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COLONIAL.
just had breakfast, a lot of toast and fruit! here a girl from the staff serves you all the time, the butter is called colonial and the houses are all in french colonial style. feels a bit wierd.
had a godd night sleep, this morning i will just walk around a bit before we head of to the capital Phnom Pen. it will take us 6 hours by a local bus. from Thailand to here we had a privte mini van, very luxurious. lets seee how this is.
like i told you before we are 15 people all together, all of them brittish exept one girl from Australia nad one guy from Gremany. the leader, steve, is a really cool and relaxad guy. he canadian. dsont know if that has anything to do with it! i like that they are all brittish since i love their accent. it improves my english but takes my self confidence down unfourtenately. i can hear when i speak Swenglish and i dont want to say anything wrong but after talking to one person for a while, usually it gets better. they are all really nice and everybody hangs out with everybody. thids night i had the single room. we are the girls going alone so we will rotate when it comes to charing the dubble room.
cambodia is, so far, a place you just have to love. the people is more relaxed then the thai people, much more reserved and respectful. the ones that say that thai people know what service is and thet they are nice, havent been here. the thais wont leave you alone even if you say no and they are in one way tired of all the tourists i think. they dont have the knowing when to stop bothering people, i think its in there way of acting, that they are more close to eachother, more intense, while the cambodians are more quiet and not so intence.
the people here are also impressive in that way that even if they have a brutal history behind them they focus on the future and puts a smile on theier face. when i had lunch yesterday the waiter, just 19 years old talked to me. i asked if he is pround to be a cambodian and he said yes. they are very good in english and also very young! half of the population is under 18 and that is noticied imideately. its rare to see people int thier 40s and older people i dont think i have seen. 70 year olds? maybe two? in other worlds this hole country, ore at least the most profitable and biggest buisness, tourism thais is, is run by people just entering their 20s. hoiw said young people can not do any good? how said young people is a burden to society? here they ARE the society. i really hope they make it, im quite sure they will.
a big problem though is the even younger ones. the kids. the street kids that is. the first night here on our way to the night market (some wanted to go for a fish massage. tiny fishes eat in a pool nibble at your feet eating your dead skin, that is what fish massage is. in oher words nothing for me. i had it for free at the erawan waterfalls when i slipped at r rock and feel in. didnt get hurt but the fishes nibbeld at my feet! not pleasant at all!) a littel girl,not even 5 yers old took my hand. she came up to me from behind, i didnt see her and when i felt her hand i thought somebody tried to make me aware of the traffic or that i was in the way of someone. when i looked down this little girl looked at me and i just freeked out! i was so strange, a sereet kid touching me, big eyes begging for help, i wasnt prepaired... so out of this world. it felt like something dirty i had to remove from my hand, like i was dirty... it has never happened before. i wonder why you dont seet them as real people,m becouse i didnt, she wasnt a person... i just pulled my hand out of hears and felt very uncomfortable. theres about 20 000 street kids in this country and where we crossed the border there were a lot of signs informing people to be nice to the kids and take care of them. they are of course easy targets for harasment by any kind. trafficing and a sorts of things i donbt know anything about. and they thing uninformed tourists dont know about is that giving money when they beg for it is just what keeps them out of school. you sholud never by anything from a kid (tons of them were round the ankor wat city tryibg to sell books, post cards, souveniers, and they were just 7-10 years old). why ios that you think? well, its their parents that tell them to and so they are the extra work forec for the familiy and they get more money. therefore they are not sent to school. if they dont have any parentsa, i guess they only get that its better to make money then going to an orphan. its so strange, people here dont go to school... 7 yoers olds are working. 5 yers olds with out parents. i wonder how they see the world. if im scared about going to the ankor wat... and if im worried somethims and can not go to sleep... how scared nad worried dont they feel?
i have never been to a country this poor before. the border crossing between thailand and cambodia at the city of poipet was just like the wild wild west. steve, the tour leder said that if you spend one week here it would be the craziest week of your life. i wanted to ask him why, but after i while i kind of understood. i can not explain it but i think its true. it was nothing like crossing ower to the countries round sweden. here you had to wait in a long que split up in threee categories. Foreigner, thais and thais with border crossings. why thais go here is becouse it aillegal to gamble in thailand. but it was a surreal feeling. i bet i sound naive and silly, and its not an excuse, but to come from sweden and never having to go cross borders like that before it fellt wierd. it was a surreal thing. felt like they wanted to check me, like i was a suspect of any kind. this place is nothing like home. nothing. it was a hole buisness built up around the border of corse. food places, clothes to buy... and young boys pulling huge wagons with peoples bags. the wagons looked like those you can see behind donkeys. young boys, and men, working like animals. it was hot. horribly hot. it just didnt feel right. there the youngre kids begged for food and water, i had water and some chrisps in a see through bag. big misstake. big misstake. no road existed on the combodian side of the boarder, it was just a dusty path and colnial style houses built up on the sides, wild wild west. definitely. and three places to pass to fillin diferent forms. one about health condition, becouse of the svine flu. it asked if i had any symptomes. i dont, but even if i havce had, i wouldnt write it. ok, had some head ake of coure but not becouse of any flu and that is not something i want to be registered. felt wierd. after handing this form in a young girl (like i said, they are all tennagers or in their early 20s) had a thing shaep like a gun, with a red laser bem pionted at my eyes. and yet again will smith came to my mind. felt like she wanted to erase and clear my memory with that laser beem. when i asked the others tehy said the beem was pionted at the forehead and took the body temperature. so she didnt erase my memory just like will smith in the movie Men in black. thank god. (you know, will smith was also starring in the movie wild wild west). but it was surreal, this place, just like in a movie. i didnt dare to tkae any pictures. just some, i think.
finally after all the formalities we wnet by bus, this time a less combortable one and heades to the city where we still are now. the landscape was facinating (i know i can not spell it !) and beautiful. serene, peaseful and gave a felling of tranquility. we passed rice lands and the people working there were walking around in the water. i think i understood how thinks work here on the countryside, (the hole country is veryu rural, about 80 % of the population lives on the countryside so its not much cities to talk about but anyway) i think they grow theirer own food, sell some of it at a local market and then get what they dont have on theier land. its all so simple and plain,. no control, no systems, no social serurity net, nothing to really care about. dont know how it is with taxes but im quite sure the people on the contry side dont have any employer, they work in a family and with their family. just like in the city maybe. the tok tok drivers just by them selves a motor bike, go out on the street and shout for people to come to them. that is how it is to get a job here, an employmen.t you kind of hire ypurself, i guess. and this hole thing made me think about the state, why we have states and governments and such a highly orgainsed society. but that is a hole other story!!
now its time for me to go out a bit, pack by bag and wait for us to head of to teh capital. tomorrow we will go to the killing fields and the S-21 prison. i like cambodia, its beautiful and sertainly like nothing i have seen before. theres so much more i can tell you but htere just no time now. im haveing a good time and wish you were all here to see the things i have seen.
Love.
Charlotte
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