I feel like all I've been posting in my blog has been all the happy, funny, and even sometimes quirky things that have happened to me and the other interns while in Cambodia. While these things have indeed happened, Cambodia is still a third world country. Bad things can still occur. So while this post will comprise of events that were anything but pleasant to experience or hear about, I hope to convey different things that I have learned rather than sound like I'm complaining or bashing on this beautiful country.
In my last post, I mentioned briefly that we spent a ridiculously long amount of time waiting at the Cambodia/Laos border for our visas. I'll expound on that comment. After some crazy complications with our sardine bus (also mentioned in the last post) we arrived at the border. No sooner than the door opened, a man stood outside the bus directing us and a group of Europeans off the bus and over to a rest stop on the side of the road close to the visa station. He seemed nice enough, and all of us were pretty dazed from the bus ride so we followed the crowd. The man sat us at a table, handed us all visa forms and told us that he would help us get our visas and cross the border. When Dan asked him how much the visas and stamps cost, the man said a higher price than what we had initially thought. Even after some attempt at clarification, the man insisted that the price he said was the real one, so we conceded and gave him the money and our passports.
As I'm typing this, I'm realizing how naive we sound. But seriously, it was a weird situation. Dan speaks fluent Khmer and talked to the guy in his native tongue just to be sure. We tried covering all our bases. But in the end, we still still ended up waiting over two hours in a fly and chicken infested rest stop to get our visas and our very kind border host pocketed an extra $6 per person and disappeared. We got our passports back with valid visas and everything, it was just disheartening.
On our way home from Laos, we had the privilege of leaving Laos at eight in the morning... and not getting back to Phnom Penh until almost 10:30 at night. We had to subject ourselves to the same corrupt busline that ripped us off on the way into Phnom Penh (we're pretty sure it's the ONLY bus line at that border crossing), and we got to sit in a small and packed tight bus for hours on end. To make things all the better, our bus driver was kinda enough to drop us off in the outskirts of the city that none of us were familiar with. Hoping that we could just get a tuk tuk and go home, the tuk tuk drivers waiting for us at the bus stop were charging $15 a tuk tuk for a ride into town (We're pretty positive the driver's were in league with the bus company, and it should only cost at max $5 for a ride like that).
Naturally we told them to suck it (okay, we said 'no' in a much nicer way than that) and we ended up walking down this long dark street, luggage in hand, in a who knows where part of Phnom Penh. We made our way to a gas station while looking for a reasonable tuk tuk driver, only to have a gang of the dumb overpriced tuk tuk drivers follow us and wanting us to still pay them for a ride. Eventually, we found a cool one who would take $5 for a ride, got five girls on the tuk tuk (mind you, it's easily past 11:00 by now and we had been traveling all day) and me, Dan, Zoya, and Nicole stayed behind to find a tuk tuk for ourselves.
Next thing we knew, we get a frantic phone call from one of the girls saying the rejected tuk tuks had surrounded their nice one, made him stop, and began threating him. As it turned out, they threatened to kill him unless the girls used their tuk tuk and paid $2 extra dollars per person plus the $5 they paid the nice driver (making it a grand total of $15). They argued for a while, a guy came up to Chelsey as she was calling us, grabbed her face and the phone, the girls screamed and ran into a nearby house, the Cambodians in the house came out and started chewing out the tuk tuk drivers, the police showed up, and we ended up staying at a sketchy police station until 3am witnessing good ol' Cambodian justice. It was straight up crazy. No one was hurt thank goodness, and we ended up having a police escort back to the hotel that Dan and Zoya stayed at, but it was a long miserable night.
And that's not even the last story, a little over a week later or so, Dan and Zoya were riding in traffic on their moto when a Lexus almost cut them off. They tapped on the side of the car to inform it that they were there, then sped up to get away only to hear a man screaming at them from the car window. Dan did his best to zig zag through traffic but they hit a light, and the next thing they knew, they heard someone running up behind them and a guy punched Dan right in the side of the face. I guess they almost started fighting but Zoya went all adrenaline-ninja-y and got Dan to stand down. The attacker eventually just walked away but unfortunately Dan had to get stitches just over his eyes and he got his wallet stolen during the scuffle.
So many fun stories! I assure you that the last two stories legitimately were freak accidents. But here's the thing, I'm not a tourist. I'm an intern studying international development. I came here to Cambodia to see and experience different issues that are inhibiting Cambodia's development. And I can now safely say that I truly hae experienced some. I got to experience first hand the feeling of anger and vulnerability of being ripped off, and I got to witness the corrupt and messy system that is the police force. As unpleasant as they were to experience, I'm incredibly grateful that I did.
I also have such a hard time blaming Cambodia for any of these awful things that happened. This country has gone through so much. I mean, some of the surrounding countries were indeed affected very badly form the Vietnam War, but Cambodia had the Khmer Rouge which decimated the country's entire infrastructure. I mean, how do you recover from having a huge percentage of your educated systematically murdered? So these people, these situations where terrible things happen, are just products of corruption. These wonderful people, these children of God, are not inherently bad. The situation in which they live force them to become something less than their potential. They have to lie. They have to steal. They have to commit random acts of violence just so they can survive in their world.
Cambodia has some of the most humble, kind, and strong people I've ever met in my life. Working at Licahdo, NGO CEDAW and CYN has allowed me to meet some of the most passionate freedom fighters I think exist in this world. They put their lives on the line to help the country they love make progress towards peace and equality. The government of Cambodia is still incredibly corrupt, but the people who are brave enough to raise their voices are actually making a difference. I may drive through their crazy traffic and fight off leeches, but I'll never be nearly as brave as they are.
In the words of Clarissa, "Monk's blessing for the problem children."
To further reinforce how amazing I thought my Cambodian friends were, our host familes were so worried about us they had us go to a high ranking monk to receive a blessing of safety, peace, and prosperity. It was truly an amazing and humbling experience.
Until next time.
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