By Courtney Ridgel
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Our Booking Coordinator Courtney recently returned from her first trip to Southeast Asia. Visiting both Cambodia and Vietnam, she gives her impressions of the dichotomies that make the region so special …
Traveling Southeast Asia for the first time, I couldn’t help but be stuck by the contrasts. Ancient traditions among a buzzing sea of motorcycles, beautiful temples sharing spaces with scruffy market stalls and glistening shopping malls, traditional villages along side growing bustling cities, great hardship and great hope.
Riding through the countryside and suburbs in Cambodia, you can see the changes rapidly taking place in everyday life of Cambodians. Along the tight dusty roads, you can see expensive cars parked in front of large houses with neat tiled roofs, next door to small huts where residents are drying rice in driveways. Banana trees line roads where rubbish floats in the ditches. Water buffaloes wade through rice fields while small improvised tractors rumble past noisily. Temples constructed a thousand years ago stand proud not far from modern dance and karaoke clubs.
In spite of the genocide, civil war, and the hardships of poverty that remain, our guides spoke of their plans to start their own businesses and build homes, rather than farm the family land. Their children are learning English to work in tourism and their younger siblings are in college. In town, posters advertise TV shows with famous stars, music videos, and yes, even tryouts for Cambodian idol. Oddly enough, I felt just as surprised by the things that were familiar, like ordering a delicious club sandwich in downtown Siem Reap.
Vietnam is also a study in contrasts. On throughways glittering storefronts mix with local residents who sell street food on the sidewalk. In visiting the homes of locals in Northern Vietnam, we found that the largest and nicest space in the house is devoted to the altar for the ancestors, just as traditional hundreds of years old dictates, and yet the children will rush home from their extra English lessons to watch American cartoons.
The Communist government offers programs to study luxury hospitality while the military administrations refuses to use buildings believed to contain ghosts. Those responsible for construction projects speak of the recession in Vietnam while the people we encountered spoke brightly of the future. We visited an elementary school in Vietnam and found a classroom of more than forty students all eagerly asking questions in perfect English. (“Do you like badminton?” was question number one.) As we drove past coffee lounges and PS3/video gaming bars, our guide explained how Feng Shui and astrology are sill critically important in Vietnamese society.
After giving my new surroundings a chance to sink in, and as I spoke with more newfound friends, I began to realize that althouth Southeast Asia is filled with challenge, it is also filled with hope. NGO’s and new busineses are abound affecting change from within the country. As we travelled around I was struck by how things in Asia are rarely what they seem and certainly never simple, though always fascinating.
Share your own stories of the wonders of Southeast Asia in the comment section below!