Crime, Corruption and Crazy Temples in Cambodia

Crime Times Two

We now arrive at a defining moment of my trip. A moment I tried to avoid but that is I guess inevitable at some point in every person's life. It could have been a lot worse, though it did shake me up quite a bit.

It all started on a sweet Bangkok evening as I arrived from Chiang Mai in transit to Cambodia for a week. Kat and Marissa and basically everyone else I had met told me nothing but wonderful things about Cambodia, so I want you to read my account as a one-off. As something that could happen anywhere…

Back to the airport. I arrived late at night and then had to leave super early the next morning so I made a (in retrospect bad) decision to sleep in the airport. I was having a ball: got a foot massage, ate some pizza, had a nice beer and updated my journal, and finally found a quiet bench on which to rest my weary soul. 

I woke up stiff as a broken board and headed to catch my flight to Phnom Penh. I traditionally take a picture in-flight between all of my destinations and as I reached for my camera, realized with extreme panic (I had one gig of photos on the camera) that it was missing/stolen. Knowing that I would not be back in the Bangkok airport for at least another week was not comforting as insurance requires that you report the theft within 24 hours. Try reporting a theft that happened in the Bangkok airport in Cambodia over broken phone lines and through two layers of a language barrier. It was the one day in my 15 months of being overseas when I thought I was ready to pack it in for frustration. I spent my first morning in Cambodia, with much effort, trying to report the robbery over Skype (3 dollars a minute for a regular call) to the lost and found in Bangkok who ended up being completely useless.

I was upset (mainly about the photos but the camera was upsetting too as it was the first time in my life that I decided to splurge on a good one) but it certainly wasn’t the end of the world, so I headed out to “enjoy” the sights of PP. 

As you may or may not know Cambodia went through a horrific period during the Khmer Rouge regime only 30 years ago where they estimate about 1/3 of the population was essentially killed or starved/worked to death. Families were torn apart, all industry with any western influence was destroyed and intellectuals were murdered in an effort to bring Cambodia back to "Year Zero" and to create an Agrarian socialist society. Horrific. The thing is that no one in Cambodia today was unaffected by this tragedy. Older people were either in the Khmer Rouge or had lost massive groups of their families, and younger children grew up with parents who were children during the terror and who didn't get to experience the basic functions of a family.

It's a poor country whose population has been devastated and as they rebuild their nation, tourists pour in, staying at their five-star hotels and basically infusing money in areas that don’t really need it. None of the money from tourism really goes to the “people” of Cambodia (I'm told). It goes to foreign investors in the tourism industry. So I can understand the desperation and anger of the people.

I headed off to the water and enjoyed a nice tapas lunch in town. Then I headed off in a TukTuk to the Killing Fields (TW), a mass grave where many people were beaten to death in order to save bullets during the Khmer Rouge regime. There is a huge memorial pagoda-like building that is filled with skulls (with estimated ages of the people next to them and with multiple fractures in all of the skulls), pits all over where the bones were recovered and clothing caked into the dirt which was slowly being exposed to the world. It was sombre and sobering and terrible.

As you walked around there were children who tauntingly and hauntingly sang “one, two, three, cheese…take a picture…one, two, three…”. The tune they sang to was eerie and reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street children's rhyme. It was a lot to process. As I was leaving I bought some candy at the shop and the begging children came out of nowhere and aggressively surrounded me in my TukTuk saying “candy for me please, please candy for me”. Of course I gave all my candy away. This is considered acceptable as if you give the kids money it goes to begging pimps basically and feeds a heavy system of corruption in Cambodia currently.

On the way home the heavens opened up and it poured and poured and poured some more. I was soaked to the bone and chilled to the max. This was combined with a bumpy pot-holed road where I was constantly being thrown dangerously in the air. Feeling miserable I started looking around me at the sights on the side of the street. Children were running and playing in the rain, women were collecting the rain falling from the roofs, and people were smiling and taking a break from work. My mood changed in an instant. These people had so little and they enjoyed every moment they could. I caught the vibe, just as the voice of my driver broke my reverie as he started asking where my hotel was. This was a tad strange as I had told him earlier where I was staying and he seemed to know and now he was pretending that he’d never heard of it. He pulled over to the side of the road next to a deep garbage pit and kept asking if I had a card that said where my hotel was. He was making me feel like a bit of a moron for not having a map and then he asked if I maybe had a card in my wallet that I forgot about.

