![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/files\/2012\/11\/IMG_7184-682x1024.jpg\")
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“You ATE those sandwiches?”<\/p>\n
“Ya, they were really good going down\u2026”<\/p>\n
“They told you they were pork?”<\/p>\n
“Yes\u2026\u2026”<\/p>\n
“I should tell you, local kids hunt for rats and sell the meat to the sandwich vendors.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/span><\/p>\n Oh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia!\u00a0 Not known for the health standards of its street food.\u00a0 But it does mean I am finally able to exchange the ever-popular bodily health “fisherman tales” with other South East Asia travelers.\u00a0 Really\u2026having one of those stories is like a right of passage while living here.<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n Ya, well I picked up a worm in my small intestine while in Vietnam.\u00a0 I swear to you, that thing was at least two meters long!<\/em><\/p>\n Sure, thats great, but my Cambodian-rat-meat-parasite kept me within ten feet of a toilet for forty-eight hours straight!\u00a0 No breaks!<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Rat meat.\u00a0 Add it to my list of “stomach-strengtheners” I’ve digested since I’ve moved here: jellyfish, barbecued cow udder, pig’s blood soup, and rat meat.\u00a0 The first two were intentional choices, mind you.\u00a0 The phrase, “ignorance is bliss” comes to mind\u2026<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Ok, there’s nothing wrong with backpackers!\u00a0 They’re\u2026.we’re<\/em>, rather, just trying to see the world, and understand foreign places.\u00a0 Really, travelers who settle down in an area foreign to them, just like to act like they’re better then backpackers.\u00a0 Its usually just a joke, but then again, you often run into certain groups of people that make you wonder\u2026.ya, I’m talking to you shirtless Aussies at the “Reggae bar,” screaming along to “No Woman, No Cry!”\u00a0 Ahem, sorry.\u00a0 Anyhow, my point is, when locals realize your backpacker status, you’re treated very differently than if you mark yourself as a resident and begin to learn the local language.\u00a0 This treatment is especially pronounced in Cambodia, where their history has greatly affected how the Khmei, or Cambodian, people interact with tourists.<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n “Tuk Tuk! \u00a0 Where you go?”<\/p>\n “Ah tay ah khun!\u00a0 I am just walking.”<\/p>\n “Walking is so hard!\u00a0 Tell me where you go.”<\/p>\n “Ah tay.\u00a0 Ah khun.\u00a0 I don’t want a ride.”<\/p>\n “I follow you, for free, until you want to go somewhere!”<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n My first stalker!<\/em> Then there was the time I decided not to buy water from a water vendor\u2026because I already had water.<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n “You buy my water!”<\/p>\n “Ah tay ah khun, I don’t want any water.”<\/p>\n “Why don’t you buy my water?”<\/p>\n “Look!\u00a0 I already have water, I don’t want any more.”<\/p>\n “You buy my water!”<\/p>\n “Ah tay ah khun!”<\/p>\n “I steal your bike!\u00a0 You don’t buy my water, I steal your bike”<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n So, the first few days of traveling were hard.\u00a0 People were much harsher than in Thailand, and the tourist traps were constant and very in-your-face.\u00a0 I was having a hard time trying to get a feel for the Khmei people.\u00a0 I wanted to have sympathy because of their history, but at the same time I wanted to scream at people who wouldn’t leave me alone.\u00a0 One person told me I couldn’t sit on a public bench unless I paid them two dollars.\u00a0 Of course they were lying, but they also wouldn’t leave until either I left, or I paid them.\u00a0 I was feeling exasperated and conflicted.<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n (Disclaimer: I’M TOTALLY JUST KIDDING, MOM AND DAD!)<\/p>\n By the end of my two weeks, I still didn’t know how to characterize Cambodian people.\u00a0 I had people viciously trying to sell me things, and others following me up a cliff just to practice English.<\/p>\n It was my last day in Phnom Penh, and I had a three o’clock plane to catch.\u00a0 I went to sit by the Tonle Sap River for an hour or two before my plane. \u00a0 .<\/span><\/p>\n “Why do you have go?”<\/p>\n “I have to get on a plane to Bangkok.”<\/p>\n “Tuk Tuk?”<\/p>\n “\u2026\u2026Baht ah khun, Tuk Tuk.\u00a0 Lets go.”<\/p>\n \n See my full album from Cambodia here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “You ATE those sandwiches?” “Ya, they were really good going down\u2026” “They told you they were pork?” “Yes\u2026\u2026” “I should tell you, local kids hunt for rats and sell the meat to the sandwich vendors.” . Oh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia!\u00a0 … Continue reading
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<\/a> I had been teaching for four months, and this was my first opportunity to travel further than three hours outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand.\u00a0 So one insane, and seemingly endless, night-bus ride to Bangkok (complete with onboard Karaoke), followed by an amazingly cushy airplane ride (only in comparison to the ride on the clearly-not-built-for-people-over-six-feet-tall-bus), and I found myself in Cambodia.\u00a0 But something was strange\u2026something was different\u2026Ok, yes, I’m in a different country.\u00a0 But it wasn’t the place, it was something about me.\u00a0 Something about my person.\u00a0 I felt some kind of presence hovering behind me.\u00a0 I slowly turned and saw it.\u00a0 My giant back pack strapped to my shoulders.\u00a0 I had gone from being a resident of a city where I spoke a good amount of the language and worked with the community and had suddenly become one of\u2026them<\/em>.\u00a0 A Backpacker.