7/11-18: Pillows for Peace

From 7/11 to 7/18, I took a vacation with Pillows for Peace.  With them, I

-saw Tuol Sleng (a genocide museum) and the killing fields

-went to Battambang and Koh Kralor to build 10 houses for people who saved money through the Tabitha program

-did temple hopping at Siem Reap

Tabitha, the nonprofit, helps people save money.  It starts out with $0.25 per week.  After 10 weeks, they have enough to buy chicks.  When a chick grows up to a chicken, they can sell it for more than 10 times the price of the chick because there's a rising trend of rich Cambodians wanting organic free range chickens.  After that, they can get things like seeds, fertilizer, a well, or a house. 

Tabitha also makes some silk crafts, hiring women with HIV.  That's one of their main sources of income.  They use that to pay interest on the people's savings (they pay 10% every 10 weeks, and they keep the money in safes rather than putting it in a bank, so the interest that they pay out has to come from external sources). 

Most of the people on the trip were Mormon.  I think that I identify more with the Khmer people that I have interacted with than them.  It's true that the Pillows for Peace group's backgrounds were fairly similar to mine -- similar socioeconomic status and education -- but with the people in my office, I only see differences in mannerisms; with the Pillows for Peace group, I could really see a different culture.

There were, of course, differences within the group.  There was an older couple that had a background in physics and architecture (the husband was a Fulbright scholar), was familiar with computers and programming (they did some programming back in the old days with vacuum tubes!), believed in science, and had similar political beliefs to me.  I didn't feel a cultural difference with them.  Similarly, the experiences that I will outline don't apply to the entire group.

The only negative was the heterosexism.  I heard some "that's so gay."  One person also told a joke in the form of: "whenever <innocent thing happens>, <bad thing happens>": "whenever there's an awkward silence, a gay baby is born."  It was hard to speak out.  Normally, I only have to interject against the way that people speak, but I felt like in these instances, I would have to tackle a deep seeded cultural issue.

There were some practices that were just different.  There was one couple that wasn't much older than me but that was already married, and I think that they hadn't even met each other a few months before they got married.  Most people, if they hadn't already gone on a mission, had someone in their family on a mission.  Whenever anyone got sick, the first thing that they would do would be to gather around to give a very formal blessing (about half of the group got sick at some time in the week long trip.  Thankfully, I have been completely healthy in the month that I've been here). 

It's not necessarily worse, but they come from a different culture than me. 

The house building was rewarding, but I feel like it was more for us than them.  They were much better than us at making houses (or all of us that I saw), and I think that they might end up repairing our bent nails later on.  Many of them couldn't speak English, so we didn't get to talk with them.  On the other hand, three of the people on the trip were Khmer but raised in the US, and it was their first time seeing their grandparents. 

The people who went on the house building trip fundraised $960 for each of the houses.  Since I knew almost nothing about the program before volunteering, I didn't know that most people fundraised, and I just donated out of pocket.  We also got our name on a plaque outside of the house.  Mine reads "In Memory of Nadja Kuller."

The Lonely Planet guide for Cambodia says, "Marijuana is not legal" but "is traditionally used in some Khmer food, so it will be around."  However, I had never actually seen any.  On the trip, we went to a restaurant called "The Smokin' Pot" that had "Happy Chicken Soup," the soup "which is cooked with happy herbs or Mariwana." 

One of the things that has surprised me during my stay in Cambodia is that I am much more culinarily cosmopolitan than many other people.  I'm vegetarian, but compared to many other people, I will eat anything, and I have eaten a lot.  For instance, it seemed like most of the people in the group had never seen a Thai Iced Tea before.  It's weird because in the US, I always feel so uncultured. 

Siem Reap was ok.  On the plus side, the temples were good to see, and our tour guide for the temples was very cool.  However, it was also very tourist centered, expensive, and it felt less like a city than Phnom Penh.  In cities, there is an air of stuff happening.  I think I'm a city boy. 

Temples: the highlights were Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and Bayon.  We also went to Banteay Srei and one or two others. 

On the way to Angkor Wat, Siya, the tour guide showed us some natural features.  There was a plant that has spread out leaves but, when touched, the leaves hide away.  One of the people in our group referred to it as a 'touch me not'.  I don't remember the name that Siya gave to them.  He also showed us a millipede.  When disturbed, they curl up into a big ball.  On the way to Ta Prohm, he showed us that the large mounds of dirt were termite nests. 

When we got to Angkor Wat, we went to the very top (Siya had us enter through the back so that we didn't have to wait in a long line to go up top).  They had just opened it a few months ago.  The steps to get up were fairly narrow.  Outside one of the windows, you could see a big yellow baloon.  Apparently, you can get a hot air balloon ride.  When we left later that night, I saw the massive balloon when it was parked.  The view of the trees from the top was very nice. 

One of the most significant features of Angkor Wat is all of the headless statues.  After the temple was rediscovered, people would cut the heads off of statues to sell for thousands of dollars.  There was also graffiti on some of the walls.  Eventually, UNESCO stepped in and put a stop to it.

Some of the cultural features: there is a large wall with the Ramayana story on it, there are Apsara Dancers on the walls (they can bend their hands backwards), and there is some Ancient Sanskrit writing. 

The engineering was amazing.  They had a human-made moat.  They had a drainage system throughout the entire temple so that in the heavy rains it wouldn't flood.  I guess you don't make the biggest temple in the world without being pretty smart.  This goes on today: once I get my pictures up, you'll see big green tents around some parts of Angkor Wat that are currently being restored. 

