Diary Entry: Carefree and Serious

by Ethan Lim


The first changing of leaves. A winter breeze on a day in Spring. Snow falling and softly landing on the willow tree.

These are the things you would not find in Cambodia.

However, you would be able to find sweat-soaked tourists running around the streets of Siem Reap.

It's the second day of our study trip in Cambodia and the heat is intense. We had our gears on and it was time to set off into our adventure into the busy streets of Siem Reap. Watching the locals go about their daily lives of setting up their stalls and selling food in the markets reminded me of a once easier time in life. Back in Kuala Lumpur, we are usually surrounded by a forest of buildings and congestion from the insane amount of cars jammed on the streets. It was good to see a little bit of nature again.

Taking a break from the afternoon heat

Our bodies released adrenaline into our system every time we tried to cross the road. Without traffic lights, it was amazing to see how respectful motorists and cyclists were of each other as well as the people crossing the streets. Someone even cracked a joke about death before reaching across the other side of the street in Malaysia.

We traveled to our next session at Wat Damnak (Wat in Khmer for Monastery and Damnak meaning Resting Place – thanks to our student guide Bona for the translation!) and watched the children across the river run around naked. Personally I’ve only seen naked children in public either on an advertisement on adopting a child on cable TV or being changed by their maternal figure. I was blown away at how free and innocent they were, running and trying to tag each other next to the river bank.

All of us gathered at the Centre for Khmer Studies and we were greeted by Depika Sherchan from COHRE who gave a mind-blowing and organized presentation on the issue of housing rights for citizens and evictions. She presented the problems that the locals faced during forced evictions and it was heart wrenching to see photos and documentaries of the Cambodians being beaten up, their houses being torched and furniture thrown onto the ground carelessly during evictions only to have their land remodeled into a skyscraper or a road. We also separated into four groups and were each given a photo in which we were supposed to describe what was going on. The photos were on the incident that happened in 20th April last year in Sihanoukville and can be viewed here.

Despite feeling upset over the situation, we had to leave so we adjourned back to our guest house where everyone went their separate ways. When we did finally get back to our room, I took off my sandals and looked at the now-brown white coloured sandals and anticipated for our next daily adventure.



Check out photos from day two here!