Phnom Penh

After leaving Siem Reap, we drove the 5 or 6 hours to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. We’ll be spending the rest of the program here, and the first three weeks will be with a homestay family, and the group will move back to a guesthouse together for the last two weeks of the program.

I, however, am having a bit of a different situation. Advocates for Youth, an awesome organization I work with in DC is sending me to the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria. Unfortunately, the conference overlaps with my time in Cambodia, so I have to withdraw from the program and leave Cambodia after four weeks (three weeks early). Though it’s a bummer to have to leave Cambodia and my friends here early, I’m really excited about going to this conference. I get to do a presentation at the Youth Pre-Conference, and participate in a young leaders summit with UNAIDS director, Michel Sidibe, among other things. So, I guess it’s really sort of bittersweet in that I’m sad I have to leave Cambodia, but also excited to go to this conference.

Well, as per usual, I seem to be getting ahead of myself. I haven’t even blogged about Phnom Penh and I’m already telling you about my impending departure. So, let’s get to it, shall we? Upon arrival in Phnom Penh, we were all sent to our homestays. I’m staying with a girl named Asa, who is also a student at PUC (the university I’m studying at), and another girl from my program, Nita, is staying with Asa’s cousin, Sin, who lives in the same house. So, we’re all staying together, and it’s been alright. We haven’t really met the family at all, and we pretty much just spend time with both of the girls in our room (which is below the main house, which we don’t go into, apparently). They are both really nice, but pretty quiet, so it’s sometimes a bit awkward, and we have a lot of trouble communicating with one another.

Phnom Penh, itself, is like most other large cities. It’s hot, crowded, and the traffic is bad. The driving here is a lot better than Nigeria, but it’s still kind of free for all, and the cars, motos, tuk-tuks, and bikes all share the same space, and traffic lights are only obeyed if the driver is in the mood. Moto seems to be the best way to get around here, since they can zoom around things better than cars or tuk-tuks, and sometimes they just drive on the sidewalk if the roads are too crowded. My homestay is more or less at the opposite end of the city from school, so it can be a long commute, and a hot one, but there’s AC waiting for us on the school end of the commute. There’s a lot of different kinds of food here, from Khmer, to Vietnamese, to Indian, to Western, which is nice, since even though I really like Khmer food, sometimes you just need to take a break and eat a salad and some cheese. Unfortunately, I seem to come to places that do not believe in consuming dairy. Like Nigeria, there are a lot of cow herders here, but they still don’t eat milk, yogurt, or cheese, which is like 50% of my diet at home, so that’s kind of killing me (I plan to eat a LOT of cheese in Vienna).

We’ve done some exploring here, including field trips to the National Museum, as well as to the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng prison. The National Museum is a beautiful red building that looks kind of like a palace, and it’s full of artifacts from various Khmer civilizations, including Angkor. These are mostly statues from Buddhist and Hindu mythology and icons, but there are also demon statues, iron works, woodcarvings, weapons, gold, and more. It was really interesting, but after three days at Angkor, it was kind of hard to get excited about more statues, which weren’t even attached to impressive temples.

As part of the Nation Building class, we went to the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng prison, which were hands-down the most depressing and horrifying things I have ever seen. The Killing Fields, for those of you who may not know, is a location near the Choeung Ek village where the Khmer Rouge brutally murdered thousands of people and buried them in mass graves. The site itself has been cleaned up/ done up a lot in recent years, so it’s actually a really strange to be in this place that looks like beautiful green fields and trees and blue skies and then think about how much blood in that ground and what a horrific history that small natural space has. This realization comes crashing down on you when you walk into the Memorial Stupa, which houses all the skulls and bones of the people murdered by the Khmer Rouge at the Killing Fields. To me, what was even eerier and more disturbing than all those bones in that building is the fact that there are still many bodies that have not been dug up, so when you walk along the paths that lead past the excavated mass graves, you can see bones and clothes of victims that are starting to surface. Seeing a tattered men’s striped collared shirt poking out of the dirt as I walked along the trail was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. After the Killing Fields, we went to the Toul Sleng prison, which is probably the most infamous of the Khmer Rouge prisons. Thousands of people were held at Toul Sleng and tortured there for perceived betrayals of the Khmer Rouge’s revolutionary cause. The place has actually been fixed up quite a lot, but it still looks mostly like it did during the days it was being used. The floors and ceilings still bear the bloodstains of the victims of the Khmer Rouge who passed through Toul Sleng (almost everyone who died at the Killing Fields was sent there from Toul Sleng). Perhaps even more terrifying than the bloodstains and torture instruments that remain in the Toul Sleng cells, are the thousands of photographs housed in Building B of the complex. The Khmer Rouge were meticulous about taking photographs of all their prisoners, and all these headshots are arranged along the entire length of the rooms. It’s harrowing to look into the faces of the Toul Sleng prisoners, many, if not most, of whom did not survive the Khmer Rouge’s bloody regime. The tragic irony of the place is that it was originally an elementary school with a beautiful courtyard full of grass and plants and palm trees, and the Khmer Rouge just took it over and converted that place of learning into a literal house of horrors. What’s more, is that my professor for Nation Building went to kindergarten there the year before it became a prison.

