Cambodian People

After I had spent a few days in Cambodia and realized that I was unjustly judging them based on our border crossing experience, I began to see them in a new light. While Thailand calls itself "The Land of Smiles," Steven and I decided that the title could also apply to Cambodia, sometimes even more so. We found more Cambodians spoke English and more still that wanted to talk to us about their lives or their country.

Our moto drivers told us of their families and their pasts, some even mentioning family members killed under the Khmer Rouge. A few of the people we spoke with talked of the corruption that is a part of their daily lives. One young man we met outside of a bus stop talked of his frustration with the corruption in the Universities, with teachers taking bribes in exchange for good grades causing Cambodian degrees to be worthless outside of Cambodia, and his frustration at the government for not doing anything to stop the corruption. Further corroborating these stories was an article I read in one of the local papers that told of firefighters who arrived at a burning village and refused to turn their hoses on the flames unless the owners of the homes paid them exorbitant sums of money; those who didn't simply watch helplessly as their homes burned to the ground.

Talking to the people we did, put a human face on the places we had visited and the history about which we had read, endeared us even more to this country we were just allowing ourselves to get to know and made it all that much harder to leave when we did.