Zen and the Art of Landmine Detonation

Cambodia offers your regular suite of cheap cocktails, fantastic night markets and drawn out bartering over local handy crafts, but nowhere else will humble you as much as the people.

Lonely Planet, Tripadvisor, fellow travellers, they can all recommend a hotel or the best way to avoid getting ripped off at the border, but no one can really prepare you for being approached by a beggar and having it change the way you see the world.

While you’re sat in your new favourite roadside haunt, sipping a fresh iced sugar cane juice and trying to shake-off your tourist image by reading the local newspaper, how would you react when a man strolls up to you, interrupting your morning news and sporting that big cheeky Khmer grin you’re used to, dressed up in his coolest Hawaiian shirt and Australian cricket cap, trying to sell you books.

These book vendors litter Ho Chi Minh, Bangkok, Laos, so what? Look a little bit closer. Look at where both of his forearms and hands used to be. Look and marvel at his spiderweb paint spatter of scars smeared across his chest and up his neck. Look back at his silly smile, try not to stare at where his elbows used to be.

Let me introduce you to one of many heroes I met in Cambodia, Mr Douk, he strolled up to us with your standard “hello my friends!” and then used his stubs of arms to shuffle through some paper he had in a basket that was strapped around the back of his neck and resting on his stomach, which was full of knock-off travel guides. He passed us a note, insisted he was not a beggar and asked us simply to read it.

Cambodia, a country rocked by civil war, exploitation from each of its borders, and now slowly trying to recover and rebuild. Upon meeting Mr Douk or any one of 1000 Cambodians just like him, you won’t know whether to cry, laugh at his capacity to smile brightly, laugh at your own petty issues or head to the nearest cashpoint and give him everything you’ve got.