Special thanks to my friend Chivy (a native of Cambodia who now lives in San Francisco) who recommended Loung Ung’s book First They Killed My Father. This short read recounts Loung Ung’s experience as a child in Cambodia when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975. Written in simple language but with a powerful storytelling sense, this book not only gave me a glimpse into Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, but gave me a bit of the history and cultural context for my travels there. More than once, as I read her descriptions of the countryside, I’d glance out the window to see a scene reminiscent of what she described in the book. If you have no knowledge of what went on in Cambodia during the 1970’s under Pol Pot, I’d suggest you pick up this book, as its a story the world should not forget. See excerpt below.

First They Killed My Father
Author: Loung Ung
256 Pages
Language: English
ISBN: 0060931388
Available at your local library or for $1.88(USD) from Amazon***

***if you buy via the link above, I will get a small piece of the sale from Amazon.com to put towards my future travels

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• Read an excerpt from the book below.
• Purchase First They Killed My Father from Amazon.com, by clicking the image of the book cover above***.
• Read an interview with the book’s author Loung Ung on CNN.com
• Read my story about Window Shopping in Cambodia.
• See photo from my trip in Cambodia
• Read some of my other book recommendations from my travels:
  • Hitching Rides With Buddah by Will Ferguson (on Japan)
  • Vagabonding by Rolf Potts (on independent travel)

Phnom Penh city wakes early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already at 6 A.M. people in Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers. Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beef teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalks and begin to set up for another day of business. Children in colorful T-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls on sidewalks with their bare feet, ignoring the grunts and screams of the food cart owners. The wide boulevards sing with the buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and, for those wealthy enough to afford them, small cars. By midday, as temperatures climb to over a hundred degrees, the streets grow quiet again. People rush home to seek relief from the heat, have lunch, take cold showers, and nap before returning to work at 2 P.M.

My family lives on a third-floor apartment in the middle of Phnom Penh, so I am used to the traffic and the noise. We don’t have traffic lights on our streets; instead, policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the middle of the intersections directing traffic. Yet the city always seems to be one big traffic jam. My favorite way to get around with Ma is the cyclo because the driver can maneuver it in the heaviest traffic. A cyclo resembles a big wheelchair attached to the front of a bicycle. You just take a seat and pay the driver to wheel you around wherever you want to go. Even though we own two cars and a truck, when Ma takes me to the market we often go in a cyclo because we get to our destination faster. Sitting on her lap I bounce and laugh as the driver pedals through the congested city streets.

This morning, I am stuck at a noodle shop a block from our apartment in this big chair. I’d much rather be playing hopscotch with my friends. Big chairs always make me want to jump on them. I hate the way my feet just hang in the air and dangle. Today, Ma has already warned me twice not to climb and stand on the chair. I settle for simply swinging my legs back and forth beneath the table.

Ma and Pa enjoy taking us to a noodle shop in the morning before Pa goes off to work. As usual, the place is filled with people having breakfast. The clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger, and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble with hunger. Across from us, a man uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into his mouth. Next to him, a girl dips a piece of chicken into a small saucer of hoisin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick. Noodle soup is a traditional breakfast for Cambodians and Chinese. We usually have this, or for a special treat, French bread with iced coffee.

“Sit still,” Ma says as she reaches down to stop my leg midswing, but I end up kicking her hand. Ma gives me a stern look and a swift slap on my leg.

“Don’t you ever sit still? You are five years old. You are the most troublesome child. Why can’t you be like your sisters? How Will you ever grow up to be a proper young lady?” Ma sighs. Of course I have heard all this before.

It must be hard for her to have a daughter who does not act like a girl, to be so beautiful and have a daughter like me. Among her women friends, Ma is admired for her height, slender build, and porcelain white skin. I often overhear them talking about her beautiful face when they think she cannot hear. Because I’m a child, they feel free to say whatever they want in front of me, believing I cannot understand. So while they’re ignoring me, they comment on her perfectly arched eyebrows; almond-shaped eyes; tall, straight Western nose; and oval face. At 5′6″, Ma is an amazon among Cambodian women. Ma says she’s so tall because she’s all Chinese. She says that some day my Chinese side will also make me tall. I hope so, because now when I stand I’m only as tall as Ma’s hips.

