Trade Unions and NGOs

The Phnom Penh Post reports that the Kingdom (Cambodia to you) has passed its first laws on trade unions. It seems that big manufacturing is a new thing to Cambodia, but I might be wrong about that. I think garment manufacturing is the main big industry.

The aim of the law is to set out the restrictions on the rights of workers to organise. Unions have to register and receive certification from the Labour Ministry, on top of this they have to provide all financial reports. The legislation also outlaws "illegal strikes". According to Rong Chung, the union leader (don't ask me what that means) "the freedom of the unions will be ended". There was a wave of strikes in September based on the garment industry which centered on the call for higher wages.

This is all very strange because I had not noticed that Cambodia had problems with workers earning too much or having too many rights.

Here is a pie graph of the distribution of international NGOs in Cambodia.

Now for the poke with a sharp stick
Meanwhile, the Non-government Organisations (NGOs) are everywhere. The internet tells me that there are over 200 international NGOs and then hundreds more local NGOs. There are do-gooder westerners (yes, including me) running around providing every manner of social welfare. You just can't move without bumping into another charity, or organisation when working in Cambodia. I do not know if it is the world's most aid dependant country, but there is a huge international wave of religious or soft core social welfare organisations.

Meanwhile, the Cambodian government officials line their pockets. The Ministers for Education own private universities and schools, the top health administrators own clinics and hospitals, the graft and corruption starts at the top and goes all the way to the bottom. At the bottom you have people paying medics to treat dying children but the medics are employed to treat them anyway. You have people paying teachers for private coaching in order to pass the test, but the teachers are paid to teach them anyway. Often the low level teachers and medics are on a beneath subsistence wage, so they have to make a living somehow.

Few NGOs want to support radical causes or workers' rights, even at the most basic level. It is not as nice as saving orphans. There is a certain apolitical naivety amongst the NGOs, and only the party poopers bring a hard core political discussion to the dinner table. All good people, doing their little bit in woeful circumstances; so asking the hard questions is no fun.

I have been happy with my voluntourism. To be honest, I have had a great time, seen and done things that I would never have experienced. (That is about it though I think.) Others think differently about it; so be it, pass the bread.

Here I must say that I am greatly indebted to Su B from Battambang. We had the pleasure of really challenging conversation and more than a few good laughs. Just when I thought I could not make sense of anything much, she literally walked past my window at the teachers' college and later helped me at least confirm some deducations and questions.

The error of my ways

It is our last day and we are ready to come home.

I have gone back through the blog and tried to fix up the typos, spelling mistakes and punctuation errors. I know some of you have been horrified to find errors. Well, my policy is "Publish and Be Damned" it is only a blog. Of course, I would like to get it right, but some days I only have limited time and access. I decided a while ago not to let it stop me. I thought about writing a draft, checking it, then publishing later, but that would create a delay. I like to get it down and out while it is still fresh. Lots of people have said they feel they are on the trip with me. I love that, even if it is only a little bit true. If I stopped and refined too much, I would simply write less.

When I get paranoid about it, I remind myself of the maxims of communication: "audience and purpose". My audience is my family and friends, my purpose is to create a record, to share it all with you, to entertain, to try to capture a few salient observations, to give a slice of life.

In Khmer: I put my hands together in prayer in front of my face, then lower my hands to my chin, bowing my head as the hands descend. This is the Cambodian greeting for hello, good bye, thank you, sorry, regards and more.

In English (Australian idiom): Build a bridge.

Banana flower salad

You have all been waiting for it, I have been holding out. "But what about the food?", you ask. The overarching comment is that in three weeks, eating out for breakfast, lunch and tea, we have hardly put a foot wrong. If you want a point of comparison, go to your atlas. It is less spicy and diverse that Thai food and more simple than Vietnamese food. It is very mild, most dishes have a little sugar, sometimes more than a little, even the peanuts that come with beer have sugar on the top.

