Week 1: Phnom Penh

Written on Friday, April 30...
I am nearing the end of my first week of volunteering as a teach here in Phnom Penh. I am exhausted and spend more than my fair share of the day feeling confused. I keep reminding myself of something the headmaster told me a few nights ago, "It is not about you."

She was referring to the change in dynamics between my previous jobs and this position as a teacher. In my career, it was always about meeting objectives and doing my best to make a good name for myself and advance my career. Volunteering as a teacher in this Montessori school means putting the children and their learning first. The philosophy of the school is for teachers to provide a framework to help the children educate themselves and find their own interests. It is a great philosophy.

I have been challenging myself to think what would be best for the children and what would make learning more fun. I am not sure that is the aim for all of the teachers, though. There are some very real practicalities like discipline and basic safety that necessitate teachers to step in and limit or steer what the children are doing. It is also quite easy, though, to get lazy as a teacher. It is pretty easy to justify sitting back and watching the kids do whatever they want or letting a toddler cry unrelentingly all in the name of teaching the child to help herself.

It has been great to see an environment where the approach is to let a child explore a toy or topic or activity instead of just jumping to dictate directions or a list of instructions. It is fascinating to stop and ask a child what they are thinking or why or why not they want to do an activity and hearing their responses. Sometimes a child's answer is really interesting and surprisingly informed. Sometimes a child's pushback is very justified and sometimes they are just rebelling for the sake of it.

The lack of structure that this philosophy naturally leads to can be really frustrating and, in this school's case where I think it has just slipped a little too far, can be incredibly inefficient and ineffective for a child's development. I can't speak to the entirety of the Montessori way, but this one seems mired down by its lacking administrative organization and budgetary control.

Two more weeks to go...I am leading the morning circle with the nursery kids, teaching Level 1 English in the morning, and helping/teaching swimming all afternoon.

School Daze

Today was my first day teaching here in Phnom Penh. I am volunteering at a Montessori school for three weeks. To say it is a relaxed environment, is an understatement. I was informed at 8am this morning that I would be teaching a 1st grade English class and also give private lessons to some students that need a little extra attention. I had been told all along that I would be working in the nursery with the four year olds.

It turned out to be a great switch because it turns out there are a very limited amount of times in a morning that I can play make believe restaurant and the memory game. My imagination apparently has not been used in a long time!

And today at the after school faculty meeting, I was volunteered to start teaching physical education in the mornings. This includes swimming lessons. I am not quite sure how I am going to fit it all in, but I am very glad that I will get a break from the heat during the swimming lessons. I am also glad that I packed a tankini and one pieced bathing suit.

For lunch, to add to the culture shock, we attended part of the wedding festivities of one of the teachers at the school. I had never before met the twenty-something bride, but they welcomed us with open arms. The bride, groom, and the groom's father shared a table with us for lunch. It was beyond strange, but the food was really good. We had a whole steamed fish, some kind of sweet and sour soup, and a stir fry with vegetables, shrimp, squid, and kidney (yes, the organ, not the bean).

Tomorrow, to celebrate my birthday, the kids are helping me to make two banana cakes with lemon icing in the school's solar oven. Everyone cross their fingers, the cakes rise! More later...off to the big western supermarket for ingredients.

Banteay Srey & Samre

It is my last day here in Siem Reap before boarding a bus tomorrow morning for a six hour trip to Phnom Penh where I will start volunteering as a primary school teacher for three weeks.

This morning, my tuk tuk driver from the previous day, San, drove me to some of the more remote temples that come highly recommended from Lonely Planet - Banteay Srey and Banteay Samre. It took us about an hour to get the 37 kilometers to Banteay Srey, but it was a nice trip. We drove by most of the sites I have already seen and then continued into the countryside which I have not had a chance to see yet.

These two temples were fascinating because many of the carvings are still in-tact or have been restored and because of the sheer amount of things the builders have managed to cram into relatively small spaces.

