We found the city of Kampong Saom to be very poor and underdeveloped. As Vietnam has become a progressive city; the Cambodia we saw has been stagnant. There are no decent bathrooms (even the hole in the ground toilets are horrifying), no sidewalks, gambling shacks seem to be a popular place to visit in the middle of the city and as we walked down some alleyways and peeked into some of the abodes people lived in, we were struck by the lack of just about everything. The people are sitting outside in the dirt and the children are playing in the same dirt, no shoes. The banks have guards and would not let foreigners in. We had to use the ATM’s on the street.
Our excursion led us to a school where the children did wear uniforms; however, there were other children not in uniforms, not in school hoping to get “donations” from the visitors. Our guide was very clear about not giving the children money because giving them just one US dollar tells them they can make more money begging on the streets than they can by finishing school. We went on a boat ride where we thought we’d see birds, macaques, sun bears, rhesus monkeys. We didn’t even see a bird. Our guide says everything has been hunted to extinction on the river. The boat pulled into a dock (or what they call a dock) where we disembarked to walk to a 45 foot tower that the Japanese built for tourists. Talk about a scary walk. We had to walk about ¼ mile, over water on wood planks with no railings. Some of the wood planks were missing and some looked read to break if stepped on. Our guide kept saying “stay in the center, walk in the center, walk with determination”. We reach the tower and the guide suggests we not walk up because the tower tends to move back and forth when you reach the top. Only one person climbed it to the top; guess who?
Our guide told his personal history during the Khmer Rouge regime. The regimes goal was to kill all educated people and return the country to a pure agrarian country. His father, a school inspector, and several uncles were killed. He was large for his 8 year old age, hence forced to work in the rice fields. One day, he was too weak for work and found some rice which he ate. He was found out, beaten, and locked into solitary dark confinement. A guard visited him and while being interrogated realized the boy and guard knew each other. A week later, the guard unlocked his cage. The boy escaped to his home village, the guard was never seen again by anyone. Then his story gets even grimmer. He harbors no ill feelings and has reconciled the entire experience through his religion.
This was not a favorite city/state and we will not be going back for a decade or two.