At a Khmer style street cafe you will get a main course for $1 - $2.
At a more western style place, you will pay $4-6. (Rip off)

Breakfast: It is just not a Cambodian thing in the way that we know it. Nor do they do breakfast pho like the Vietnamese, but we had some wonderful omelettes. Our advice: eat some fruit and juice, then maybe an egg or a French style baguette.

Snacks: At the school we were given a Cambodian snack every day. All good. Little trays of noodles with pickled vegetables, little parcels of rice wrapped in banana leaves, and special Battambang sticky rice.
Rice paper rolls and spring rolls are much like the Vietnamese style.
In Battambang the preferred snack is sun-dried spiced snails. They looked a bit of a worry and the television was reporting that many children were getting sick from them.
Little grilled song birds, probably just sparrows were also a popular snack. Next time I come I will try them, I promise.

Main courses
Amok is the national dish. It is a mildly spiced coconut curry. My favourite was served in a scooped out green coconut. It was rich and luxurious.
Lok lak is a very popular disk. It is a meat dish with some noodles and most important of all a runny fried egg on the top.
Soups: Tom Kar is lovely but my favourite was the preserved lime and chicken soup. It was magical and restorative.
Salads: The rule of thumb for the safe traveller is to avoid the salads, but that would be missing out. We had green mango salad and banana flower salad. Both of these were just lovely, and so far we are still standing.

French Food
We had one reasonable but quite expensive meal.
We had one terrible, expensive meal.

Drinks
Gen is transported back to her childhood in Goa, every time they serve her a green coconut. They take off the top, she drinks the juice, then scoops out the young soft coconut flesh. She is back home in India.
Wine: They sell it, it is terribly expensive so we have not bothered.
Beer: At 50cents for a pot of Angkor beer, we have been spoilt.
Cocktails: The perfect mojito for $1. A bottle of Havana Club rum for $8. It is as cheap as it gets, we have not missed the opportunity.
Water: Unless you want to grow a colony of amoeba in your gut; water has to be bottled, always bottled even when you clean your teeth. Those who live here and have the means filter it, then boil it. (Apparently there is a whole group of Ivanhoe Grammar students in Cambodia at the moment who have all be infected with amoebic dysentery.)

Cooking school
We did it, it was fun. I could have got the recipes from the internet, and done just as well, but we did it as a group, had an interesting guy teaching us. We declared it "another great day in Cambodia".

Stirring up the Froth

Once upon a time
A long time ago, the world was made of milk. The gods and the demons were fighting about who would get the elixir of life. They fought for a thousand years to no avail. Then they decided to work together and use a snake as a rope to stir up the milk to become froth. After another thousand years they stirred up a lot of milk froth and out of it the celestial dancers known as apsaras emerged smiling and dancing. They were all very pleased.

And then
Now, Cambodia is made of red dust. The poor working people and the corrupt leaders are fighting. They have been fighting for a long time. Working together has not been successful at all because the corrupt rich folks insist on driving around in their late model cars with no number plates. They are using the tuk-tuk drivers to stir up a lot of red dust and out of it one completely allergic hay-fever ridden westerner known as Greta has emerged sneezing and coughing. They are all very disappointed.

We have moved from our indulgent hotel, to a really lovely hotel. It is brand, spanking new and the manager did his training at the Sofitel. They are keen for business, so it is ridiculously cheap; for westerners that is.

Back to the late model cars without number plates
They belong to the corrupt government officials. They drive around and do what they like. This includes running people over, knocking people off their motor bikes, and plenty worse than that. When they knock someone off their bike they simply drive away. No stopping to check for a pulse here. This was told to me, then on the last day in Battambang, I was standing outside The Asia Hotel chatting to some Finnish tourists and it happened. Luckily, the injured person lived to keep his mouth shut about the tale. The thing to remember in this story is that whole families including tiny babies carried in slings travel on motor bikes. I hate to think what happens when they get knocked off.

I thought I was used to the sight of families on motor bikes until I saw a man riding a motor bike with one hand, his other hand wrapped around a tiny baby maybe 3 - 4 months old sitting in front of him. Watch out for the black late model cars I thought. But what choices does he have?