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/files\/2012\/11\/IMG_7990-682x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>Cambodia has seen unbelievable tragedy and hardships over the last half-century.\u00a0 Most Americans aren’t really taught about the 1976-1979 Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge.\u00a0 This may have something to do with how we bombed the bejesus out of the uninvolved Cambodians during Vietnam war, just for good measure.\u00a0 I spent my trip learning about this history, getting bits and pieces every day.\u00a0 The scars from this regime are visible everywhere, and its impossible to travel Cambodia without encountering them.\u00a0 The Khmei people are trying their hardest to recover, but its not an easy process.\u00a0 Phnom Penh is littered with half finished skyscrapers, which ran out of funding and eventually will just be demolished. \u00a0 You also notice quickly that there aren’t many old people.\u00a0 The period of Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea left the country with nearly ninety percent of the population under the age of fifty.\u00a0 They are eager to rebuild, and have realized that they must latch onto tourism as a way to heal.\u00a0 The problem is, they really<\/em> latched onto it.\u00a0 If a Tuk Tuk driver or any other Khmei involved in tourism sees your backpack, get ready for them to latch onto you.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/files\/2012\/11\/IMG_7313-681x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/a>Exasperation aside, some fellow travelers and I were on a mission to explore the country, as our breaks from work were short.\u00a0 I made it all the way down to the lazy, beach town of Kep (where the rat meat spirit exacted its revenge for my consumption of its Earthly body), and far north to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat at Siam Reap. \u00a0 These crumbling temples are free game for scrambling and climbing, by the way.\u00a0 I was<\/em> Dr. Indiana Jones for two days\u2026if Indiana Jones encountered fifteen-year-old girls who threaten to steal your bike instead of giant, rolling boulders and poison dart traps.\u00a0 Seriously though, the country is beautiful, and tourism ploys shouldn’t be a deterrent for travel.\u00a0 I’d seen images of those ancient Wats for as long as I could remember.\u00a0 It felt really amazing to be climbing to the top of them.\u00a0 But again, these areas were rampant with vehement salespeople.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/files\/2012\/11\/IMG_7694-1024x682.jpg\")
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<\/a>It wasn’t until we escaped\u00a0 the tourist centers of Phnom Penh and Siam Reap, that I finally met people who wanted conversation.\u00a0 Real conversation.\u00a0 Not as a ploy to get me to buy something.\u00a0 On our first day in the city of Battambang, we climbed up to a giant Buddha head perched on a cliff.\u00a0 We were soon followed by five, twenty-year-old Khmei who wanted to practice their English.\u00a0 We spent a long time talking about teaching, and I was even able to practice my Thai with one of them.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/files\/2012\/11\/IMG_7874-682x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>The next day we met another twenty-year-old who, ten minutes after meeting us, invited us to a water festival.\u00a0 Again we talked about teaching aspirations and the future (while being totally overwhelmed by a massive crowd and a motorbike accident).\u00a0 He even informed us that we were officially “best friends forever.”\u00a0 I was seriously impressed by the passion and desire to better not just themselves, but those in their communities.\u00a0 Most twenty-somethings in America are no where near this point of self-awareness; most are just dispersing resumes like there’s no tomorrow in order to avoid going back to their parents’ home.\u00a0 I was so desperate to avoid this, I fled the country.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/files\/2012\/11\/IMG_7942-682x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>A group of five ten-year-olds ran up to me and starting asking me all kinds of questions.\u00a0 They tried to impress me with goofy tricks for a long time, until they ran out of material.\u00a0 At that point they noticed a French girl five benches away.\u00a0 They pointed at her, then at me, and asked, “Love?”\u00a0 Yes, of course.\u00a0 We’re both white-backpackers, so it was meant to be.\u00a0 They wouldn’t leave me alone until I went over and talked to her.\u00a0 I resisted until I realized:\u00a0 I have a plane in an hour!<\/em> Making an ass out of myself suddenly was not a fear.\u00a0 I had an awesome, jet-engine powered escape at the ready.\u00a0 We walked over as she looked up at what was surely the strangest posse ever seen.\u00a0 I introduced myself, and quickly found out that she spoke no English.\u00a0 So she took out a sketch pad, and we all started drawing different things.\u00a0 Soon, two Tuk Tuk drivers came and joined us.\u00a0 I laughed for an hour straight.\u00a0 I wish I could have kept the pictures those kids drew of me.\u00a0 They really captured my good side: the side with the square eyeballs and a mouth with only two teeth.\u00a0 I actually barely interacted with the French girl.\u00a0 I was more interested in the stories the Tuk Tuk driver had of his family, and the time he owned a Thai restaurant.\u00a0 It took me two weeks after the fact to realize that Phnom Penh was able to bring two backpackers, a pack of children, and a Tuk Tuk driver all together to sit by the river, talk about nothing in particular, and laugh at our terrible drawing skills.\u00a0 Soon my hour was up, and I was amazed that I was feeling sad about saying goodbye to a Tuk Tuk driver\u2026one of the men that had been making the vein in my forehead bulge for the last two weeks.<\/p>\n