Siem Reap - Day 5

Cooking and the Circus

Today was another rest day. I can't rush these things you know! Plus I need time out to go and have massages and pampering every day or at least every second day. At $18 for an hour at a very nice, clean, quiet, professional spa, its so worth it!

So today was cooking class and then night circus show.

I was picked up by Tuk Tuk after breakfast and taken just out of the city down a little dirt lane, past some very poor houses and then all of a sudden we were at a very nice building/resort i guess you would call it. I met up with the rest of our cooking class group, a family of 4 from the US and another Aussie from Maryborough. The teacher took us down the lane carrying a 2kg bag of rice with her to give to a local family that she would introduce us to. On they way she stopped off and showed us various herbs and fruit growing naturally by the side of the road, lemongrass, basil, bananas, papaya, oranges, mangos. Then we visisted with a poor family, met their kids, had a look at their kitchen and passed over the bag of rice to them. The father was very grateful. Although i had to wonder if the same family is getting a 2kg bag of rice every day from this cooking class? Hopefully they have other families that they have this arrangement with. The photos below show how the average rural family lives. Just surviving a lot of the time, with very little in the way of protein, mostly rice and some veggies. Needless to say all the kids are half the size both vertically and horizontally of most Aussie kids. 

The family kitchen, in a separate, low lean-to away from the house. Notice the smoke damage to the roof! I asked him about accidental fires and the father said that they keep a bucket of water nearby to put them out...What do you think their kitchens looked like 100 years ago? 500 years ago? Now think about what Aussie kitchens looked like 100 years ago, compared to what they look like today. Many things in Cambodia look and work exactly the same today as they did 500 years ago...and not in a good way.

The kitchen sink, laundry sink, bathroom sink, shower, bath, drinking water for themselves for their animals......installed by an NGO at some point. There were many of these in the front yards of rural houses.

This country reminds me in so many ways of East Timor. They both have many, many similar problems and issues, but Cambodia seems to be on everyone's radar more. Perhaps its just that Cambodia has been more publicised around the world over the last 30 years, whereas East Timor is so small and insignificant to the major western countries they haven't wanted to know about it so much.  Plus Cambodia has a bigger population and of course they have Angkor Wat and the other temples. This alone brings 1 million tourists  to Siem Reap every year. Tourists in their thousands flood the streets, hotels and restaurants. A number of local people told me that Cambodia is not as popular with tourists as neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam and so they stay poor. Whilst this is true to some extent,  tourism in and of itself is not going to lift the country out of its desparate poverty. Lots of the tourism dollars still end up going to local and national government in bribes due to ongoing corruption. 

What i did notice about Cambodia compared to my experiences with Vietnam is that the people are more trusting/naive? Not sure if Vietnam used to be like that and now isn't or if it never was. The Cambodians also generally seem to lack the sheer enthusiasm and drive that you see in Vietnam. This could reasonably be due to such recent social  and political problems, which have only just stopped having a direct and major impact in the past 10 years. The general attitude is, "oh well, whatever will be, will be. We can't really do anything about it." 
Obviously there are exceptions, Davy being one of them, but the general feeling amongst both the locals and the expats that i spoke to is that there has been decades, even centuries, of dictatorship led power and this has kept the vast majority of the population in poverty, with no education and absolutely no way of making something of themselves and improving their position. It just wasn't possible under the authority and rulership of governments and kings. They ensured that ownership of land and posessions was impossible. Similar to the position of Serf's during the European dark and middle ages. If you weren't royalty you had no hope. There wasn't any major rebellions against the government or leadership either. And whether this is partly due to their strong Buddhist religious beliefs or not i'm not sure. It has certainly contributed to them not having a strong desire to better themselves. This and the fact 1/4 of their population were killed and/or permanently maimed within the past 4 decades. In any case whilever they have an undemocratic, corrupt government in place nothing much will change. Even though every year for the past 15 years the world has continued to pump $500-$800m worth of aid into the country, which is 50% of their GNP. It has been estimated that half of this money each year goes directly into the pockets of the  countries leadership. The gap between rich and poor is so, so much greater than Australia. A small bottle of water costs USD$1. Lots of the population hardly make that much money per day.

Ooh, that went off on a political ranting tangent didn't it?? Now, where was I?
Oh yes, cooking class. Well we did lots of chopping and then pounding with the mortar and pestle and then more chopping and slicing and peeling and then cooking and voila! We created 3 amazing dishes which the cooking teachers then plated up for us and we sat at a beautifully decorated table on a timber platform in the middle of a rather green pond full of catfish and made ourselves very full. Proof is in the pictures below. I made it all myself, I promise!

Tasty  chicken and green mango salad with lovely, salty dressing and freh herbs

Best dish of the day. Amazing flavours, aromatic, but not too spicy, this freshwater fish Amok was so delicious.

Rice flour dumplings with a piece of palm sugar imbedded inside each one. Rather horrible, gelatinous, sticky, tasteless things these were, definitely not big on Sth East Asian sweets. Best thing about them was the freshly grated coconut on top.

And so to the circus that night! This ended up being another wonderful highlight of my trip to Siem Reap. I wasn't sure what to expect which was a good thing in this case. It is a mixture of drama, theatre, clowning, gymnastics, dance, humour, music and lots of laughs and energy. Its official name is Phare Cambodian Circus and the idea came from an amazing French NGO who are using this and music and art to assist young people to focus on learning and providing them with creative outlets. It was so good, amazing actually, shows just how fantastic young Cambodians can be when given the means, education and opportunity.  I have added a movie clip below which hopefully will give you some idea of the vitality of the night, was so much fun. The good thing was about 25% of the roughly 100 people in the audience were Cambodian families which was great. I was expecting it would be  tourists only. The local Cambodians sitting next to me on the benches were beside themselves with excitement, laughter and wonder.