Siem Reap, Soapboxes, and Sappy Sentimental Sayings

Since my last post I finally made the requisite “Cambodian tourist” trip to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. For those of you not in the know, Angkor was the former capital of Cambodia and is a massive area covered by all sorts of temples built by different Khmer rulers from 800AD to 1400AD. It’s essentially the leftovers of a 600 year pissing contest between all the rulers as they each strove to leave a more impressive legacy than the others. The result is a series of ruins that remain incredibly impressive centuries later to history lovers and generic tourists alike. The gem is of course Angkor Wat, the largest religious building in th world.

After a bus ride from Phnom Penh, I got settled into my guesthouse and grabbed a tuk tuk into Siem Reap. It’s a pretty awesome little town; much smaller (obviously) than Phnom Penh, but bustling with bars, restaurants, and tourists from every corner of the Western hemisphere. There’s an area called Pub Street that is closed off to automobile traffic so people can walk around; it reminded me a bit of Bourbon Street in New Orleans in that regard. Since I was going solo, I didn’t stay too long and, after dinner and a couple drinks, retreated to my guesthouse where I enjoyed the rare comforts of strong air conditioning and hot water.

It was good that I went home early too, because I had decided to get up at 4:30 to catch the much-recommended sunrise at Angkor Wat. Because Angkor Wat faces west, it’s considered a prime place to take in a sunset. Despite the insanely early hour, the place was mobbed with other tourists. The sunset was kind of disappointing, but I ended up being glad I got there early, if only to keep me out of the heat for most of the day.

I’m not going to go into all the details of the temples I saw; both because I don’t have my guidebook in front of me and because unless you’re standing in front of these ruins, the details of their construction are only interesting to history buffs (sorry Dad). I’ll try to add the details onto my Picasa page when I load it, but suffice it to say that all of Angkor is amazing, whether or not you’re huge into history. The reason for this is not that you’re seeing things you can’t see in the U.S.; I’m sure there are many museums all over the country that have relics from these times and places. The difference is that in these museums you have to look at a few samples from behind a velvet rope; it’s interesting to see but very sanitary and removed from its original environs. But here you can reach out and touch these carvings that were made centuries ago, you can climb all over them, you can stand in the middle of them just like the people who made and used them did. It’s incredible to take such a distant and exotic history and have a tactile interaction with it.

My first day I went all over the place. I hit up the big three “must sees”; Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Ta Prohm, as well as a few smaller temples and a long trip out of the area to do a three mile hike at Kbal Spean. Combine all of this with the heat and the fact that I’d been up since 4:30, and I was pretty much as tired and sweaty as I’ve ever been in my entire life. I managed to get back to the guesthouse to shower then grab dinner in Siem Reap.

The next morning I took a trip to tour the floating village; this is a fishing village just south of Siem Reap; the entire village floats to accommodate for the varying water levels between the wet and dry seasons. Although I was there when the wet season had begun, it’s takes a good deal of time for the water level to really reach its apex. As a result, the water levels were very low. I took a boat tour led by a 22 year old guy who was born and raised in the village. He spoke perhaps the best English I’ve heard a Cambodian speak, and he was really cool. He told me about how he has 9 siblings that he provides for because his father lost both legs to a landmine, and how he hopes one day to be a tour guide at Angkor Wat. This village clearly had a good deal of poverty that was tough to see. The boat ride went through the village and out onto the Tonle Sap lake, then back through the village.

