At Sihanoukville, in southern Cambodia, "beach kids" prowl the hot sand, selling a variety of goods, from cold drinks and barbecued meat to sarongs and T-shirts. (Photo: Sarah Treleaven, Rob Elliott, AFP)
(Photo: Sarah Treleaven, Rob Elliott, AFP)Saturday, June 10, 2006
Sarah Treleaven
Weekend Post
My eyes were closed but I could hear the sound of fast-moving feet on the sand. I opened my eyes, using my hand to shield them from the brightness of the sun, and smiled at my new friend, a nine-year-old Cambodian girl, as she flopped down next to me on the edge of my beach towel. I could see that her shoulder bag was full of small portions of cut fruit, and she had bracelets tied to a board tucked under her arm.
I stared out at the ocean, the idyllic shades of blue mingling in the distance as the sun reflected off the softly rolling waves. She stared, too. Maybe she was trying to see what I could see, hoping to understand why I was so thoroughly dazzled by this place. Or maybe she was wondering what was out there, beyond her small town of sand and stray dogs and afternoon brownouts.
I wish I could remember her name. I know she told me, and I even said it out loud to myself once or twice, but it was an unfamiliar group of sounds that left my unreliable memory as quickly as they bounced off the tip of my tongue.
I met my friend when I spent a week in the southern Cambodian beach town of Sihanoukville. I went there for the same reasons everyone carrying a 20-kilogram backpack goes: I heard that it was beautiful and cheap. You can get a room for $5. The mixed drinks, served in small buckets, will cost you about $1. And for $3 you can have dinner on the beach, eating red curry and drinking a mango shake while watching the sky over the ocean fade into a warm shade of orange.
I stayed on Serendipity Beach, a long stretch of white sand covered with small wooden guest houses and brightly painted restaurants and bars. Every morning, I walked about 20 paces from my guest house to the same little cafe. It had weathered wicker loveseats facing the ocean, and a diverse English breakfast menu with questionable spellings. I would order a small baguette with jam and butter, and "white coffee," a cup of very strong, poorly filtered coffee sweetened by a generous serving of condensed milk. I would eat my breakfast, feeling the slow burn of the creeping sun across my shoulders, and I would watch the ocean.
Before the baguette had reached my mouth, I was usually surrounded by a crowd of young merchants. My friend was just one of many beach kids in Sihanoukville. They spend long days prowling the hot sand, selling a variety of goods, from cold drinks and barbecued meat to sarongs and T-shirts. Their parents can't afford to send them to school every day, and they are extremely eager to take home a few dollars to help feed grandparents and baby brothers. They are keenly aware that possession of a single American dollar -- the currency most commonly used by tourists in Cambodia -- will make a much bigger difference to their life than yours.
By my second morning at the cafe, all of the kids knew my name and where I was from. Most of the kids are close to fluent in English and, in a bid to endear themselves, can spout off facts about Western countries, including national capitals and geography trivia. Not long after they appeared every morning, they would start with their formal pitch: "Do you like pineapple? Would you like to buy some pineapple? Will you buy some later? If you do buy some later, promise you'll buy it from me. Let's pinky-swear on it."
And then, having finished with their early-morning business, they were free to be kids again. They would doodle in my spiral notepad, pick a page at random from my book and read it aloud. Often, they would squabble among themselves, comically competing for attention. Eventually they would move along, but my friend always stuck around a little longer so we could chat. She would ask about my life back home, about the things I'd seen and the places I'd been. When I told her about travelling around Southeast Asia, about seeing Thailand and Cambodia, and my plans to see Vietnam and Laos, she looked at me like she was dreaming.
Backpackers love to take pictures of poor kids with dirty faces. Sihanoukville was the only place in Southeast Asia where I commonly saw tourists stop to talk to those kids, to treat them with the same good-natured affection we usually have for the kids we come across at home. Most of us bought fruit and jewellery and drinks, knowing that it really did make a difference. Sitting on the beach, I watched 20-something Westerners race the kids into the ocean, everyone shrieking and laughing. Sometimes they would spend an afternoon just kicking around a soccer ball, and then pay for a round of Cokes.
Though some of us are occasionally tempted to believe that tragedy is meted out in roughly equal proportions, there's nothing like travel to remind you of how fundamentally unfair life can be. At home, we're often able to isolate ourselves from the poor through carefully selected neighbourhoods and schools. But there are few places to run from poverty in Cambodia. It's impossible to avoid the amputees, leaning on crutches or wooden carts, selling books about the Khmer Rouge and the temples of Angkor. You can't steer clear of the kids in torn clothes offering a handful of cheap postcards, their hands and faces caked with the brown dust that pervades every inch of the unpaved villages and towns.
On my last day in Sihanoukville, I sat on the sand with my friend and we both stared at the ocean. I asked her about what she had learned when she was in school a few days before, and she asked me when I was leaving. She tied a macrame bracelet around my wrist, just like the ones I used to make at camp as a kid. I protested briefly, but then sighed and offered her some money. She shook her head. "You're my friend," she said with a smile.
