Aug 18, 2007
By Hao-Nhien Vu
Nguoi Viet (Calif., USA)
There are at least 500,000 Vietnamese living in Cambodia but despite having been there for generations many do not feel welcome and live on boats instead of land. Nguoi Viet's Editor, Vu Hao Nhien recently visited Cambodia and has this report. Photos By Hao-Nhien Vu
TONLE SAP LAKE, Cambodia — Here, as soon as the tourists appear at the souvenir shop on the bank of the lake, the tiny boats rushed over. All were women and children, all with the permanent tan of someone who spends entire days in the hot sun.
They were selling things — bottled water, soda, beer, bananas. Each selling for ''one dollar,'' they clamored, pronouncing ''dollar'' the way people all over Asia pronounce it: a hard ''d,'' a round ''oh,'' a flat ''ah'' and no trace of any ''r.''
I ventured something in Vietnamese. ''Chuoi gi mac vay?'' Why are the bananas so expensive? That did it; they answered back in Vietnamese.
They were clinging on to the side of the shop, but none climbed up. It then struck me that the scene was reflective of the entire Vietnamese village here — all living on the water, with no access to solid ground.
Right in northwest Cambodia, where the Siam Reap River meets the Tonle Sap Lake, on the far end of the country’s border with Vietnam, there is a populous village of expatriated Vietnamese whose origins lie lost in the memory of the locals. Everyone lives on boats and form a floating village.
Vietnamese are the most populous of the people in the floating village. ''Vietnamese, Cambodians, Muslims live here,'' our Cambodian guide said. Our tuk-tuk driver had said the same thing, in that same order.
Most of these 3,000 Vietnamese have been in Cambodia for two, three or even four generations. Most have never been to Vietnam.
Some families have been living here since the middle of the last century. Some had fled to Vietnam in the 1970’s to escape Lon Nol-era anti-Vietnamese pogroms — in which ethnic Vietnamese may be attacked and killed by radical Cambodians — and, later, Pol Pot’s killing fields, but then returned, feeling more attached to the place in which they’d been born and grown up than to the land of their ancestors.
''So, if you’ve all been here for generations, how come your Vietnamese is so good?'' I asked, in Vietnamese of course.
They answered in a perfect accent of the Mekong Delta. ''We all live with each other — song chung het ma chu.''
''All Vietnamese,'' one proudly added, ''no Cambodians.'' Decades of bloodied conflicts have resulted in still simmering resentment.
This same resentment also resulted in laws that have kept the Vietnamese villagers on the water. As foreigners —even though they’ve existed here since the time of the grandparents or even great-grandparents — local Vietnamese are not allowed to own land.
''We all live on the water,'' one young mother whose name I could not catch told me. ''Most of us raise fish or sell things to tourists for a living.''
Raising fish in the Tonle Sap is the local equivalent of raising chickens in your backyard. You keep a large net under the water, attached to the bottom of your boat. You throw in a batch of small fish, and keep them there while they grow up and multiply; a hole in the floor of the boat gives you access to the fish which you feed several times a day.
The people who can afford a fish-raising boat can make a comfortable living. Our guide pointed to the roof of one such boat where two antennae stood. ''That antenna, TV. And that antenna,'' he said, pointing to one long pole shooting straight upward, ''telephone.''
The electricity that runs the TV comes from car batteries. Once the batteries are discharged, they need to be recharged. That service is provided by a boat (what else?) that is connected to a land-based power line.
But many of the Vietnamese living here cannot afford a fish-raising boat. They scrape together an existence doing odd jobs, mending other people’s nets, for example, but mostly by selling things to tourists.
''One dollar'' seems to be the only English they know. There’s a boat that serves as an English school, taught by a Cambodian teacher. As knowledge of English opens up opportunities as well-tipped boat guides, such lessons are at a premium. Our guide paid the equivalent of $20 for a month of teaching.
In contrast, Vietnamese education is rudimentary. Lam Nguyen, the producer of the film ''Journey from the Fall,'' had been in the area for a few weeks, working on a Van Son music video production.
''The Vietnamese school here teaches kids just enough to read Vietnamese, and to do enough math to count money accurately,'' he said.
The school is subsidized by a Vietnamese charity, but the teacher still charges. ''Two hundred riels. That’s about five U.S. cents a lesson. If you have five cents today, you go to school today. If you don’t, you stay home and if tomorrow you have five cents, you go to school tomorrow,'' Nguyen said.
