Cognitive Dissonance in Cambodia

Have to admit I never really thought a lot about Cambodia but our few days here have been an eye opener right from the get go.

 Crossing the border was a trip a little like what I imagine the it was like during the fall of Saigon--hundreds of anxious tourists, farmers with produce, stoned backpackers standing in confused lines while overwhelmed custom officials slowly, ever so slowly, processed the paperwork. The longest lines reserved for the locals and preferred treatment was given to white people. Once one cleared immigration one joined this swirling crowd of people looking for transportation away from the dusty, incredibly hot border town. Total bedlam. Carts, donkeys, aging Toyota Camries, nuns on bicycles, Tuk-Tuks,  surly cops, and of course desperately thin women trying to sell scarves to Japanese tourists in Gucci.

The drives we've taken through the country--Siam Reap is three hours the border--reveal a primitive way of life I have never seen before-(it makes rural Mexico look like Easy Street).

Torn between seeing their simple existence in the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen--a choice between backbreaking labor in the rice paddies, as the way we should all live and recognizing that living in a shanty made of equal parts corrugated tin( these guys are wizards with this building material) palm branches and recycled advertisements for Cambodian Beer is not the world one would want to wish on anyone...well maybe Alan Greenspan. I'd pay  to see him put in a shift in a paddy than climbe the ladder to sleep in his stilt house while his wife cooks up some rice gruel,four feet from a road cluttered with buses, carts, scooters, bikes and inevitably a very forlorn looking dog.

I think I forgot to mention the most interesting aspect of this roadside lifestyle--the family store. Most of these folks living by the road operate a store,selling a few tawdry items under an umbrella or lean -to.They tend to work in packs, You turn a corner and there are four houses in a row selling the same straw hats made in China. Then there will be four stores in a row where a women  is squatting over a makeshift grill browning up beef and chicken on a stick--othersnare also restaurants and others "service stations" selling gas in old Jack Daniels bottles. The weird thing is that you never see any commerce actually happen and the only potential customers are the very same neighbors who are selling the same  product at their house/store next door.

Odd moment when we were passing through the floating village described in the last post. The teenager running the boat, who probably lives in one of the stilt houses without running water or electricity spent the time texting someone on his smartphone as he piloted the boat passed his neighbors while they were catching fish with primitive hand nets, some wearing only Calvin Klein Knit boxers.I, of course, was busy snapping their pictures while sipping bottled water, as if they were a diorama at the Peabody Museum. 

End of post written by the pool after a tiring morning taking a tuk-tuk to watch tthe sun rise over the AnqorWat temple with hordes of the aforementioned Japanese tourist.