15122016
Asia, Cruise, Cambodia
Very early morning, we were in fact awake before the buffet. The port was actually a few hours away from the things we were going to see. We were near Sihanoukville, which is I guess a major city in Cambodia, I honestly know very little about Cambodia beyond the involvement of the US during the Vietnam war, and the post war Khmer Rouge atrocities.
The civil war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War) started in the 1967 and ended in 1975, but then the Khmer Rouge did all kinds of awful shit for another 4 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide) but things didn't actually get better until Pol Pot died in 1998 and the Khmer Rouge really gave up.
The civil war, the genocide, the Khmer Rouge insurgency, all had a deep impact on the country, and it really shows. Cambodia, at least this part that we were in is by far the poorest area i have ever been in.
The first stop immediately made me uncomfortable. We stopped at a pepper plantation, which in itself isn't what unsettled me, it was the presence of the locals. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, if curtailed a little by the language barrier. The tour bus, and 3 other tour buses rolled up to this small family owned peppercorn farm. Our guide explained how the peppercorn plants can produce 4-6kg of pepper (per year i think, i tried asking the guide but he didn't explain it directly).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper
they dry them in the sun to make the black pepper, they boil them which essentially peels them, and then sundry them to make the red ones, and they use them fresh for cooking as green peppers.
What fucked me up about the experience was the farm family, or what i was led to believe was the family, they had a little girl probably 3 years old, that immediately a dozen people from the tour (read that as rich old white people) dropped to a knee and started snapping pictures of her.
Im certain the family gave some kind of consent to let us onto the farm, and expected these things to happen, and (I hope the tour agency paid them something for giving us access) a few tourists purchased bags of peppercorns (but we aren't allowed to bring agricultural products on the ship, nonetheless onto planes back to most Western countries...) to compensate them. But it felt very much like a spectacle.
The next stop was even worse.
They took us to a traditional fishing village. The village had a population of probably 500, and the tour agency dumped off 75ish tourists (again, rich old white people). This town can't just absorb that many people, especially when they are trying to go about their normal lives. The tour guide pointed out “how they live”. It felt very much like a zoo, and i think it was exacerbated by the people we were with. At one point a lady with a huge lens fancy camera (like a $2500 rig) was taking pictures of people without really asking them, and the particular instance that put a foul taste in my mouth about this lady, and honestly embarrassed me, was her pictures of a little girl.
She started taking pictures when the little girl realized she was being photoed she started bawling, and the camera-lady made a “did I do that?” gesture, and still snapped a few pics of the crying child.
It made me feel really shitty for being there.
We walked around for about 10 minutes, generally getting in people's way, and the the tour guides corralled us back onto the bus to gawk at the locals elsewhere.
That elsewhere was a market. The market was pretty neat, a covered market full of food stuff and flowers and bread and clothing and random shit. But again, it wasn't the kind of place 3 tour buses of westerners can just roll up to.
The guide began walking us around, but laura and i split off and walked our own circuit of the market and met back up with them.
It all felt very voyeuristic.
The bus then took us to lunch.
Lunch was good, allegedly traditional to Cambodia (allegedly because i have never had Cambodian cuisine, and have no internet to check it). The thing i liked the most was the stirfried fresh peppercorns and squid. Everything else was akin to the stuff served elsewhere in Southeast Asia, shrimp fried fish, a soup etc.
After lunch we began heading back to the port, as this was a quick stop for the cruise. The tourguide had a copy of The Killing Fields (wiki link here) for us to watch, which if you havent seen it is really good.
On the way home we stopped at a Buddhist temple complex.
This part was cool, and a pretty classic third world experience. There were little kids all over the place, they didn't seem to be looking to do anything nefarious, but i was immediately suspicious of them. While going into the temple one is expected to remove their shoes, out of respect, and for hygiene. And as you take your shoes off the little kids offer to hold your shoes for you.
Im not about to give a bunch of little shifty eyed kids the advantage here…
We say a lady open her wallet presumably to give some money to a beggar girl, and immediately get swarmed by other kids. I don't think she actually got robbed, she just wasn't intending to give out so much money,
After this we got back on the bus for the final few minutes back to the bus,
The guide had a lot to say, but given my lack of prior knowledge, his imperfect english (i don't blame him for this, he certainly had a grasp of english good enough to be an adequate tour guide, just not an excellent guide), and other tourists asking stupid questions (there is always that guy {especially on a trip with this demographic breakdown} that did not hear or wasn't listening to the previous statement made by the guide), i dont have that much history to sneak in.
The guide remembered what it was like under the Khmer Rouge. The endemic fear, and paranoia, the unseen violence. I wish I could have engaged him some more about this stuff, but our time in Cambodia was very short.
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