Kids

Begging children bother me. It isn’t that the fact that they are begging causes me to dislike them, it’s more like it feels as if there is something wrong with the world when I am confronted by a needy child. It might really be the confrontation with my own inability to fix ALL the world’s problems that makes me agitated.

In any case, the town of Siem Reap, which the Lonely Planet gives a population figure of 158,000, seems to have a large number of children begging. To be fair, most of them aren’t begging you to give them your money for nothing; they are begging you to buy whatever it is that they are selling. From bracelets to t-shirts, pineapples to sodas, these children-of all ages-swarm towards tourists all over the Angkor site, and in certain areas of the town as well, rebuffing every negative response and continuing to demand, ask, cajole and suggest that you buy from them. The tuk-tuk drivers, all males, some in their middle teens on up to middle aged, market themselves in quite the same manner. They constantly approach people suggesting the need for their services. Street vendors and restaurateurs use similar tactics, as if their yelling or approaching with menus waving will trigger a sudden switch in your brain that will lead you to their shops.

There are land mine victims making their way about as well. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world…which I found strange because I had never really heard the country’s name in conjunction with any war stories in the news. Of course our parents remember the Vietnam conflict, and years of civil wars before and after have made this a dangerous place to go for a stroll in the woods. Some of the victims just flat-out beg with their hands out. The more popular approach that I have seen is to put together a band with five or six guys and play traditional Cambodian music. Ashley and I also were approached by Duuk, who lost both his arms from the above the elbow. He carries a box full of books (I will mention the book selling again later) with a strap around his neck, like a peanut hawker at a ballgame. He also has a sign written in English, that explains who he is and what he needs your money for-his four children’s schooling and the rent-which totals seventy US dollars a month. He also plays in a band.

At no time have the children tried to pickpocket us, or snatch anything we were carrying. The only time it felt really uncomfortable was when one little girl put her arms around Ashley’s waist and wouldn’t let go, while her cohorts surrounded me and a mother with a baby kept asking me for milk. Right as we got free from that mob, a tuk-tuk driver approached us and asked for the second time if we wanted to buy some weed-since we had apparently wandered around in a circle. It was the straw at that point and I seriously saw red for long enough to tense up and think about whether I should hit him in the left or the right side. Fortunately I also had enough sense to realize that I had wandered into his territory, and that there was almost no police presence anywhere in the kingdom that I had seen. We walked away from that one and were able to laugh about it tonight when a driver offered us some of his best “skunk”!