“Princess Monineath of Cambodia, now she is famous for being proper,” Ma continues. “It is said that she walks so quietly that no one ever hears her approaching. She smiles without ever showing her teeth. She talks to men without looking directly in their eyes. What a gracious lady she is.” Ma looks at me and shakes her head.

“Hmm …” is my reply, taking a loud swig of Coca-Cola from the small bottle.

Ma says I stomp around like a cow dying of thirst. She’s tried many times to teach me the proper way for a young lady to walk. First, you connect your heel to the ground, then roll the ball of your feet on the earth while your toes curl up painfully. Finally you end up with your toes gently pushing you off the ground. All this is supposed to be done gracefully, naturally, and quietly. It all sounds too complicated and painful to me. Besides, I am happy stomping around.

“The kind of trouble she gets into, while just the other day she-” Ma continues to Pa. but is interrupted when our waitress arrives with our soup.

“Phnom Penh special noodles with chicken for you and a glass of hot water,” says the waitress as she puts the steaming bowl of translucent potato noodles swimming in clear broth before Ma.

©2000 Loung Ung. Excerpt courtesy of HarperCollins publishers.

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• Read the story that goes along with this photo gallery 1 Bus, 2 Motorbike, 8 Cambodian Drug Dealers, and A Run For The Border
• See other photos from Cambodia in the The Temples of Angkor

A taxi picked us up at our guest house in Siem Reap at 6am and dropped us at the crowded city bus station, overrun with hawkers selling everything from bananas to hair picks—all swimming in a muddy, trash strewn parking lot of honking buses and taxis haphazardly laid out in no recognizable fashion. We insisted on trying to get the $8 tickets on a “local” bus, avoiding the pricier (but cleaner) $12 “tourist bus” to make the journey to the Cambodian capital city. Clutching our bags tightly we pressed ourselves through the bus yard crowd and in semi-English/Cambodian were directed to a dust-covered jalopy of a bus with a cracked windshield. We stashed our bags in the cargo hold underneath, before climbing aboard.

Once on the bus, as our eyes adjusted to the dim musty interior, we were met by a wall of curious eyes, as we were, at this point, the only three non-Cambodians on the bus. A group of about 8 men, gathered in back, quickly shuffled seats in what seemed like an obvious move to avoid having to sit next to one of the foreigner. We checked our seat numbers, and Weijie made a move for his seat, as a larger man shifted over towards him, filling two chairs—including the one Weijie was clearly headed for—this elicited a hardy laugh out of the rest of the men. We awkwardly shifted around in a game of musical-bus-seats and when the music stopped Weijie and Janny were sharing two seats in back and I was sitting by myself a few rows up, next to a skinny young man with a gaunt face and tussled black hair. As I sat, his eyed darted out the window and I shoved my daypack under my chair. The ride was to take 6 hours.

Eventually the bus filled, and with the exception of a German couple in the first row, we were out numbered by Cambodians 55 to 3. I leafed through a few pages in my book, before I was interrupted by the skinny young man, who turned to me and in nervous English said, “Hello, I am Sophea.”

“Hello,” I said, “My name is Andy.”

“I try to sit next to foreigners on the bus,” he continued, “Most of my friends don’t like to, but I want to practice my English.”

I smiled.

Over the next few hours, Sophea and I chatted for much of the time and I learned that he was 23, had a degree from a Cambodian university in computers and had spent the last year working at an IT company in Phom Phen. Recently though, he had to quit his job because the salary (about $150/month) was not enough to live on his own–his family lived in a village far away in the northeast part of the country. He had spent a number of months applying for better paying IT jobs, but having found none, he took a job as a sales man for a US-based company that sold multi-vitamins and nutrition related drugs in Cambodia–in this job he said, he could make 3 to 4 times what he was making in an IT job.

