June 8, 2008
By GLENN and DIANA VONDRA
Special to the Register
The Des Moines Register (Iowa, USA)
Our first lesson upon arriving in Hanoi was on how to cross a busy street choked with motorbikes, akin to a swarm on hungry locusts, without getting run down.
Our guide, Lee Trein, advised that after stepping off the curb to walk slowly and deliberately, do not stop and do not run, and everything should work out. It is up to the motorbike driver to miss you. It was still somewhat disconcerting watching speeding bikes zip past you, veering at the last second and barely missing important body parts.
Such was the beginning of our three-week journey through the Southeast Asian countries that made up the old French Indochina: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
We booked the trip with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), which specializes in indigenous experiences for their travelers. Over the course of our trip, we had several dinners with families and then spent a night with a wonderful family in Dalat, Vietnam. These personal visits gave us a good insight into the culture and everyday living conditions of the local people.
The years of war seemed like a distant past as everywhere we went, we were treated very warmly and there seemed to be a smile on everyone's face.
While in Vietnam we slept aboard an old junk in mystic Halong Bay. We crawled through the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi. We distributed clothing to the children at the Ming Tu Orphanage in Hue. We met with university students in Dalat, most of whom were transpiring to be tour guides, translators or school teachers. We visited a village of Kho hill tribe people and we also traveled on a sampan up the Mekong River.
Cambodia was the last leg of our journey and was perhaps the most emotional.
Cambodia is a dichotomy of contrasts. Within the past several years the country has developed a budding tourist industry with beautiful new five-star high rise hotels sitting beside squalid thatched huts and polluted waterways.
The country's population is very young. One does not see many old people because during the Pol Pot regime of the mid-1970s, almost half of the population was brutally murdered.
After the army of Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia was an intellectual wasteland. No teacher, no doctors, nor anyone with schooling remained. Even wearing eyeglasses subjected one to being killed.
Everyone we talked to recounted horrific tragedies in their families during those terrible years. We saw many people with one or both legs missing and were told that there are still more than 3 million land mines unaccounted for in the countryside.
While in Cambodia, we spent most of our time in Siem Reap, which is close to the ruins of Angkor, a 600-square mile complex of ancient temples. They were first built by the Khmer people in the 10th century as a Hindu shrine, but later became a Buddhist religious complex before being abandoned in the 15th century.
After visiting these spectacular ruins, we went on a cruise on Tonle Sap Lake, which is the largest body of fresh water in Southeast Asia and has a water level that fluctuates 25 feet, depending on whether the Mekong River basin is in the wet or dry season.
On Tonle Sap, we visited a floating school to distribute supplies. These schools are unusual in that they keep moving as the fluctuating water level constantly redefines the shoreline and the fish population, so the families of fishermen are always moving. Eighty percent of the protein utilized in the entire country is provided by the fishermen of this lake.
As Cambodia today tries to recover from its terrible past, there exists a great need for clean water. Almost a third of children die from water-borne diseases such as typhoid and chronic diarrhea.
One of the highlights of our trip was being able to participate financially in the construction of a well to provide clean water for up to six families in a village close to Siem Reap. This was through a local independent program we discovered called "Water for a Better Life."
The cost of the well, hand pump and concrete platform was $260. More than 40 wells have already been constructed and are in full use by families in several villages. We sincerely hope this will make a small difference in a country whose people have had more than their share of tragedy.
We left Indochina with the hope that peace will be lasting for the wonderful and friendly people we met while there. We intend to return someday to visit the children that our well will have helped.
Our guide, Lee Trein, advised that after stepping off the curb to walk slowly and deliberately, do not stop and do not run, and everything should work out. It is up to the motorbike driver to miss you. It was still somewhat disconcerting watching speeding bikes zip past you, veering at the last second and barely missing important body parts.
Such was the beginning of our three-week journey through the Southeast Asian countries that made up the old French Indochina: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
We booked the trip with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), which specializes in indigenous experiences for their travelers. Over the course of our trip, we had several dinners with families and then spent a night with a wonderful family in Dalat, Vietnam. These personal visits gave us a good insight into the culture and everyday living conditions of the local people.
The years of war seemed like a distant past as everywhere we went, we were treated very warmly and there seemed to be a smile on everyone's face.
While in Vietnam we slept aboard an old junk in mystic Halong Bay. We crawled through the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi. We distributed clothing to the children at the Ming Tu Orphanage in Hue. We met with university students in Dalat, most of whom were transpiring to be tour guides, translators or school teachers. We visited a village of Kho hill tribe people and we also traveled on a sampan up the Mekong River.
Cambodia was the last leg of our journey and was perhaps the most emotional.
Cambodia is a dichotomy of contrasts. Within the past several years the country has developed a budding tourist industry with beautiful new five-star high rise hotels sitting beside squalid thatched huts and polluted waterways.
The country's population is very young. One does not see many old people because during the Pol Pot regime of the mid-1970s, almost half of the population was brutally murdered.
After the army of Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia was an intellectual wasteland. No teacher, no doctors, nor anyone with schooling remained. Even wearing eyeglasses subjected one to being killed.
Everyone we talked to recounted horrific tragedies in their families during those terrible years. We saw many people with one or both legs missing and were told that there are still more than 3 million land mines unaccounted for in the countryside.
While in Cambodia, we spent most of our time in Siem Reap, which is close to the ruins of Angkor, a 600-square mile complex of ancient temples. They were first built by the Khmer people in the 10th century as a Hindu shrine, but later became a Buddhist religious complex before being abandoned in the 15th century.
After visiting these spectacular ruins, we went on a cruise on Tonle Sap Lake, which is the largest body of fresh water in Southeast Asia and has a water level that fluctuates 25 feet, depending on whether the Mekong River basin is in the wet or dry season.
On Tonle Sap, we visited a floating school to distribute supplies. These schools are unusual in that they keep moving as the fluctuating water level constantly redefines the shoreline and the fish population, so the families of fishermen are always moving. Eighty percent of the protein utilized in the entire country is provided by the fishermen of this lake.
As Cambodia today tries to recover from its terrible past, there exists a great need for clean water. Almost a third of children die from water-borne diseases such as typhoid and chronic diarrhea.
One of the highlights of our trip was being able to participate financially in the construction of a well to provide clean water for up to six families in a village close to Siem Reap. This was through a local independent program we discovered called "Water for a Better Life."
The cost of the well, hand pump and concrete platform was $260. More than 40 wells have already been constructed and are in full use by families in several villages. We sincerely hope this will make a small difference in a country whose people have had more than their share of tragedy.
We left Indochina with the hope that peace will be lasting for the wonderful and friendly people we met while there. We intend to return someday to visit the children that our well will have helped.
4 comments:
It's not just in Cambodia that you see that-it's the neighboring countries as well including Thailand and Vietnam.
Right, so what else is new. Travelers find this contrast in all poor countries. These people seemed to have traveled to SE Asia, or Asia for that matter, the first time. Good reading for Americans but not much in it.
right on!
hey, hey, why don't you travel the world and see that cambodia's planned development is no different than the one you see in bangcock, manila or some other countries out there. so, i don't buy that! cambodia will be better, though. full speed ahead, cambodia! god bless cambodia.
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