Banteay Srey

Banteay Samre













Oh, and I just had to show everyone this sign commonly found in toilets here.

More temples

Today I hired a tuk tuk driver to take another half day tour ($6). This time I went to some of the lesser known sites - Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, and Pre Rup. The temples were so much less crowded. It could also have been because I took my tour during the hottest part of the day, from 10.30am-1.30pm. I am so much more willing to put up with the heat than to get up early!

I took along my copy of Ancient Angkor and was able to read either in the tuk tuk on our way between sites or in a shaded area at each temple. It wasn't as easy as having a guide along, but it was nice to have a day to myself and time to just let my thoughts wander in these ancient architectural marvels. It truly amazes me that the works of man can last thousands of years.

It is also quite shocking to me how desensitized I have become to the touts that line the parking lots and even doorways of Angkor's temples. I haven't yet mentioned them probably because I wish they didn't exist...that they needn't exist. There is the mother that offers passers cut pineapple over the whines of the toddler perched on her lap. There, of course, are the tuk tuk driver's clapping their hands and shouting, "Lady! Tuk Tuk?!" "Lady! Where you going?!" There are also the teen aged boys that stand at temple entrances and offer to tell the temples 'story' for $2 or want to sell you a copied book.

Worse are the small children with their little baskets of bracelets or postcards. Two girls (age seven or so) walked with me for several minutes, one on either side, trying to sell me identical bracelets. They bargained between each other, alternating between English and Khmer. They were down to seven bracelets for $1 without my saying a word. When I kept walking, one changed her tactic and asked if I had any gum or candy or a pen for her. It caught me off guard and I looked her in the eyes and smiled at her wittiness and told her that no, I didn't have anything to give her. Immediately she started saying, "Why won't you give me your candy," as if I were holding out one her. "Since you won't give me candy, you should buy my bracelets." Such tactics! I just went back to ignoring them and walked to my waiting tuk tuk.

The worst of all are the landmine bands. I don't know if that is their official name. They are a group of four or five men playing handmade wind and string instruments. In front of their rug or wooden platform, they display a sign stating they've all lost limbs to landmines. The sign really isn't necessary since they oftentimes line their prosthesis (horrible plastic ones, at that) along the stage. They typically line one of the shaded walkways up to a temple. I am a horrible person. I have not stopped once to give them money. I will look at them and smile as I walk by, but I just can't bring myself to stop.

Angkor What?

I am in Siem Reap, Cambodia this week. So far, I have taken two half day afternoon tours of various sites in Angkor with two friends I met on my Vietnam Intrepid Tour. We hired a guide and an air conditioned car organized by our hotel. I had read on Tripadvisor about so many great local guides that I thought we would be fairly safe in using whatever guide the hotel came up with. That is so not the case. The guide was fine and at $15 total for a half day was not a huge investment, but we would have done just as well on our own with a copy of Lonely Planet. It was a much better alternative than joining a huge Sinh Tour again since we could dictate the pace and had the guide to ourselves. He also took some great pictures for us like the one of me Eskimo kissing one of the one hundred and forty eight remaining faces of The Bayon.

Last night, we bought copies (really high quality, color photocopies) of Ancient Angkor by Claude Jacques, a great book explaining the history and symbolism behind Angkor's temples. My friend managed to bargain a vendor in the Night Market down to $3.50 each copy, a much better bargain than a guide. I have been reading it and am going to take it along the next two days as I revisit Angkor Wat and explore some of the lesser known sites. Earning the title of the largest preindustrial city in the world at 1,000 square kilometers, I won't get anywhere close to seeing all of it, though.

We woke up at 4am on Monday to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. It was worth it...just. Thankfully, we hadn't booked a tour that morning so we gladly took our tuk tuk back to our hotel where I was asleep again by 9am.