A view out the bus window….

He was returning from a meeting with the company’s founder, who flew in from the US a few days earlier, the other guys on the bus—the group we had played musical chair with earlier—were his co-workers.

On the bus ride that afternoon, Sophea gave me his sales pitch, flipping through pages of a plastic binder and saying he didn’t need me to buy anything but wanted only to practice his English. The company, it seemed, sold nutritional supplements intended to fix health aliments that don’t really exist where I come from in American, yet are prevalent in an under-developed and often malnourished country like Cambodia (i.e. leprosy, gout, etc). So for anywhere between $5 and $50 I could buy bottles of Vitamin C, supplements and special nutritional drugs. The company, Sportron, it appears to me, operates in a sort of Amway/pyramid scheme style, but my lack of internet hasn’t allowed me much time to look into it since (feel free to let me know what you think, www.sportron.com). It is run from its corporate offices in Texas by its American founders. I was a bit skeptical of the company, but Sophea seemed excited about the money he could make; he said, if he were able to recruit other sales people to the company a percentage of their sales would be his. He had, at the time of this story, been with the company for 1 month.

Four hours into the bus ride, we came to a stop at a roadside restaurant for lunch, and we exited the bus in search of bathrooms. Weijie, Janny and I walked by steaming pans of food and what appeared to be a cafeteria, but our inability to speak Cambodian and our unfamiliarity with the food led us to consider waiting to eat until later. As I headed back to the bus, I heard someone call my name and looked up to see Sophea and his eight coworkers waving me over to join them. They pulled up a chair for me, and two for my friends, and as I sat, plates of food were set before us. In typical American style, I declined immediately, but soon was enticed to eat. Janny and Weijie eventually joined, and we dined on the Cambodian equivalent of a burger and fries (it was rice and fish among other things). The group of men introduced themselves in broken English and we introduced ourselves back in the same broken English. Soon, the bus honked its horn to signal its imminent departure and we headed back to our seats. As we settled in, I attempted to pass a few dollars to one of the men, a man we came to know as “Tiger, who without hesitation, refused to accept it. Even after I insisted he take it, he waved me off. (At this point, its important to remember that its very possible that I make more in one day at work in America, then he makes in an entire month in Cambodia).

Family transportation, Cambodian style.

Sophea and I continued to chat as the bus started off again, I asked him about life in Cambodia and he asked me about America. A few hours later, as the bus arrived at the station in Phnom Penh, Sophea said, “I will go get my bike.” Unsure exactly what he meant, and still a little hesitant of strangers (it was early on in my trip), I wasn’t sure of what to make of it, but we agreed to meet in an hour at our guest house.

Almost exactly an hour later, Sophea showed up at our door with a motorcycle helmet in hand and a friend with another bike in tow. For the next three hours, Sophea and his friend drove us around town on the back of their motorbikes, taking us to see the tallest building in town (a shopping mall), a temple, and a few other sights.

As rain descended on the city, we retreated to a restaurant for a fried squid snack and I suggested we buy a small gift for the Sportron guys (the ones who had bought us lunch) and stop by their office to drop it off (despite being it a Sunday, most of them were at work). We arrived at the offices and after an hour or so of hanging out, we decided it might be best to just take them out to dinner, since they had been so kind as to treat us for lunch.

An hour later, we three travelers and eight Sportron drug and supplement salesman (plus a few friends and one wife), gathered for what could only be described as an absolutely fantastic Cambodian hot pot dinner at a restaurant I recommend highly (Dararaksmey Restaurant, #51 St. 63 Corner St. 208, Sangkat Boeng Raing, Khan Daun Penh in Phnom Penh; 012 877 087).

