A student's view of Cambodia

Children swirl around the Rustic Pathways visitors as they arrive in Sre Brey, a small village about three hours from Phnom Penh by boat. (JOSH FIDLER, Chicago Tribune / February 9, 2010)

A teen service trip to Cambodia not only helps orphans there but does perhaps even more to help the student making the journey.

March 21, 2010
By Josh Fidler
Special to The Chicago Tribune Newspapers

The road that led me to Cambodia crosses just about every ocean. It's called Rustic Pathways, one of dozens of programs for teens that organize service-project trips around the world — from Fiji to Thailand to Tanzania.

The Rustic Pathways trip that jumped out at me was the 25-plus-year-old company's trip to Cambodia, a country rich with possibility and beautiful landscape. Through research, I learned of the 1970s genocide that no teacher had taught me or even touched on. And I saw an opportunity to help, to teach and, at the same time, to learn. The mission was to teach English to children in small schools and orphanages.

And so, in late summer I headed off for Cambodia by way of New York. During the next seven days, I came face to face with ancient temples, new friends, history and hope.

Phnom Penh

My introduction to this country begins in its capital. My Rustic Pathways group is small, just four of us. Two guys, two girls, all from the United States and all 16 to 18. With our RP team leader, we spend two days here and begin our sojourn with a visit to Tuol Sleng, now a museum. Originally, Tuol Sleng was a school. Then, after Pol Pot set out to return the country to a totally farming-based economy in the mid-1970s, it was used, paradoxically, to torture and murder anyone who was educated.

Large fences wrapped with rusted barbed wire still surround the school's courtyard. As I walk on ground where thousands of brutal murders took place, this past is impossible to shake — even in the beautiful courtyard. Inside the museum, photos of victims line walls.

The lesson about Cambodia's dark past then takes us to one of the dozen or so Killing Fields; at this one, about 17,000 people were murdered and buried in mass graves. An enormous memorial temple towers here, its windows revealing shelf after shelf filled with human skulls dug up from the graves, reminders of the staggering toll of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. Along the grounds, bones are piled, and old, withered clothes litter the ground. The constant rain increases, and we have taken in all that we can.

The floating villages

We haven't started really roughing it yet. This night, we stay in a hotel a lot like those in the States. But we're soon headed for a different way of life. The next morning we will travel by a small wooden boat with a tin top to a small village called Sre Brey.

The boat ride takes three hours and gives us our first glimpse of Cambodia's floating-village culture. It's one connected by stilted tin huts rising at river's edge and swaying with the wind.

When we arrive at Sre Brey, a Muslim village along the Tonle Sap Waterway, all the children are eager to learn our names and find out how old we are. Age helps the children determine where everyone is placed in "rank." They surprise us with how well they speak and understand English.

After our introductions, we walk with the kids through neat rows of green rice fields to a swimming hole where some of the boys jump in and splash. Everyone soon joins in.

Back at the village, we break up into smaller groups and play games. The hours seem to evaporate. It's dark and the villagers have made us dinner. For each of us, a big bowl of noodles sits steaming next to a large bowl of freshly cooked rice; a platter is filled with pork and some vegetables from the local market.

Finally, it's our turn to repay our generous hosts. It's time to teach. The kids gather their favorite books and their journals and get as close as possible so that we can share the light from a battery-powered lantern. I help 15-year-old Roni read a Bob the Builder book.

The ultimate hosts

We stay overnight in the village. David Goldman, another RP traveler, and I stay in a room that has been netted off so we can sleep mosquito-free. The wood floor is covered with a knitted blanket. It's hot enough to make my brow sweat, but there's no complaining: Strangers gave up their house to give us a place to stay; the family sleeps wherever it can in the village.

The next thing I know, the roosters are crowing. Goldman and I search for the village kids, itching for a soccer game. At nearly 6:30 a.m., we learn, it's blistering hot.

We play for nearly half an hour until sweat makes us look as though we've just come from a swim. The villagers, we notice, barely break a sweat.

The girls are up, and we gather our stuff to leave. The crowd that gathers to send us off is remarkable, for they are all our friends now. We drive on uneven dirt roads for a couple of hours until we arrive at another hotel and unload. After settling in, we head for a local orphanage.

