Friday, April 17, 2009

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

We spent the day trouncing through temples with our guide. The group is an interesting mix of folks from New Orleans and myself. Our guide has lost both of his parents and takes care of his younger brothers on his own. He is the breadwinner at 24. Many in Cambodia would consider him lucky. As much as I want to write about how stunning and awe inspring the temples in Siem Reap are, I think wikipedia Angkor Wat does just as good as a job as anything. What I would rather write about is the juxtaposition between living in an emerging economy like China and in a super city such as Beijing and yet completely forgetting how the other half lives. Cambodia was a wake up call for me, as much as China is poor and corrupt and has its problems, its easy to forget, even in a place like Beijing about Cambodia. I suppose Cambodia represents more than itself for me in the sense that everything I took from it was raw. Its a rough country where billboards highlight the need for people to stop using arms, where child trafficking across its borders is eerily too common and 80% of the country's teachers have roughly a 3rd grade education. While the temples and the history of Siem Reap were exciting to see for the traveler, I think what I took back most from the trip was the recurring 'action-fact' that we have a lot more work to do in this century in order to really improve the lives of the lot of us. Unfortunately, in a place like Cambodia, all the money and effort we devote to that improvement is squashed by the enormous graft that permeates Cambodian society.