Rolling on the river

Today is my last day in Vietnam before flying out tomorrow morning to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I have been here for only 17 days, but I am ready to move on. Saigon and the Mekong Delta especially just rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps I toured the country in the wrong order. Maybe I should have started my tour in the Mekong Delta, the poorest region in Vietnam, and then gone to Saigon, the crazy place Vietnamese call The City of Dreams, and then headed north to the less polarized areas.

It is just irritating and shattering to get paraded around on buses and boats to stare at people that are trying to get on with their day. The tour is so popular because the people living in this region are some of the last to live primarily on boats. I have included pictures of their boats - usually a larger one room craft that serves as their home and storage space for the goods they sell along the river on a daily basis and a small boat used to ferry between the other boats selling at the floating market. It just felt like we were on a tour to see how poor and how unusual they lived. It felt really judgement and unfair to them since they are just doing the best they can with what they have.

The tour was organized by Sinh (Cafe) Tourists and, at 40 persons to a group, was a much larger group than I was used to after my Intrepid Tour with only seven other people. It was also very hot on the unairconditioned and sometimes even unshaded boat trips. To top things off, I also got a stomach bug. I upgraded my hotel from the basic option offered by Sinh and, instead, spent two nights at what I am told is the nicest hotel in the Mekong Delta, Kim Tho. While the standard is comparable to any American mid-level hotel, I was really happy with my stay. It was great to have a very comfortable room with all the amenities I could want and a full day without a tour to enjoy it. The timing was right too since I didn't want to be far from a 'happy room' (Vietnamese for 'toilet').

Picking up the pieces

Wednesday, 14 April

Yesterday was the most difficult day of my journey thus far. We left Nha Trang on a night train and arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at 5am. After getting to the hotel, taking a shower, and taking an hour and a half nap, I was off again on a day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels a two hour drive outside the city. Then the difficult part began.

I am just starting to put the pieces together of what the Vietnam War did to this country's people. I will never be able to fully understand it. My last post seems almost embarrassing in its simplicity. The Vietnamese government takes every liberty in turning the Cu Chi tunnels and the War Remembrance Museum (which I visited in the afternoon) into tools of propaganda, but the devastation caused by the war is undeniable. A war by definition is destructive, though, so it is really difficult for me to reconcile what could be par for the course or what could be, as the Vietnamese government puts it, an unpunished crime against humanity. The answer is likely to be somewhere in between. Saigon and its surrounding areas in particular were quite literally bombed back into the Stone Age and seemingly kept there for the next several decades until the U.S. lifted its trade embargo in 1995. I do not really have an opinion on the use of embargoes. I can understand, though, why that action was taken and supported for so many years. It was the ultimate retaliation.

The tunnels of Cu Chi so infamous to soldiers and to the world are in an area just outside of Saigon that was once know for its beautiful orchards and lush landscape. The napalm blanketed across the countryside by US planes not only shrivelled up the vegetation, it infiltrated the waterways and insidiously crept into the soil. Only recently have the rubber and bamboo trees typical of the area started to grow again. The orchards won't be back for years. In addition to the soil deprivation, it seems the locals would rather focus their resources on catering to the tourists that flock to the tunnels by the bus load.

American sized mannequins provide ridiculously over-sized re-creations of the Vietnamese farmers turned soldiers and are posed in various spots along an area of the forest that has long ago been trampled down by tourists' feet into a smooth dirt pathway from entry to entry of the underground tunnel system. A group of Chinese tourists ahead of our group gamely climb onto the remnants of a bombed out US tank to pose for pictures. In white English lettering, it describes how the Cu Chi farmers used leftover pieces of enemy artillery to re-craft into booby traps to attack the tank. They proudly boost how many American soldiers were killed in the process.

