When I reserved my ticket for Cambodia months ago, my plan was to stay fair for 4 days, visit the Angkor Wat temples and return to Thailand to get another 30 -day visa. As soon as I landed in Phnom Phen, something happened: I fell madly in love with Cambodia, so much so that I decided to extend my stay for 14 days 🙂
Why did I fall in love with Cambodia?
Cambodian Kids Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:cambodian_children.jpg
I continued to ask myself the same question again and again during the first days, but I did not have a clear answer.
I just felt it.
I felt the place, people, smiles, landscapes. Everything moved me for any reason. When I finally arrived in Siem Reap, the “final destination”, I was so tired that I could barely walk. This trip was one of the most difficult, but most enriching experiences since I started my adventure.
Bangkok-Siem Reap:
When I saw the real Cambodia.
We slept at the airport to take an early flight to Phnom Phen, when we landed, I have already been destroyed for lack of sleep.
I did not know that the worst was not yet to come: the bus for Siem Reap, 8 hours in hell! Infinite bumpy streets in the middle of nowhere, damn hot, and a single stop on the way. Not surprising that on a bus of only 50 people 3 was Western, I guess we are just not ready for that …
Nevertheless, I found myself happy to be with the inhabitants. I could finally have a real taste for what life in Cambodia looked like. And it’s damn hard.
During the trip, I looked outside windows like a zombie, and maybe extreme fatigue served me as a tool to receive everything at a deeper level.
What I saw was something that I did not prepare entirely to face. I knew that Cambodia was an extremely poor country, I saw documentaries, read travel guides and blogs on the genocide and their difficult political past.
But if there is one thing, this journey teaches me, it is that to fully understand things (to be your own emotions, culture or behavior of people), you have to experience it from the first hand.
It was quite shocking: Kilometers of single fields, without any vegetation (the dry season does not help much, I suppose), and an infinite suite of very poor houses made of old wooden leaves and palm.
Cambodian village. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
Children looking for food in huge piles of waste, surrounded by stray dogs and chicken. No freshwater available for a big hole in front of each hut. It must have been filled with rain water during the rainy season, but now it has been reduced to a swamp where pigs, chicken and dogs have refreshed heat.
The same water as residents use for their daily needs.
The more I saw, the more I could not believe how people could survive like that. Aren’t they instantly sick? What about children? I did not spot a single school for the kilometers. Not a sign of what we call “civilization”.
What was even more surprising for me is that People continued to smile at us. Permanently. Despite their condition, despite hunger and everything they have been reduced. I found these people simply incredible. They have such interior, kindness and calm elegance that disarms.
![Di Lukas Bergstrom (Children) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]Municipal Wikimedia attack](http://www.keepcalmandtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Ratanakiri_children.jpg)
Di Lukas Bergstrom (Children) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]Municipal Wikimedia attack
Children in particular, They come to you and smile. Wherever I went, there were children smiling or trying to play with me. One night, I was dining in a local street kitchen place (where the owner remembered that I am allergic to spicy, so nice) foods and this little child came to see me and asked me for my sprite.
Of course, I gave him. Feeling completely shameful that the only contribution I could make was an idiotic sprite. During this first stay, I couldn’t do better than that, but I would like to come back here to stay longer and try to really do something. Even if it is a drop in the ocean.
My time here is coming to an end for now. Tomorrow, we are attracting an early bus to cross the Cambodian border and enter Thailand once again for 2 more weeks. And I already feel sad to leave.
Not only for the beautiful Angkor Wat temples.
… Or my fight with the monkey on a bottle of water (which I totally won by the way!))
Monkey at Angkor Wat. Image of Clelia Mattana, all rights reserved.
Or to be the unofficial photographer at a wedding in the temples….
Married to Angkor Wat temples. Image of Clelia Mattana. All rights reserved.
What I will miss the most is the people and their smiles. What I will take with me for the rest of my trip, while waiting to return to this beautiful controversial and difficult country. See you a Cambodia day!
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