Cambodian Aerobics

8-28-2011

Our last day in Siem Reap was spent with Julie showing us around town. We started by looking around one of the markets. Lise was in search of a “krama”, a type of scarf that is widely worn by women in Cambodia. The market was interesting, but pretty typical and nothing struck me as extremely unique. It was fun, though, to watch Julie communicate with the vendors in Khmer. Interestingly, though, she didn’t seem to have super bartering powers. She still had to fight for her prices, but she also has an incredibly kind heart, and didn’t mind paying extra because she knew she could afford it.

After the market, we walked back to the center of town and sat down on a bench by the river. As we waited, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, an adult man with a small child coming down the sidewalk. I noticed them because all of a sudden the toddler tripped and fell. I made a sympathetic face to the child, and I soon made eye contact with the man I presumed to be the father. He smiled and walked over to us and said hello. Lise and Julie hadn’t noticed him until now. He seemed friendly and started by asking us what country we were from and then asked what we were doing in town. Although Lise and I were typical tourists, Julie lived here and spoke Khmer. I became skeptical of him, and sure enough, he started telling us about a school that he ran for poor children. He showed us pictures of the kids and told some stories about them. I wanted to ignore him, but Julie seemed interested. I assumed she knew about the scams like this and just wanted to hear where he was going with it. Eventually asked if we could make a donation and pulled out some papers with records of previous donors. There were names of people from all over the world with the extremely generous amounts of money they had given. Julie explained that her mom ran an NGO that also had schools and various other projects. She asked more about the school and where it was. We repeatedly said we couldn’t give him any money, and he eventually left. Julie later asked her mom about this school and where it was. As suspected, it did not exist. Her mom told us that there are lots of scams like this in Siem Reap, as well as plenty of informal schools run on tourist donations that are extremely corrupt and ineffective. I feel bad highlighting this unfortunate situation, as it reflects negatively on the country and the people of Cambodia. During my month in the country, though, any cynicism about the people early on was completely diminished. The typical Cambodian was almost always kind, friendly and hospitable, without having any ulterior motives.

Later in the day, we met up with one of Julie’s local friends and went to park for aerobics. Yes, aerobics. Apparently it has become a very popular form of exercise in Cambodia. In the capital’s Olympic Stadium they have free nightly aerobics classes that attract hundreds. Ours was a little more modest with a couple dozen in attendance. It was fun to do the aerobics, but I was mostly interested in the history behind this. Why in Cambodia, of all places, did aerobics become so popular?

After the aerobics, we decided to go get some dinner. We wanted them to take us somewhere special, you know, something we wouldn’t have found on our own. We were going to get on Julie’s friend’s motorbike, but there was not room for the four of us. We hired a “motodup”, which is basically a motorbike taxi. I got on it, and he was supposed to know where the restaurant was. After fifteen minutes, though, I could tell he seemed lost, or at least that we were in a place where there were no restaurants. Eventually we were in a dark side street. I was getting a little nervous, but then he asked a pedestrian for directions. Soon enough I was in the restaurant with the girls. We were there to eat baan chav, which could be seen as a Cambodian crepe. Of course, it is much different than this. It is a thin, but slightly spongy pancake made from rice flour, and then stuffed with meat and sprouts. It is served with a big platter of leafy greens (lettuce, parsley, mint, endive, and basil) and cucumber. The idea is to take a leaf and stuff it with the baan chav, meat and other leaves. Once you have a nice little taco going on, you dip it into a sweet and sour sauce. For such a healthy dish it was really good, and, of course, fun to eat.

After dinner, we were ambitious with the motorbike, and Julie’s friend decided she could fit us all on. The four of us squeezed onto the long, flat seat and headed back to town. We ended up the more touristy part of town, which we hadn’t seen before. It was surprising how it had a Khao San Road vibe. Lots of restaurants catering to foreigners, young tourists getting their party on and plenty of tuk-tuk drivers trying to exploit them. We wanted to go to the night market to see the shop ran by Julie’s mom’s NGO. One of the organization’s projects is training people how to make handicrafts, quite often made from recycled materials such as rice sacks, food tins and tire tubes, which are sold in tourist shops. Unfortunately it was closed, so after a small exploration of the tourist-oriented market, we made our way back home.

