Into Cambodia

*** Fair warning - unpleasant images after the halfway point***

Next stop was Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  Cambodia is a place not short on issues, having spent the twentieth century being successively ruined by the French; the Americans/Vietnamese; a ridiculously diverse number of internal factions; and finally and more comprehensively destroyed by the four-year reign of the communist regime of Pol Pot.
This last managed to set Cambodian against Cambodian, killing what amounted to a quarter of the entire population, and reduced the remnants to a miserable agrarian lifestyle of subsistence farming. The rice they managed to produce was 'collectivised' and sold to China for guns, leading to mass starvation. Schools, hospitals, factories and offices were all closed. Money was eradicated and the central bank was blown up.  You can read the details yourself.

So Cambodia today is up against it:  corruption is endemic; the rule of law is notional; the countryside is thoroughly landmined; justice is arbitrary; medical and educational services are pretty bad, largely because the doctors and teachers were all killed; poverty is widespread; anyone over 40 has survived a genocide and so is likely working through some issues beneath the surface.   So it's easy to come here with some fairly dire expectations.  But subsequent to the unpleasantness they have seen exceptional growth and a fair amount of foreign investment.   

The first thing you'll notice about Phnom Penh is that it is busy. The traffic is unrelenting. When on foot we'd wait at the side of the road for a natural break in the traffic from a traffic light or something, only to realise after ten minutes that it wasn't coming.  Then we'd notice a local just stride in front of traffic, gesturing indifferently at the oncoming cars.  

The largest family unit we've seen on a single moped is six.

The next thing you'll realise is that any preconceptions you might have about the maximum working payload of a common scooter or moped is about to be shatteringly confounded.   The local variety of tuk-tuk is a scooter towing a trailer with benches in it.  Families travel en masse on a single bike (not that that's specific to here; we saw that in Thailand too). Trade vehicles are just mopeds with elaborate brackets and trailers attached, pulling everything from mattresses to steel bars.

We had seen these old pop bottles full of amber fluid previously, sold from bamboo stands on the side on the road in the Cameron Highlands.  I had assumed they were selling some manner of home brew, but I subsequently found out here that they were full of petrol.  Evidently a Pepsi bottle is all you need to top up the moped's tank.  The colour difference between bottles implies dubious contaminants though.

We spent one day at a sanctuary for bears run by FreeTheBears.org, an Australian charity started by a granny from Perth, who set up the organisation after reading about the plight of bears in Asia farmed for their bile.  Naturally if it involves doing something awful to animals for a bullshit medicinal reason, you can generally blame China without looking it up. This is no different: farms in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and China catch bears, put them in small cages and insert catheters to drain their bile to be sold for nonsense. The bears live for about 2 years before infections or liver cancer kills them.

They are also traded as pets and their body parts are used in food - bear paw soup being a Cambodian delicacy, coming in at US$150 a bowl.

This park, which lives on a separate compound in the Phnom Penh zoological park, does not have any breeding programs, nor does it rehabilitate for release (unless the bear is a wild one that just needs patching up because its been caught in a trap or something): it just finds caged and abused bears and gives them a better life. They aren't released into the wild again because there is nowhere deemed safe for them to go, owing to the illegal activities mentioned above and also because of the staggering rate of Cambodian deforestation, and they often have no skills for the wild because they've been captive all their lives.

The two Asian bears are the Asiatic black bear (or Moon Bear):

And the very dog-looking Sun Bear (or Honey Bear):

We did somewhat envy their facility to jump in the pool when they felt like it.

We were there to check out the facility and lend a hand with some of the bear-keeping stuff.  One thing they create -as the bears never now have to forage for their food- are "enrichment exercises". These are foodie treats hidden inside of hollowed out medicine balls and bamboo sections, which make the bears work a little for their goodies.

We helped out making them up. Today they contained a mixture of bananas, dried dog food, honey, some manner of local vegetable and some morning glory - a local spinach that grows on the river banks. After thoroughly coating ourselves in honey as an offering to the ant gods, we took these out and threw them to the bears.

Chan thinks this qualifies as one of her annual meals that she cooks for me.

This was quite cute.

"Whats all this green shit?"

"Dunno, but it comes out easily enough"

In the afternoon we spent some time in the kitchen, preparing food for the bears.  I felt a lot better when they took the cleaver off Chan and had her weighing portions for the different bear group sizes instead. When it was all prepped, the bear enclosures were emptied and we set about hiding the food in interesting places for them to 'forage' for.

Release the bears:

Outside of the bear facility, there are several other animals that have been rescued from one place or another by other NGOs and housed here for their own safety.  This gibbon was being kept as a pet, chained by its ankle, which is why it has no fur there now. 

Gibbons are monogamous, unlike monkeys, but she has not taken to any of the males they've introduced her to, so she's on her own.  Picky, picky.  But because she used to be a pet, she has no problem with human contact.  When she sees someone she knows, she offers something to be scratched.

