Are all explorers lost and is Scotland the best?

When a friend of mine left Scotland to work in France, I was envious of him as I imagined what it would be like to live in France with red wine, croissants and cheese. I found it hard to understand why he continued to insist that Scotland was still the best country in the world. My incomprehension was not resolved by his inability to explain why. Finding it difficult to capture the right words, or even identifiable things that makes Scotland the best, he had to settle for telling me that it was the best because it just is. I was left puzzled and doubtful.

As a child, a day after arriving at our holiday destination, I would ask my parents when we could go back home. Maybe I felt that I would miss a great game of football with friends or that it was the perfect season to be playing golf. Or something else that a ten-year old’s life may revolve around. It was not that I did not like these places or struggled being away from home, I guess it was just that home was where my life was.

It seems to me that the desire to explore is at odds with the desire to be where your life is, unless your life is only what is with you at that particular moment in time. For most people, life is much more than what is in that instant as it contains the people and places that have become woven into our lives over long periods of time. When attempting to fulfill a desire to explore, it can be very difficult to take your entire life with you and I sometimes wonder whether constant explorers are those without much life behind them.

Before coming to Cambodia, an acquaintance approached me at the end of a meeting and shook my hand. He had previously spent four years in Brazil and had done other travelling. A warm, light hearted man, he looked at me seriously, carefully even, and told me “don’t get lost”.

Immediately, I knew what those words meant. They had the same meaning as the fear that was inside of me as a child when I wanted to go back home as soon as I had arrived on holiday. They had the same meaning as the fear that propelled me to go through all of my classmates names during the long summer holiday. It was not that I was scared of getting lost - I remember sometimes dreaming of being alone in a far off country, sitting drinking a beer and reading a book - more specifically, I was scared that I would be lost to others. The further you explore, the harder it is to reach those behind.

Claire has spoken about the feeling that some people have when doing VSO of feeling like they have pushed the pause button on their life. As if when they leave home, everything in their life stops but in a not-quite-real-life parallel universe, they fulfill their desire to explore and seek new experiences, only hitting the play button on their real life when they return. For me, I find that not only is life paused but my identity of who I am is also suspended a little as in this not-quite-real-life-parallel universe my identify forms with different people and events shaping it.

For me a special time in Cambodia is between 4:30pm and 6:30pm when the sun begins and finishes its descent. I sit on our roof, looking into the distance, breathing in the experience of Cambodia. There is a magical light that fills me with happiness, but I have realized that part of this happiness is because the light makes me think of those long, summer, Scottish evenings. They make me think of home. They make me think of my life there and the people in it.

A lot of things, a lot of wonders, go into making a country what it is. Unweaving this wonderscape to explain exactly why Scotland is the best place in the world is as hard as unweaving a rainbow. I write this blog in Guangzhou airport on my way back to Scotland having finished my time as a VSO volunteer, but maybe not having finished my time exploring. I want to see my friend and tell him that now I understand what he means and why it was difficult to explain. But most importantly, I want to ask him to make sure that even if I keep exploring, I am never lost. 

Gordon

Angkor Wat explains a lost love in election

Since 2003, the Cambodian GDP has grown at an average of 7% per year. Life expectancy has risen from 59 to 63 over the same period and more people have access to clean water. But when the official results are announced in a couple of weeks, you will find that the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) has lost 22 or 23 of its 90 seats. It has enough to retain a majority, but the opposition party will have won about 56 seats, whilst believing that it actually won more if not most.

For a few days over the election, I was in Siem Reap, and parts of it encapsulates why some people have fallen out of love with the CPP.

Who could say no?

Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat, has some of the most luxurious hotels I have ever seen and restaurants which would be expensive in London. And like Phnom Penh, you will see large 4x4 Lexus and Range Rovers dominating the roads in amongst people on motos. For a province in which the Tonle Sap floods annually, the trickle down of these riches remain dry; Siem Reap is the second poorest province in Cambodia. It is a place where 2 million internationals come to visit but in which local people leave for Thailand in order to find work.

This juxtaposition of garish wealth and enduring poverty does not go unnoticed. During the election campaign in Phnom Penh, it was noticeable how many expensive cars also had CPP stickers or flags on them. The symbolism of who would benefit from a CPP victory stark. For some, the distaste runs deeper than a gap in wealth, being borne from a sense that Cambodia itself is being sold for others to profit from.

People queueing up to vote in a polling station (a school). You could vote from 7am - 3pm. At 4pm, it started raining - impeccable timing. 

Sokimex is a company ubiquitous because of the number of petrol stations that it has dotted on the highways. It has also managed to secure a 99-year lease on managing, and taking large revenues from, the Angkor Wat Archaeological Park. People find it strange that the building that appears on their flag can be leased to a private company to make huge profits from. 

In my area of work here, education, one statistic stood out for me. Between 2009 and 2012, there was only 1 province of 24 in which primary net enrolment fell (% of children aged 6-11 enrolled in primary school). That province was Siem Reap. When local people look around at all of the wealth, they do not feel that they or pubic services are benefiting. (Plus, they complain about the price of petrol. Clinton's mantra could actually have been "It's the price of petrol, stupid"). 

Just voted and got the ink to prove it. My tuk tuk driver friend was able to wash the ink off quite easily, which caused some to joke that he wasn't actually Khmer (because he hadn't been able to vote). Others found it a more serious issue because of potential double voting, which has been alleged.

When in the Angkor Wat Park, my bicycle got a flat tyre. A tuk tuk driver offered to put my bike and me in his tuk tuk and drive me to the nearest bicycle repair shop, which are not common in an archaeological park. After deflecting his questions about who I thought would win or which leader I liked more, I asked him who he voted for. He told me that before he "loved" the CPP, but now, he voted for the opposition. He was not happy, he wanted change. 

The man was speaking Khmer to me, so he knew the word that he was using, and he deliberately used the word love. The jilted lover that is the CPP now has to decide whether to go it alone or change its ways, and the new mistress (Cambodian National Rescue Party) will have to decide whether to push for a full-blown messy divorce based on a belief that they won the election or be content to wait for five years. 

Make love, not war. Supporters from Funcinpec and Cambodian National Rescue Party shake hands during a parade before the election. Funcinpec used to be a coalition partner of the CPP, has royalist links and lost all of its seats in this year's election. 

I think most are hoping that both sides choose their latter options. 

Lots of love folks

Gordon

Postscript added 31.07.13
My last sentence should have read:
I think some are hoping that both sides choose their latter options, whilst for others, it's not just a case of whether the CNRP accepts a CPP government or not, but whether the people will accept a CPP government or not.

Speaking to some more people today, admittedly in CNRP hotbed country (Phnom Penh), they say that everybody now knows that the CNRP won the election, so if the people have asked for change, change is what should happen. The CNRP has taken the first step to rejecting the CPP's unofficial results by releasing their own provisional results showing they won at least  63 of the 123 seats. Enough to form a government.

The more support shown for the CNRP, the bolder more people are becoming. Weeks ago people would have been frightened of speaking out, but now they feel that they are the ones in the majority and cannot be silenced. When asked about possible violent repercussions if the CNRP demands CPP hands over power, they said that the CNRP must not back down.