I suppose it’s also interesting to note that the Killing Fields memorial is actually operated by a Japanese company, which I find troubling, to be honest with you. I don’t really think it’s appropriate for another country to be controlling a site that means so much for Khmer history. The Japanese didn’t live through it, so I guess I just have trouble believing that they have the personal and cultural connection to this place that I think is necessary for whoever is running the memorial at the Killing Fields.

After a week in Phnom Penh, two girls from my program, Nita and Angela, and I decided to escape the city and head to beach! More on that next time…..

Angkor Photo Explosion

Here is a smattering of the hundreds of photos I took at Angkor during the three days (and one very early morning's sunrise) we spent there. They hardly do the place justice, but, unfortunately for you, I can't bring home Angkor Wat or Bayon Temple, so they'll just have to do. They are in the same order as I saw them, but I'll have to go back caption them later when I have better internet and can actually see the photos I'm writing about rather than trying to guess which ones are which from the web coding.

Siem Reap: Or How I Puked At a UN World Heritage Site

Alright, well, I am clearly failing as a travel blogger these days. A lot has happened since my first (and only) post almost 2 weeks ago. In an attempt to keep this post from becoming a novel, I’ll split it up into a couple different posts.

So, the day after allowing “Dr. Fish” to eat all the dead skin off my feet, I did some more weird stuff, though primarily in a culinary manner. I ate a Cambodian delicacy called Duck Fetus, which is….. a duck fetus. Still in the egg. I could only manage one bite before the visual was just too much for me, but it didn’t actually taste too bad. Then, because that wasn’t enough, I decided to eat a cricket. It was dead and roasted, so the actual eating wasn’t challenging, but I forgot to bite the legs off, so I had to pull them out one by one, which was pretty gross. The cricket itself, though I hate to say it, did kind of taste like chicken.

The day after the duck fetus and cricket feast, I went with three other students from my program to visit a school out in the forest outside of Siem Reap. We ended up riding on the back of motos (small motorcycles, like the Nigerian achabas) for about an hour there, and got caught in a rainstorm about halfway. Since it’s the rainy season here, that’s not uncommon, though due to global climate change, the rains are coming when they are supposed to, which means bad and scary things for a country where 70-80% of the population are subsistence rice farmers. Anyway, the school was an open air cement building, and about 70 people come to the school for various 2 hour sessions throughout the day. The kids are learning English, and they are really cute. Like Nigeria, though, it was heartbreaking to see 13-year-olds who look like 8-year-olds because of lifelong malnutrition. But the school is going to do good things for the villages its serves, and the man who runs it is dedicated to expanding it to provide housing for orphans and services for more people who want to learn. Plus, the moto ride was really fun.

We also started our classes during our 10 days in Siem Reap. I’m taking Cambodian History and Culture, and Nation Building After the Khmer Rouge, which should both be interesting, though the latter hasn’t started yet. I also took a three-day crash course in Khmer language, which was both helpful and really hard. I’ve learned the basic survival language, but that’s about it. The history course is being taught by an archaeologist who is in charge of the Angkor Preservation Project (I think that’s the title?), and he does a lot of mapping and analyzing of the Angkor region and temples.

As a part of that class, we did a three day field visit to Angkor. It was, in a word, incredible. The temples were beautiful, and we got to see a lot of different ones from different periods in Angkor civilization, and it was really cool to see how they evolved from smaller, brick temples, into the massive sandstone ones (like the famous Angkor Wat or Bayon). It was hot, humid, sweaty, and dirty, but it was also a lot of fun, and kind of mind-boggling to think about how these temples were erected a thousand years ago with none of the modern technology we think of necessary for building. They think that maybe a million people lived in Angkor during the height of its power, which was, of course, during the same time that Europe was stuck in the dark ages.