Asian otters were also present, so that my record of being shouted at by the world's otters is 2 for 2.

There were also some monkeys here, but they were only caged because the were juvanile.  Once they've figured out climbing and other monkey business, they get let out.  This poor sod had an altercation with an older male who gave him a serious bite on his head, blinding him in one eye.  This has buggered up his depth perception, so his jumps between platforms were more faith than judgement.

One of the kids who worked at the park was taking a nap with a couple of the baby monkeys that had been rescued from the pet trade, after their bottle feed.  There are definitely worse jobs.

Our guide assured us that this boy is 18.  But he also said his parents have a lot of kids and might've forgotten his age.

Having contributed to one worthy cause, we thought we'd keep up the good work by going to Friends The Restaurant, a tapas place run by Friends International.  FI work with all manner of vulnerable and marginalized kids, and in this restaurant they train them up as chefs and front-of-house staff.  The restaurant is now world-renowned and the queue was in the street when we got there.  We had reservations, naturally.  Our karmic goodwill took a bit of a nose-dive after we ordered, however.  We had the Khmer-style Scotch Egg (described as "adventurous"), which is made from a fertilised duck egg - with a baby duck inside.  It tastes like egg, but a bit meaty and with hints of corrupted innocence.

I have made a friend of horror

We were in Phnom Penh, but I was cynical about visiting the genocide museums fir the victims of the Khmer Rouge.  I was reminded of the museum in Santiago that made all the effort in the world to describe the actions of the junta in Chile, but little in the way of its background and motivation, and therefore - to my mind- failed to achieve its primary purpose: to preempt and prevent this kind of thing happening again.

I found the commentary at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek a bit more helpful in that it gave testimony from victims and guards, and some pre-history to the events.  What we were less impressed with was the repetition of lurid details, not because we were squeamish, but because it distracted somewhat from the larger picture. It sometimes felt a bit too much like our emotional reaction was being dictated to us by rote.   We don't need to see replicas of the murder weapons where no originals survived - that only adds artificial ghoulish spectacle.

There have been reports before now of tourists taking selfies with the skulls or with the tree that was used to kill babies, because people are often odious fucking cretins. Thankfully, the atmosphere on the site when we were there was one of quiet reflection -as one would normally find at a war grave or cenotaph- and we found the audioguide and headphones isolate you and your thoughts quite effectively.

The central stupa houses hundred of human skulls recovered from the mass graves.  It's an odd contrast of reverent (stupas are built around relics of the respected deceased) but also coldly clinical - the tiers of the display are sorted by age group and forensically colour-coded by the likely cause of death.  I think it's walking a very fine line between striking memorial and ghoulish spectacle, but I am culturally alien to here and so my opinion counts little.  Chan was bothered by the encouragement to take photos and the lack of any mention of consultation with affected families.  

The other half of this particularly grim tour takes you back into town, into the school that was turned into S21: the notorious prison and torture center.  From what I had read previously, I expected a ghoulish London Dungeon-type exhibit showcasing goreand torture methodology.  It wasn't really like that.  The ground-level rooms are largely empty, except for an iron bed frame and a photo on the wall, each showing one of the last 14 victims of the facility, who were hastily murdered when the town was being liberated by the combined Vietnamese-Cambodian rebel forces. 

The upper levels have exhibits detailing the murderous policies and privations of the Khmer Rouge, with a special exhibition on the forced marriages organised by the regime.  Men and women were paired off by committee and forced into relationships against their will. If they failed to act the correct part, they ran the risk of being taken away for tortured re-education.

One of the particularly shocking facts was the complicity of some in the west  -particularly a delegation from Sweden- who came to observe the country during the height of the regime, saw the state of things and then went away to write a completely false rosy report for the rest of the world. Because no other information left the country, the UN would only recognise Cambodian representatives from the Khmer Rouge for twelve years after they were ousted.

The translation isn't wrong - the KR had a bizarre vernacular which made the sentences sound like that in Khmer.

I've read that Cambodians don't normally speak of the Khmer Rouge: they deal with things by burying them down deep and trying not to think of them.  The more pragmatic among them (adopting a rather Buddhist attitude) accept it as a thing that happened that cannot now be undone.  What this does to a national psyche, I cannot imagine. The commentary at the killing fields implores the listener to learn their lesson, and that of the genocides in the USSR, China, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Chile and of the native Americans.  I take his point, but I wonder what lesson they've taken from the ordeal, when so many of them were involved from both sides and yet none of them speak of it to the younger generations.

Evidently the evening constitutional consists of walking/jogging around the national monuments every evening.  It is possible, however, that they were just trapped like us by the constant traffic and couldn't cross the road to escape.

