Cambodia: my favorite picture.

Somehow I managed to not pack either of the two camera battery chargers I had, so for most of the trip I relied on stumbling upon other people who had the right charger. It worked until I hit Cambodia, and halfway through both of my batteries died with no charger in sight. I was halfheartedly checking out a camera store in Ban Lung, not really expecting to find either another battery or the right charger, when lo, my eyes did light upon ye olde disposable camera. Real film! How fun!

A couple hours later, I opened the box to check it out. The box said it was supposed to have 27 exposures. The counter on the camera was already down to 18.

I didn't get too upset about being ripped off of a third of the pictures - it happens. My main concern was what was on the Missing Nine. Cambodian naughty bits? I was nervous about getting the film developed once I took the pictures that had so considerately been left to me. I ended up getting them developed in Japan, because, you know, they've probably seen it all.

All of them were some variation on this picture, presumably the shop owner's wife and daughter:



My favorite part of my favorite picture is that you can see in the picture that the baby is actually playing with the box for the disposable camera. Really? Really?!? Just rub some salt right into that wound, why don't you?

Cambodia: The Green Gecko Project.

The Green Gecko Project [facebook - become a fan!] is an incredible organization run by an incredible woman. Tania Palmer, an Australian woman, read an article about kids begging on the streets of Cambodia and booked the next flight there. After meeting the kids on that trip, she returned to Australia just long enough to pack up her stuff and head back to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The project went from feeding a few of the kids to paying a school to let the kids use a room to learn English to renting a separate building to leasing a whole plot of land and building buildings where the kids could live, learn, and play.

Although the place is sometimes called an orphanage, most of the kids actually have parents - but those parents send them out with their baby siblings [to evoke more sympathy] to beg on the streets. They don't go to school, and they of course don't get to keep any of the money they make.

Now, however, just under 70 kids of all ages live at Green Gecko [and they all call Tania and her Cambodian husband Rem "Mom and Dad"]. They get plenty of food and clean clothes. They go to an accredited Cambodian school part of the day and learn English, computer skills, and more from volunteer teachers for another part of the day. Some of the kids will be going to school until their late 20s because of their late start, but one of the Gecko kids is already on his way to college, and the organization is currently raising money to pay his way.

Green Gecko doesn't care just about the kids themselves. When they take in a kid, the rest of their family has to promise to stay off the streets, too. Green Gecko helps them stick to their promise by giving them rice each week and helping them start small businesses like book carts.

The other day I started talking to a barista who really wanted to go to Cambodia, and she said a friend of hers had gone and volunteered at an orphanage but had to leave because conditions were so bad there. Green Gecko is nothing like those places. It's clean, bright, and friendly. They have limited visiting hours so that the kids feel undisturbed and safe in their home. As Tania said, be wary of any organization that lets you visit at any time, that pulls kids out of class to perform for visitors, etc. They don't really care about the kids.

Green Gecko cares about the kids. If you have time or money or can just spread the love somehow, go to their website, read the stories, tell your friends, buy something from the gift shop [I got the cookbook and am puuuumped to try my hand at cooking Cambodian food], donate something on the wish list, eat at Green Star while you're in Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, volunteer at Green Gecko for a few months...

The kids are split up into groups with different colors and animals; on the sides are awards for being a good helper, speaking a lot of English, etc.

They try to be as self-sufficient as possible - they have their own rice paddy that the kids help plant and harvest. Along the paddy are the huts where the different groups eat together. The kids also help with cooking, cleaning, etc. - but again, in a fair way that teaches them responsibility without taking too much time away from learning and playing.

And they use solar power!

English class.

A brother and sister showed me around [at least one of their younger siblings is in the program, too] - their English was great, and they seemed genuinely enthusiastic and happy about being Geckos.

The library.

The girl in the black-and-white picture that Tania is pointing at is the girl in real life that Tania is pointing at with her other hand, back when she had to beg with her baby sibling in arm.

It's very kid-friendly.

With some of the TAB people and Tania, an amazing woman running an amazing organization that needs - and absolutely deserves - any support you incredible people can give it.

Cambodia: non-profits and fair trade.

