March 23, 2011

Tishy’s Littleworld

Ironic that just after stumbling into the Little Nomads blog, today I accidentally stumbled into another interesting travel blog - tishy’s Littleworld.

I’ve not yet read that much on it, but it appears to be a quite detailed account of travelling through south-east Asia, and what makes it special is that this isn’t just another tourist guide - it’s simply the experience of travelling through new countries and new countries, many of which have had troubled recent histories.

For example, here’s the long and detailed entry on Cambodia. I especially like the pathos end section:

Verdict on Cambodia? It is a very scarred country, physically and mentally. An American who’s lived here for 18 months in a remote village told us that the normal ‘hello, how are you?’ type greeting here is ‘have you had rice today?’ no matter what time of day it is, stemming from the awful times when it was a lucky thing if you had eaten. So now it is seen culturally as a sign of happiness and prosperity, the basic fact that you have eaten today….

The schooling system is a shambles, education is seen as a priority by few. All the educated population were killed or fled so there is a huge shortage of all the sorts of people needed to build the country up again. People are generally happy with their very small lot in life simply because it is so much better than the awful times in their recent past so any progress is very slow. Neither the education nor the will is there in the majority of the population.

Cambodia has a lot of natural beauty and some wonderful sites, but it is very sad that it is such a 3rd world country. The legacy of the brutality at the time we were born makes it likely that it will stay that way for a very long time yet.

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