Thank you David Bonderman!

Because of Mr. Bonderman's generosity, I have been given the opportunity to travel the world and learn about culture. As a Bonderman Travel Fellow I plan on traveling through Western and Eastern Europe, East Africa, Northern India and Southeast Asia. I am excited to experience new and amazing things that will better enable me to empower and inspire the next generation of young students.

ALSO!!! If you are interested in following the nasty development of my beard and hair....you can follow it at

Friday, June 10, 2011

Cambodian Kids..two different stories

Story 1:

I went on a run yesterday through some parks and then along the mekong river in Phnom Penh. It was nice, it was sunny and it was early in the morning so the masses weren't out quite yet. At the end of my run I stopped in at a public park to do push-ups, pull-ups and stretching...earlier in my exploration of the city I discovered a jungle gym station that was PERFECT for a variety of different pull-ups..I took advantage. I arrived at the park at around 9 am only to find swarms of kids all over the place. I tried to mind my own business and bee-line for my jungle gym...i was successful. BUT within 4-5 minutes I had gathered a crowd of 10+ children that were ALL under 8-yrs-old. They were asking me questions about my hair, where I'm from, why I was wearing certain clothes (particularly my shoes...), how old i was, etc., etc. Before I knew it 3 of the boys had starting imitating everything that I did...they would do the same stretches when I did them..they would do pushups with me...they'd even attempt pull-ups whenever I did them...it was adorable. I MADE LOCAL FRIENDS!!!! Yesterday morning I said, "Its pretty easy to talk with locals if theyre under 8-yrs-old because theyre definitely not trying to scam me!" So great

Story 2:

BUT THEN....as I was crossing the border from Cambodia to Vietnam yesterday (later in the afternoon) I needed to go to the bathroom so I took a few minutes to find a toilet. Found one instantly. When I got to the door I noticed this little 7-yr-old girl sitting at a table outside the bathrooms collecting money from users. VERY normal. I also saw a sign above the girl that read "2000 D or 'foreign-language-squiggly-line'00 Riel"...which means it either costs 2000 in vietnamese currency or an unknown amount in cambodian...well, i ONLY had cambodian, so I gave her 2000, thinking it was definitely enough. It was enough and she tried to pay me 1000 D in return..cheating me big time (now I know she was cheating me 30 cents!!!). I told her NO way! So she proceeded to to stuff the massive wad of vietnamese currency back into her pocket and then reach down her lack-of-cleavage into her shirt/bra area (remember this is a 7-yr-old girl) and pull out an enormous wad of cambodian money...so weird. She gave me two 500 Riel notes. Each note has english numbers on them and cambodian numbers...I matched the cambodian number 5 with the squiggly line on the sign and immediately realized that the bathroom only costs 500 riel and this little girl tried to cheat me out of an extra 500 (thats 12 cents!!!). I WASNT HAVING IT. So I made her give me all of my change. I'm not getting ripped a single penny anymore...

I take back all previous claims about young children being innocent and ignorant of scamming tourists...theyre definitely out there

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Some places where poverty is so rampant - parents teach their children, even maime children to "earn" a living. I've seen it too........ Peace, Blessings. DrK. Good blog ...