Cambodian Hot Pot @ Dararaksmey Restaurant

Despite the fact that not everyone spoke English, and we clearly spoke no Cambodian, we had a fantastic night dining with our friends from the bus. As the beers continued to be opened and the food kept coming, I quietly grew concerned that this dinner might cost us more than we bargained for—we were, after all, budget travelers despite our inherent affluence. At the end of the night the bills was totaled and for fourteen people to have essentially all-we-could eat and drink at what I bet is one of Phnom Penh’s finest hot pot restaurants, the entire night set us back $43 USD.

Happy and full, we thanks are new friends who gave us a ride back to our guesthouse.Early the next morning we boarded another bus bound for Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam ($3). On this second bus ride we didn’t find any new friends, but we did almost lose the bus.

Shops opening in the early morning hours.

At a ferry crossing the bus stopped for what we thought was a bathroom break, but before we returned, the bus pulled forward getting lost in a jumble of probably twenty identical buses that was slowing moving forward onto the ferry deck (mental note: next time you are in a line of buses, pay closer attention to what your bus looks like!).

As the traffic lurched forward, a crowd of people on foot were allowed to overtake the dock and the ferry horn blew which signaling the ferry’s immediate departure. Amongst the crowd of dozens and dozens of Cambodian women with baskets on their heads, livestock, and hawkers selling fruit, candy and sunglasses, we frantically chased what we hoped was our bus (with our bags in its cargo compartment). We pounded on the bus’s aluminum siding as it rolled forward, hoping the door would open as the gang plank of the ferry was pulled up nearly right underneath our feet and the ferry set off across the Mekong River towards Vietnam.

We were one of the last few people let onto the ferry. Fortunately in our mad dash for the boat, we managed to single out the right bus, but unfortunately in the rush, we didn’t get any great pictures of the chase.

We crashed into our bus seats with our nerves shot and sweat pouring down our brows from the tropical heat, and an hour later as the sun hit its apex overhead we made it to the border crossing, putting a close to our Cambodian adventures and opening the door for this American tourist to literally walk into Vietnam—one of the last Communist countries on the planet.

Vietnam Border Post

[You can view more photos from our trip across Cambodia in the photo gallery that will be highlighted tomorrow---Don't have a clue where to find that? Then click here.]

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• Read another story of a random friend I made in Window Shopping in Cambodia
• Read a random story from China and how I Bought A Camera From a Guy Named Fish

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• See photos from Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples.
• See photos from another climb up another ancient monument: The Great Wall of China
• See past videos on ‘What It’s Like’:
  • In A Karaoke Bar in Hong Kong
  • To Fire A Machine Gun In Vietnam
  • To Walk Through a House in China
  • To Buy A Duck In China
  • In a Tibetan Dance Club

“You are handsome.”

“Thank you” I said and then smiled and looked away at the tin roof of the three-walled hut.

She waited a moment, then said “Very cheap, I’ll give you a good price.”

“Thank you” I said, “But I’m just looking.”

She waited, then said, “If you pay, I can get my education.”

“Thank you” I said, “But I’m just looking.”

“Where are you from?” she asked, her shoulder length black hair pulled up in a pony tail.

“America,” I said.

“Oh, I have a friend in America,” she said softly with a smile.

“Wait,” I paused amongst the t-shirts and kitschy Cambodian goods (more than likely made in China).

“Does that actually work?” I asked. She looked back innocently.

“I mean, if you tell someone you know someone from where they come from, do they actually buy something?”

She feinted innocent.

“I mean, first you told me I was handsome, then you’d give me a good price, then you told me I should buy something so I can fund your education, and now you’re claiming you know someone from America? I mean, which one of those usually works?”

She stared at me blankly for a second, then smiled shyly and looked down towards the ground.

In that brief moment of silence, I felt the wall between this American tourist and the Cambodian shop woman—walls built between money and poverty and unlimited choice and few opportunities—- crumble. The ice had been broken, and over the next half an hour my new friend Srie Ra, opened up to me about Cambodia, life and running a souvenir shop on the side of the road in one of the world’s most money poor but tourist rich countries.

