the first week in the third world

having completed my first week in southeast asia, there have been too many things that i have done, seen and experienced to verbalize everything.

being in phnom penh allows me to truly experience unadulterated asia, complete with abject poverty in all her beauty. other countries in this part of the world have become westernized with mcdonalds, starbucks, etc. cambodia is still recovering from the seemingly little known disaster that was the 1970s. all it takes for one to realize the influence of killing off 98% of a country's population is a stroll down one of the bustling streets of phnom penh. the rare occurance of encountering an elderly person is just that - there are almost zero people older than the age of forty in phnom penh and every single one of them has a personal horror story of the way in which the pol pot regime operated.

visiting the killing fields outside of phnom penh was a worthwhile journey. to see the place where an unknown amount of people were killed is harrowing. indicative of the face of the nation is this photo, two children outside the fence of the killing fields. they wanted me to take a picture of them and then asked me for a few dollars to pay for books so that they could learn. i didn't really care what they spent the money on.

the people here are truly amazing. everyone always has some sort of project going, most of them have to do with repairing one or a series of motorbikes. everyone has their own garage in which any number of projects are completed on a daily basis. i am staying in a relatively poor part of phnom penh and the local laundry service is also the local moto repair shop/fuel station/food stand. the level of convenience is quite remarkable.

the eastern line of the city is drawn by the confluence of the tonle bassac and mekong rivers. the riverside area is full of bars, tourists and the only elephant in the city that walks back and forth twice a day. locals live on the side of the river in the tall grass that usually disguises their presence to westerners. i looked a little deeper into the riverside the other day and found a very friendly youngster who must have been around an aussie at some point, as the only english phrase he could say was, "the dingo ate my baby."among abject poverty is utter opulence. there are few cars on the streets here, but almost all of them are brand new cadillac escalades or lexus suv's. the focal point of the riverside district is the national palace, which is beautiful and a demonstration of complete devotion to the royal family and buddha. the man driving the tuk tuk in which i was riding early this morning stopped everything to approach a monk on the street. he gave the monk a few hundred khmer riel and laid prostrate in the street before him. it was a good thing that he got his blessing for the day as he was responsible for navigating the maze that is phnom penh.
okun jrean!