Teachers Across Borders [TAB] is a collaboration between Australian and American teachers to help Cambodians improve their educational system, which was completely ruined during the Khmer Rouge. They teach subjects the Cambodian teachers might not have learned so well themselves [Mom has had to go over genetics a few times with her biology teachers], donate equipment and resources, and so on. Their website says they're also going to start up programs in India.

===

I know I've mentioned it before, but here's another plug for Green Star, a delicious restaurant in Siem Reap whose profits go to Green Gecko, an incredible organization that will have the whole next post dedicated to it.

===

Artisans d'Angkor trains disadvantaged young people to make traditional Cambodian crafts, both to help the youths and to revive/preserve Cambodian art tradition, which almost died with most of the artists during the Pol Pot regime. They have a workshop and store in Siem Reap and boutiques in other locations, like the Phnom Penh airport [inside security]. They have beautiful carvings, artwork on lacquered wood, silk clothing and accessories... [I spent far too much money there, but at least now I have art for my future apartment!]

This sign is in a room where a group of young deaf girls is in charge of elaborate paintings.

===

Bloom Bags [check out their manifesto and "behind the scenes"] was founded by a Singaporean woman and makes fun bags out of old rice bags. They're more expensive than what you can find in the markets, but their workers get more money, and for rich Westerners, they're certainly still a cheap find. I'm thrilled with my travel toiletry hanger.

===

I got some nice scarves at Khmer Royal, which doesn't seem to have a website but is at 6A St. 57 in Phnom Penh, across from the Khmer Surin restaurant [which isn't a non-profit or anything but is still delicious!].

===

At one of the temples we stumbled upon a guy in a wheelchair selling paintings and drawings. They were really incredible and varied, and most of us ended up buying some - I got one of monks riding an elephant, where everything is black and white except the monks' robes, which are bright orange. The guy gave us the card of the shop he's a part of, and we checked it out later. Rehab Craft Cambodia in Siem Reap "is a fair trade NGO run by and for Cambodians with disabilities that provides support and creates job opportunities by producing quality handicrafts and marketing our products along with products from rural artisans." It's good stuff.

Across the street from Rehab Craft, there's always a guy selling books from a wheeled cart. Top Vanna lost both of his hands to a landmine; here's an article from the BBC on his story. I got two books written by a woman who experienced the Khmer Rouge as a girl before making it to the United States [First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers and Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind by Loung Ung - haven't read them yet, but I'm sure they're fascinating!].

===

I just found this while looking up more information for some of this stuff: Stay Another Day lists some of these and other organizations that are doing great things in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, including things like restaurants that train former street kids in restaurant work.

There are some terrible things going on in the world, but there are also some great people and organizations trying to better themselves and others in the face of those terrible things. Support them whenever you can.

Cambodia: there's poverty, and then there's poverty.

Cambodia has been described as being fourth-world, and indeed, most Westerners couldn't imagine living like Cambodians – the infrastructure [roads, electricity, water...], for example, leaves much to be desired. Education is poor, and most Cambodians barely see much outside their own hometowns, much less make it to other countries. Technology is lagging quite a bit – most internet connections are still dial-up speed, and most households don't even have it at all. The livestock aren't as isolated from the people as we're used to, clothes are old, and the children can be a little dirty.

But most children are also well fed – no skeletons or distended bellies. They're healthy – they get enough to eat and they spend a lot of time outdoors, playing with other neighborhood kids and using their imaginations. The clothes may be old, but – they have plenty of clothes. They mingle more with their livestock, but – they have livestock, which is both food and an investment.

There seems to be a great sense of community – family and neighbors gather in the spaces under houses. They sit in hammocks or on platforms and eat together and talk together. I once even saw a couple of young guys playing pool on a pool table under a house, and other houses had karaoke sound systems set up underneath them. As cheesy as it is, they are certainly rich in community.

So although most Cambodians seem to be poor to outsiders, they are actually doing relatively fine, at least according to my few observations. Pity is not something they need or want.

But, of course, there are those who are truly living in poverty – single mothers, landmine victims, families who haven’t recovered from the Khmer Rouge, the mentally and physically disabled... You see a lot of scruffy children on the street, trying to sell postcards or just begging, and you see just as many people without an arm or a leg or missing even more limbs, and it just breaks your heart.