In the morning, we headed to the bus station. We had made reservations for the ticket over the phone, which we had never done before, and barely made it in time. Contrary to most places I’ve traveled, it seems common to make reservations for bus tickets here in Cambodia. It turned out that it wouldn’t have mattered much, since the bus was about half full. We had considered going to one of the smaller towns on the way, but changed our minds and went all the way to the capital, Phnom Penh.

We passed through mile after mile of chartreuse tinted rice paddies, with the occasional village or small town along the way. In one area, near Kampong Cham, we noticed a few mosques. It was just more evidence of the way religious leanings around the world are constantly in flux rather than static, and simply defined by regions and borders as we always assume. Although Buddhism is the predominant religion of Cambodia, it has had moments in its history of being Hindu as well as Muslim. There is still frequent evidence of this history throughout the country.

We hugged the Mekong River as we approached the sprawl of Phnom Penh. We passed an area that seemed to have a lot of Vietnamese influence, evidenced by the stalls selling pho and banh mi, as well as the Roman based Vietnamese script. Then we passed the French embassy, which was the last holdout for all the foreigners when the Khmer Rouge took over the city in 1973. As we got closer to town it was clear that this was no Bangkok. Nor was it resembling Manila or Kuala Lumpur. No, there were no high rise buildings, mega malls or ultra modern sky trains or light rails. Hell, there didn’t even seem to be local buses. Phnom Penh has progressed leaps and bounds since the civil war and unrest that continued into the 90’s, but in comparison to most other Southeast Asian capitals, it resembles something of a backwater. Our bus pushed through the sea of motorbikes and bicycles in the non-distinct center of town. There was no central bus station as every transport company has their own lot in various parts of town. As we pulled in, we saw a gaggle of tuk-tuk drivers, moto drivers and hotel touts crowding around the bus, peering into the windows. One of them caught a glimpse of us, the “farango” as foreigners are known here, he got extra excited, motioning for us to come to him. It felt a bit silly to be summoned so enthusiastically when we were still moving. When we got off, the Cambodians were also getting coaxed into various modes of transport, but they were a little more aggressive with us as we were worth a lot more. I had studied the map before coming into town though, and knew that we were only a mile from a cheap hotel. We were hassled for a while as we continued in the right direction, but after a couple blocks, the last hotel tout gave up on getting us a room. After our walk, though, we found that our hotel was closed. We checked a few others and could not find anything for the price we were hoping for. We settled for the cheapest option, which, after negotiating, was quite reasonable at $6/night, but still a far cry from the incredible deal we had gotten in Siem Reap.

During our search for dinner, we found ourselves a bit disappointed. We trekked back to where we had seen some street stalls, but now that it was dark, everything was closed. Most of the restaurants were large, fancy Chinese, or sometimes Korean, joints. There was one that billed itself as a North Korean restaurant. That made me a bit curious, but mostly I just thought the potential of making jokes about a North Korean restaurant in Cambodia was near limitless. We ducked into some dark side streets and alleyways, where rowdy children and old men drinking beer and whisky lurked in the shadows. It got more sketchy, and less likely to have something to eat. We came across some sort of bbq restaurant that had cheap pitchers of beer. We sat down, wondering how the food worked. Nothing was in English, and it looked like another communal style of eating that we would have to figure out the protocol to on the fly. We were informed that they were out of pitchers of beer and only had the more expensive cans. We were not feeling ambitious enough to try to navigate this eating style without at least the benefit of cheap beer. After another twenty minutes of walking we finally found our gem. This small, family run place looked like they would be closed, but they seemed open to one last customer. And mostly, they had cheap pitchers of beer. It had been a long, somewhat stressful day, but our great meal, the beer, and most of all the homey atmosphere reminded me of why the drudgery of travel is worth it.