Later we watch a film honoring the fighters - one a teenage girl. They were awarded military metals based on the number of US soldiers they could kill. I suppose it sends shock waves similar to those experienced by Vietnamese upon hearing of the US military's policy at one point in the war that "a dead Vietnamese is a dead VC," thus implicitly giving troops the green light to kill innocent civilians. As we look at replicas of the booby traps created using converted ditches, some originally created to catch wildlife, lined with sharpened and treated bamboo sticks, the commentary takes on that of a hunting expedition fueled by rage and revenge. I lost count of how many times terms like "American devils" and "American imperialists" were thrown out throughout the day.

The tunnel system was originally three levels deep. Sections of the first level just a few meters below the ground have been widened for tourists. Nevertheless, I still had to fold myself in half and bend my knees almost completely to be able to walk through the tunnel. I took the first exit available, but had I chose to continue, I could have walked for several minutes to one of the many submerged bunkers before exiting. I just can't begin to imagine what surviving in those tunnels would do to a person physically and mentally. And, after hearing my guide brag about how successful the fighters were in infiltrating nearby American posts, I can only imagine how paranoid it must have made GIs.

The War Remnants Museum was originally called The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government of South Vietnam and was later renamed the Museum of American War Crimes until relations between the U.S. and Vietnam improved in the 1990s. There is some blatant misinformation inside, for instance, a timeline of major world conflicts that states that World War II lasted for only a few years which is really unnecessary. The message that the U.S. led a very dirty and unpopular war that targeted innocent civilians and that maimed the country and its people for decades really does not need exaggeration to get across the point. Frankly, it just left me skeptical about how the Vietnamese government was able to get authentic pictures of U.S. soldiers in the act of such heinous activities as throwing a prisoner from a helicopter and carrying the charred remains of a VC soldier killed by a Napalm bomb.

In addition to dozens of pictures depicting the effects of Agent Orange to both civilians and the later genetic mutations suffered by offspring, the museum goes even further and displays jars of still born infants killed by the toxins. It just crosses a line from education into the bizarre and vulgar. They even recreated a section of the museum grounds into the torture chambers and guillotine used by the South Vietnamese soldiers on their northern countrymen. It is not a memorial and it does not encourage any of us to take a step forward and move on. I felt afraid to admit I am American.

There were reconstructed US helicopters and fighter planes in the front lawn of the museum. I do not understand why the government went to all that expense, but leaves the top floor of the museum unfinished and has not thought to install air conditioning in the building. After a few minutes in "The World Supports Vietnam in its Resistance" and "Historic Truths" Rooms in the stifling heat, I was sweating far too much to concentrate on reading the captions under the displays. The gift shop was even worse and, anyway, what could one possibly want to buy as a souvenir?

I am not going to post pictures for this entry, but I have provided links to the Wikipedia entries which provide pictures.

Good Morning, Vietnam!

I am checking in from Vietnam. It has been over a week. I hope no one was too worried. I joined a tour group on 31 March in Hanoi, Vietnam and, like with most tours, we have been kept ridiculously busy. I am on the fifteen day Reunification Express tour offered by Intrepid Travel. I can’t say I have enjoyed all of the stops on our itinerary, but just being able to hand over the transportation and accommodations responsibility to someone else and to someone with a lot of experience in Vietnam, has made the whole trip worthwhile. I have also had a great time getting to know the people in my group. The group consists of seven Aussies and myself. Luckily, everyone seems to get along pretty well. Our tour guide is a twenty-something Vietnamese guy from Hue that goes by the came Charlie.

We are twelve days into the trip so there is so much to tell and so much I have probably already forgotten. Today we are in Nha Trang and hop on an overnight train around 8pm for a nine hour trip to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). I am really not looking forward to the train, but it is our second night train so at least I know what to expect. Our first night train took us from Hanoi to Hue. Each city along our well travelled path down the eastern coast of Vietnam is known really only for one or two things. Whereas a tourist could spend a week in Rome and not scratch the surface, I have been pretty much ready to move on from most of our stops after two days.