Cambodia as a whole is pretty much building itself back up from scratch after the tyranny of Pol Pot, and there are a lot of great organizations there assisting with general country building and trying to relieve poverty. I'll highlight a few of them in my next two posts.

Cambodia: the landscape.

Lush, dense foliage and amazingly beautiful clouds.

Behind a waterfall.

===

===

A storm's a-brewin'.

===

Tending the rice paddies.

Cambodia: the Tonle Sap floating village.

The Tonle Sap is a river/lake system that's a little unusual – the river flows in one direction half the year and in the other direction the other half. Depending on the time of the year, the lake is either pretty small or large enough to be considered Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake. There's at least one floating village on the lake, a community of mostly Vietnamese. You can see boats going through with produce – a moving grocery store. We went by what seemed to be the party houseboat, with music blasting. I think one of the houseboats might have even had a TV, thanks to a generator and a satellite.

Solar panels on the roof of the restaurant / gift shop!

Cambodia: housing – a roof over your head, stilts under your feet.

Not much to say about most of the hotels, but they did have some good rules. Unfortunately the picture is really blurry, so I'll point out a couple of gems. "Do not spit in the room. We are not responsible for any thing stolen by prostitutes ( and not allow prostitutes in ) . NO DRUNG Exploitation."

Again, unfortunately not the best of pictures – we mostly just saw these houses while we were driving. These are the typical houses – made of wood and on stilts, with a roof of wood, thatching, or metal.

Stilt houses in the Tonle Sap riverbed – at the height of the rainy season, the stilts definitely come in handy.

We spent two nights in the Yaklom Hill Lodge near Ban Lung in Ratanakiri province. It was a great, pretty rustic place – electricity was only available three hours a day, six to nine p.m. The family that runs it is actually Laotian, and apparently Laotians suffer a lot of discrimination in Cambodia. This was the first time we had to use mosquito nets. I felt like a princess – a princess protected from malaria and Japanese encephalitis, which is probably one of the best kinds of princess to be.

Near the hill lodge is a lake in a volcanic crater. Kat and I swam all the way around it like the badasses we are. The first half had a few docks along the way, and we made friends at each - at one, American missionaries' kids [and their dogs - big, healthy, happy dogs are a strange sight there] who have lived in Cambodia their whole lives [I'm jealous of their Khmer]; at another, a Dutch guy who sounded exactly like Goldmember from Austin Powers [it was so very hard to stifle my giggles the whole time]. [photo from Yaklom Hill Lodge site]

We spent our last night before returning to Phnom Penh in a home stay in one of the houses on stilts. Our hosts were a grandmother, a young mother, and a cute little baby girl. There was no sign or talk of the husband, so we're not sure whether he's still around or what. The bathroom was the most rustic yet – just a squatter in an outhouse. The inside of the house was a little more updated – they had a TV and sound system, which they used to play more of the soap opera-style karaoke videos [although, again, no one actually sang along to them]. Cambodians seem to not be that into putting diapers on their kids – while we were all gathered around Mom's computer looking at pictures, the baby just went right through her clothes onto the floor. It happens. I actually really like Cambodian houses – they're built to be big and open and airy, which is important in such a hot and humid climate.

Some of the group spent a lot of the time during the home stay in the yard, playing a game that was pretty much hacky sack with a shuttlecock.

But mostly we just hung out underneath the house, lounging about in hammocks and communing with the chickens that were running around the place.

Cambodia: ethnic culture.

A few miles down the road from the Yaklom Hill Lodge [see next post] is a village that particularly markets itself to tourists. When you turn off the road, there's a sign that says "Ethnic culture – 3 km." As though the rest of the country weren't already "ethnic culture" for people like us.

Even though they want tourists, it felt strange and a little invasive to walk around and take pictures of people going about their daily tasks. It's not exactly some Disney Epcot village – it's still just regular people living their lives.

Using bicycle tires to work yarn.

Since I didn't feel comfortable taking too many pictures of the people, I took some of adorable baby animals.

One of the buildings was a little shop where villagers could bring their scarves to sell to whatever tourists come by. When they see that some have arrived, they all come over to watch and hope that their scarves sell – and, in this case, dress us up.

In the scarf building – the guy on the left gave us an impromptu little recital on whatever instrument that is.