i’m currently in phnom penh, cambodia, headed for sihanoukville tomorrow. good ol’ eli b. brings up a good point in his comment on my last post, so i’ll dedicate this post to my experiences with the locals which i’ve been remiss about as of late.

truth be told, i wasn’t very fond of the vietnamese, although i love thais and laos (i think i mentioned this in a previous post). let me explain why. these are generalizations, but for the most part, the vietnamese are very rude and basically only care for your money. they will talk to you and approach you only to offer you a motorbike or cyclo ride. “motorbike miss? motorbike madam?” are encountered at every corner a thousand times a day. it gets immensely annoying after a while. it’s hard to simply ignore them when they also follow you down the block. (also imagine being a solo girl with a huge pack when you’ve just gotten off a bus and have to look for the right guesthouse or hostel, and you’re basically just being bombarded by a chaotic mass of motorbike drivers thirsting for your money). so you’re either compelled to be rude back at them or pretend they don’t exist.

here’s a solid example of rude behavior in vietnam (also bear in mind that my image of the vietnamese was tainted by the hellish 29-hour bus ride and the incident at the food stall – go back a few posts for that story): you cannot simply browse or window shop in vietnam. if you touch something, the saleswomen will scurry over to you and say “very nice, i give you very good price.” and whether you intended to bargain and buy it or not, if you don’t end up purchasing it, they’ll hastily and roughly snatch the item right out of your hands, turn away with a loud “hmph,” speak loud insults in vietnamese, and turn abruptly to another customer.

in another instance, i bargained really well for myself for some fruit, and the lady just snatched the money right out of my hands because she wasn’t satisfied with how much she was getting. (and another thing is more often than not, you need exact change or they will simply take all the money for themselves.) there are countless, COUNTLESS stories of these things happening in vietnam. also bear in mind that i almost didn’t go to vietnam because of all the bad reviews i’ve heard about the country. many fellow travelers have said they would never go back to vietnam again because of all the brusque and unappetizing attitude of the locals. and this is not taking into account just the general loudness, ill/strangely-mannered behavior of the people there (particularly men, who’ll just whip out their members on the side of the road in more rural areas and just take a piss right in front of you). and YES, i realize that’s part of being immersed in a different culture, and i take all of these sights with a grain of salt and understand that this is how the people here live, but it’s something that’s hard for a lot of westerners to digest – even for any open-minded person.

to be fair, the people in the north were much more abrasive than the southern vietnamese. still, i got the sense that they all only really cared for you money. you essentially feel like a walking atm machine. they don’t care to get to know you at all, which is also a fairly big contrast from the laos and thais. even when we went on a small excursion up a river known as the fairy stream in mui ne, little boys (9 and 14 years old, who really looked more about 6 and walked beside our group. but we rarely spoke back to them as we all knew what they intentions were: money. i finally caved a bit and talked briefly to the boys, and they told stories of how their parents had passed away and that they were very poor (but one of the boys had dyed hair – hm, how could he afford that?). at the end of our little trip up the stream, they demanded “MONEY MONEY MONEY!,” and started screaming and throwing huge tantrums. this is my general perception of the vietnamese. they won’t hesitate to cheat you for more money – not in the slightest.

the vietnamese are a hardy people. even their landscape is really rough. they’ve been through a lot for sure, but so have the laos and the cambodians. i’ve only been in cambodia for a day, and i haven’t encountered the same kind of rudeness i did in vietnam. sure, they still want your money here, but they’re never short of a smile back at you. i feel i’ve rarely seen the vietnamese smile other than to make fun of something.

so this is why my posts in vietnam lacked anything much about the people there.

it’s also tricky business being a female traveler in these countries. in lao, my aussie friend and i befriended a 25-year old local guy who worked at the bar we were chilling at, and although he was very friendly, extremely nice and probably totally harmless, he was clearly talking to hit on us and flirt with us, particularly my white aussie friend.

in thailand, i had befriended a few locals through couchsurfing (i think i’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a super awesome networking sight for travelers) and they were great. but the problem i had with them was that i couldn’t ever get them to talk about anything serious. they didn’t really want or care to talk about the real conditions and situation in their country. they also liked to drink LOADSSSSS of alcohol, and i couldn’t keep up with them and really couldn’t handle hanging out with them much more towards the end of my stay in bangkok and chiang mai as they wanted to get drunk literally every night!

so far, here in cambodia, i’ve met one nice 19 year old guy. i sat next to him at a food stall yesterday in the late afternoon, and he just started talking to me. he spoke great english for a guy who didn’t learn the language in school.  i learned that he was a car driver (i don’t believe they have real taxis here, so he just picks up anyone who wants a ride for a small fee). that was nice, but we didn’t get very far in our conversation. i think he mentioned something about being poor and still living with his parents (which is very typical here even as adults). still though, this conversation was a nice reprieve from the quite literal animosity i felt in vietnam. i can already tell the cambodians are friendlier than their eastern neighbors.

speaking of cambodia though, it’s definitely a very poor country. i don’t know if it’s supposed to be one of the poorest or not.. however, phnom penh seems to be rapidly developing (with the help of korean construction companies it seems, as i see korean construction, restaurant and store signs everywhere. in fact, it was also like that in saigon. i think korea must be doing a lot of development work in this region). anyway, the biggest difference i notice from cambodia and vietnam or thailand is that although the main road is paved, the side roads are not at all. and although lao was quite poor, it was mostly that the entire country seemed rather underdeveloped and pastoral. i didn’t see so many beggers even in their biggest city of vietiane like i’ve already seen here in phnom penh. for some reason, although lao has been through a lot, the people there always seemed happy. here, i get a slightly mixed sense. i guess the people are still trying to recover from the khmer rouge days.

speaking of this, i went to the s-21 museum today, the prison where they used to confine, torture and execute thousands of people during the khmer rouge revolution. really gruesome stuff. it really dampened my afternoon, and i have decided i don’t want to go to the killing fields. i think today was enough.

as far as the war remnants museum in saigon, there was a lot of terrible stuff there as well. america did a lot of horrible things for sure, agent orange, napalm and the whole “burn all, destroy all, kill all” policy. and although there was one exhibit about the american soldiers who died sponsored by some american foundation and another exhibit about the war protests around the world, it was quite one sided, as was the cuchi tunnel tour and the hanoi hilton museum. i suppose it’s all propaganda and that’s just how it is… it got me thinking though, does america have a substantial exhibit or museum dedicated to slavery? i know there are native american museums, but i haven’t yet been to one solely dedicated slavery, and i’m quite curious to see what’s shown and exhibited.

oh, i get stared a lot here! like, a LOT! i got stared at in vietnam (in hanoi and saigon especially) and most thais and laos assumed i was japanese or korean. but MAN, i can’t avoid it here at all! and i’m not even white! i was walking with my dutch friend mark today and i felt that they were staring more at me than at him.

anyway, off i go to take a much needed shower – it’s boiling here! contemplating eating a ‘happy’ pizza tonight. can you guess what that is? hmmm…