Rolo on Tour

A nice thing about travelling is that you get to know the diversity of the world. Although some things may be characteristic for some regions it always turns out that there is something special about every country.
Before I arrived in Cambodia I thought I would more or less just visit the ancient Angkor temples and then head on to Thailand. But I was wrong. In contrary that country and its people have touched my soul unlike any other place I know.

To give you a better understanding of that I have to tell you a little bit about the recent history of the country:
During the Vietnam War parts of the Vietcong wanted to hide themselves from the US forces and crossed the border to Cambodia. As a result the US army was bombing parts of cambodian territory. That on the other hand caused the cambodian people to fight against the suppression and their US-friendly regime.
Now when the USA left in 1975 a group called the Khmer Rouge under leadership of Pol Pot seized the power. All foreigners had to leave the country within 3 days. Next they sent all the people to rural areas to do forced labor for example in rice fields. Any person who could be some kind of threat to them was killed – together with their whole family. Who could be a threat? Anybody who disobeyed. Anybody who was caught stealing food when they were dying of starvation. Anybody who appeared to be intelligent: Doctors, Students, People who spoke a foreign language or simply people wearing glasses. It was a crime of unbelievable scale: approx. 2 million people (that was a quarter of the population) were killed within a couple of years.
In 1978 the group was overthrown and there followed 15 years of civil war. The country is since then run by a group of people calling themselves ‚Cambodian People’s Party‘. But basically it is a group of corrupt and criminal guys who run down the country even more. The transparency international corruption perceptions index lists Cambodia on rank number 154 out of 178 countries.

The normal people in Cambodia have a hard life and many of their families have been affected by the events which happened in the country. Hardly anybody has enough money to sustain a family.
Now that causes some more problems for the society. Many men make a baby and then run away. They can do so as they are not forced to pay for their kids (some of them can’t pay even if they wanted to, but of course there are a lot who could pay but do not want to). So now how will the mother provide care for her kid(s)? Sadly the only solution many of them see is prostitution.

Despite all these problems the people in Cambodia are so incredibly friendly. I do not know if it is their faith that lets them endure that much suffering. Their smiles can be the biggest smiles I have ever seen. It is actually contagious, so pretty soon I myself was walking around smiling all the time. And of course I also had to wave to all the kids everywhere, as they always got so excited upon people passing in a tuk-tuk.
But of course behind all this there was always also a deep sadness hidden and I think that it is exactly that duality which deeply moved me.

Now for those of you who just want to see the pictures of my time in Cambodia, here they are:

The royal palace in the capital Phnom Penh:

Some sightseeing monks

Creative gardening can often be seen in South East Asia

In one of the restaurants my travel mate Tobi had to settle the price for some books by playing Rock-Paper-Scissors:

Guess who won 😉

Next followed one of the cultural highlights of Asia: The Angkor Temples near the city of Siem Reap. Yes, there are actually a lot more than just Angkor Wat. We did 3 days of sightseeing and it was not too much.

Come on in!

One of the entry points of Angkor Thom

A romantic moment

The Bayoun temple which has buddha faces on all its many towers

Ta Prohm – the „Tomb Raider temple“

The area is crowded with street sellers: postcards, paintings, clothes or just drinks, they have everything

As you see 12th century cambodian women already were very beautiful. Those shown in the carvings are called ‚Apsaras‘.

What’s that?

Angkor Wat in the morning

You think that guy has a big load? You are wrong!

THAT guy has a big load:

🙂 🙂

Leaving Siem Reap I chose the option to take a boat to Battambang and it was a memorable trip. The boat passes some lake on which there are many floating villages. For me it is hard to imagine how life there might be, just think about the fact that they can not walk maybe more like 2 metres in one direction.

Mirror lake pictures are always lovely

I present you the floating temple. They also had a floating school nearby.

Practice for the cambodian version of Oxford versus Cambridge

Some days in Battambang and on the beach in Sihanoukville (where the biggest challenge is having to get rid of the kids who want to play pool for money/bracelets with you) later I finally managed to leave that country.
It was the last country I got to know on this trip and I am glad I did get to know it.

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