Traveling can be hard.
It has many faces.
Our 5 day motorbike adventure In S. Laos re-energized us, was peace-giving, strengthening, refreshing, relaxing, challenging, dream inspiring, painful at times but just what we needed.
We needed a change in elevation, bringing cool weather. We needed to escape the tourist trail and our many frustrations with it.
We needed authenticity.
Afterwards we boarded another bus only to arrive in Siem Reap 17 hours later.
It’s difficult here. Tourists fill this place as a result of one of the World’s 7 Man-Made Wonders, the ruins of Angkor Wat being only kilometers away.
And Angkor Wat is truly incredible, well worth a visit.
But when a place attracts many tourists, a sub-culture is created. One that is so far removed from the actual culture of the place.
Streets are lined with pizza joints, night clubs, bars, ice cream parlors. Many tourists love this. They can have the luxuries and comforts of home for cheap in this developing country where 77.7% of the people live on less than $2 a day.
You cannot walk down this street in peace. Every few steps you are confronted by tuk-tuk drivers (S.E. Asia form of a taxi-a cart attached to a motorbike) massage places including blown up pools with fish for a foot massage, restaurants, street-children selling postcards and other trinkets for a dollar and men with missing arms and legs due to the many landmines in this country crawling around with books and videos and a picture of their family along with their tragic story attached to their crutches or baskets.
One could avoid the beer specials, pizzas and souvenir stalls and still leave this place in debt. For every 1 man with blown off limbs comes 3 children. When you refuse the men they just look at you with sad eyes and point to their family on their sign. The children however give you a major pity party-“You make me cry-you make me angry-its only $1 and I am hungry- my family is sick- I need shoes-you’re mean…”
Every few seconds you get asked to buy something from the herd of money-hungry tuk-tuk drivers that line the street eager to make a buck, massage spas, souvenir stalls, the disabled men and begging children.
I want to strip off my clothes, abandon my things and paint on my body
I DON’T NEED ANYTHING.
SCREW MONEY.
What do you do? I bought one book from a man with 1 leg, I’m anxious to read it. It’s about Pol Pot and the Communist Regime that ruled here in Cambodia from 1975-79 right after the U.S. dropped bombs and planted landmines throughout Cambodia at the end of the Vietnam War even though Cambodia was a neutral country. Anyways, Pol Pot had a vision of creating a classless agrarian society-he was a radical and in order to fulfill his vision he abolished money, closed schools and hospitals, burned books, disconnected Cambodia from the outside world, relocated city-dwellers to farms, forced people to work 12 hour days, starved many and murdered anyone who was educated, religious, or may be against or get in the way of his vision. An estimated 2 million people died in a country of only 7 million.
These people have suffered and endured much. Anyone over the age of 30 experienced this and hardship lingers in the air here like no where I’ve ever been before.
We’re surrounded by tragic stories and its uncomfortable for no one can erase history and its hard not to feel a sense of guilt when it was our country who left many of the landmines here that still continue to blow people up.
How do we interact with these children who aren’t fortunate enough to go to school or be taken care of by their families? How do we interact with the men who aren’t able to work because of their missing limbs? I didn’t plant any land mines here, nor drop any bombs, but I still feel responsible. These people are part of our world-wide family and it doesn’t seem right that they have had to and are still suffering so much. But I don’t know what to do. My spirit is crushed, I am overwhelmed with grief and I constantly feel mean and rude when I turn so many away. I am trying to still look at these people as people, I can’t ignore them, when they look at me I look them in the eyes, I try and communicate love, I talk to the children, I bless the men. It’s hard.
