Kâmpŭchéa 2011
Angkor Wat អង្គរវត្ត
Floating Village
Phnom Penh & Noir
Krong Battambang
Feb 03 2011 Battambang.
They are everywhere. They have the eyes of wild animals, glistering with their only meaning in life. To survive. I met three of them on the street. The colossal ambition in their little hearts gave them hard task of bring all recycled goods home. If what they called home is a home. Sophisticatedly warped paper and bottles in styrofoam boxes, boys punched two holes in each side; threaded through with red neon rope and dragged them around. The top huge bag kept falling out of the box. They stopped and discussed how to pack for several times. Ten minutes after, they still struggled to walk through one block. 5pm, sun was about to set. Light bouncing in between those french colonial buildings. On the dirt road, their glimmering eyes took over all my attention from the past that faintheartedly suspended between time and eternity. I walked to them, picked up one bag that was half of my height. "Dar dam ban o?" I said, can i follow you? "Dak dak " the older boy said " let's go". We walked together with tons of recycled goods in our hands. We stopped for resting and shared some crackers by the street with other street kids we met. Their home, one kilometer away, was in the allay right by Department of Health. And it wasn't just the home of those three boys, it was also homes for hundreds of other kids. Right there, right by the Department of Health, stood one of the slums in Battambang. And no one seems to have the energy to even sense the sadly ironic location. Many many people live there in many many tattered wooden structures. Piles and piles of trash, or in their eyes, the source of income, laying in front of shelters. 6pm, sunset. I followed them walking into this unknown territory. It was not only geographically alien to me. The whole situation, the whole street stroked me with nothing left to respond. All the kids started running towards me, asking for crackers first. After I ran out of crackers, they asked for money, the object that represents tomorrow in their young lives. How can so many so many people be so poor? When did it actually start? In which generation people start losing everything and have no power to gain them back? At which point this country have to leave their people be so vulnerable? How can one country be so openly corrupted? How can prostitution happen in every corner as the darkness descending upon the city of Phnom Pehn? How can lives be so straight forward but yet so hard to complete? They are many many answers to many many questions. But those sullied souls might not have the chance to live longer for the solution to come. It reminded me of the other night, when I asked a lot of english spoken tourists about where to eat for less than 3000 Riel. (Which I did find before, but lost the direction of that area.) I will never forget their faces, "3000 Riel? That's like a dollar! I don't think there are such places!" I smiled and said " Yes, that's like a dollar. And that's where I want to eat." How can I spend more than one dollar to eat when so many people around me need the other dollar more than I do? I didn't dare to explore more in the slum. Tomorrow, I said to myself. But, when tomorrow came, I still felt hesitant. Never in my life, I feel so full, but yet so lonely. Because I care of no one that much to share, and because no one cares that much of me to listen.
Feb 09 2011 Siem Reap.
Now I feel embarrassed that I was considering this city as a country town as my bus roaming into the suburban of Siem Reap. The journey to the east was painted by layers upon layers of blue palm trees, banana tress and coconut trees. When the Khmer passenger next to me finally woke up in time and said, 10 minutes, 1 km away form Siem Reap. I was still imagining myself being in one of the scene of a Chinese movie called "Happy together". The scene was simple and elegant, the camera rolling endlessly through tropical trees covered by the blanket of morning mist as the slow Rumba music softly playing in the background. It was the opening scene and already set the atmosphere of this movie that contents different gradients of blue. One Km. Huh? I thought I was still in the countryside, and that was when I imagined Siem Reap to be a fairly large village instead of a city. My surroundings changed dramatically in the next ten minutes. When I got out of the bus, I thought I was in a back alley of Paris in the 50s, only that people talk in English. To be more precise, I even searched for my sunglasses, so that I don't look as dusty and unpresentable. So here I am, one of the cities that depends on tourism for its major income. Full of different skin colors, hair colors and eye colors in this already colorful country. Female tourists ware cheap floral printed dresses that are sold everywhere in the market but no local girls ware them. Male tourists are red from the sun or the drinks that never leave their hands. This city is unbelievable. Lack of experience, I had never be in a city where the number of tourists are far greater than of local inhabitants. And this made it harder for me to find a place to eat for less than 3000 Riel. I looked through lonely planet, and decided that. Ok, today I will treat myself with something luxury. Amok. I have to eat in the restaurant called Amok. And I have to order Amok, because I had just learned how to make this traditional Cambodia green curry dish yesterday. After shopping for those floral printed dresses as souvenirs. I wandered with my groaning stomach for an hour just to find the disappeared Amok. It was the god's well that I didn't find it, and that I decided to eat by the street again. Only this time, i the street restaurant was also packed with tourists and the meal and a fruit shake costed 3 US dollars. I chose a seat in the corner under the light bold with thousands of moths chose to fly into. I ordered Amok still, o.. I only wish that I have the vocabulary to describe the sweetness soaked in juicy chicken. The taste of the fusion of white coconut milk, and green lemon grass, and yellow ginger, and hot red chill and many others I can only register in Khmer. As the thick soup are poured on the top rice, down to the throat, toppled each other, the taste became so light in the stomach. So light and thin that I can never have enough Amok. I believe that I will eat it everyday and I will honor it by naming this trip as In the search of Amok. Back to the street. Back to the corner seat I chose, the spot the allowed me to watch in 270 degrees. Because I chose the corner seat, my dinner with Hesse was never interrupted by those kids who sell postcards of Angkor Wat and Books like " Finally they killed my father - Memoir form the survivor of Khmer Rouge." The foreign young couple sat right by the street had a totally different dining experience from mine. They tried to dive into traditional Kampuchea food with the company of contemporary Cambodia society. Every three minutes, they needed to expresses how much they didn't want to pay one dollar for six cheesy postcards. They needed to say sorry and to look away, not even looked into each other's eyes. I can understand, considering that they probably want to save the extra dollar for traveling, and they are here by the street eat food half the price of any other places in the city. Then this possibly 8 year old endeavoring boy came to them after three kids had given up convincing this couple. Mingled around for nearly 5 minutes. The frustrated foreign woman finally became out of control. She started yelling in perfect American accent English, the English that many Khmer envy and see as the most beautiful accent of its language. She yelled slowly with her exaggerated lip shapes, as if her listener was deaf therefore can only read lips. "GO AWAY! GO AWAY! I SAID GO AWAY! JUST GET OUT OF HERE!" The boy was petrified and pushed to the street by the vendor. He timidly stood behind lines of motorbikes. Not moving, but looked around for another 3 minutes. I had that feeling before too. I was standing outside, at a place that no one would even pay attention to, but imagined that everyone was looking at me, everyone was still listening to the lingering echo in the air of endlessly bouncing refusal. Where is his home? How old is he? Does he go to school? How many times he is refused every day? I started wondering. And as I wondered, he became a human being more than a boy trying to get her one dollar. And as I wondered, I wondered if that American girl wonders too. When we feel threatened and disturbed, we stopped seeing the other person as a human being. We forgot that they have parents too, they have family too, they have stories too, they are afraid of being hurt too, they have feelings too, they have memories too, things that happen around they can alter their thoughts about themselves, people they meet can have the power of changing their lives. We are all vulnerable. to cherish how vulnerable everyone can be makes lives beautiful. we are all just learning to do that. I tried to find him after the meal, but he disappeared like the restaurant "Amok". I just wanted to buy that set of cheesy postcards from that shirtless barefoot boy, not from anyone else. And I will send those postcards to many people, well, maybe six, who cherish the world and its vulnerabilities. I will be back on the 17th.