Near the Vietnamese school is a Cambodian school, a gift from a Japanese charity. In addition to the large classrooms, it also has a fenced-in playground on the roof.
''The Japanese school is also more solid,'' Nguyen said. ''It’s built of steel. The Vietnamese school has a bamboo bottom. Whenever a large boat passes by, the whole school swings and sways.''
The same thing happened with the boat-cum-pool hall, a local hangout for Vietnamese and Cambodians alike. Latched tightly against the bank of the lake, the pool table still swings and sways with each passing boat. The table surface, as a result, is not the usual smooth felt but some rougher fabric. It may make for a more difficult and unpredictable shot, but at least the balls don’t easily move from their position.
Smaller children had a fenced-in basketball court to play on, also a gift from Japan. But the sport, invented by a North American, has not caught on with the local little ones. They play soccer on it.
Nguyen’s dream is to build a place where local Vietnamese can relax and enjoy themselves. ''I want the children to have a playground, and the grownups to have a place to watch films. Real movies. Maybe I can combine them into one.'' It would cost around $20,000 or $30,000, he said, ''but if I want it to be solid like the Japanese school, it would cost some more. But I want the people to have a life, enjoy life. Right now, they’re just living day-to-day, and they’re sad all the time.''
There may be a reason why the people don’t seem to have a life: When even five cents for schooling can be hard to come by, the pressure to make a living weighs on everyone in the family, even the smallest child.
Charlie Nguyen, director of ''The Rebel,'' told of his experience visiting the floating village with a group of Vietnamese-Americans.
''There are these kids, they were begging us for money. They’re tiny little kids, not even four feet tall, and they were hanging on to the side of our boat, asking for money in Vietnamese. 'Chu cho chau mot ngan di,' they’re asking for us to give them a thousand riels, which is only about a quarter.''
Then the captain of Charlie Nguyen’s boat started the engine.
''We then started to go back to Phnom Penh, and the kids were still hanging on. We kept telling them, 'Jump down, or we’ll be too far away' but they won’t quit. They kept hanging on to the side. Our boat kept leaving the floating village farther and farther behind; we kept telling them to jump down before it’s too late, and they kept asking for money. Finally we gave them the money. They thanked us, tucked the money in their shorts, and jumped back in the water.''
''I don’t know how long it took them to get all the way back to the floating village. We were pretty far away,'' Charlie Nguyen added.
All that for a quarter. But that would mean five days of Vietnamese lessons, and who knows how much food and lodging or improvement to the roof over their heads.
TONLE SAP LAKE, Cambodia — Here, as soon as the tourists appear at the souvenir shop on the bank of the lake, the tiny boats rushed over. All were women and children, all with the permanent tan of someone who spends entire days in the hot sun.
They were selling things — bottled water, soda, beer, bananas. Each selling for ''one dollar,'' they clamored, pronouncing ''dollar'' the way people all over Asia pronounce it: a hard ''d,'' a round ''oh,'' a flat ''ah'' and no trace of any ''r.''
I ventured something in Vietnamese. ''Chuoi gi mac vay?'' Why are the bananas so expensive? That did it; they answered back in Vietnamese.
They were clinging on to the side of the shop, but none climbed up. It then struck me that the scene was reflective of the entire Vietnamese village here — all living on the water, with no access to solid ground.
Right in northwest Cambodia, where the Siam Reap River meets the Tonle Sap Lake, on the far end of the country’s border with Vietnam, there is a populous village of expatriated Vietnamese whose origins lie lost in the memory of the locals. Everyone lives on boats and form a floating village.
Vietnamese are the most populous of the people in the floating village. ''Vietnamese, Cambodians, Muslims live here,'' our Cambodian guide said. Our tuk-tuk driver had said the same thing, in that same order.
Most of these 3,000 Vietnamese have been in Cambodia for two, three or even four generations. Most have never been to Vietnam.
Some families have been living here since the middle of the last century. Some had fled to Vietnam in the 1970’s to escape Lon Nol-era anti-Vietnamese pogroms — in which ethnic Vietnamese may be attacked and killed by radical Cambodians — and, later, Pol Pot’s killing fields, but then returned, feeling more attached to the place in which they’d been born and grown up than to the land of their ancestors.
''So, if you’ve all been here for generations, how come your Vietnamese is so good?'' I asked, in Vietnamese of course.
They answered in a perfect accent of the Mekong Delta. ''We all live with each other — song chung het ma chu.''
''All Vietnamese,'' one proudly added, ''no Cambodians.'' Decades of bloodied conflicts have resulted in still simmering resentment.
