Phnom Penh

When we left Bangkok at 5am in the morning it was pouring down with rain and half the stuff in my luggage was soaked. So I could not believe that Phnom Pehn was full of sunshine and dead heat when I arrived.

Here me, Emma and Jo met up with some of the PEPY volunteers for a few days of touring in PPN before we head to Siem Reap to meet the rest of the group.

It is such a leafy city - much smaller than I thought it would be, not very many high rises and lots of open spaces and wide roads. Its obvious that it is a lot more impoverished than Thailand. Laos was "poor"in the sense that they didn't have great hunks of material wealth, but not the sense of desperation shown here in Phnom Pehn - housing is really really fun down, and environmental degredation is so widespread. Every corner there is a begger, mainly children who says in English "Need One Dollar for School" and points at the food you carry. They stay out till late at night, often 12 or 1 am still out looking for money and food. Some of them just simply sleep on the streets. The tuk-tuk drivers too, they even sleep in their vehicles.

The local markets were not crowded but much more basic than those in Thailand. but I was really pleased that many of them spoke better Mandarin than English, so I was able to communicate quite well, to Emma and Jo's jealousy. It is a circus here but a different circus - meat and fish is diplayed in the hot sun, and so is ïnteresting"cuisine such as barbequed snakes, cooked giant black hairy spiders, cochroaches and grasshoppers.

To be really honest, being fresh off the boat I didn't feel particularly safe here as we get approached quite a bit by beggers and tuk-tuk drivers targetting foreigners who actually yanks the corner of your clothes and often cry in front of you. Oh, and a guy with a big bathroom scale came up to us wanting to weigh us in exchange of money - urh, no... But every time I say "no"/ "te"a sense of guilt come rising up my chest - what the hell am I doing here with my full belly, clean clothes and comfortable bed in their country when they have hardly anything - how could I say no? but how could I stop every 2 minutes and give to every person? How do I stop being mobbed and how do I keep safe? How do I morally justify why I am here, supposedly understanding their way of life and not give anything back? What do they do with the money I give them? Who do I trust?

After talking to some of the other travellers and expats it seems like a lot of the beggers particularly children are controlled by either their parents or an older leader whom takes their money away at the end of the day anyway, often for alcohol and gambling, and this encourages the kids to continue to beg on the streets instead of going to school. It is much better off giving the kids some food because you know that they stay fed and they benefit directly - ironically many of these kids don't end up wanting the food you give them because its not food that they want... money is what they have been taught that makes this entire world spin around, particularly in this chaotic and merciless city.

This is really crude but I think this is a micro-version of aid - the donor countries give give and give, the recipient country gov takes it, keeps most of it for itself and a tiny wee bit dribbles down to the real ppl the donors thought they were helping. The majority of the population stays poor (while the govy ministers gets rich), which encourages the donors to have to keep giving cos the money's not particularly effective.