The 5000 Project

The weather was good but the sense of westerner guilt in a deprived country did not fade.

I was confirmed by a couchhost although upon arrival in the city I had no message providing address, the profile mentioned that he runs an indi cinema, confirmation email mentioned that he is generally there from 5pm each day. So I checked the website and found the address of the ‘movie house’ and decided to attempt a long walk there.

During the walk I noticed that certain areas were purely for  foreigners, all the shops were new and flash, everything was highly expensive, the only locals within the walls were the employees of the foreign invested businesses – the majority of the locals were outside in their tuktuks and motorbikes waiting to provide transport for the foreigners.

After an interesting walk I arrived at the movie house and met with my host. That night we went to a foreigner pub, containing mainly NGO employees and a few Expats, for the weekly ‘nerd night’ which consisted of anyone presenting a slideshow on a projector and having a talk about anything, their passion, a project they’re working on, or it could just be about themselves. It reminded me of TED talks in perth but a lot more frequent and with people from all areas of the world – really interesting stuff.

I ate dinner right in the middle of a large busy market

What made the night even more interesting was the controversial chat I had with my host after a few drinks. Disclaimer: what follows may only apply to certain scenarios, I don’t have a long list of references to prove complete truth. Purely speculation from what others have told me. Which I guess is exactly what a blog is.

Pol Pot’s Khmer rogue reign of slaughter resulted in 3.6 million educated people killed or  missing. Their culture was destroyed. As such, a lot of the locals don’t know how to read their own language; they also have no concept of what a movie is, with a beginning middle and end. My host used to provide a day for free screenings for locals, his cinema is the only one showing actual movies in phnom penh that isn’t just slapstick cambodian comedy or chinese Charlie Chapman. While the locals watched the western movies they would get bored and leave, even though some of them understood the language it was a matter of not understanding the concept of a movie story.

The country is so poor, yet there are so many NGO funded English schools to help the children. What this seems to do however is inject money into the growing occupation of foreigners and foreign investment, NGO management drive expensive cars and spread the wealth to the feel-good backpacker employees when, sure enough the kids learn a bit of English, however there is no handover for the next teacher to replace the last one after a few months – so they start from the beginning again. The end result: tuktuk drivers who sound like they know fluent English, until you attempt conversation.

The government is not helping the people at all, instead they build more on the foreigner-occupied areas, such as, what will be the second highest building in the world on an artificial island, for the financially bullshit of the world to visit. Meanwhile 90% of the Cambodian people live on the rice fields in the country areas, in poverty, just as the Khmer rouge envisioned. 50% of the population is under 21, the new  young generation is not getting a new age upbringing.

The tuktuk drivers provide for their families in the country, while in the city they actually sleep in their tuktuks as accommodation. This was a frequent observation.

To continue the negative vibe, lets get on with what I did in this city. Well, I went to the genocide museum where people were tortured to death and the killing fields were hundreds were killed and buried.

I could go into detail but its far too sad and this post is getting too long already. All i’ll say is that after the genocide; we, as citizens from UN countries, appointed pol pot the Cambodia seat at the UN and for some reason there has been little media attention on this era of real terror since. From my experiences many people in the world aren’t aware of how nasty the Khmer rouge was, when he was just a step below Hitler.

Skulls on display at the Killing Fields, one of many mass grave sites all through cambodia

Now for some positivity.

The house where I was staying is a 3 story building with a rooftop shower. A shower completely in the open, but high enough for a little bit of privacy, was quite different.

the rooftop shower :D

After a few days of walking all over the city and seeing the sights, I applied for a Vietnam visa (cost $45, can’t get it at the border) which took a couple of days. On my final night I joined a pub quiz at a foreigner bar, my host was the quizmaster, then headed to Vietnam on a bus the next morning. No real adventures to be had.