Hanoi’s main draw is the General Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho, for short) mausoleum and surrounding complex. Yep, it is possible to see the man himself. Against Uncle Ho’s final wishes, he has been embalmed and put on display for all to see behind bulletproof glass, surrounded by eight guards and inside of a several million dollar square shrine made entirely of marble. His wishes had been to be cremated and he insisted that the government not spend any money on a monument to him because he felt it would be better spent on the people. He was right. The mausoleum comes off looking like a dull, gray stone cube reminiscent of the Soviet era.

In contrast, Hue is known for its imperial Citadel. The ancient walled city and vast grounds for the royal family is taken straight from their Chinese ancestors down to the eunuchs used as male servants to the king. Everything is painted in the imperial colors of yellow and red. Most of the city was destroyed, though, by bombings during the American War and is just now starting to get slowly reconstructed. Both to my Australian group members’ relief and chagrin, the Vietnam War is referred to here as the American War despite the heavy involvement and casualties by several other countries including Australia. Strangely, I am something of a novelty as an American touring Vietnam. Once my nationality is noted, though, no obvious judgment is passed on me and not much more is spoken of it. Possibly because it is pretty clear that I was not even born during the time of the war, but I also think that most Vietnamese are very happy to keep that part of their history in their past. They see themselves as the victors and the survivors. They just want to get on with life. It probably also helps that much of the country consists of farmland and rice fields. On the surface at least, it took much longer to rebuild the cities of Europe bombed during World War II than it did to grow crops to cover the Vietnamese countryside ravaged by bombing campaigns. It is the difference of a war taking place in a developing country. I don’t mean to downplay what were probably herculean efforts to restore Vietnam. I am more trying to make sense of why there seems to be very few signs of war here. Or maybe that is exactly the government's goal.

The poverty here, though, is overwhelming at times in its scale and its assault on all your senses. Buildings stand half finished or half demolished depending on slight variations in the structure or possibly just depending on one’s outlook. Trash lines sidewalks and sewage flows freely along the curbs. Exhaust fumes clog the already humid air. These are not war torn cities. these are impoverished communities struggling to meet basic needs. In some cases, the government has started to demolish houses in the hopes of building five star golf resorts to draw foreign tourists, but has stopped mid-stream for reasons our guide can only speculate about. In the vast majority, though, people are living in small, one room structures with walls of concrete and roofs of corrugated steel sandwiched between neighbors in much the same arrangement. Shopkeepers have a slightly better lot as they oftentimes live out of their stores. Running toilets, hot water and sometimes even electricity are unknown conveniences. There are nice parts of each town, especially in Hoi Ann, the city of tailors, with nice houses, but their luxuries are what we would all call modern essentials. Most striking, is that most of the people don't seem all that less happy than anywhere else.

So far, I have enjoyed Hoi An the most. It is a quaint little city trying very hard to lure in tourists looking for tailor made clothes and get them to spend more money on knock-offs – everything from books to dvds to jewelry to shoes. Several shops also make Chinese lanterns and someone seems to have had the great idea to adorn the streets and cafes with them. It gives the whole town a festive and friendly atmosphere. I couldn’t resist the idea of, for the first time in my life, having clothes tailor made. I ended up purchasing three linen dresses and two pairs of handmade Capri tights to wear with the dresses. I think they look rather nice with the fake Rayban’s I picked up in Hue and the light tan bolero hat I also bought in Hoi Ann for $3. I will post a picture so you can each see what you think.

We are now in Nha Trang, a world renowned beach destination that I just don’t get. It is filthy. Everything is filthy – the water, the beaches, the streets, the hotel rooms, the restaurants – except for a half kilometer strip along the beach lined with reasonably nice deck chairs and umbrellas. That is where all the Westerners are to be found…or out on Vin Pearl Island, most know for hosting the Miss Universe Pageant a handful of years ago. It is only accessible via an incredibly overpriced funicular ride across the bay. I opted to just hang-out in the hotel for the afternoon. Tomorrow we get to Saigon and go on a day trip to the Chu Chi Tunnels.