*SOAPBOX WARNING; IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ME PROSELYTIZE ABOUT DEVELOPMENT, SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH* Some of you may know that I’m doing my big graduate project on Community Based Tourism. In brief, this is the practice of ensuring that tourism practices A) are sustainable in a way that allows them to continue indefinitely (i.e. don’t pollute it so badly you can’t use it in 10 years) and B) that allows the communities that live there to benefit from the tourist dollars. Many developing countries are emerging as great tourist destinations, and effectively using tourism for economic development is very important. I have already had an academic interest in this subject, but this weekend has made me officially pissed off about it. To get into Angkor Wat, you have to pay $20 a day. This $20 goes straight to a Vietnamese oil company that runs the place. Yes, you read that right. Forget all the poor Cambodians who have Angkor Wat as their legacy, they’re relegated to trying to sell souvenirs and cold drinks while a freaking oil company from a developed country gets the admittance fees. Also, plans are underway for Angkor Wat to be outfitted with electric cars run by a Korean company. Why let the local moto and tuk tuk drivers make money off tourists when we can let those poor Koreans make a quick buck? And the icing on the cake; that quick little boat ride in the floating village cost an absurd $25. Did this money go to my tour guide supporting nine siblings and crippled father? No, it goes straight to the Cambodian government, a fiscal black hole if ever there was one. There was, however, one moment of useful tourism for me. My tour guide asked if I’d like to visit one of the schools at the floating village. I of course said yes, and he asked only that we stop by a market quickly to buy some school supplies to bring with us because the school needs them. So I dropped $10 and bought a bunch of notebooks and pens, and visited the school. It was fantastic, the kids were adorable and the teacher very nice. It’s where I managed to get what, so far, is my favorite picture of this summer:

See, this is smart tourism. They let me hop on the floating school and check things out, and as a sort of admission price, I bring donations. That was money that I was downright elated to spend, because I knew it went somewhere it should. I would have happily paid twice as much to get into Angkor Wat if I knew that it went towards helping locals to achieve economic development. Ostensibly it could or should; the money goes to the government of Cambodia who, I’m sure, has a lucrative deal with these companies. If they then turned around and spent the money for the locals then it would be fine. But again…fiscal black hole. OK, the rant is over.

After touring the village I headed back to Angkor to hit up a few more temples and take in a sunset. I ended up catching the sunset at Pre Rup, one of the more popular places to do so. Apparently it wasn’t THE place to do it, but THE place to do it is overrun with tourists, and I preferred my choice. Although the sunset wasn’t spectacular, it was a nice quiet way to end the day around a handful of other friendly tourists and a local who carried up cans of beer that he sold to us. Sitting on centuries-old ruins, drinking a can of Angkor beer, and watching the sunset; there are worse ways to end a day.

Not much more to mention after that; I caught a bus home the next day. I really liked Siem Reap, but quickly tired of how tenacious they were towards tourists. Any time you’re a Westerner people treat you like a big bag of money, but in Phnom Penh you only get that at the markets and big tourist spots. Since all Siem Reap is nothing but a big tourist spot, it’s pretty rough. Every driver asks if he can be your driver to go all around Angkor, the driver I did get gave me his card and repeatedly (and I do mean repeatedly, to the point of annoyance) asked me to please give it to my friends who were planning to visit. Kids are perpetually trying to sell you stuff at the temples. This isn’t different from Phnom Penh, except that in PP when you say no they stop trying, but at Angkor no apparently means “Why don’t you ask me 14 more times and we’ll see”. I remember thinking “please let me make it through the day without screaming at a little Cambodian girl.” You know in cartoons when a character is really hungry, and when they see another cartoon character that character suddenly transforms into a giant turkey leg? Well it’s like that, except white people become a huge dollar sign. Anytime a waitress chases you down with a menu asking you to eat at their place, it’s annoying. But I also understand that we’re their cash cow; it’s how it is. Maybe that would change if the tourist practices improve. Here’s hoping…

This weekend I’m going to Bangkok to see the city and visit my friend Alicia, next weekend is Ho Chi Minh City. Then my friend Diana visits Phnom Penh, and then Stephanie shows up and we take a vacation for a couple weeks. And then I go home. Man…really??? When I first got here I remember thinking, as I saw Phnom Penh for the first time and fought off a panic attack, that three and a half months was FOREVER. Now I’ve fallen in love with this country and it just doesn’t feel long enough. At the same time, I’m really excited to get home, to see all my family/friends, and to move into my new house and summarily drive Mike and Jessie (my new roomies) slowly insane. But I know the second I get home and rest up, I’m going to miss being here. Be here, miss home. Be home, miss here. Until I figure out a way to transport everyone I love and miss overseas with me, this will be a juxtaposition (that’s our word of the summer!!! AHHHHHH!!!!! ) I’ll have to deal with. I’m always missing something, no matter where I am. But I’m also starting to learn that having things to miss means that you’re doing something right with your life. And on that note so sappy and sweet every ant in my apartment (of which there are many) would swarm me, I’ll end it.

