Reflecting Cambodia

The kids have had so many experiences on this trip. For us, it has been great to experience this trip through our children's eyes.



Laos was wonderful. The people were friendly and happy and even though we spent a fair amount of time in rural and isolated villages, it still seemed fairly easy for our kids to connect with the Laos kids. Without speaking the same language they could play games, show pictures of snow and skiing, and generally have fun together. It was clear that the villagers had little material wealth in their lives and yet everyone smiled and people were sunny and happy.



We really enjoyed Cambodia too but this was the place where the kids were struck by the poverty and the desperation. It is just a border that separates these two countries and yet their worlds are totally different.



Levi is too young but I am totally proud of my girls for the interest they have shown in understanding such grown-up things like: civil war, genocide, the Khamer Rouge, communism, and the Pol Pot regime. (The hardest thing for Greg and I to understand is how this happened in our own lifetime.) The day that they were completely shocked was the day that we spent on a boat going through Tongle Sap (in the dry season this lake is 2,500 square kilometers and in the wet season it grows to 13,000 square kilometers) and the thousands of people who live on little boats on the lake. Everything floats. They have floating schools, floating animal pens, and floating grocery stores. The buildings that do not float are up on stilts 2 stories high.



It was over 35 degrees Celcius and the smell of drying fish in the air was thick. It was pretty easy to see that these people have nothing and live on nothing.



Our biggest challenge in Cambodia was trying to figure out what our 'role' was. In Laos we only encountered about a handful of beggars (less than I do going to work downtown everyday) but in Cambodia we quickly saw a difference. Little kids -- 2 and 3 and 4 years old -- coming over to beg, lots of disabled people (mostly landmine accidents and many of them only young teens), youth begging for money so that they could pay to go to school. Lots of people would try to sell us items we didn't want; then they would beg us to buy the items we didn't want; then they would nearly insist that we buy items we didn't want.



At first we bought items from children vendors but then learned (through more seasoned travellers) that this does more harm than good as it rewards the kids to stay out of school -- and we also learned that school is free (so we also learned that we could be easily scammed by 6 year olds). Needless to say, we had some interesting conversations with our kids about this dilemma and we were so impressed with their maturity and their insight and their appreciation for their own little world back home.



Cambodia offered some beautiful sights, some wonderful hospitality and we also met some very nice people. I'm so happy we were able to experience both Laos and Cambodia on this trip; together these countries offered so much to all of us.



... inching toward our dream of exposing our children to a world apart from our own so that they have a better chance of becoming culturally and morally astute adults.



Lana.