Written by Jonathan Smylie
On my second day, I climb a beautiful brick wat. The older wats were built out of brick, the later ones sandstone and laterite, a rock that has the look and consistency of lava. Virak stops by the gate in the wall at ground level and tells me to take my time.
On top, a small framed boy, maybe 16 or 17 years old with black, long, uncombed hair, a black T-shirt and long pants approaches me. Like dozens of other encounters, I’m expecting him to show me a guide book or postcards he wants me to buy or to simply tell me a few interesting facts about the wat and then ask for money. But his approach is all together different.
“Are you alone? Would you like a girlfriend for the day?”
“No thank you.”
“A nice, pretty, young girl?”
“No thank you.”
“Pretty girl, do what you like.”
“I already have a wife and find one woman is enough.”
He stops asking (they never push to the point of being rude or obnoxious) and starts telling me about what I can see from this high vantage point. We are above the trees. He is helpful and I see towers and wats, I would have missed otherwise. He disappears for a while. I finish my picture taking and start down and he shows up again, asking for money. They want American dollars, I give him a 10,000 note worth about $2.50 USD. He thanks me and asks for a second. “For school, to pay for school.” Virak has told me each student must bring his teacher a quarter a day, because the government does not pay the teachers enough. I give him a second note.
Eighty percent of Cambodians are farmers and 60 percent are poor, which means they have a house, a one room shack on stilts and food to eat but no possessions at all, including furniture. He figures ten percent of the country are well off, and perhaps 20 percent in the middle. That’s why each time I step out of the car to look over another wat there are 4 or 5, sometimes ten children who swarm me, wanting to sell me something--books, postcards, T-shirts. Once I say no to a purchase, they resort to begging. They gently try to trap me by asking, “You buy when you come back from seeing the wat.” They are in great need, but never malicious. Shyness and a smile come over their faces when I hold their eye contact for as long as they will allow.
The aggressive ones are the young men in their 20s, who all seem to be pimps. Their questions are the raunchy kind and there is plenty of evidence that their services are in demand. In every wat I visit I see German and French men, middle aged, with young (early 20s) pretty Cambodian women. Virak confirms what I think I see.
We pass one couple while walking around a wat on the first day. He is French, middle age, athletic looking with bulky muscles, she is his height, maybe 22, Cambodian, slim, well curved and dressed for the cocktail hour. We see them again two days later at another tourist site. When I take their picture, she notices me and unlike the couple we saw on Cat Ba Island (a short overweight Chinese business man and a young Vietnamese woman who would not look at us) this woman looks me right in the eye.
The darkest side of prostitution is rampant here. On the back of the tourist map that the money exchange service hands you with your cash at the airport, and on bill boards lining the only road leading from the airport into town, the message is clear in any language, because it’s told in pictures. Sex with children will get you put in jail.
The uncontrollable joy and shouted hellos with which the Vietnamese showered upon us are missing from these people. There is a flat, blank look in their eyes. Incentive and curiosity is absent from their expressions as is the quick, easy joy of seeing someone new. Virek says his country’s people don’t have much religious faith because long ago they stopped trusting their leaders. Cambodia is run by a Vietnamese dictator and before him the Vietnamese themselves ruled for ten years and before that was the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. The companies that are building all the new hotels in Siem Reap are either owned by the dictator or his friends or are foreign owned so the wealth is not going into the local population.
For my three days here, I feel not only like a tourist, but an employer, having hired a guide and car and driver, having decided to say at the nicest hotel in town. I am uncomfortably comfortable.
On my second day, I climb a beautiful brick wat. The older wats were built out of brick, the later ones sandstone and laterite, a rock that has the look and consistency of lava. Virak stops by the gate in the wall at ground level and tells me to take my time.
On top, a small framed boy, maybe 16 or 17 years old with black, long, uncombed hair, a black T-shirt and long pants approaches me. Like dozens of other encounters, I’m expecting him to show me a guide book or postcards he wants me to buy or to simply tell me a few interesting facts about the wat and then ask for money. But his approach is all together different.
“Are you alone? Would you like a girlfriend for the day?”
“No thank you.”
“A nice, pretty, young girl?”
“No thank you.”
“Pretty girl, do what you like.”
“I already have a wife and find one woman is enough.”
He stops asking (they never push to the point of being rude or obnoxious) and starts telling me about what I can see from this high vantage point. We are above the trees. He is helpful and I see towers and wats, I would have missed otherwise. He disappears for a while. I finish my picture taking and start down and he shows up again, asking for money. They want American dollars, I give him a 10,000 note worth about $2.50 USD. He thanks me and asks for a second. “For school, to pay for school.” Virak has told me each student must bring his teacher a quarter a day, because the government does not pay the teachers enough. I give him a second note.
Eighty percent of Cambodians are farmers and 60 percent are poor, which means they have a house, a one room shack on stilts and food to eat but no possessions at all, including furniture. He figures ten percent of the country are well off, and perhaps 20 percent in the middle. That’s why each time I step out of the car to look over another wat there are 4 or 5, sometimes ten children who swarm me, wanting to sell me something--books, postcards, T-shirts. Once I say no to a purchase, they resort to begging. They gently try to trap me by asking, “You buy when you come back from seeing the wat.” They are in great need, but never malicious. Shyness and a smile come over their faces when I hold their eye contact for as long as they will allow.
The aggressive ones are the young men in their 20s, who all seem to be pimps. Their questions are the raunchy kind and there is plenty of evidence that their services are in demand. In every wat I visit I see German and French men, middle aged, with young (early 20s) pretty Cambodian women. Virak confirms what I think I see.
We pass one couple while walking around a wat on the first day. He is French, middle age, athletic looking with bulky muscles, she is his height, maybe 22, Cambodian, slim, well curved and dressed for the cocktail hour. We see them again two days later at another tourist site. When I take their picture, she notices me and unlike the couple we saw on Cat Ba Island (a short overweight Chinese business man and a young Vietnamese woman who would not look at us) this woman looks me right in the eye.
The darkest side of prostitution is rampant here. On the back of the tourist map that the money exchange service hands you with your cash at the airport, and on bill boards lining the only road leading from the airport into town, the message is clear in any language, because it’s told in pictures. Sex with children will get you put in jail.
The uncontrollable joy and shouted hellos with which the Vietnamese showered upon us are missing from these people. There is a flat, blank look in their eyes. Incentive and curiosity is absent from their expressions as is the quick, easy joy of seeing someone new. Virek says his country’s people don’t have much religious faith because long ago they stopped trusting their leaders. Cambodia is run by a Vietnamese dictator and before him the Vietnamese themselves ruled for ten years and before that was the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. The companies that are building all the new hotels in Siem Reap are either owned by the dictator or his friends or are foreign owned so the wealth is not going into the local population.
For my three days here, I feel not only like a tourist, but an employer, having hired a guide and car and driver, having decided to say at the nicest hotel in town. I am uncomfortably comfortable.
No comments:
Post a Comment