Cambodia by the Count
Exchange Rate: 1 USD to ~4000 Riel
A little explanation – USD is used, but not coins. So you pay for a 50 cent coffee with a dollar to receive
2000 riel in change.
Cost of an iced coffee + condensed milk: ~2000 riel
Number of bags of coffee bought (they serve coffee in bags, not cups): 30+
Number of times we blew a tire and almost flipped in a van: 1
Average cost for breakfast: $1.15
Number of days of ministry: 25
Number of English classes per day: 8
Average time I’d get tired: 8:30 p.m.
Number of bikes available to ride: 7
Number of years ago the Khmer Rouge reigned: 33
Distance to the market: 3 km
Total time spent on the internet over the month: 5 hours
Number of tuktuk breakdowns: 3
Travel time from Kampot to Phnom Penh: 2.5 hours
Number of students I taught: ~30
I’m writing this while almost at the conclusion of our 6-7 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. 6-7 hours? Chump change, friends, chump change.
The scenery is eerily similar to most big international cities. Hundreds and hundreds of mopeds swarm the roads, most of the operators wearing a facemask, similar to a doctor’s face mask, because of the pollution from so many vehicles. The streets are lined with tarp vendors selling miscellaneous everything, from plants to stones to food.
..It’s now 6 days after writing that short blurb above. We’ve been staying in Ho Chi Minh City since we arrived. Our ‘ministry’ consists of striking up conversations with both tourists (it’s backpacker alley where we are) and locals. Most of the tourists are eating and milling about. Locals go the park a block from our hostel to do one of several things: exercise, play badminton, play shuttle cock, practice sepak takraw (Wikipedia that.. it’s incredible), or practice their English. If you sit in the park, you will have multiple people walk up to you within a half hour to practice their English. Or so I’ve been told. My looks blend in a little better with the Vietnamese than my Caucasian squadmates.
There are a little under 8 million people living in Ho Chi Minh. Vietnamese are some of the friendliest we’ve ever encountered. They’re keen help, ask questions, or speak in English and yet their desperation is so apparent. It’s impossible to camouflage the difficulties and, sometimes, despair you discover in a 15 minute conversation with men and women who hassle tourists to buy their sunglasses, their bracelets, their whatever they’re trying to sell. You uncover the woman who’s selling sunglasses has a 5 ½ month old that she takes care of while she makes her bracelets from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is also the time her husband works to sell paintings. When 4 p.m. rolls around the woman and her husband switch – she works while he watches their child – until 11 p.m. when she comes, only to repeat the same routine the next day.
But you have to ask yourself this question.. is this just in Vietnam?
I highly doubt it.
Tomorrow, my team leaves for another city with beautiful mountains and the cool weather (70 degrees!!). We’ll see what the Lord has in store for us.