Started by the French, this orphanage is home to about 50 kids, ages 9 to 18. At first, we teach them a little English and play a language game. They eat it up, not wanting to stop until everyone has had a chance to play. As the game winds down, we disperse into the courtyard and play volleyball and soccer, and the kids chase one another through a constant drizzle. Megan McAdams, our group leader from Rustic Pathways, sees an ice cream vendor and buys all the children ice cream. Most kids go back for seconds, some thirds. After nearly 40 frozen treats, the vendor tells her that the price is $2. She gives him a five, and he looks as though he has won a lottery.

The road to Battambang

Tomorrow we head for Battambang, a developing city where you can find a mall and even a few American cafes. We head to the open-air market before going to another orphanage, and we clean out our wallets to buy food for the kids. There have been times when they were surviving barely on one bowl of rice a day.

Together, the four of us are able to buy seven bags of rice and noodles (enough to last the orphanage three weeks) and even clothes for the kids. There is a church inside the grounds, and monks stroll as kids play soccer and "high kick," a Cambodian form of hacky-sack played with a feathery thing that looks something like a shuttlecock.

We watch the sun rise at Angkor Wat. This ancient and amazing complex of temples has become a magnet for travelers. Strangely, our group seems to be less wowed by this wonder than we have been by the people we have met and kids we have taught. You might chalk it up to any number of reasons — a not very glorious sunrise, the limited time we have to explore, and the emotions of this being our last day together in Cambodia.

Farewell, Cambodia

Our work, undeserving of the word, is over, and it's time for us to explore the market in Siem Reap.

The market is sheltered and provides shade from the slumping sun. Shoppers begin bartering at half the asking price of any item.

For our last meal in Cambodia, where we've eaten everything from pad Thai to frog legs, we head to a multilevel restaurant called Dead Fish. Though the menu offers mostly Khmer (traditional Cambodian) dishes, they serve cheeseburgers too. We're advised to go to the bathroom and see the alligators in an open pool nearby. When we walk by it, the gators are motionless and seem almost unreal. But when the lights come on and we buy fish to feed them, there is no doubt. It's an intimidating sight to see a 400-pound beast voraciously attack the sushi we're serving.

After dinner, we flee, for the last time, tuk-tuks, the scooter-pulled carriages that line the streets, run into massage sellers, head for more ice cream. The end, we know, is near.

Waking up early in the morning, we say our goodbyes to the Rustic Pathways staff and Siem Reap. In Bangkok, we change planes and meet up with kids who had been on other Rustic Pathways trips in Asia.

I arrive home a changed person. While thinking about people stressing about the value of their 401(k)s (and understandably so), I also remember how four teens with pocket change fed 50 children in Cambodia for a month.

Personal Journey: A tourist, and a native, and comfortable

Writer Somanette Seang , at Angkor Wat, survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and arrived in the United States at 7.

Sun, Jan. 20, 2008
By Somanette Seang
For The Philadelpha Inquirer (Pennsylvania, USA)

It had been more than 26 years since I was in Cambodia. I survived the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s and, at age 7, emigrated to the United States with my mother, grandmother, aunt and cousin.

Until last summer, I never felt ready to return to Cambodia because I struggled with feelings of survivor's guilt. Why did I live when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died?

My fear was that I would be just another tourist instead of Khmer. In the end, I was a Khmer tourist.

I arranged to volunteer as an English teacher in Siem Reap through the nonprofit organization Journeys Within Our Community (www.journeyswithinourcommunity.org). I would be teaching two English classes at Wat Thmey (New Temple). Wat Thmey is an old temple with a modest memorial dedicated to about 50 people who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

My "classroom" was the open foyer of the temple, and I had a dry-erase board. My students were teenagers and young adults who could not afford to enroll in a high school or university. Poverty is prevalent throughout Cambodia, even as the country builds and develops.

My 17 students did not know what to make of me initially. I looked Cambodian enough, but there was an intangible characteristic that made me not quite truly Khmer. I told them my story of emigration and the loss of the father I never knew. Several of them told me stories of their impoverished lives in the rice paddies, helping their families find aluminum and plastic reusables in the polluted city, or selling beef on a stick and coca (soda) along the dusty and crowded streets of Siem Reap.

