3/19/06: Siem Reap, Cambodia

Day 2. I went to Cambodia with my mom [Left: woman on left with hat], and therefore in a tour group. In retrospect, it was actually much more fun than I thought it would be, although at the time, I really dreaded the whole "tour group experience"; I saw aspects of Cambodia and I got good tips about navigating Cambodia that I would have never known had I come alone. Arriving at Siem Reap Airport, the tour guides bribed customs and we went to our hotel. It was amazingly hot and humid. That afternoon, we went to the lake where we saw the way people really lived: in single room shacks/huts along a polluted river. Each home was built on stilts to accomodate the expanding and shrinking lake. They were also made to be temporary, in case it was completely destroyed. People on the lake at the time either lived out of a small boat [Right picture] or a floating home. Children paddled around in tubs begging every foreigner for food or money [Right picture]. It was very disturbing and heart-breaking seeing these people, seeing how they lived, and having children desperately bargain everything they were selling for a dollar. I wasn't sure, though, how much of it was culture, how much of it was complete poverty, and how much tourism was helping or hurting. It was a constant theme/conflict the entire time I was there, and it really made me feel guilty. Our tour guide [Left picture] was actually from Cambodia and talked about how it was growing up there during the war. He said, "Everything that you've read or seen on TV, multiply that by about a hundred, and that is what it was like."