Apollo says...

Happy July 4th everyone!

4 Things

1. There is a big national election gearing up over here, just like in the U.S. The two big parties are the San Ramsey (spelling?) Party and the CCP. The CCP sends trucks all over town loaded up with people and blaring music and speeches over loudspeakers. It's pretty crazy, and I'd like it more if it weren't for the fact that one of the CCP offices is right near my apartment, so I often get to hear the stuff whether I like it or not. Another truck was loaded with people playing bongos and dancing (editors note: Senator McCain, if for some unknown reason you're reading my blog, THIS is what you have to do to get me to jump the Obama ship. Pick up a bongo and play it like you mean it.)


2. Cambodian kids are the most adorable kids I've ever seen; I totally understand Angelina Jolie's decision to adopt a child from here. While most people over here quietly (yet often overtly) notice that you're a Westerner, they don't make a big deal out of it. But the kids will run up and say "hello! hello!" One time when I replied in both English and Cambodian, they started dancing around yelling "Hello! Hello!" over and over. It was awesome.


3. I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields this past weekend. I don't plan to write about it.


4. If anybody is curious about what the traffic is like in Phnom Penh, I suggest listening to the song "I Love A Magician" by the Dismemberment Plan (those classmates of mine new to DC should take note, as this is the best band to ever come out of DC). The song is frenetic and chaotic, abnormal and atonal, yet at the same time the musicians know what they're doing and beneath the chaos is a musical pulse with a very deliberate direction. You have to get used to it to see the method to the madness, and you have to listen to it a lot to appreciate it. Yep, that's Cambodia.

So Noone Told You Laos Was Gonna Be This Waaaayyyyyyy

It was your standard bar/dance party scene; tons of drunk college-aged kids dancing to popular rock music, cute girls dancing too hard from higher-up locales like tables and benches so that they could be sure everyone knows how cute they are, sketchy frat boy/hippy guys trying to dance up on them in a vain attempt to curry favor, and me standing in the corner with my friends, drinking a beer and watching the scene unfold like I'm some sort of sociology professor (some things are far more entertaining to watch than participate in). "Livin' On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi comes on, and everyone flips out and dances harder and more drunkenly. This is taking place in a big sheltered area around a fire. Outside of the shelter is a field, the field runs along the Nam Som river located in Veng Vieng, in Northern Laos. I'm surrounded by white people dancing to Bon Jovi in the middle of a jungle in a devastatingly poor and still-Communist country.

Maybe I should back up.

Pete and I met Wednesday at the airport and caught our flight to Vientiane, the capitol of Laos. We landed in late afternoon, got a room booked, and went to check out the city. The first thing we noticed is how insanely quiet Vientiane is; people don't drive with their horns and nobody screams at us for moto rides. It was like the city had been evacuated. It was eerie, but a welcome change from the chaos of Phnom Penh. We stopped at a bar on the Mekong and had a drink. You can look across the river to Thailand, which itself is a weird concept to me. We walked around a bit more then got dinner at a French restaurant near That Dam Wat.

Early the next day we caught a "minibus" to Veng Vieng. I call it a "minibus" because the actual bus we bought a ticket for was full, so they put us in a minivan packed to the brim with people. They stuck all our bags on top, and I shared the front seat with the driver and an English/Australian girl. Every time he changed gears it would hit my leg; and I had almost nothing to brace myself against for all the sharp turns that made up this 2-3 hour ride. Not fun.