I pulled out my wallet (that I had recently transferred everything into) and started to fish around just as I peripherally noticed some children approaching the TukTuk looking fascinated at what I was doing. Being the naïve person that I was and working on my past experience, I thought they were just going to ask for some money or food. In a flash, one of the kids burst forward and slammed my wallet down on the ground, picking it up in an instant that played out in slow motion to me as I can recall every feeling and expression on his face, and he jumped into the garbage pit.

I leapt out of the TukTuk and lost it at this point (realizing that everything I had except for my passport was in the wallet: two bank cards, two credit cards, two pieces of ID and 200 dollars). I started running after the kid and realized that he had disappeared in a sketchy field behind houses. As I was alone in the pouring rain, now surrounded by about 50 locals, I didn’t feel like that would be the safest idea. I then spotted a policeman down the street and ran up to him asking for help. He basically laughed at me and indicated that there was nothing he could do. I tried to find another entrance to the field but none existed (keep in mind this is still in the middle of a torrential downpour and I am soaked and my clothes are running ink).

I then ran back and started yelling at everyone and anything that I had nothing and I couldn’t get home. I then grabbed the arm of the second kid involved in the robbery and asked where his parents were, thinking that if I talked to them they would get the wallet brought back (I have spoken to others who had something similar happen and they reported moments of insanity where they did the same thing). I was wild

I realized now that it was getting dark and we were coming up on 5 o’clock. I was scared, and knew I had no money at all to make it through the night. This is when I started insisting that my driver take me to the Canadian Embassy. These were apparently the magic words to get things moving. All of a sudden the TukTuk driver was telling me that maybe if I waited my cards would come back (I would have to pay a fee for them of course, but it was possible and he was going to talk to the father of the boys about it). Then the policeman got on his cell which wasn’t working before and started trying to figure some stuff out.

I now understand that they were all in on it and this is where the corruption in Cambodia comes in which I will explain later. Nothing was really happening so I insisted at this point about going to the embassy, cards or not. I’d considered them a write-off at this point and I wanted to report the whole thing before someone tried to use my credit cards. The driver finally agreed and took me to the embassy and proceeded to wait two hours outside for me so that he could collect his money from me.

I ran into the embassy looking a fright and feeling more lost than I have ever felt in my entire life. I was picturing some Mission Impossible scenario where I would run into the plush mansion-like embassy, cry out “I’m a Canadian citizen and I’ve just been robbed”. Then someone would come over with a towel and a cup of tea, ask me if I wanted to take a hot bath and change into some fresh clothes provided by them before I dealt with my situation. In reality, I did get to say my little line but was basically ignored, was lucky that I caught the ambassador on her way out the door, and stood in a freakishly cold aircon room as I tried to figure stuff out.

The ambassador was actually really amazing. She stayed two hours after closing time to help me cancel my cards etc., she drove me home, and she invited me back the next day to tie up some loose ends. She told me some crazy stories about how people’s passports are stolen and they appear at the embassy the next day and “ransom” is requested for their return. The kicker is that the only thing I had left was my passport, and it had gotten so soaked in the rain that it was virtually unusable. When I went to the Aussie embassy to get my visa, the bloke who gave me the visa looked at me very reproachfully and said that I should really take better care of my passport. Right, I'll keep that in mind next time I'm robbed in the middle of Typhoon-like conditions. I did have tonnes of trouble at customs in Cambodia where they almost didn’t let me out of the country. If I had lost my passport I would have had to stay in Cambodia for three weeks. As I said, things could have been much worse.

I spent the next three days trying to calm down, getting emergency money transfers through Western Union, dealing with insurance and trying to get proof that I had indeed reported my camera missing. On top of everything else, no one that I had reported my camera missing to would write down that I told them about the camera. They actually even hid on me, hung up on my phone calls and basically refused to give me any kind of proof for my insurance company. Basically, everything was lost in translation and it was a frustrating mess.

Phnom Penh Anxiety

I still tried to see PP. I headed to the Russian market (clutching my bag close and snarling at anyone who got too close – I was a charmer), to S21 – the prison where many Cambodians were murdered, to many western restaurants (all of a sudden the only place I really felt safe was in western-run establishments), and camera shopping in the mall. I luckily met some nice US military men who took me for dinner, made me feel safe and who let me crash their 5-star hotel pool where I really felt safe and removed from Cambodia, which is just what I needed at the time. Which also made me feel terrible, understanding the extreme poverty and the not always positive impact of the tourism industry on the country. 

