Beauty and Poverty in Asia

In my last blog I was in Khon Kaen Thailand and the Songkran Festival was just beginning. During the three days of Songkran we spent all of our time throwing buckets of water on everyone near us. They returned the favor by throwing water on us, sometimes laced with ice cubes. Since the weather was usually over 100 degrees it felt pretty good until about 6 p.m. when the temperature would drop suddenly and we would be cold and wet. Where I had been slightly sick with a cold before, I then got a sinus infection with a nasty cough.

My plan for Cambodia was to paint and to see the temples of Angkor Wat as well as having a vacation from my teaching and my travels. So I had my splurge week in a very beautiful $25 a night hotel with a swimming pool, massages and my own little bungalow. It was located among banana, mango, coconut and many other tropical fruit trees unknown in the US as well as an abundance of flowers. The first day I went out for antibiotics and other medicine and spent the rest of the day relaxing by the pool side, reading and got a massage. It was not very hard work.

I spent the next day in 100 degree heat climbing up and down the temples, walking all over. This was hard work! The third day I went to see the floating village. This was where the poor people who had no money for land got a boat and lived on the water. There were about 800 families in the floating village. The house boats were rag tag for the most part but the people had fish to eat. There was a floating school with a floating basket ball court, a floating church, and a floating restaurant with souvenirs for the tourists. I saw pigs living on their own raft with a fence. Dogs, children and plants all lived on the boats. While I doubt that this life is particularly idyllic it was still quite nice on the water and there was a strong sense of community and peacefulness.

I then went to the Landmine Museum and learned how the landmines are still hidden all over Cambodia. In the town you see many people missing arms, legs, or hands. These survivors sold books to tourists to support themselves and their families. Cambodian landmines are a major problem even now. The US is one of about 6 countries in the world that has not signed an agreement not to use landmines, and continues to make and sell them to other countries.

During the next few days I mostly stayed at my hotel, went swimming, read books, got massages, and painted. By the end of the week my sinus infection was gone. Just before leaving Cambodia I had my tuk tuk driver take me around the countryside, to photograph the villages, rice paddies, palm leaf houses and so forth. My driver stopped driving at one point to talk about poverty. He told me that the villagers often did not have enough food to eat, despite the rice paddies all around. Often large farms bought up the smaller ones. Education was not free so villagers were untrained for most jobs, and did not have money for schools for their children. For my driver, driving me around the countryside may have been like slumming it in the cities. Where I was seeing beautiful landscapes, Cadeye was seeing poverty. I started wondering if I was romanticizing poverty as I took photos of the palm leaf houses. While these mat houses on stilts were very ecologically sound, few of us would have wanted to actually live in one long term. I saw them as very cozy, with fresh air flowing through on hot days, they also were leaky in the rain and needed to be rebuilt every few years.
I only had one week in Cambodia and it was way too short to learn as much about the country as I would have liked.