We got into Veng Vieng, got settled in a room, and set out to explore the city on a very rainy afternoon. I have to admit I enjoyed the novelty of having moisture cover my body that didn't come out of my pores. Although stunningly beautiful, Veng Vieng is a notorious backpacker haven. Very popular are the television bars, which are essentially open air bars with tables you can lounge around with several tv's blaring American television. By "American television" I mean Friends. Literally, at every single bar (save one that showed Family Guy), Friends. All day. Every day. Into the night. Friends. After our brains had been sufficiently numbed by inexpensive Beerlao and the comedy stylings of Matt LeBlanc, Pete and I called it a night.

Seriously though...Friends? Everywhere??? In Laos?!?

The next day we each went on a separate adventure tour through an ecotourism company called Green Discovery Laos. Ecotourism is based upon the principle that tourism should be sustainable (i.e. don't ruin the environment because it is a precious commodity that should be maintained for the community to benefit from) and its profits should be reaped by the people who make up the community. Many of you will hear me talk much more about this, because my capstone project for my degree is based on ecotourism. Without dragging out my soapbox, it is a very important trend and an important tool to help such crushingly impoverished countries like Laos harness the valuable assets they have to improve their lives.

Pete, the avid-rock climber, decided to spend a day climbing the ridiculously cool and vertical mountains you can see on my Picasa page. I, the avid acro-phobic, opted for a more serene and ground-friendly caving/kayaking trip. My group consisted of me and a family of seven Californians who had come to visit one of their 5 brothers/sons who was finishing up his semester abroad in Thailand. They were nice enough, and often reminded me of my brothers and I (especially when their unending movie quotes pestered the crap out of their mother). But I definitely felt like an outsider when they started talking all about college wrestling (many of them were on a scholarship), friends of theirs who got boob jobs (a conversation they casually had in front of their parents), and gossiped about friends of theirs (they apparently know a girl they call "Fat Jen" who walks with a waddle).

Despite this, the trip was quite amazing. All of the mountains were shrouded in clouds from the recent rains, and I found myself getting the theme song to "Jurassic Park" stuck in my head. I shared a kayak with our guide, and I talked to him a lot about ecotourism, the current state of Laos, and all sorts of other SE Asian affairs. We toured a couple caves which were quite cool, and even stopped off at one of the many innertubing bars along the river for a drink and to use an awesome swing they had set up over the river (which you can check out here).

I got back earlier than Pete, and waited for him by getting drunk on Beerlao and watching...that's right...Friends. We got cleaned up, then met a couple Norweigan guys Pete climbed with (Dag and Bjorn) for dinner. These guys are immensely cool; they're supposed to be coming to Cambodia soon so hopefully we'll see more of them. They were also the ones that knew about a cluster of bars in a field across the river run by a bunch of Americans, and that's where this messy story started.

The next day we got a bus (a real one) back to Vientiane. We spent another afternoon/evening walking around the city, and enjoyed a very cool sunset over the Mekong. Next day was an early flight back to Phnom Penh. It was an odd contrast to be absolutely surrounded by Westerners, but to be in such a foreign/exotic location. I found myself looking around and being disgusted, but then looking out to the horizon and being awed. I never expected I would need to use the word "juxtaposition" so much, but that's just the kind of summer this is turning out to be. I'm learning to accept that.

Still...FRIENDS?!?!?!?

Reason #324526 to stay out of the water in Cambodia

One interesting aspect of Cambodia is that, for whatever reason, the craziest news stories come out on a frequent basis. Recently two people, an old woman and a food vendor, had over $20,000 stolen from them in a mugging. Mugging is a normal enough crime, but what in the holy hell were these people doing with that much cash on them? There's also the not-so-funny but kind of outrageous story of the guy who killed a hooker, tried to burn her to destroy the evidence, lit his apartment on fire, and broke both legs jumping to safety (he's now enjoying a well-earned stay in Cambodian prison).