This same resentment also resulted in laws that have kept the Vietnamese villagers on the water. As foreigners —even though they’ve existed here since the time of the grandparents or even great-grandparents — local Vietnamese are not allowed to own land.
''We all live on the water,'' one young mother whose name I could not catch told me. ''Most of us raise fish or sell things to tourists for a living.''
Raising fish in the Tonle Sap is the local equivalent of raising chickens in your backyard. You keep a large net under the water, attached to the bottom of your boat. You throw in a batch of small fish, and keep them there while they grow up and multiply; a hole in the floor of the boat gives you access to the fish which you feed several times a day.
The people who can afford a fish-raising boat can make a comfortable living. Our guide pointed to the roof of one such boat where two antennae stood. ''That antenna, TV. And that antenna,'' he said, pointing to one long pole shooting straight upward, ''telephone.''
The electricity that runs the TV comes from car batteries. Once the batteries are discharged, they need to be recharged. That service is provided by a boat (what else?) that is connected to a land-based power line.
But many of the Vietnamese living here cannot afford a fish-raising boat. They scrape together an existence doing odd jobs, mending other people’s nets, for example, but mostly by selling things to tourists.
''One dollar'' seems to be the only English they know. There’s a boat that serves as an English school, taught by a Cambodian teacher. As knowledge of English opens up opportunities as well-tipped boat guides, such lessons are at a premium. Our guide paid the equivalent of $20 for a month of teaching.
In contrast, Vietnamese education is rudimentary. Lam Nguyen, the producer of the film ''Journey from the Fall,'' had been in the area for a few weeks, working on a Van Son music video production.
''The Vietnamese school here teaches kids just enough to read Vietnamese, and to do enough math to count money accurately,'' he said.
The school is subsidized by a Vietnamese charity, but the teacher still charges. ''Two hundred riels. That’s about five U.S. cents a lesson. If you have five cents today, you go to school today. If you don’t, you stay home and if tomorrow you have five cents, you go to school tomorrow,'' Nguyen said.
Near the Vietnamese school is a Cambodian school, a gift from a Japanese charity. In addition to the large classrooms, it also has a fenced-in playground on the roof.
''The Japanese school is also more solid,'' Nguyen said. ''It’s built of steel. The Vietnamese school has a bamboo bottom. Whenever a large boat passes by, the whole school swings and sways.''
The same thing happened with the boat-cum-pool hall, a local hangout for Vietnamese and Cambodians alike. Latched tightly against the bank of the lake, the pool table still swings and sways with each passing boat. The table surface, as a result, is not the usual smooth felt but some rougher fabric. It may make for a more difficult and unpredictable shot, but at least the balls don’t easily move from their position.
Smaller children had a fenced-in basketball court to play on, also a gift from Japan. But the sport, invented by a North American, has not caught on with the local little ones. They play soccer on it.
Nguyen’s dream is to build a place where local Vietnamese can relax and enjoy themselves. ''I want the children to have a playground, and the grownups to have a place to watch films. Real movies. Maybe I can combine them into one.'' It would cost around $20,000 or $30,000, he said, ''but if I want it to be solid like the Japanese school, it would cost some more. But I want the people to have a life, enjoy life. Right now, they’re just living day-to-day, and they’re sad all the time.''
There may be a reason why the people don’t seem to have a life: When even five cents for schooling can be hard to come by, the pressure to make a living weighs on everyone in the family, even the smallest child.
Charlie Nguyen, director of ''The Rebel,'' told of his experience visiting the floating village with a group of Vietnamese-Americans.
''There are these kids, they were begging us for money. They’re tiny little kids, not even four feet tall, and they were hanging on to the side of our boat, asking for money in Vietnamese. 'Chu cho chau mot ngan di,' they’re asking for us to give them a thousand riels, which is only about a quarter.''
Then the captain of Charlie Nguyen’s boat started the engine.
''We then started to go back to Phnom Penh, and the kids were still hanging on. We kept telling them, 'Jump down, or we’ll be too far away' but they won’t quit. They kept hanging on to the side. Our boat kept leaving the floating village farther and farther behind; we kept telling them to jump down before it’s too late, and they kept asking for money. Finally we gave them the money. They thanked us, tucked the money in their shorts, and jumped back in the water.''
''I don’t know how long it took them to get all the way back to the floating village. We were pretty far away,'' Charlie Nguyen added.
All that for a quarter. But that would mean five days of Vietnamese lessons, and who knows how much food and lodging or improvement to the roof over their heads.