In the past, it was used by monks, and you could always hear one group or another chanting.  Historically, there was also a big library with different levels to go on depending on the level of understanding of the monk.  Now, the monks have a small, modern building outside Angkor Wat, and Angkor Wat is purely a cultural site.

When we left (through the front), we saw the stereotypical Angkor Wat sight with the reflection of the temple in the moat.  It was pretty nice.  The clouds were nice too.  Siya also showed us a bullet hole in a stone column near the entrance. 

Two mornings later, we came back for the sunrise over Angkor Wat.  Unfortunately, the clouds disagreed with our plans, so we didn't see too much sun until it was already bright out.  I did see lots of annoying tourists, though.

Ta Prohm is the temple featured in Tomb Raider.  Siya always hears people calling it the Angelina Jolie temple.  He only speaks English and Khmer (I think), but when tourists of other languages come to the temple, he can still pick up the words "Angelina Jolie."  If I were religious, I would think of that as western culture desecrating a holy place.  Since I'm not, I just think of it as sad.

The best feature of Ta Prohm was the trees.  Banyan trees can grow anywhere.  A seed might fall on one of the temple's walls, and a tree would start growing there.  It would grow slowly because it couldn't dig its roots into earth to get water.  But the roots would grow downwards and, eventually, they would reach the ground and the tree would start growing very quickly.  One member of my group commented: "it's a temple to Shiva, the destroyer, and the trees are destroying the temple!"  That tree is Tetrameles nudiflora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrameles_nudiflora).  There are also banyans (strangler figs) which grow around other trees, strangling them. 

The Bayon temple was discovered by a couple in love that got lost and separated in the forest.  Then, they found each other at the temple, which is full of smiling faces.  Siya knew all of the cool photo ops -- where to stand so that it would look like you were kissing or rubbing noses with one of the faces, where to stand for a group photo, where the face would be framed or in a line, etc.  He was really good with a camera (he immediately knew how to use each person in the group's camera.  It took me a few minutes to figure out where my zoom was.), and he was eager to take pictures. 

Banteay Srei was the favorite temple of some of the veterans in the group.  Apparently, when she first started coming to Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge were still active, they used the temples as a camp site.  The agreement was that they got it during the night and the tourism industry got it during the day.  In the early morning, you could see warm fire pits where they had made breakfast. 

The temple is made with pink/red stone, and the designs are intricate (and 3d), so people think that it was made by women.  I'm not sure if there's more to that theory or not. 

Since my dad told me to ride an elephant, I also went on an elephant ride.  It was an interesting experience to have, but it probably wasn't worth supporting an institution where elephants are held in captivity for the sake of tourists.

Rant on Photos: what is the point of taking picturesque photos?  I can understand the desire to take photos with yourself in them to send to family and friends or to remember that you went some place.  But why take 'perfect' photos of the sights?  If people want to capture the moment, then they would include the power lines, the construction, the balloons, and the other tourists.  If people want something pretty, then there are better photos (taken by more qualified photographers with more expensive cameras) of the same exact sites easily available online (unless it's an obscure or unique site or you're a good photographer).  In other words, many of my photos are just wasted space.

I guess I don't really understand the whole 'tourism' thing.  It seems like the model for tourism is going to a place for a few days, seeing the sites (which, beautiful as they may be, won't take my breath away) and eating the food (which isn't too different from food in the US), and leaving.  What is left out is getting to know the culture, the people, and the daily lifestyle (most locals who aren't tour guides don't go temple hopping every day).  I would rather know people than sites.  A relationship is more important than a photo. 

In other words, getting to know Siya was more important than seeing some pretty sculptures.  He moved to Siem Reap from the countryside and taught himself English using YouTube.  Now, he volunteers by teaching English at high schools.  He's good at English, too -- he knew enough to make clever jokes (someone in the group asked him "are there any monkeys here?" and he responded "they live with the monks"), to make fun of our mannerisms, and to tell the difference between the many different dialects of English.  He's trying to get the money to bring his mother to the city, so he has been working as a tour guide basically every day for the past three years.  He has a Facebook.  He's teaching himself web programming so that, later, he can start his own business (I gave him my email in case he needs help).  I'm glad that I met him.

That's why I'm glad that I'm staying for a few months.  I have the chance to get to know the people in my office and get to know the city.  Learning a culture isn't about unique experiences; it's about repetition.  Trying a style of food once won't make you appreciate it as much as eating it for a month.  The same goes for the heat, the rains, the smells, the traffic, and the lifestyle in general.  The model for cultural understanding should be walking a mile in someone else's shoes, not a few steps.  The alternative is summed up in Fight Club: when you're a tourist, everything is single serving, like on an airplane.  Single serving food; single serving drinks; single serving friends. 

I also think that the long term model is less likely to produce the 'Ugly American' as the single serving model.  I think that an 'Ugly American' is someone who sees a different mannerism (that is, an insignificant difference) in another culture and thinks that that difference is worse.  For instance, many westerners are off put by Cambodia because people aggressively try to sell things to westerners, so when a westerner walks down the street, they are asked if they want a tuk tuk ride by someone on every block.  In the US, we only have people trying to sell us stuff by advertising on TV, in magazines, in the paper, on the internet, on the clothes that we wear, on billboards, on radio, in stores, and on our doorsteps, so it seems weird that someone would advertise their own services that we might need in a location where we might need them.  Given more time, it's easier to see the similarities and to see that it's just a bunch of people trying to make a living by doing something that works (advertising themselves).