The sad part is that after this experience I trusted no one and I became quite hostile to anyone who I felt was threatening my safety. I just couldn’t let anything happen again. I had heard that sometimes people wait outside a store for when western people buy stuff and then follow them and steal it. So when I was buying my camera and random men would come up and watch my buying experience, I would ask the sales guy to ask them to leave. I was in a constant state of fear and didn’t trust anyone. When dark fell I was terrified, but my only option other than retiring to my room was to take a TukTuk somewhere, and I didn’t trust TT drivers any longer. I was now terrified to be robbed again in the more traditional way, which is for people on motos to grab your bag as they ride by, giving you a split second to decide if you are going to protect your body or your belongings. I was just a body of nerves and it was really constantly unpleasant.

Siem Reap Beauty

I finally caught a bus out of PP to Siem Reap and it was quite a relief for me. Siem Reap was a much nicer experience and with a little money in my pocket I tried to put the double robberies behind me as much as possible and just get on with my trip.

SR has an awesome tourist district with wonderful restaurants and massage parlours. Quite a contrast to the child beggars that approach you as you leave the restaurants. You are not meant to give money to the children, only buy things that they can eat. But then on top of that you have to open whatever you buy them as otherwise, they will just sell them back to the shops for money. Many children would walk up with their younger siblings and indicate that they needed powdered baby milk for the little tykes (who were clearly too old for baby powdered milk). This happened about 3 times and I would instead buy them fresh milk, put the straw in and then hand it to them.

I spent two days visiting the stunning temples. Sunrise at one and then up the next day at 4:30 for sunrise at Angkor Wat. What an amazing sight. It was wonderful and totally worth it. The cost to get in is so high though that most Cambodians have never been able to visit. Unreal.

You can get a TukTuk driver for the day going around temples for about 8 dollars. But for the sunrise, I decided to hop on a motorbike and as I was getting off I was graced with a “Bali” burn. In Koh Samui Thailand they call the same burn the “Samui” burn. It is basically a brutal circular third-degree burn that you get from your leg touching the exhaust of the motorbike as you get off. Ouch!

Corruption Cure?

On my last night in SR I went to a Beaticello live concert. I walked there instead of taking a TT which ended up being a big mistake as I kept sinking into about 3 feet of quick mud and would get my sandals ripped off. I arrived at the concert covered in caked-on mud. Thank god for bum cleaner hoses in the toilets.

Beatuicello is a Swiss doctor who years ago started high-tech hospitals for children in Cambodia. Cambodian children who experience disease can often not afford proper medical care due to corruption in the system. These hospitals solve that problem as doctors don’t accept bribes and the hospitals are built with 92% private donations, the rest with government aid. This guy goes around the world and plays the cello in concerts to raise money for the hospitals (a concert that I watched) and then lobbies for government aid. These hospitals are amazing and the project outstanding, however, it is discouraging to hear that Princess Anne visited a few weeks back, I guess determining whether or not England would give more money to the hospital, and she basically said that the hospitals were too advanced for the economy of this country. Great attitude. It makes me a little sick as she is basically saying that because of their economy, Cambodians should not have access to medical care that exceeds their socio-economic class.

Someone tried to explain the corruption in Cambodia to me. I was really upset and disillusioned that the police officer neglected to help me at all when I was in trouble. She basically pointed out that the police officer made about 20 dollars a month, and that even if he was able to keep his family afloat for 1 dollar a day, as many Cambodians try to do, it was not enough money to feed his family. So he is forced in essence to accept bribes. The same goes for teachers who accept bribes for students for good grades, doctors who accept bribes from patients for basic services, and just about everybody in every industry accepting bribes to oil the system and keep the wheels moving. It is so deeply rooted that changing it is no simple affair. And the beat goes on.

So that was my experience of Cambodia. An eye-opener, a learning experience, a confidence destroyer, and a series of beautiful sights. I have never been happier to board a plane for Bangkok and ecstatic to be heading to my mini-cleanse retreat in southern Thailand. It was quite an experience of an entirely different sort…some might say crappy. Stay tuned...