Shortage and abundance

Here is your homework. Sort the following list into two groups. One list should be the things that Cambodia has a shortage of, the other the things that Cambodia has an abundance of.

• Limbs both real and prosthetic
• plastic bags
• tuk-tuks
• female tuk-tuk drivers
• loud speakers
• plastic bananas
• water
• clean water
• meaningful work
• hammocks
• corruption
• late model black Toyota Lexus cars with no number plates
• moisturiser without a "whitening" agent
• signs on the road advertising the Cambodian People's Party
• imitation Louis Vuitton handbags
• Korean owned conglomerate businesses
• mental illness

There is an explanation for each of these, some of the ideas you can work out for yourself, others are quite sinister.

Today was a trip out to the enormous lake in the middle of Cambodia, known as Tongle Sap, through terribly poor villages, up a river and out to the lake to visit the floating village. I loved the boat houses with duck and geese farms, the floating basketball court and the floating battery recharging shop. The floating school looked nice and the floating Catholic Churches were a curious inclusion. Best of all was the floating pig farm and the floating crematoria. I could not make it up if I tried.

The Khmer Lexicon

I will teach you some Khmer language and culture. The literal translations are below.
Breakfast = Eat Rice Morning
Lunch = Eat Rice Sun Above
Dinner = Eat Rice Sunset
Kitchen = Rice Cook House

You get the idea. It is all about the rice. The poverty is in the language.
Our friend Barbara has decided to go with this idea and add to the lexis. She has not lucked out in the hotel department as Gen and I have. Her mattress is hard, her pillow is flat and her towel is threadbare. Here is Barb's contribution to the Khmer/English dictionary.
Towel = Strain Rice Device

We are staying at Le Meridian and have been forced to take a suite, even though we booked a twin. I guess I will just have to put up with it. Gen's husband gave us his hotel loyalty points and we have been upgraded. How I will thank him, I do not know. Perhaps I will arrange for some apsaras to come and dance for him, one showing her teeth. I feel as though I have been upgraded to another planet. We had our first night away from all street noise, and are both much restored. Later there will be photographs to prove that for a few days at least, I lived the life.

What wat?

We have recovered from our culture shock and started to enjoy ourselves. Our friends leave tomorrow morning so we spent the day with them going to the temples. To be precise, we spent the day going to the world's biggest temple city complex. These people just did not know when to stop with the temples. I will finish this entry when I can get WIFI. Right now I am on the Kindle.

Hurrah for free WiFi!

"Angkor" means "city", "Wat" means "temple", "Thom" means "big". The adjective comes after the noun. So, we went to Angkor Wat, (City Temple) and the Angkor Thom, (Big Temple). We also went to the Terrace of the Leper King, the Terrace of the Elephants and Bayon. (So far the tip of the iceberg.)

They mixed Hinduism and Buddhism together and came up with their own blend. The whole 40 square kilometre complex of temples is built to honour gods, animals, workers and more especially young, topless women performing a sexually arousing and elegant dance. (To my reckoning this is not terribly different to some aspects of western culture today, but only when the girls have had a few drinks). The apsara, (dancing girls) and all very nubile and fertile, they each have a slightly different pose or hairstyle, or posture. (They all have the same breasts though.) They are frozen in time, smiling for the king in bas relief carving. Some of them, but only the special ones, are showing their teeth. I tried to have a beauty pageant and pick my favourite but after walking about five steps I passed about a thousand of them and I could not concentrate any more. Now, I can't do the maths, but I want someone to calculate how many apsara there are here. In 5 steps I passed inestimable thousands x 40 square kilometres = Ta Prohm knows how many.

On top of this there are young Cambodian women wearing a few litres of makeup and half a kilo of fake eyelashes and hair extensions, and metres of highly beaded polyester. They spend their time standing around the temples asking for a dollar to have their photograph taken with a tourists. (These modern apsaras do not show their breasts.) Then, there are the bars with apsara shows in the evening. I might report on that later, but then again, I might not.