Before heading to Phnom Penh, the first stop for most tourists coming to Cambodia from Thailand is Siem Reap, in the northwest of Cambodia. This mid-sized town is the basis for exploring the ruins of Angkor, which has been described as the eighth wonder of the world. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Angkor was the cultural and economic centre of one of the world’s great civilisations, the Angkor Empire, stretching from Burma to the South China Sea. However, by the time French explorers came across it in 1860, the Angkor Empire had been destroyed and its temples lost to the jungle. Today, Angkor Watt is again of prominent importance to Cambodia, not as its economic and cultural capital, but as its pre-eminent tourist attraction.
It is indeed impressive. The main temple, Angkor Watt, is approached by a long stone bridge across its moats. Fearsome stone lions and dragons flank the bridge, and the main tower rises 200 feet into the air in front of you. The size of the place is awesome; the largest temple of its kind anywhere in the world. Inside, though its opulent riches have long since gone, carvings of courtesans, dancing girls and other scenes of court life adorn almost every stone. Probably the most recognised temple is Ta Prohm, where imposing giants of trees have grown from out of the ruins, their branches spreading down through the crumbling stone; long, skeletal fingers slowly but inevitably tightening their grip on this testimony to human endeavor, squeezing it back down into the jungle. Like the giant, weather-beaten stone faces of Buddha staring out at you from the Bayon complex, it is at once eerie and awe-inspiring, a reminder both of the power of civilization, and of its vulnerability.
To me though, the most impressive and moving thing about the Angkor Wat complex was not the buildings themselves, but the Cambodians I met there, making a living by hawking t-shirts and postcards to tourists.
Like most tourist attractions in poor countries, Angkor Watt is teeming with hawkers, most of whom are children; it’s not rocket science that cute kids make sympathetic, rich Western tourists more inclined to buy that naff-looking wooden flute that they don’t really want and doesn’t really work. However I was overwhelmed by how bright and articulate, and how genuinely sharp-witted and funny, these kids were. When one girl of about 12 asked me why I wouldn’t buy her postcards, I told her jokingly I didn’t have anyone to send one to. “No problem,” she replied without a pause, “I give you my address, you send to me!”
I’d spent five months travelling around India becoming desensitised to raggedly dressed, undernourished children begging you to buy something outside temples. You justify ignoring them by telling yourself that it’s wrong to encourage them, that they should be in school, or that if you gave money to everyone then you’d have no money left and they’ll still be out begging or hawking souvenirs the next day anyway. What is needed are long-term solutions, not hand-outs from tourists. And all of this is true, but so is the fact that people are depending on your handouts to make a living.
Two months previously in India, I’d literally had to brush malnourished street children away, step over abandoned young mothers and their emaciated babies in the streets, and dodge around the lepers waving their stumps in my face. In a big town, if you stopped on the street to buy something, more often than not an old lady or a mother with a baby in her arms would stand next to you for the entire time you stood there, hands outstretched, pleading with you for a few rupees. After a few weeks it just becomes normal and you don’t even really register her presence. The less fortunate around you cease to be people, and just become part of the landscape.
But for some reason, talking to these kids in Cambodia brought back the reality. They were by no means the poorest children I’d ever seen; they were clean, clothed, well fed and smiling. But their smiles and banter really brought home the fact that they were just children, wanting to be children.
In a country like Cambodia, perhaps it is just idealistic to say that all these kids should be in school; the current dearth of formal employment means they may well be learning more practical life and language skills haggling with tourists outside a temple than they would be learning trigonometry in a classroom. These children are certainly luckier than the kids you see sifting through the rubbish piled up on the side of the roads in Nairobi, glue pots jammed up their noses, or running barefoot between the traffic in Delhi, begging from passing cars.
But still, life has not dealt them the best hand; some of them will make it and some of them won’t. They weren’t born with the advantages in life I was born with, so they rely on the generosity or sympathy of a few backpackers and middle-aged Americans, who are lucky enough to come from more privileged backgrounds.
