Begging

As Cambodia is still recovering from its horrible civil war, it is probably the poorest country I have ever been to. Many rural people still live in thatched roof huts and have kitchens next to their houses with dirt floors (a lot of the houses do have satellites, though). There are people begging everywhere, and we would be ambushed by beggars at the entrances/exits to all the temples. They were either just outright begging or trying to sell little trinkets, postcards or books. Some of the beggars would get mad when you didn’t buy something from them, and I got the impression that because we were “rich” westerners and they poor Cambodians they felt that they deserved our money just because they were poor. It was a weird feeling and made me not want to give them money.

This may be a huge generalization, but Mr. Bobo told us that many of the poor people just drink away their sorrows and don’t put in any work to better their situations. He said that they are lazy, and if they would just work hard it is possible to give yourself a better life. Mr. Bobo was a perfect example of this. During the civil war, he collected plastic bottles to earn enough money to buy himself a bike. When the UNESCO relief workers came to Cambodia in 1992, he rented his bike to one of the workers and earned enough money to purchase a motor scooter. For a number of years he was a motor scooter taxi driver, and he finally earned enough money to put himself through tour guide school and now he earns a decent living and sends his kids to private school.