Rural Cambodia, the last frontier

Despite Phnom Penh's fast growth pace  and Siem Reap's huge success as a tourist magnet because of its iconic Angkor Wat, Cambodia is still a very rural country. Arguably, better roads and new Chinese-built bridges will lead to faster urbanisation. 

For the tourist wanting to walk off the beaten path, opportunities abound. But the journey can be back-breaking.

First, The Ugly Chinese Abroad

Last Valentine's Day, I was queuing to buy my bus ticket to Stung Treng and a man at the head of the next line was speaking loudly in Chinese and hitting his knuckles against the glass counter. He kept saying the word stupid to the girl manning the counter. I said to the man:

Why are you scolding her?

I'm not scolding her. I'm merely saying she's stupid. She doesn't understand I want a window seat.

Look, she can't understand Chinese and you can't speak Khmer. How can she understand you?

That's why she is stupid.

I'm sorry, but I have to give you this advice: why don't you ask someone who speaks Chinese and Khmer to help you. If you continue to raise your voice at her, I will wish I don't have anything to do with being Chinese.

Are you Chinese?

No, I'm Malaysian.

This story has a good ending. In front of me, a local had looked on and until then hadn't uttered a word. He could speak English, and when three men used a combination of three languages, the angry man calmed down, realizing the girl had already given him a window seat.

The CNN had once portrayed that an ugly tourist makes places "bend" to his will. More than simply just being rich, it's making the place one visits accommodate one's tastes, or disrespecting local customs. 

Has the mantel or stereotype the Americans held been finally replaced by the Chinese?

Stung Treng, My Destination

Phnom Penh to Stung Treng, 348 km by road. Shorter by river!

I was going to Stung Treng, a provincial capital town, only 70 km from the Laos border.

I think Stung Treng is as rural as one can get when traveling in Cambodia. Things to do here are biking along the banks of the Mekong and taking a boat to the Laos border to see the Irrawaddy dolphin and admire waterfalls on the Laos side of the border.

But, It's the Journey

At an average speed of 50 km/hr, it's easy to imagine that my destination would take a long time to reach, or 13 hours to be exact. There were several refreshment stops, and near the major towns, passengers were allowed to board or disembark. Every two hours or so, guys were able to signal the driver to stop so we could pee on the wheels if we wanted to (I saw someone doing it). 

Snuon Stol was a stop over point for a meal. On my return journey, I bought chempedak and coconut, but the drink lady was on both trips nice enough to let me fill my thermos. This town is near Mondolkiri, a remote region with a national park.

Kratie was reached in 9 hours. This is the most popular tourist stop and playground of sorts. An American girl takes tourists on kayaking trips to spot Irrawaddy dolphins. An NGO had started an adventure trail linking the town to Stung Treng, 140km away, on which one can ride a push bike or a boat, or walk. I was curious to find out if there existed a best kept hiking track in Asia. From the fact that the organisation that ran the promotion no longer maintained its website, I wasn't hopeful.

Soon after passing Kratie, I was photographing sunset through my window. The road was bad in sections and the bus slowed often to 30km or a crawl. By then, the air conditioner wasn't effective, and the dust that speeding vehicles kicked up was disturbing us so that the rear windows had to be opened.

Friendly People

Without a doubt, rural Cambodians are among the most friendly people in the world. They smile a lot. They also consume a lot of sugar, so I worry for them. A woman sat next to me, carrying a 24 month old infant. She was born premature. I was take aback when she showed me an energy drink and asked if it was alright to feed her child with it. I said in Chinese that she should not. This Cambodian woman earned about $500 per month in a shoe factory in Phnom Penh and her Taiwanese manager liked showering her with candies.

 To reduce the boredom, I struck up a conversation with a girl seated in front of me. At one of the stops, she ran after a monk to give him the equivalent of 25 cents. I asked her why she did it. Her reply was that she used to do this a few times a year. She even stood barefooted in front of the monk.

A Rare Find

A French Tourism NGO had set up Le Tonle, a training centre to teach young people how to run a hotel and tourist programme. When the mototaxi dropped me at its doorsteps at 9pm after a wrong turn, I was welcomed by Pech, the assistant local coordinator. At 24 and studying management at the local university, Pech seemed eager to show me the town.

Judging by the good manners and smiles, I was convinced the classes attended by the dozen or so Le Tonle trainees were having positive results. I was shown to the Ratanakiri Room, one of four with either single or double beds, sleeping 10 guests in all. A mosquito net hung over each bed. My room and the shared bathroom were spotlessly clean. I only had steamed rice and vegetable soup that night. It was a delicious meal. I slept very well.

