Cambodian music lesson

In the picture above, landmine survivors play the tro, a Cambodian traditional instrument similar to the violin, near a temple to raise money.  This blog tells the story of these musicians.  

I looked around Russian Market, a main tourist market here, for souvenirs and gifts yesterday, and amidst the hand-painted teapots, Apsara keychains, and Angkor beer t-shirts, I saw a few traditional instruments, including the tro.  I saw two different types of tro: one with a wood and snakeskin base and one with a coconut shell and leather base.  Two small strings run from the base to the top.  The sound changes depending on the type of base, the movement of your fingers, and the way you stretch the bow across the string.  The vendor showed me how to play, but somehow when I tried, it sounded like a cat dying.  

Tuk tuk: friend or foe?

Before the age of 18, everyday transportation meant a personal car; after the age of 18, transportation meant my own two feet or a subway.  In Cambodia, I get around primarily on a moto dop (motorbike taxi) or a tuk-tuk (a passenger carriage attached to a motorbike, pictured below).  If you want to take a look at how these forms of transport look on the road together, take a look at this post from last year.

A little background:  There are no set prices or meters for moto dop or tuk-tuk fares, so bargaining is a part of everyday life here.   Tuk-tuks cost approximately double a moto dop, though, and are more "touristy" by nature.  As a helpless passenger, your experience on either of these forms of transport depends largely on the personality and kindness of your driver, especially if you are a foreigner.  Though locals use tuk-tuks for large numbers of people or to carry things, they are largely tourist transportation.  Tourists are the main source of income for tuk-tuk drivers, who have been known to charge $10 to a foreigner for a trip that would cost a local $1 and a foreigner who knows better $1.50.  For a positive, interesting description of the new trend in making your tuk-tuk look unique ("pimping out" your tuk-tuk), visit this blog.  The carriage is typically red, but I've seen a baby pink one, a camouflage one, and several with colorful lights or music inside. 

This leads me to the point of this post - tuk-tuks: friend or foe?  Tuk-tuk drivers wait outside of areas they know tourists will be, like Western hotels, restaurants, and bars.  When I leave my house every morning, a herd of tuk-tuk drivers shout, snap, clap and wave to get my attention.  They call out, "Lady, you want tuk-tuk?"  "Tuk-tuk, OK?"  Some become particularly aggressive.  Once I saw a tuk-tuk driver call out to a heavyset woman as she left her hotel, "Tuk-tuk, OK?"  She politely declined with a smile.  He persisted:  "Where you go?"  "I like to walk," she said, still pleasantly.  He looked at her, following her as she walked up the street, then said, "Yeah, you need to walk."  The smile left her face.  I've heard stories of tuk-tuk drivers who confused patronage as true love and others who become physical when they feel that the fare wasn't sufficient.  Now, this is not to say that all tuk-tuk drivers are rude young men like these.  Some are honestly trying to make an income for their family, and never having personally felt the pressure of poverty, I can't criticize someone's attempts to feed his family (tuk-tuk drivers are always male).  If being aggressive means dinner for the night and not being aggressive means leaving your family hungry, I think we would all make the same choice.

I'm not proud of it, but somehow, I tend to not be as nice to tuk-tuk drivers as I should be.  Perhaps it's the language barrier, perhaps it's the frustration at the inherent tension between foreigner and local, but somehow when last night's tuk-tuk driver asked for more money, I just rolled my eyes and walked away, mumbling something about him being "ridiculous."  Would I ever do this with a US taxi driver?  Here, I've gotten out of tuk-tuks because I didn't like the way the driver was acting (docking his pay) and I've yelled out commands in snobby tones.  I'm not exactly Meryl Streep's character from the Devil Wears Prada, but certainly there is room for me to a bit more compassionate.    Plus, there's no other option...

Apsara keychains

Today was the last of 27 focus groups, and at the end, we gave the girls each one of these Apsara dancer keychains from the market.  I cut up around 80 of these in the past couple days!  Check out my post from last year for more info about Apsara dancers in Cambodia.

Afternoon commute

They're even on the right side of the road.  If you look at the bottom right, you can see me with my camera in the rear view mirror below my research assistant's motorbike helmet.

The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War

I stole this book.

From my boyfriend, but still.  He brought it to Cambodia, and I don't know if it was the fact that I brought no books with me (doh!) or the cool-guy cover, but I kept casually picking it up when he would leave it around, pretending I wasn't that captivated by it.  This past week, I actually committed to the book and read the majority - officially asking to borrow it while traveling.

My take:  If you've ever wondered about the stories surrounding the photos in the newspaper, this book is for you.  Expectedly, it's not all sunshine and roses, and isn't exactly a beach read.  It's a very realistic, very personal look at a group of war photographers in South Africa in the early 90s who struggled with the tension between documenting conflict and taking a human role in response to suffering.  Two of the photographers won Pulitzer Prizes, and one of those two, who took this picture, took his own life when what he'd seen and done became too much.

The book gives a very honest, non-idealistic version of the stories behind the Bang-Bang Club's photos, and of course it includes dozens of the photos mentioned.  It also chronicles a turbulent period of South African history that I shamefully knew little about.  A story that makes you think, a book that makes you want to Google lots of names and historical events to learn more.  Though we're not all war photographers (not that I'd ever wanted to be one, but this book also confirmed that I never could be), the questions raised by this book are still important, for example:  In a time of media saturation, when are we voyeurs and when are we complicit in inaction?      

Back at it

I'm more than two months into my second trip to Cambodia, and I keep meaning to post to my blog again - so here goes!  Some factoids about my current life (both boring and silly):

1. I'm two-thirds finished with my last of two research sites.  This one is located 30 km southwest of a town called Battambang.  Battambang is located around 300 km northwest (towards Thailand) from Phnom Penh, the capital where I spent the first half of the project.  The commute to my current research site involves a ride on a motorbike past picturesque rice paddies and a beautiful temple built on a craggy rock, not to mention the wind in my hair.  (Don't worry, Ma, I wear a helmet and I'm not driving!)  The research itself involves discussion groups with adolescent girls; in the picture above, tenth grade girls are discussing ways to improve the school environment for girls if they were given a million dollars.

2.  The research site includes a vocational training center, whose name translates to "Forest for Baby Tigers Vocational Training Center."  At the entrance gate, there are two roaring tiger statues.  Some days it takes everything in me not to pose for a picture doing my best Tony the Tiger roar.  

3.  I spent last Saturday night hunting and killing a baby cockroach that appeared behind my hotel bed.  After forcing it from behind the headboard with a folder, I committed animal-cide with an air conditioner remote.  I turned away for a few minutes, then looked back at my kill.  It was moving, despite being completely flat.  Don't worry, I crushed his squirmy little body into pieces.

overfed monkeys, wat phnom