Anyway, on Saturday (which was our last day in Siem Reap), my friend Angela and I decided to get up at 4am and go watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat. I was feeling a little queasy when I got up, but I just assumed I was tired. However, after about 30 minutes in a Tuk-Tuk (the best description I can give would be a rickshaw, which with a motorcycle instead of a bike), I was feeling real uncomfortable. But, I wanted to see the sunrise, so we walked down the long stone walkway that leads to Angkor Wat, and then went down a set of stairs that leads to one of the moat-like ponds in front of the Temple itself, which was where we planned to watch the sunrise. And then I threw up. All over the grass at Angkor Wat. A UN World Heritage Site. Which I actually think makes a pretty good story. I felt a lot better after I threw up, so I stayed and watched the sun rise, but then I promptly got sick again, and spent the rest of the day sleeping and hydrating. Whatever it was, food poisoning, virus, bacteria, or something else, it was more or less over within 24 hours, so I said farewell to Siem Reap and hopped on the bus to Phnom Pehn the next day.

Pictures to follow when I get good internet.

How you feeling? Hot, Hot, Hot.

So, as you may be able guess since I am writing this, I have arrived in Cambodia safe and sound. It involved 25 hours of travel time (22 of those hours on airplanes), and numerous near-missed connections, but I made it. For those of you who don't know, I am doing a 7 week program in Cambodia to learn about Cambodian history, culture, language, and post-Khmer Rouge development.

My trip is starting with 10 days in Siem Reap, in the northern part of the country, which is also where the famous Angkor Wat temples are. After that, we move to Phnom Pehn for the last 5 weeks. The first 3 will be a homestay and the last 2 we'll all be back together in a guesthouse.

Anyway, I don't have much time, since I have to leave in about 20 minutes for my first class, but I am loving Cambodia. It's hotter than hell on Triscuit here, but it's worth the sweat. In fact, I think it's worse than Nigeria. It's probably about 10 degrees cooler, but it's also about 100% humidity, so it feels worse, and your sweat just pools on your body (that was clearly information you needed...) In the last three days, we've explored the town pretty well, going to both the tourist-y Old Market and some of the less-visited markets and streets. A lot of what we've done is orientation stuff which is probably not too interesting for you (since it wasn't for me either...), but we've had some really good Khmer meals, and met some awesome Cambodian students. Perhaps the highlight so far was going to the "Dr. Fish massage" last night at the night market, which basically involves sticking your bare feet into a little pool full of small fish who then come and eat off all the dead skin on your tootsies, leaving them fresh and clean. It was hands-down the weirdest thing I think I have ever done. The best way I can describe it that it sort of feels like that "pins and needles" feeling when your foot is falling asleep. But not in bad way, just in a sort of tickle-y way. There was a lot of laughter involved, and the one we went to gave you a free beer with massage, which was nice, and, to be honest, kind of necessary for experience.

Today's my first day of class, so I'll let you know how that goes, and the current plan for tonight is to go to a Mexican restaurant (in Cambodia) and watch their big screen World Cup game (I believe it is the North Korea game we're going to), so that should be an interesting experience....

Let me know how all of you are doing!!

Kampuchea

Well, this blog has lain dormant for sometime. Actually, it was almost one year ago exactly that I left Nigeria, and it's been quite a year. Without going into that too much, suffice it to say that my wanderlust is back, and I'm itching to see the world again. As a cure for this persistent malady, I have signed myself up for a 7 week study program in Cambodia.

Why Cambodia, you ask? Well, to be honest, the answer comes back to, well, why not Cambodia? It's a place that I don't know much about. In fact, I don't know much about Asia at all. My high school education was ridiculously Euro-centric, and my college studies have been primarily interested in Africa. I tried to take one class on Asia, and it was pretty much a bust, so I figured, well, why not come to Asia and experience it firsthand.

Some basics, for those of you who aren't familiar with Cambodia (which includes myself):

Here is where Cambodia is situated in the world:



Here is a map of Cambodia:



The first two weeks, I'll be in Siem Reap, which is in the north-western part of the country. It's also where the famous Angkor Temples are located. For the remaining five weeks, I'll be in Phnom Penh, the capital city. For three weeks there, I'll be with a homestay family, and for the last two weeks, we'll all be back at a guesthouse here.

The language spoken in Cambodia is Khmer, which is also the name of the major ethnic group here. Most Cambodians are Khmers, but there are some smaller minority groups.

I'm currently in the process of packing, and I'm packing lots of lightweight clothes, since it seems like the weather is sort of like Nigeria, but more humid. Awesome. Why do I keep going to these tropic climates when I am so ill-equipped to cope with the heat?

Well, I'll (hopefully) keep you all posted on my various adventures and foibles in Southeast Asia. Let me know what's happening with you while I'm gone, too!!