LTO Cambodia: Cambodian Beggars in Bangkok

Friday, December 23, 2011

Cambodian Beggars in Bangkok

3 or 4 year old Cambodian boy, begging cup in hand, working the tourists on Sukhumvit, about 1:00AM

I was in Bangkok last week. Stayed in the heart of the Sukhumvit tourist area, Soi 4. In my 3-day stay I was a bit surprised by the number of Cambodian beggars I saw there – all women and young children. Seemed to be a lot more than usual. I don't know much about the foreign beggar situation in Bangkok. I’m in the city every couple of months for a few days or a week at a time – shopping, doctor, perhaps a bit of R&R. I know the place mostly from the perspective of a tourist.

There have always been both Thai and foreign beggars in that area. Of the foreigner beggars I’ve noticed, it’s been mostly Cambodians and some Vietnamese in the past, often children. One or two at a time here and there. What seemed unique this time was the sheer number of Cambodian beggars, and that they seemed to be working in family groups. There were at least a dozen and a half that I saw, comprising 3 or 4 family (or family-like) groups working a relatively compact tourist area around Sukhumvit Soi 4, including 3 or 4, 22-32 year old women with infants, several very young (3-6 year old) children begging and selling gum, and also several, mostly female flower sellers, around 9-12 years old. They all seemed to know one another and from what I could overhear they all spoke Khmer i.e. Cambodian Khmer, not Khmer as it is spoken in Thailand. These people were from Cambodia, not ethnic-Khmer from Northern Thailand.

They were likely trafficked here from Cambodia.

One evening I sat in front of the hotel for more than 3 hours, drinking beer and lazily watching the street scene including watching the beggars work. That area is solid tourists and those feeding off of them – punters and prostitutes, shoppers, street sellers, travelers and, of course, beggars. There was an easy dozen Cambodian beggars working that block alone. No men. All women and children. The youngest beggar children carried plastic cups to collect money, as did the infant toting Moms. The older children sold flowers and chewing gum.

A three year old boy was working the sidewalk right in front of where we sat, pacing back and forth hitting up passing tourists for change and doing a pretty good job of it. Seemed about 1 in 3 or 4 would give something, highlighting why he's been put on the street to beg. Because it works.

My wife called him over and asked him in Khmer where he was from. He said, in Khmer, that he was from Siem Reap and that he had been working in Thailand a ‘long time,’ (whatever a 'long time' may mean to a 3 year old.) One of the flower girls saw him talking to us and yelled to him in Khmer, ‘Don’t speak.’ He went back to begging, working long stretches unsupervised. He sure was a puffy-eyed, tired looking little guy still working at 1AM. He’d lay his head on the railing in front of us to rest, but would go on auto-pilot when he heard a tourist coming, automatically waving his plastic cup in their path. He knew how to do it in his sleep, so to speak.

A few times the whole lot of them went dashing up the street in a panic as if they were running from something, but we never saw anybody give chase. I asked a Thai street seller what it was all about and she explained that they probably spotted the police nearby and were fleeing for fear of arrest. Apparently the local constabulary is not on the trafficker's payroll.

I noticed in the Pattaya Daily News a couple of weeks ago that there are reports of Cambodian beggars of similar description working the tourists (and now arrested) in Pattaya – all Cambodian women with infants and children. While noting that there are Cambodian beggars in Bangkok would not be news, in my limited observation this time there seems to have been a recent influx and numbers are up. And I wonder why. Is the increase because of the beginning of the tourist season? Or did some new trafficking route just open? Or did I just fail to notice all of them before?

Cambodian girls selling flowers on Soi 4

Cambodian mother with infant (well, presumably she's the mother) working as a beggar on Sukhumvit Soi 4, Bangkok

More:

The Nature and Scope of the Foreign Beggar Issue (especially as related to Cambodian child beggars) in Bangkok

2 comments:

GastonMarch 6, 2013 at 9:43 AM
hmmm very sad, why they did not work for their living T_T
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sollysenySeptember 18, 2017 at 6:07 PM
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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.