Recharging my Batteries in Fascinating Cambodia...

Sua s'dei, dear friends!

It's time again for an update from your ever-traveling globetrotter, this time from the North of Thailand! When I left you last time, I was in Bangkok's Chinatown, preparing myself for a longer stay and a potential internship in Cambodia... As my current location already gives away, things didn't exactly turn out they way I had planned, but isn't that what backpacking is all about :-)

Sunday February 7, 05:30 AM: waiting at Bangkok's central station for the train to the border town of Aranyaprathet... After a rather smooth journey, it was time for the 'Tourist Scam Circus' to begin! Coming off the train, a rikshaw driver would take us (me and some Polish fellow-travelers) to the border for a reasonable price. Well the 'border'..., it turned out that he wanted to drop us off at the 'Visa Buro' to get our Cambodian visas arranged there, for an increased price of course. Fortunately, we were warned by the Lonely Planet which describes most of these scams and after some persuasion and our rikshaw driver getting pissed off, we finally continued to the actual border where we would get our visas. Although this particular Cambodian Visa is supposed to be 20 USDollar, the ever-serious officials at the border demanded an extra 5 USDollar for unclear reasons. Since I really don't like these corrupt practices, I argued with them pointing at the sign above their heads: "You see, it's just 20 USDollar, I'm not gonna pay you anything more!" Rather unfortunately, the official simply took my passport, threw it in the corner of his office and ignored me until there was just nothing else to do than to pay him the extra money. When we left him, he gave me a big smile as if to say: "How naive, what were you thinking you stupid tourist..."

All well, I finally arrived in Cambodia and couldn't wait to start learning about the recent history of this country and to find my way around the capital city of Phnom Penh (PP). Since I was interested in working with human rights, one of the bigger NGO's had asked me to participate in an event which they had organised. For those of you who don't know what exactly happened in Cambodia, in very short: between 1975 and 1979, during the totalitarian regime of the 'Khmer Rouge' (the Communist Party), more than 1.5 million Cambodians (which made up for about 1/5 of the total population!!) died because of starvation, execution, torture or non-existing health care. Although its leader, Pol Pot, of whom you must have heard before died many years ago (he was either poisoned or committed suicide), in an effort to put a final end to the past and to start building on a brighter future, the Cambodian government is working together with the United Nations to prosecute former government officials for genocide and crimes against humanity before the 'Khmer Rouge Tribunal'. The tribunal has been working for several years now and I personally find the whole process intriguing and was happy to see what's going on, with my own eyes. For three days, the NGO ('the Documentation Center of Cambodia': DC-CAM) had invited about one hundred victims of the Khmer Rouge to come over to Phnom Penh and to inform them about the efforts and developments of the Tribunal. On the first day, we listened to presentations and visited the infamous 'Killing Fields', where the most horrible things happened, and one of the torture prisons 'Tuol Sleng'. On the second and third day we attended the pre-trial hearings of two former ministers (Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan), who are both being accused of, inter alia, genocide. You can imagine that attending these hearings and visiting these historical sites is fascinating and being surrounded by the actual victims of this awful regime gave it a whole extra dimension: overall very impressive!!

Unfortunately, the next step of actually finding a suitable human rights internship in Phnom Penh didn't prove to be as easy as I had hoped for and although there seemed to be some opportunities, my tactics of just showing up and trying to arrange an internship last-minute turned out not to be exactly the right way to do it... To kill the time while waiting for (slow) replies of NGO's, I tried to find some sort of routine for a few weeks in Cambodia. I had already found a nice guesthouse and after a while I knew exactly where to buy the best noodle-soup in town, how to speak some essential Khmer words, where to get fresh fruit and where to go for a swim and a little work out. Because I stayed for once longer than usual in one place, I also made some new friends with whom I met more regularly, instead of the often short-lived friendships you make while traveling around. Riding my rental bicycle through the streets proved to be an ideal way of exploring this once French city (although almost no one speaks French any more, on every corner of the street you can buy French Baguettes :-D). Except for the beautiful Royal Palace, there are no real tourist attractions in Phnom Penh and a quick observer could argue there's not much going on. But mainly thanks to the French style of city-planning with buildings being not much higher than 3 or 4 storeys, I found it actually quite a pleasant and easy-to-navigate city to stay for a few weeks.