The students did not dwell on their struggles; they showed hope and determination. For the week I was there, they rode their bicycles - the luckier ones rode borrowed motos - to class. We studied present-tense verbs and vocabulary for different modes of transportation. But mostly, we talked about Cambodia. They were eager for me to know and love their country.

Because they wanted me to see the true beauty of Siem Reap, two of my students, Saphour and Vanna, picked me up on Saphour's moto (it is amazing how many people ride at once on a moto) and took me to Angkor Wat. I had read and seen pictures and movies about the 12th-century stone temple built with three levels and four galleries. The galleries' walls are covered with hand-carved, detailed scenes of battles, gods, heaven and hell. When I walked onto the gateway of Angkor Wat, I felt completely proud to be Cambodian.

My students thanked me for being their teacher. But truly, I was the most thankful. I may have taught them grammar, as my father might have done when he was a teacher, but they taught me about hope and self-acceptance. It was fine to be a Khmer tourist.

A helping honeymoon

Boys at Knar School eat a lunch of noodles. Ponheary Ly's clients, mostly American tourists, help support Cambodian schools with their donations. (Photo: DON FAUST)

Sun, Jan. 20, 2008
By Chris Gray
Inquirer Staff Writer
The Philadelphia Enquirer (Pennsylvania, USA)

Newlyweds lend a hand in Cambodia's struggle against the ravages of war and poverty.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia - Let's be honest: It was the specter of tigers, temples, and tom yam soup that led my husband and me to honeymoon in Southeast Asia. We wanted an adventure to remember, on a continent where neither of us had been.

But as I researched our trip, I realized that we should spend at least a little time practicing "voluntourism," giving back to people who are still struggling for the basics after decades of war and poverty.

We found a way to have it all in Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the ancient temple complex Angkor Wat - and Ponheary Ly, a tour guide who considers it her mission to help educate as many Cambodian children as possible.

I found Ly, a Siem Reap native and survivor of dictator Pol Pot's labor camps, through the Asia message board on Fodors.com. Ly, 44, is a veteran guide who has arranged private tours of Angkor Wat and other Siem Reap attractions in both English and French - languages she learned in secret during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia - since 2000.

A former English teacher, Ly has also worked for seven years to enroll children in Cambodian schools. While public school in the country is ostensibly free for the first three years, many rural children do not have the $12 necessary for shoes, school supplies or uniforms, she said.

"As a teacher, I knew about the difficulties of the kids and families who couldn't send the kids to schools. Also, I found that the kids are smart, but they don't have any occasion to show how smart they are. To build the country, we have to build the education for all people, especially the kids."

It's a message that Ly's clients - mostly Americans who prefer independent travel with native guides to packaged tours - could support. In addition to touring the temples, more and more visitors asked Ly whether they could visit the schools and donate money for bicycles, supplies and uniforms.

Lori Carlson, formerly of Austin, Texas, was one such convert. When she visited here in 2005, Carlson was struck by Ly's background and dedication. On her return to the States, she founded the Ponheary Ly Foundation (www.theplf.org), a registered nonprofit that channels money directly to the schools.

As of December, Carlson, 48, had raised $90,000 for five schools - and quit her job to move here to work fulltime with Ly. She formed a board of directors for the PLF, which distributed school supplies to 1,955 children last fall.

"I believe the travelers who go to visit the temples at Angkor Wat understand they bear at least some of the responsibility to gently nudge these children toward school rather than reinforce the idea that it's good to stand on the corner and beg dollars from tourists," she said.

With such strong advocates, Don and I were excited to meet Ly and do our part. We arrived here to find a city undergoing massive change. The number of tourists visiting Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992, has exploded in recent years, spurring an increase in hotels, shops, restaurants and other businesses.

While the influx of dollars has been good for many Cambodians (merchants prefer U.S. dollars to the Cambodian rial), it's disconcerting to see barefoot bicyclists ride past $800-a-night hotels. Young children hawk maps, books and trinkets near the temple grounds; tuk-tuk drivers fight over $1 fares.

That's not to say that Don and I eschew luxury (it was our honeymoon, after all). We turned down a $20 room at Ly's simple guesthouse, primarily because it didn't have a pool, which we considered essential to deal with the area's crushing humidity. At $95, our poolside room at Bopha Angkor was spacious yet not ostentatious, and the package included daily breakfast, a traditional Khmer dinner, and a massage.

