Viva Las Poipet!

Poipet is the biggest and busiest border town crossing with Thailand. It’s a couple of hours bumpy journey from Phnom Srok and now home to Elise, another VSO volunteer. It is the place where the gap between rich and poor couldn’t be starker. The quality of the roads is so poor that the slightest bit of rain turns them into swamps. There is filth and rubbish everywhere, always being scrupulously picked through by scruffy looking, bare-footed children in rags hoping to find something they can make a few hundred Riel from. All day, poor Khmers, adults and children alike, pull wooden carts across the border and back again, transporting food and goods to sell in the markets. Landmine victims with missing limbs cycle their carts with their arms, children play with syringes and cigarette butts in the dirt and women sniff glue from plastic bags on the street. It’s really depressing stuff and sadly helps form negative first impression of Cambodia for many tourists passing through to Angkor Wat.

On the flipside, it is a town of immense wealth riddled with huge shiny and often grotesque looking Casinos and hotels. As far as I know these are all Thai owned as gabbling is illegal in Thailand so the wealthy Thais skip across the border in order to satisfy their needs to part with copious amounts of money. Khmers aren’t allowed in, unless they work there of course, or have been hired for the night! Corine and I have passed through Poipet a couple of times on trips to Thailand, not wishing to stay longer than we had to and despite our efforts, unsuccessfully trying to dodge the scam buses to Siem Reap.

So Elise lives somewhere between these two worlds, each as depressing as the other but both offering fascinating insights into lives different from ours. Again, on paper our job descriptions are practically identical but in reality very different issues face us both. Phnom Srok is a very poor district but there are still smiling faces whereas Poipet has intoxicated smiles and lifeless faces barely willing to make eye contact. But I have confidence that Elise will find some genuine smiles amongst the rubbish and mud! I joined her for a really fun weekend and had a great time enjoying her company and the contents of her fridge, meeting some of her colleagues and visiting some of Poipet’s highlights. We did visit a Casino which was very surreal as it was like stepping into a different world; slot machines, roulette and poker tables surrounded by pizza restaurants, duty free and clothes shops. We enjoyed a huge swimming pool to ourselves on Saturday afternoon... what a crazy world!