turn. But when you leave and reflect back, perhaps it is that guilt, and the guilt of knowing that it keeps happening, and the contrast with whatever mundane comfort you happen to be enjoying while you reflect, that makes you cry.Pol Pot died in 1998, and though the country is still devastated many Cambodians have moved on in spirit and their biggest city now exudes a positive energy that is contagious. And with that we moved on, excited to see monuments of a more glorious age for this turbulent slice of the South Pacific.
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