Khmers are Kool. Cambodia was a hoot.
Cambodia is a small country in the middle of the Indo Chinese peninsula that has a whole lot of history. So much history in fact that I felt a bit bad at how little I knew about it, especially given how much of its past 50 years have been affected by American policy and intervention (like the genocide that America propagated). Like many places in Asia, Cambodia likes to extol its “thousands of years of history” but unlike many of its peers, Cambodia still has many of its older ruins to explore. Angkor Watt has to be one of my favorite places that I’ve been on my entire trip due to the sheer beauty and grandeur it exudes. I’ve been to a lot of places in the world, but not many places have enthralled me as much as Angkor Watt. On top of that, Cambodians are a rather good looking bunch and people were friendly (for the most part).
I say for the most part because Cambodia was the first place on my trip where the othering I’ve experienced throughout my time in Asia really began to affect me. This isn’t to say that people were mean to me per se, but it was a bit disappointing to see how much my white peers were venerated there. Perhaps because I’m African American and I have been around white folks my entire life that I don’t see them as anything special, or perhaps because I have hundreds of years of poets, philosophers, writers, and thinkers telling me to not internalize imperialism that I am willing to see white folks as peers rather than superiors, but this is something that I really began to hit me in Cambodia and I did not like it. I ran into a few drunk Dutch women in Angkor Watt that I’d seen earlier in my trip and we walked around a temple complex together. Naturally, in their state of inebriation, they began to climb the ruins (blatantly ignoring the signs) and I, naturally, told them to get their asses down. You would’ve thought that I’d just spat on the Queen of England by the Cambodian’s reaction to the interaction. It was a bit jarring, but that’s life unfortunately.
I ended up staying in Cambodia for a few weeks longer than I anticipated. Mainly because I made friends. Mainly because I ended up staying on this cool island called, Koh Rong Saloem. The people on the island were very friendly once they found out that I was American. I’ve found that my Americaness forgives by blackness in many parts of Asia which was a bit sad considering most Cambodians are around my complexion, but I colorism seems to be a thing in most places. Perhaps what made Cambodia stand out to me was that so many of my identities were confronted at once. On the island, I was rather openly gay and that wasn’t a problem for anyone. My Americanisms were extolled. And my (American) blackness was intriguing. Then again, there were plenty of people that had nothing but hard feelings for America, and despised both mine and their own dark skin. Perhaps the combination of all this identities mixed with a bunch of stimuli overwhelmed me.
It undoubtedly overwhelmed me. Out of all the places that I’ve been Cambodia is the poorest country that supports an independent tourism apparatus and the poverty was apparent immediately once you got out of the major cities. I did a good amount of solo travel within the country and while things weren’t as dire looking when compared to other locations, the poverty was apparent. Now this isn’t to say all of Cambodia is poor, quite the opposite, the capital city made me confront some of my own biases and realize that Western media still likes to portray developing nations as an impoverished monolith and I was, unfortunately, uncaring enough to not give my perceptions of these places the same scrutiny that I give portrayals of African Americans.
Cambodia opened my eyes to so much of my own perceptions and how little I knew about America’s impact on nations that aren’t even vaguely on my radar. I guess that’s why I took this trip.
