LTO Cambodia: Kids say the darndest things

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Kids say the darndest things

We (my family and I) just returned to Cambodia last week from our annual family trip to the US. We did the usual - three weeks in the States for the kids to see grandma and grandpa, a little road trip, a day at Universal Studios, etc. The tourist thing. Since our return to Cambodia the kids new school year has begun and I've been playing mad catch-up here at work, clearing three weeks of paperwork from my desk. As I plow through my piles of paper here, I reminisce about our holiday, and a story from last year's trip to the States comes to mind:

We flew from Phnom Penh to Taipei and then Taipei to LA to begin our trip in the States. When we first arrived at the Los Angeles airport (LAX) and were making our way through the baggage collection area my 7-year-old daughter looked around and casually but rather loudly observed,

"Dad, there sure are a lot of black people here."

Black people (those of African heritage) are, after all, a rather rare sight back in Cambodia where she's grown up. There are plenty of Asians and whites of various sorts but for whatever reason very few blacks. I cringed, took a quick glance around to see if anybody had noticed and then gently shushed her, explaining that it's not really polite to comment on the color/race of others in the US - that somebody might take it the wrong way. She seemed to understand and made no further comment on the subject. About a week or so later we walked into a McDonald's in Tallahassee Florida which was 100% black - the customers, the staff, every single person in the place was black. My daughter looked around and, following my instructions to the letter not to comment on other people's race, announced, rather loudly again,

"Ya know, we're the only white people in this place."

Kids say the darndest things.

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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.