We arrived at Cambodia, or we arrived at Phnom Penh. What a evoking name, and the city lives up to it. Coming on the boat through the Mekong from Vietnam, one can see the changes from the populous country. Once in Cambodia there are not many houses by the river, although and unlike in the neighbor there are stunning golden pagodas every now and then. There is much more vegetation and much less people. Phnom Penh changes that. Its riverside has been face washed with nice buildings and stunning pagodas, one gets an idea that it is a relatively wealthier city. However, once passed the riverfront I got to the inner streets full of markets, people, garbage, tuk-tuks and the like, And many pagodas, some of them very well kept and clean, but naked children and not much order on the streets. I felt it closer to India than China - Vietnam feels inevitably like China -. And then we walked down some vice streets, where ugly and undesirable old Westerners - white and black - look desperately for young and sadly beautiful poor Cambodian girls: not a nice sight.
A Cambodian man at a travel shop, when I told him how much richer I felt it seemed than Vietnam, according to the riverfront, assured me that Cambodia was actually very poor, and it literally imported everything. I could witness that when we went to a local upmarket restaurant for lunch and we were served... Italian sparkling water - Pellegrino -. I can't help getting angry when I see how unfairly multinationals are ruining local industries, and cannot understand why the local government doesn't tax their products, as Western economies do with developing nations' goods.
Phnom Penh is suffering a massive construction boom, fueled by apparently no-strings attached Chinese investment. Even some buildings have its signs in Chinese only. Some of these modern buildings are actually nice, others are just plain functional ugly Western style. The issue is that no infrastructure has gone with it, so the streets are decaying, unsafe, there is no sidewalk in some parts to walk. There is a state of the art brand new Chinese casino, neon-screens, but loads of poor people making a living selling overripe fruit or useless things. The imbalance in this other time stunning city - there are some old colonial French buildings which unfortunately are not being repaired and most of the times end up demolish for brash new sky scrappers - is hard to digest, and leaves you questioning if the future is bleak or somewhat hopeful for Cambodia's capital. Lots of people are moving in from the countryside, most of them are illiterate and have many children, which they cannot feed. I saw some monks looking after abandoned children. It seems government corruption is ubiquitous. I hope I am wrong.
We visited the impressive Royal Palace and the incredibly interesting National Museum, with an impressive exhibition of Khmer statues that I dare say rivals the Louvre, Vatican and British museums. I ate grilled crickets and silk worms, crunchy and not bad and also tried the fish amok, the delicious surprise of Cambodian food.
As I was to check later, Cambodian people are really sweet and loving, and naive - once again the sad reference to sex tourism from undesirable Westerners -, laid back though not entrepreneurial and hard working as Vietnamese.
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