I didn't think I wanted that bracelet, but when I lost it a month later in Vietnam, I was crestfallen. I looked for it for days, shaking T-shirts and turning pockets inside out, checking and rechecking my room. I didn't want to lose that bracelet, to give up my connection to that particular place, to someone who didn't logically belong in my world. I wanted to keep that small reminder that even the most seemingly disparate pieces of a puzzle sometimes fit together.
I stared out at the ocean, the idyllic shades of blue mingling in the distance as the sun reflected off the softly rolling waves. She stared, too. Maybe she was trying to see what I could see, hoping to understand why I was so thoroughly dazzled by this place. Or maybe she was wondering what was out there, beyond her small town of sand and stray dogs and afternoon brownouts.
I wish I could remember her name. I know she told me, and I even said it out loud to myself once or twice, but it was an unfamiliar group of sounds that left my unreliable memory as quickly as they bounced off the tip of my tongue.
I met my friend when I spent a week in the southern Cambodian beach town of Sihanoukville. I went there for the same reasons everyone carrying a 20-kilogram backpack goes: I heard that it was beautiful and cheap. You can get a room for $5. The mixed drinks, served in small buckets, will cost you about $1. And for $3 you can have dinner on the beach, eating red curry and drinking a mango shake while watching the sky over the ocean fade into a warm shade of orange.
I stayed on Serendipity Beach, a long stretch of white sand covered with small wooden guest houses and brightly painted restaurants and bars. Every morning, I walked about 20 paces from my guest house to the same little cafe. It had weathered wicker loveseats facing the ocean, and a diverse English breakfast menu with questionable spellings. I would order a small baguette with jam and butter, and "white coffee," a cup of very strong, poorly filtered coffee sweetened by a generous serving of condensed milk. I would eat my breakfast, feeling the slow burn of the creeping sun across my shoulders, and I would watch the ocean.
Before the baguette had reached my mouth, I was usually surrounded by a crowd of young merchants. My friend was just one of many beach kids in Sihanoukville. They spend long days prowling the hot sand, selling a variety of goods, from cold drinks and barbecued meat to sarongs and T-shirts. Their parents can't afford to send them to school every day, and they are extremely eager to take home a few dollars to help feed grandparents and baby brothers. They are keenly aware that possession of a single American dollar -- the currency most commonly used by tourists in Cambodia -- will make a much bigger difference to their life than yours.
By my second morning at the cafe, all of the kids knew my name and where I was from. Most of the kids are close to fluent in English and, in a bid to endear themselves, can spout off facts about Western countries, including national capitals and geography trivia. Not long after they appeared every morning, they would start with their formal pitch: "Do you like pineapple? Would you like to buy some pineapple? Will you buy some later? If you do buy some later, promise you'll buy it from me. Let's pinky-swear on it."
And then, having finished with their early-morning business, they were free to be kids again. They would doodle in my spiral notepad, pick a page at random from my book and read it aloud. Often, they would squabble among themselves, comically competing for attention. Eventually they would move along, but my friend always stuck around a little longer so we could chat. She would ask about my life back home, about the things I'd seen and the places I'd been. When I told her about travelling around Southeast Asia, about seeing Thailand and Cambodia, and my plans to see Vietnam and Laos, she looked at me like she was dreaming.
Backpackers love to take pictures of poor kids with dirty faces. Sihanoukville was the only place in Southeast Asia where I commonly saw tourists stop to talk to those kids, to treat them with the same good-natured affection we usually have for the kids we come across at home. Most of us bought fruit and jewellery and drinks, knowing that it really did make a difference. Sitting on the beach, I watched 20-something Westerners race the kids into the ocean, everyone shrieking and laughing. Sometimes they would spend an afternoon just kicking around a soccer ball, and then pay for a round of Cokes.
Though some of us are occasionally tempted to believe that tragedy is meted out in roughly equal proportions, there's nothing like travel to remind you of how fundamentally unfair life can be. At home, we're often able to isolate ourselves from the poor through carefully selected neighbourhoods and schools. But there are few places to run from poverty in Cambodia. It's impossible to avoid the amputees, leaning on crutches or wooden carts, selling books about the Khmer Rouge and the temples of Angkor. You can't steer clear of the kids in torn clothes offering a handful of cheap postcards, their hands and faces caked with the brown dust that pervades every inch of the unpaved villages and towns.
On my last day in Sihanoukville, I sat on the sand with my friend and we both stared at the ocean. I asked her about what she had learned when she was in school a few days before, and she asked me when I was leaving. She tied a macrame bracelet around my wrist, just like the ones I used to make at camp as a kid. I protested briefly, but then sighed and offered her some money. She shook her head. "You're my friend," she said with a smile.
I didn't think I wanted that bracelet, but when I lost it a month later in Vietnam, I was crestfallen. I looked for it for days, shaking T-shirts and turning pockets inside out, checking and rechecking my room. I didn't want to lose that bracelet, to give up my connection to that particular place, to someone who didn't logically belong in my world. I wanted to keep that small reminder that even the most seemingly disparate pieces of a puzzle sometimes fit together.
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