Whereas PP might lack of true tourist attractions, SR (Siem Reap), the second city of Cambodia houses what is perhaps the biggest tourist attraction of the whole of Southeast Asia: the Temples of Angkor... What I didn't know before, is that between the 9th and 13th Century, the Khmer (today's Cambodians) had established the mightiest empire this region has ever known! Even today, the Cambodians are called 'Khmer', as is their language, their food and their culture; their flag contains an image of the temples and one can truly say that Angkor is still at the center of the Khmer society and its national pride. The Temples of Angkor are considered to be the 'Eight Wonder of the World' and I decided to explore the temples in a typical Dutch way, by bicycle. One and a half day of cruising through the former capital of the Khmer Empire (once, there lived a million people and it is believed to have been the biggest city in the world in those days!) full with magnificently mysterious temples was a truly majestic experience and well worth a visit. Before I even got there, I stopped over for a quick bite and got into a conversation with a Khmer guy of my age who randomly announced that he was getting married later that day. "I should definitely come over when I got back from Angkor"... Not sure whether I would make use of his friendly offer, on my way back I did stop to look whether there was already something going on and I was immediately recognised by the groom. Before I knew, he sat me down a table with his friends and family and I was enjoying some great food while being a sort of VIP-guest :-) A few hours later, some Khmer-dance-moves later and above all a very genuine Khmer experience later, I returned to my guesthouse and concluded that Siem Reap was well worth the visit!

So the process of finding an internship didn't work out that well and last week I realised that I could either wait some more for replies to my applications or that I could make new plans and start traveling again... Could you believe it, what a surprise!? :-D ... However, I would still very much like to get some working experience with human rights and I will definitely keep on looking for something useful to do while traveling around Southeast Asia. Indeed, I made up my mind and decided to go for the very popular round-trip through the region: starting in Bangkok, traveling to the mountainous North of Thailand, crossing the border into the poor but laidback country of Laos, making my way to Hanoi in the North of Vietnam, traveling southwards to Ho Chi Minh City (better known perhaps as Saigon), exploring the beautiful Mekong River Delta and finishing my trip in Cambodia, where I left most of my luggage! Right now, I am in the North of Thailand, in Chiang Rai to be more precisely and I have been looking into the possibilities to cross over shortly to Myanmar: the rather isolated, but therefore very interesting country which is lead by a military junta. After that, I will probably visit the 'Golden Triangle', where three countries meet (Thailand to the South, Myanmar to the North-West and Laos to the North-East) and which used to be at the center of the world's opium production.

On the 29th of April, I will fly out of Cambodia to Kuala Lumpur to meet my parents: of course I am very much looking forward to seeing them again! Our plan is to travel for about a week in Indonesia (Sumatra and Java) and another week in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur and perhaps a few days on one of the Bounty islands to finish our trip!). There is even more good news, since my brother (Sander) is coming over to meet me in...... Beijing!!! When my parents will return to the Netherlands, I will have about two weeks to spend in the region and it would be good to find a suitable internship during that time. After that, I will fly out from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing to meet Sander and together we'll explore China in about four weeks time, which promisses to be just great! (just as it was two years ago, when we had an awesome time traveling together throughout Kenya and Tanzania!)

Alright, that's it for now! After spending some time in Cambodia and not moving too much, I am ready to go exploring again and I can't wait to the great travels which lay ahead of me. Of course, I will try to keep making you part of my experiences and I really appreciate your messages and enthusiasm :-) You'll hear from me again in about a month time, who knows what will happen in between.... all the best from the Land of Smiles!

Leah Hai, Marijn