Stung Treng had potential as a rural tourist town: it had village appeal.

Pech spoke good English. He was my guide the next day. Late into the previous  night, we discussed our plans. I took his advice to explore villages, and visit a silk factory and the sticky rice trail.

At sunrise, I was riding pillion along the river to Srey Krosant Village. We passed Preah Bat and Koh Sampea where villagers had already begun life that day, women were cooking and men (I also spotted one group of women) were warming themselves in the mid 20's temperature, beside smoky fires. In a vegetable garden, a woman was doing the day's watering using large metal cans hung on each end of a pole. I liked the Cambodian village scene.

The Sticky Rice Trail



My pushbike ride along the Mekong started with a seven-km easy jaunt to Mekong Blue, a cooperative by the Sekong River, started 10 years ago. It harnessed disadvantaged women to produce beautiful silk textiles for tourists who come a-calling or to be sent by road to a Phnom Penh outlet at an international hotel.

Silkworms are reared and silk cocoons harvested, processed, dyed and turned into beautiful silks. I was looking for a necktie that would make a difference: wearing a genuine  made-in-Cambodia accessory, and I picked one with an Ikat design.  I also bought a scarf for Sim. I was told it took three weeks to make. 

Recently, it opened a centre to also  house divorced women with small children.

After crossing Sekong Bridge, we arrived at Kankoban. We were lucky to find a family making sticky rice (krolan). This must be the most laborious food preparation I ever saw. First, rice soaked overnight with a pea was stuffed in foot long bamboo and coconut milk added. A bit of coconut meat was used to simply stop dirt from entering. This was cooked a few hours over a fire. The burnt bamboo tube was then shaved and thinned so one could peel it off to eat fragrant cooked rice. Each was sold for between 60 cents and a dollar. It was delicious.

The next stop on our cycling route was the Pum Thmay Village where the Mekong Bird Resort was situated. Boats here took tourists to an island where I was told there were hiking opportunities.

The Cassava Brigade

In my travel in rural Cambodia, I wanted to photograph children at play. But this morning, an idyllic vision was shattered. Here's how:

In Phnom Krahong, I saw a small group of mainly women, and children, bent, hard at work, using machetes to repeatedly chop something. Then I realized they were cutting cassava into small pieces. I snapped a few photographs of people at work, although it wasn't quite 8am. They looked happy when looking into my camera. As I rode on, I realized this was a cottage industry. Whole families, including small children of course, were in their yards, chopping up cassava and then spreading them up to dry by the sides of the road. I saw a few trucks on their way to collect the dried tuber, stuffed in large blue sacks. I saw several godowns, and in one, a towkeh was directing his workers stacking the sacks, presumably to be ready for sending to a factory to be processed into food additives, glue, or whatever use industry has thought of using the starch.

It was with mixed feelings when I reflected on the plight of these children. Most probably they weren't going to school. (Today, Saturday, is a school day here.) Yet, rural families need the income of 20 cents per Kg of dried cassava to live. 

I don't doubt it's a good industry, but children need to be in school.

Houses with a view

It seems ironic that tourism in Cambodia is less developed than in Laos. When our bus

stopped every two hours to let us go for a pee, I wonder if over the border, women needed to feel the same loss of privacy as those in my rickety bus did today. But I digress. I want really to write about the tourism potential i saw on the banks of the Mekong.

Yesterday, my guide pointed out a delapidated Khmer house he wanted to convert into a lodge and a piece of prime camping ground that could very well be what the banks of the Swan in Peppermint Grove in Western Australia looked like before the first mansions were built 100 years ago.

The houses we pedaled past were wooden instead of brick. Some were mere shacks. (Think of the beach shacks.) The only English the kids knew was the hello word that they greeted me if they were not up the tree already concentrating on picking the milk fruit, or if they weren't planing wood on what I thought was a dangerous machine. But the water views...

From what I read about the 4000 islands on the same

Mekong just a few km across the border, the region is an extremely popular tourist playground. 

Now if these Khmer houses with a view are made into lodges, and if Pech, my guide, realizes his dream, I envision the Mekong Row, not of millionaires perhaps, but of chalets for hikers served by the first exclusive walking path. The authorities it seems had seen some tourism potential but their idea seemed to be to replace the laterite road with an all-weather one, and who knows, may give in to greed and take over the houses with a view to build hotels.