First Week in Phnom Penh

Do you ever feel like it’s all a useless crock of shit? That putting in any effort whatsoever is not worth the disappointment when it gets you nowhere, yields you nothing? That—quite literally—is the national attitude of Cambodia. A people crippled by war, genocide, famine and corruption, Cambodians have come out of the horrors of the past forty years with no choice but to live right now, right here, and can barely conceptualize the future. There are very few Cambodians over the age of 45—the majority of them were murdered or starved during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and this is poignantly obvious as you drive through the streets. Everyone is young. And most everyone is poor. While the street scene is not unlike that of Ho Chi Minh City, there’s something heavy in the air of Phnom Penh that enables you to almost touch the repression this society is cloaked in. How can you have dreams if there is absolutely no way to make them happen? In the US we have the great “American Dream” to motivate our ambitions. Though it may be an illusion, at least we still have it. Cambodians have the day to get through. That’s all they have. While the Khmer (pronounced Kah Mai) people are super friendly and their faces seemingly quite happy, as you move through the city it’s impossible to ignore the institutionalized complacency and borderline hopelessness that pervades life here. The socioeconomic discrepancies are made really apparent by status symbol Lexus and Range Rover SUVs, some with US license plates, owned by the few wealthy Cambodians and western NGO workers. It’s strange, really. There are so few cars, but the ones you see are for the most part luxurious. Cambodia is one big contradiction. Though they have a throw-you-in-jail-if-you-get-caught drug policy, the smell of marijuana is everywhere and there are “Happy” pizza places all over the place. If you order “happy, happy, happy pizza” you get some THC as a topping. There are traffic lights and yellow lines on the street, but that has no bearing on driving whatsoever. Traffic is a complete free-for-all. Drive on the right side, drive on the wrong side: whatever gets you to your destination fastest. In spite of chaos, it seems to work. Cambodia has only been established for 16 years now. The last of the fighting ended in 1993 and it’s amazing to think of how far this nation has come in such a short time. Governed by a democratically elected communist party (yet another contradiction) and a figurehead king, Cambodians seem to revere their king and support their government. In an amazing twist of fate, girlfriends of mine and I could not go for our $6 massages as planned at 5:30, so we went to the riverside to have a beer until 6 when the masseurs were available again. While we sat in a second floor balcony enjoying some Angkor beer, we realized that the traffic on the street below had ceased; the street was completely empty. Employees of the restaurant informed us that the King would be driving through. Shortly his royal motorcade began to appear and then, there he was: in an SUV, dressed in regular clothes, sticking his head outside of an open window, waving and smiling. Imagine Queen Elizabeth or Obama sticking their head out of an open window? The employees of the restaurant impressed upon us how rare it was to see and I was amazed by how close, accidentally, I got to a KING! Cambodia…It’s an interesting place.