Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I woke up early as we were riding down the Saigon River pulling into Vietnam as the sun rose. We were surrounded by forest on both sides and the trees looked absolutely beautiful paired with the rising sun and the reflection in the water. Every so often we would pass these little fishing boats and that really gave us an introduction to Vietnam. It was so incredible that I was woken up that morning before my alarm even went off by my roommate looking outside and screaming oh, wow! We were both freaking out about how cool it looked. I went upstairs to meet up with my friend and take some pictures and it was just so great to see. I really couldn’t get over it. The temperature at the time was great and I got really excited since all we had been hearing was that it would be awfully hot, and then I realized that it was 6:30 in the morning.

We went through immigration and then had a quick diplomatic briefing about the state of the country and what we shouldn’t say and do. I found out I couldn’t blog about the political state of Vietnam and so that was obviously a huge bummer since I love talking politics… or not. I went out to the side deck where you could see a bunch of parents lined up outside the gangway that were in Vietnam for the parent trip. My family was not in the crowd because they don’t love me… or because I didn’t think it was necessary for them to come. There weren’t very many parents and it wouldn’t have been a great time for them to come anyway. I then packed up last minute stuff for my trip to Cambodia that left that morning.

When we left for my trip we literally got right on the bus outside of the ship, so we didn’t get to walk around Vietnam at all. All we got to see of it before departing on the plane was the drive through Ho Chi Minh City, which was really cool to see, and the aerial view from the window of the plane, also cool. From the bus we got to see all the motorcycles, buildings, parks, people, etc. and really got a good taste of what we would be returning to two days later. Security at the airport was really interesting. The immigration desk was completely bare- just an old computer and one other machine. It was very technology-lacking. After going through China’s intense immigration screening this was very different to experience. Everything in the airport was priced in US dollars which was new for us, but we would soon learn that US dollars are much more widely accepted and requested than Cambodian currency and even Vietnamese currency. The views during takeoff were pretty incredible and it was interesting seeing that and then seeing the views in Cambodia, which were surprisingly very different. Cambodia was much more barren. The plane ride was about a half hour and potentially the shortest plane ride I have ever had (I once flew from Minneapolis to Madison and I remember that being very short too).

We excitedly left the airport to enter the city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. It was much different than any place I have been thus far in my life, including Ho Chi Minh City. You noticed the poverty immediately as well as the smaller city size and much lower population than we have seen in the other cities. The first place that we went to was the National Museum. There were a bunch of historical statues, but due to not really being able to hear our tour guide not many people on my trip could tell you much about it. Then we went on a sunset cruise down the Mekong River. This was really amazing. We got on the boat along a natural dock of mud and grass, in an area where a lot of locals were hanging around this large sidewalk-esque park. It took us a while to pull away since we were stuck in the mud but when we finally did we got to see these awesome views of the streets from the middle of the river. You could learn so much about Phnom Penh and Cambodia’s culture just from looking at the buildings and people. Along the streets were a lot of short, crowded buildings that were a mix of houses and businesses, and we saw a lot of extremely undernourished, underweight men on these old boats on the water. It was interesting. Finally, we rode past people living in these shacks on the water and learned that they were the illegal immigrants living in Cambodia. Surprisingly, even though it was on the water, they had electricity and we saw a television on in one of the homes. However, it was all open and there was no privacy and it was definitely an incredibly poverty-stricken area. It was sad to see. After we got off the boat, we ran into a large group of locals doing aerobics on the large sidewalk park, and of course everyone joined in. It was pretty awesome.

Next we went to the Palm Tree Orphanage, sadly my first orphanage visit of the trip, so I was very anxious to go since my visits with children in these countries are what I was most looking forward to experiencing. This orphanage is supported by Cambodia’s Hope, a SAS alumni-run organization. We went fairly late at night so it was hard to see the entire orphanage but it seemed like a fairly nice place given the other places we had seen in Phnom Penh up to that point. From the second that we arrived at the gates of the orphanages, the kids ran up to us, grabbed our hands and started showing us around. They showed us where they played, where they learned, some of the things that they had made and so on. I met some truly adorable children that I really wanted to just take back with me. They were smiling and full of so much love that it just broke my heart that they were there. One of my favorite children at the orphanage ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug. He was an extremely tiny boy but gave such a heart-felt hug that I was completely taken aback. He had some sort of mental disability but was one of the happiest children I have ever seen and couldn’t stop clapping his hands and hugging us. It was precious. We played a few cute circle games that had all the kids giggling in the most adorable ways possible. Since the children that I interacted with either didn’t know much English or were incredibly shy we didn’t talk much but there was so much smiling around me that I honestly learned how a smile can say a thousand words. Saying goodbye was the most difficult part of the night and it was so incredibly difficult to just turn around and walk away from them to go back to our nice hotel, then to our nice ship with our friends and eventually to our amazing families in a few months. As depressing as it was though, I had to keep reminding myself that our visit gave them just a few hours of more smiles than they would have gotten without it and that had to be enough for now. A lot of the discussion that has been going on currently back on the ship is about how it is so hard to visit these countries that have so much poverty and stay at five star hotels and have these incredible opportunities. A staff member on the ship said something in response to this at a pre-port reflection the other night along the lines of how you can’t let your guilt eat you up. Instead, you have to appreciate the fact that you have the privilege to do all these and look at it in the most positive way possible [not a direct quote, she said much more, much better, much more eloquently, but that’s what I got out of it].

