Cambodia 12/31/06 - Day One

Fortunately, a dear friend of mine Yoshimi lives in Cambodia now and so rather than spending New Year's alone in Thailand I flew to Siem Reap for a few days with Yoshimi. This was a great way to step back from all the thesis work and also meant that I missed the nine bombs that went off in Bangkok on New Year's Eve.

Cambodia, like NE Thailand, was hot and dusty. Yoshimi met me at the amazingly beautiful airport (the $20 visa fee to get in and the $25 airport tax to get out pays for it I suppose) with Mr. Hun our tuk-tuk driver for the day. Yoshimi had a sign that said "Cathy" on it. I think the surrounding crowd was disappointed that Cathy wasn't a man, i.e. not Yoshimi's boyfriend ;-)

With my bag in tow and big smiles on our faces we hopped into Mr. Hun's tuk-tuk and headed to the guesthouse Yoshimi arranged called Peace of Angkor (fitting for a Peace Fellow no?). Upon arriving I was worried that my lack of Cambodian currency would be a problem but I soon found out that the local currency serves mainly as change for American dollars valued at roughly 4,000 riels = $1.

My initial impression of Siem Reap was nothing that I could have expected after being in NE Thailand for 2 weeks. Due to the millions of tourists who flock to Siem Reap to visit the immense UNESCO World Heritage temple complex Angkor Wat there are a fair number of very posh hotels. What struck me most was an area near the river where the luxurious Raffles Hotel sits and across the street built into the steep river bank on stilts are rickety wooden shacks that it seems a strong current could easily devastate. The juxtaposition of almost crass exhorbitance and poverty was a stark reminder of why Cambodia is considered an LDC (least developed country).

The style of the hotel complexes and particularly downtown Siem Reap seemed reminiscent of French colonial times. Quaint buidlings in pastel colors, narrow pretty alleyways, people dining at street restaurants and cafes, a bakery, photo galleries - was this really Cambodia? Where was I? I felt disoriented by the town, the American dollars, the wealth, and the poverty.

Yoshimi told me that the airport is run by a French company and the expensive ($20/day ticket) at Angkor Wat complex is run by a Korean company. This caused me to wonder how much of this wealth trickles down to the local people? Does the money just exchange from an American tourist's wallet like mine to a Korean company's bank account? Are the people in Siem Reap better off for the tourism their magnificent monuments attract?

Like Afghanistan and Liberia, Cambodia too is faced with a majority of the population under the age of 15. This results in a limitation of the country's human resource capacity. A limited number of adults with business, services, teaching, or construction experience for example impacts the country's ability through domestic leadership to nurture its own development. Many of the older generation often don't have these skills due to the rule of the Khmer Rouge for so long or were killed. The starck and brutal legacy of the Khmer Rouge era lives on in the groups of disabled musicians playing somber music who sit outside the temple complexes and in the main tourist areas who have been injured by landmines that are still strewn throughout the country.

While I have never worked in development being in Cambodia, hearing Yoshimi's daily experience of trying to run her organization respectably and not cave into the corruption that locals find normal and many big agencies (including the UN) participate in as a means to get things done, and my own research, have given me plenty to ponder about the purpose and effectiveness of development. Not paying a bribe sounds like a good principle but what if it prevents you from accomplishing any of your goals? Or prevents you from actually fulfilling the mission of your organization? It brings up the age old question do you go against the system (in this case corruption) or do you work within it and try to change it? I don't know all the answers but these are some of the questions that keep arising for me again and again in different contexts.

Here are a few pictures of the downtown shopping/restaurant area for you to get a feel.


























































This misspelled sign is for the Mainers out there. For the rest of you; In Maine when someone says "its a pissa" that means something bad happened.