All good examples, but here is the most recent and, I think, the best:

Puffer fish mauls Cambodian boy's groin June 17, 2008

A Cambodian teenager was recovering in hospital after an angry puffer fish attacked him in the groin, local media reported.
The Khmer-language Koh Santepheap daily ran a picture of the unnamed 13-year-old in a hospital bed with heavy strapping around his testicles, saying he was lucky to be alive.
The paper quoted the boy's father, Sok Ly, as saying the fish had become enraged when it was accidentally trapped in the boy's net and, when it was freed, had attacked the boy's scrotum.
Cambodian legend has it that the bite of the fish is even more dangerous than its poisonous spines, especially for boys, and Cambodian boys are traditionally advised not to swim in waters where the fish is common.
The victim, from Prek Pneuv commune outside Phnom Penh, was expected to recover from Monday's attack, the paper said, but the extent of the damage had yet to be determined.
© 2008 AAP

No country for cold men.

The juxtaposition of amazing Asian culture and an inordinate amount of sweatiness makes this my "pictures says 1000 words" shot of the summer.

So since I last posted I've finally made some trips out to the Cambodian countryside. The most recent was a trip to Kampang Chhnang to visit the factory that my NGO started to build our ceramic water purifiers. It was a pretty incredible experience, and I blogged about it here: www.idssummer08.blogspot.com. This blog is being shared by all of GWU development classmates, in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. What I was writing about felt more at home under the rubric of development issues, but I'd encourage all of you to check the blog out, both for my stories and the stories of all my friends that are out in some very interesting places.

So last weekend Pete and I took an overnight trip to Kep, in the Kampot Province. It's a beachtown in southern Cambodia; Sihanoukeville is the most well-known beach town, but we'd heard it was dirty and loud (even though the beaches are nice) so we opted for the quiet/sleepy beach town instead. For those of you familiar with, or from, the South, you might say we chose the Outer Banks over Myrtle Beach.

So we took a bus early Saturday morning, me with either a stomach bug or adverse reaction to my malaria medication, and Pete sleep deprived and hungover. I'm glad we forged on though. The ride out was amazing; it was my first glimpse at life in rural Cambodia. Lots of farms, small houses, and malnourished cows everywhere. We got to Kep in about 4.5 hours (compared to the advertised 2-3), got settled into the bungalow we were staying at, and made our way out to a pier where we chartered a boat to take us out to Rabbit Island. This is a small island off the coast of Kep inhabited by a couple small restaurants, a slew of hammocks/wooden mats, lots of livestock, and a bunch of Westerners laying out. It was quiet and gorgeous. We stayed there a few hours then headed back to our hotel, where we sat in the restaurant, drank beers, and watched the most awesome sunset I've ever seen.

The next day we headed down to the waterfront to hang out and wait for our bus. I had heard that Cambodians are notorious picnic-lovers, and this proved to be very true. All along the sidewalks on the road above the water were these shelters that had wooden mats and hammocks that families would rent out. They'd drive into Kep from out of town and have these enormous picnics; it was an extremely social event. People were playing in the shallow water, or just sitting up by the road eating crab. It was great to see an activity so endemic to Cambodian culture, but removed from Phnom Penh. After an even longer bus ride in an almost air-conditionless bus, we were back home.

I'm probably getting backed up with stuff to talk about. My friend Alicia came into town this weekend, which involved an inordinate amount of shopping and eating delicious food (Alicia, your new nickname is Bag Lady). We just got back from a trip to Wat Phnom, an awesome Wat on a hill in northern Phnom Penh where we got to see monkeys and an elephant, as well as of course touring the Wat. And I'm headed to Laos on Wednesday, so there should be some stories coming from that as well.

Where in the World is Jarrett?

So I've finally got some pictures online of my last few weeks over here. They're on my picassa page, which you can access here. More to come I'm sure, including my planned trips to Vientiane in Laos, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Bangkok, Kampong province, Kampang Chhnang province, and a massive end-of-summer extravaganza reaching from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur.

Not a lot else to add at this point, I'm getting even more comfortable with the city and getting into some semblance of a routine. Work is still frustratingly slow, so I may need to have a talk with my director when he gets back in the office Friday. Otherwise I'll leave you with this thought: on the way to work today I saw a guy on a moto with at least a dozen ducks tied down on it. Fine, whatever, except the ducks were still alive, one on the top was even looking around a bit. So I'll ask you, my family/friends/loyal readers the question that pops into my head at least once a day; where the hell am I???