We went to dinner afterwards, there were lizards on the ceilings and ants all over the bathroom, then went to the hotel to check in, and finally left to check out the night market. We took a tuck tuck (rickshaw) ride there which was fun. There was a concert at the market and that was funny to watch, I bought a few things and learned that bargaining is not as much fun and cheap as it is in China, and then they started to close the market and we went back to the hotel to sleep.

Early the next morning we woke up in preparation for a rough morning. We were to spend the first few hours of the morning learning about the Cambodia genocide that took place in the 70’s and see some of the sites in which it happened. I don’t particularly remember ever learning about the Cambodian genocide led by Pol Pot, the most harshly communist leader I have ever heard about. Within four years he killed a few million people because they were “involved in free-market activities” which encompassed all educated people and he wanted those that lived in the city to relocate to the countryside to work on farms and labor projects. He, as the head of the Khmer Rouge, used many incredibly gruesome and violent methods to kill off anyone from babies to old men and women. The first place we went to was the genocide museum, which was a school once upon a time before being used as a jail to torture all those that the group opposed. There were pictures of all the people that had been held there, some pictures more disturbing than others simple headshots. It was difficult to walk through. Out of the thousands of people that were held in this jail, SEVEN people survived. After that we went to one of the killing fields. There were 376 total killing fields according to our guide, which is where they would take people to kill them. The one was incredibly saddening to walk around.At first glance it looked like an average large field with some trees, but then you would see that one of the trees was what they used to slam the babies and toddlers on to kill them, or one of the small circles off the path contained a few hundred bodies of naked woman and children. Mass graves were labeled all over the place. There was one very beautiful building that when you walked up to it you noticed that the entire thing consisted of shelf upon shelf of skulls that were discovered in the area that the building now stood on. There were so many awful things that we learned about how they killed people at these sites that I am not even going to put them on here. What is unbelievable about these killings are that because it is such a small country, so much of the population died and the majority of the population is extremely young. It is similar in Vietnam. Even our tour guide lost his parents and remembers some of what was going on as he was eight years old at the time. There was a very tense moment on the bus after, mostly my fault, because my friends behind me started comparing genocides- or more specifically the Cambodian genocide and the Holocaust. One of them was saying that he thought that what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did was worse because of the reasoning for it… I turned around and said that you can’t compare them, that you just have to know that they were both unbelievably awful events in history but very, very different. Neither can be justified as BETTER than the other.

Luckily, we moved onto lighter notes after the killing fields and went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. They were beautiful pieces of architecture and had some amazing statues inside. There was one that was covered in diamonds and made out of gold. It was exquisite. There was a wishing tree in the area, where people had written wishes all over its leaves. I wrote a wish but I was reading through some of them and there was one in huge letters that said “I WANT MONEY!” After walking around there some more, we went to lunch. When we were leaving lunch we noticed that they had a little pond with someone’s future meal in it, a baby whale. We asked if it was okay to touch it and they said okay so I did. It was very scaly and slimy. Following this, two smaller but scary looking fish almost went to protect the one I pet and swam on either side of him. It was pretty cool.

Next we went to an extremely warm and crowded market. There were a bunch of different sections that you had to search for the entrances to and it was like a fun maze trying to find our way all over it. The worst about this market compared to the ones in China and Japan, is that because of the heat all the foods that they have in them smell up the ENTIRE MARKET. Wasn’t the most pleasant of smells either. When we were bored of shopping and getting way too hot, we decided to check out the air-conditioned mall across the street. This was really no different than any American mall I have ever been in, except that the DVD store was selling DVDs for a $1.50 each. We also got some amazing ice cream.

After spending some more time in the mall, we left for the bus to the airport. It was interesting taking a domestic flight in Cambodia, since the terminal wasn’t as nice as the original duty-free international terminal we saw on arrival in Phnom Penh. There was literally one café, it was a nice one but it was such an unbelievably small terminal. We walked outside to get on the plane, which was a tiny propeller (on the outside) plane. There were 60 of us on the trip and we took up all but three or four seats on this plane. It was pretty crazy. Then we set off for Siem Riep, home to Angkor Wat!

A lot of what I got out of the Phnom Penh section of the Cambodia trip was grim reminders of why I wanted to go on Semester at Sea. I knew it would be difficult for me but I also knew that I wanted more than anything to learn to appreciate the things that I have in my life more. It has been completely putting things into perspective for me about my life and the little things that I take for granted on a daily basis. Our bus leader, my LLC, has two children with her on the trip that are eight and five. I asked her if she thinks that they will remember any of the trip and she responded that even if they don’t, she hopes that it impacts them enough to stay with them. I thought that was a really good thing to think about with all of us on SAS. While the memories are great, it is so much more important for all these places to influence our futures, the way we live the rest of our lives, and the things that we do with the rest of our lives.