Just a few hours after we landed, we went to Angkor Wat with Ly's brother Dara as our guide. There are more than 300 temples in the complex, but Dara steered us to the ones that would provide the most interesting backdrops for my husband, the photographer.

As we sweated in the 90-degree heat, I asked Dara about his family's experience under the Khmer Rouge. He told us that his father, a teacher in Siem Reap, was among the first wave of educated people to be killed under Pol Pot's regime. As a result, Dara and his siblings were sent with their mother to the countryside to work.

It's a sobering tale, and we heard more from Ly over the next few days. Ly, who was 13 when the Khmer Rouge came to power, and her siblings survived, mainly because villagers would leave food for them at night.

"We were given this much rice," Ly told us, holding up the tip of her finger. Dara would "crawl out on all fours, like a cat" to get extra food; sometimes, actual cats or monkeys would have gotten to the rations instead, she said.

Still, the extra nourishment kept the family alive - and the Khmer Rouge noticed. Officials asked her mother why her children were still alive when so many other youngsters had died, Ly said. When her mother refused to answer, she was horribly beaten.

Such atrocities were common in the Pol Pot years. Yet most Cambodians don't like to talk about the time under the Khmer Rouge, Carlson said. It's rare to find it discussed in schools, primarily due to the country's Buddhist beliefs, which hold that people - even war criminals - are responsible for their own karma.

Ly is different, Carlson said. She understands that it's important to talk about the past so it doesn't happen again. We were talking in Ly's van, on our way to deliver lunch to the 476 children at Knar school, out in the Cambodian countryside. On the road, we saw men on bikes toting crates filled with piglets and open huts with children playing in the dirt.

Cambodian families expect all children, no matter how young, to contribute economically, Ly told us. Which is why even the kids who are lucky enough to go to school attend for a half day; at home, they are needed for chores, farm work, or other ways to make money.

In addition to a donation made before our trip, we gave Ly $40 for lunch, which buys two noodle packets for each child. That's essential, Carlson said, because if the child received only one packet, he or she would take it home to the family instead of eating it. The school tries to feed the children at least once a day to make sure they have enough energy to learn, Carlson said.

We arrived at Knar School, which consists of several one-story classrooms. As Don carried the boxes of noodle packets into the rooms, the children's eyes grew wide. They straightened in their seats and thanked us by pressing their hands together and bowing.

Carlson and Ly showed us around the school and talked about the improvements that have been made. Incentives such as bicycles, uniforms, and extra noodle packets show the families that there are tangible benefits to their children attending school, Carlson said.

"I would like to have my country be the same as the other countries," Ly said, with Cambodian children able "to have good education to work well to get out from the poor life."

The children seemed to love school, showing off their uniforms and books. An impromptu game of soccer ensued, with Don in the thick of it. It was an emotional sight for me, which sparked later discussion: Although we had been together several years, Don and I had never talked about the greater good we could accomplish as a couple.

It's a conversation that all newlyweds should have, wherever their honeymoon takes them. For us, road-testing our fledgling marriage in an underdeveloped country not only gave us the adventures we sought, but also set the course for a more permanent path. And that's definitely a trip worth taking.

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Two Sides of Cambodia

There are no direct flights to Siem Reap from the United States. You can fly there from various Asian cities, including Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi.

British Airways flies to Singapore from Philadelphia International Airport with one stop. The lowest recent round-trip fare was about $1,815. Singapore Airlines flies nonstop from Newark Liberty International Airport for about $1,970 round trip.

We stayed at Bopha Angkor (www.bopha-angkor.com), booking the "Poolside Evasion package." The cost was $285 for both of us for three nights, including airport transfers, breakfast, a dinner, and a massage for two.

We booked Ponheary Ly as a guide by e-mail (ponheary@yahoo.com). Ly charged us $145 for 21/2 days of touring, which included three half-day sessions at Angkor Wat, the visit to Knar School, and a visit to the floating village on Tonle Sap lake.

More information

To donate or read more about the Ponheary Ly Foundation, go to www.theplf.org. Or e-mail Lori Carlson at donate@theplf.org.