Phnom Penh

It's poor, it's underdeveloped compared to any standards, there's kids begging and the poverty is striking. But they're friendly, they seem curious, they like to make contact and their smile is appealing.

They were also easy targets to photograph. Either a friendly smile, a big laugh, a wave or a shy looking away, but never an objection. They actually seemed to like the attention.

Big smile and laughing when they spot the camera...

A lot of them literally live on the streets. I'm not sure if they have homes or live in one of the slum areas I saw, and just venture out to the city during the day, but they eat, pee, play, sleep, get their hair cut and dry their clothes on the streets, as some of the photos show. In fact, I caught them sleeping everywhere. On trucks, on benches, in tuk tuks, on seats at a funeral, they clearly like to sleep. My kind of people :-)

Kid playing near Phnom Wat...

'They' is of course not everybody, but the street life is in your face. It makes parts of Phnom Penh a very lively mess, especially around the market area.

Knowing a little bit of the history of Cambodia and the horrors that went on there - first by the Americans, then by Pol Pot slaughtering his own people - the resilience of the people seems amazing.

I don't want to romanticise it though. Life there seems also harsh. They might smile and some might seem genuinely happy with the little they have, a few days isn't enough to get a sense of what these people are thinking or feeling or how they experience their daily life. Think it's safe to assume that everyone would prefer a normal house over a slum, and a clean bed over a bench in the park. And the smiling might look friendly, but I remembered a book about the Pol Pot regime, in which Cambodians are described as friendly but also as spiteful. I'm quoting here freely, but in the book they're called 'the most spiteful Asians of the whole of Asia'. In short, don't piss off a Cambodian, because he might seek revenge in a less pleasant manner. How true it is, I don't know, it's second hand knowledge, but it's not unwise to keep such knowledge in mind when visiting there :-)

One tip worked out quite well, the street kids begging. In stead of giving them money - which is either spent wrong or possibly given to other people for whom they work - I bought a big bag of candy, and we just handed that out whenever the occasion arose. And it works, they leave you alone after that, with quite a happy face.

I also handed out money to disabled, landmine victims and other unfortunates, but you quickly realise it's impossible. They keep coming. It's one of the nasty aspects of these places: the confrontation with your own luck, the fact you have and they don't, and how to deal with that if they rub that almost literally in your face, with missing limbs, in wheelchairs and with other deformities. The Dutch suffer from guilt quite easily - I wrote about that in another post about Calvinism - and it's also a part of my nature. I haven't found a convincing way yet for myself. I give some, I reject some, but it still lingers in the back of my mind without a resolution, because there is none. This is the way it is, this is their life. You visit, you leave. Most you get out of it is the feeling of being lucky and a sense of admiration for this nation and its people.

Another striking thing, of which some Cambodian artists make fun themselves in paintings I saw, is the number of people they carry around on trucks, buses and motorbikes. Five people on one motor cycle wasn't an exception, and some seem to carry their whole material existence on their motor cycle. Furniture, stoves, bags, appliances, hardware, tools, you name it, you can find someone driving around with it, stacked, stuffed or folded onto a bike or truck, usually with people on top, also quite visible on some of the photos.

Two motor cycles and a lot of other stuff in a truck, with people on top...

Took me quite some time and trials to get some photos of the people on motor cycles, visible in the first album, but luckily they don't drive faster than about 30km per hour. Traffic is very chaotic, but because of the low speed it doesn't seem to go wrong often. Five on a motor cycle is quite acceptable if you don't go fast.

The weather was so so. It's the rain season now, and the first few days we had on and off drizzle and a grey sky. Dry enough between the drizzle to walk around though. The place is also quite windy, and as sandy and dusty as Siem Reap. Completely flat land, no mountains, so the wind can do its thing undisturbed, bit like The Netherlands, where a day without wind is quite rare.

Otherwise, apart from observing the life going on, there's really not much to do in Phnom Penh. There's a few sites to visit and there's some nice restaurants and cafes around the river area, but that's about it. My initial guess that a few days would be enough turned out to be true.

I did enjoy it though. Not sure if I will return there soon, but I think it was a worth while trip.

(Click on the photos for the bigger version)