Ending on an up-note:  the city really grew on us.  The whole place is a glorious mess, but it's getting better.  I was reading the other day about the chap who took over the dirty and dysfunctional water utility service and turned it around.  He sacked all the lazy and corrupt staff, improved sanitation and piping, modernised the payment system such that money actually appeared and almost got shot for his trouble by an army officer who was irked because he received an actual bill.

We will be coming back to Cambodia in about a week, but we're popping over to Laos first.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Kambodscha ist korrupt und chaotisch. Die Auswirkungen des Völkermords der Roten Khmer sind heute offensichtlich. Die Museen sind stark und störend, sondern auch informativ. Trotz der Probleme, gefällt uns die Stadt von Phnom Penh und wir hoffen, dass es bald verbessert.

Land of the Thunder Dragon - Part 4

We were taken a bit further east to the Phobjikha valley, the pronunciation of which will baffle non-Bhutanese in perpetuity. We saw our first yaks on the way there too, which was quite a thrill, as you can imagine.

"Moo"

The herder lives in a yak hair tent (a yurt, in whichever language calls them yurts) which, using black magic, has a hole to let smoke out but also somehow prevents rain ingress. He/she tethers them up at night and during the day lets them stare balefully at passing tourists. The yaks, like the rest of the cattle in Bhutan, are only used for either utility or dairy.  I know the Bhutanese eat yak and beef, but they get other countries to do the gory stuff for them.

In the area is Gangtey Monastery, known for the intricate woodwork of its architecture. I don't know what the catchment area policy is for monks, and I'm sure its a respectable job regardless of where you end up, but I can't help but think it might be preferable to be stationed in one of the Punakha temples -with its subtropical climate and bananas- than living in a stone room on a windy Himalayan hillside with a rug for a door. But whatevs, I'm sure it's better than that yak herder's job up the page.

The valley is particularly famous for being one of the very few homes of the black-necked crane, which live either there or Tibet and bits of north India. There is a local festival about them, and their migratory route has them fly three times in a circle over the Gangtey monastery when either arriving or leaving - to which all kinds of auspicious and religious significance is attached as it mimics the kora, the clockwise walking around of holy places practised by Buddhists.

We saw  quite a few if the cranes while walking through the valley, a walk that felt a lot like playing Skyrim on the Xbox.  It has a certain moody photogenicity about it.

The land not protected for the wildlife is used for farmland. Specifically they grow potatoes here, which are not eaten widely in Bhutan and so are instead sold mainly to Bangladesh.  And business is good:  the farmers' need to expand their lands to fully exploit trade links with neighbouring countries is the main factor to negotiate for conversationalists in the area.

This is done almost entirely by hand.  This blog post is just stacking up with jobs I don't want.

We stopped at a small hamlet, and our guide took us inside one of the farm houses.

Round the back, they were busy chopping up turnips for animal feed.  A conversation took place and we were ushered inside.  Downstairs was used for the storage of tatties, so we had to climb upstairs on the 'traditional' stairway, which is essentially a ladder.

Upstairs, the family matriarch was (very) busy making up ara, the local rice wine.  Apparently it's drunk pretty much everyday to take the edge off, so she was making it in bulk.  That's what the jerrycans were for.  Obviously we were offered some and so -not being uncivilised- we accepted.  It was served warm as it had literally just been made, and tasted not too bad for moonshine, in that I was not immediately struck blind by ketone poisoning.

We were shown around the living area of the house, which was all the upstairs area.  The pride of place is the altar which all good Buddhist homes and apartments will contain.  Chan -not being backwards in coming forwards on the questions front- ascertained what she was cooking for dinner, but also found out that this house has been in the lady's family for 210 years, and that she had lived there personally for all of her 61 years, having been born there.  As an aside: property here is generally passed to the daughters of the family, with men sent out to find their own way.

I'll point out that our guide hadn't asked permission for our arrival beforehand, nor was he particularly familiar with this family, this is just the accepted level of hospitality and he considered this the best way to demonstrate their culture. So there you go.

Looking around, and at all the activity in the fields around, it was easy to think of this place as being stuck in some quaint 19th century agrarian existence, but then the lady pulled a mobile out of some hidden fold in her gown and went off for a natter in the next room.
Also, there is a massive satellite dish in the back yard.

They needs themselves some Geordie Shore

After our stay in the valley, we drove back to Paro - which is just as rocky and awful on the way back.  We are quite interested to come back in a couple of years to see if they've managed to fix their roads on time, they're looking for a 2018 finish.  The same job (chiseling out a few hundred miles of mountain) in the UK would have a schedule marked in epochs.  But you can do wonders with cheap labour and lip-service health and safety, so we'll see.

We did also see a family of monkey by the roadside on the way back. They did not pelt us with rocks as their friends had previously as we drove by, nor did they mistake my head for a watermelon, so that's one more diplomatic success to chalk up.