She talked of her family, her 17-year old niece Hourt who co-ran the shop with her, the large commission she must pay to the man in the city who actually imports the goods she sells, the challenge of getting an education in a country that went through a genocide just 25 years ago and why so many Cambodians speak amazing English.

(She also told me that men usually go for the “your handsome” line and women go for the “help me get an education” line.)

All of what she shared was a much needed window into Cambodian life, in an area that is teeming full of tourists that necessitate Coke stands and t-shirt shops stuffed in every unoccupied spaced between dozens and dozens of thousand year old stone temples—The Temples of Angkor.

In order to travel and see the world, or at least to see the famous things, you have to spent time in tourist areas like Siem Riepe—though I don’t always like it. Often tourist areas seem prepackaged and inauthentic because of the commercialization and the imported Western world amenities (The Holiday Inns, The KFC’s, the Coke stands, the Pringles, etc.). Getting past those things, to see the people for who they are, not the stuff they sell, is sometimes difficult. But thanks to a friendly young girl in a random shop, just down the road from the Angkor Tom Temple, I had an hour where the walls came down and through the little window we created, we shared with each other a glimpse into the other’s world.

What I learned about Cambodia and life as a shop owner was a lot, what I shared with her about America, I hope was helpful too. I learned that on an average day at her shop, one shop with identical things amongst twenty other identical shops lining the same street, a good day would be a day when they had one, or two, sales.

“How much is a good day of sales?” I asked.

“If we make 8 dollars(US), it has been a good day,” she said.

Cambodia is a country that surprised me. Flying in from Singapore, based on the country’s recent tragic history (if you don’t know what I’m talking about go Google “Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge“) and all I’d heard from the media, I expected to be confronted with extreme poverty, beggars, orphaned street children, and no English.

What I found was a beautiful country of extremely friendly people, poor but intrepid, a people who had taught themselves English because they knew tourism may be the only thing their country could export (by importing tourists). Yes, there was poverty, and I’m sure much more in areas outside of the tourist spots (and all I saw was the tourist spots). Yes, the country was poor (with an average per capita income of less than $290 per year) but Siem Riepe (the tourist capital) and Phom Phen (the political capital) had more shopping malls, night clubs, internet cafes, and Holiday Inns than beggars and orphaned street children. Walking around the emerging capital city a few days later, after noticing that there were few men over the age of 30 on the street (as most were killed by the Khmer Rouge), I saw casinos being built, narrow roads being widened into picturesque boulevards and growing modern amenities. Phom Phen is certainly up and coming. Despite their terrible history, the people in Cambodia may be some of the nicest and friendliest I’ve met on the planet.

Back at the shop, after a short lunch of steaming noodles and fish (which cost all of 75 cents), I decided to return Srie Ra’s shop to thank her for opening that window for me by buying something small from her.

After a bit of looking, I picked out a black and gold tablecloth and a blue surrong from the displays on the wall, and I asked her how much she’d like for the two items.

“$16,” she said hesitantly.

“Ok, I said,” not wanting to bargain, as is typical, because I was buying this not because I needed a tablecloth and sarong, but because I wanted to give her some business for sharing her time with me.

She smiled.

Her niece grabbed a plastic bag and they conversed in Cambodian for a moment and then she reached under the table and pulled out three cloth scarves (which sell for about $3 a piece) and she folded them and placed them in my bag with the tablecloth and sarong, saying nicely, “A gift from us for you and your two friends.”

I smiled. Maybe she was thanking me for opening a window for her…

…or maybe she was just being Cambodian.

Srie Ra and Hourt in front of their shop

The crew inside the shop (you’ll note the blue scarf in Janny’s hand)

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• See photos of The Temples of Angkor
• Read another shopping story: my search of women’s designer hand bags in Hong Kong.
• Read how I learned how to (or how not to) barter in the story “Great Men, Great Wall, ‘Great’ Shoppers”
• Get another glimpse through an “open window’ of a Tibetan family in “Another Man’s Shoes“