The grand scam

I am stupid. I am stupid. Did I mention that I am stupid?

I wanted to rent a room in Hong Kong to stay here for a month. From a Facebook flatmates group I found this guy advertising the flat from where he had recently moved out. So I emailed his previous landlord, who according to our messaging appeared as a busy and precise business man. We agreed that I would send him a deposit and a month's rent via Western Union and he would send me apartment keys via DHL.

I waited for the keys delivery at my hostel but it did not arrive in time. The landlord never gave me its tracking code, without which DHL could not locate it. Finally he emailed me telling that the package had been returned due to insufficient address, and I never heard from him again despite requesting to get my money back.

It soon began clear to me that I had been fueled badly. With unbelievable naiveness I had sent a stranger over 1000€ without getting anything in return. After relieving my anger by wrecking my finger skin at a bouldering gym and drinking a few glasses of expensive wine, I went to the police station nearest my hostel. The alert constable listened to my case and advised me to visit the apartment to interview its residents.

I hopped on to the convenient MTR train, and then zip zagged on lively local streets asking directions from by-passers until I found the right building. In its lobby I met the housekeeper. The keen old man pointed out that the address I had missed an exact apartment number. He also told I was not the first person coming to investigate the case.

The target location

 I walked through a street, whose bars began to fill with suit-wearing expats, until I reached the local police station. It was less organized than the previous one; several young officers wondered about cases and answered phones in quite a random manner. After two hours I had managed to make them understand my case and ordered a written report about it.

After a few days I went back to the police station to pick up the report. Unfortunately writing it had proven to be too difficult of a task for them, so they had transferred it to another department, where they advised me to call. I did not bother, but filed my insurance claim just with a scanned picture of the small case cards I had received from the police.

So what was I saying? Oh, I am stupid.

Phase Cambodia

In order to maintain some structure, I have automatically started to divide my travels into phases by destinations. Phase Cambodia lasted for three weeks and included traveling through the poor and hot country. I was pleased to have Kimmo, a Finnish climber who I had by chance met in Laos, as my travel company for most of the part. Together it was neat to share accommodation and travels costs, ripoff incidents, experiences, opinions, jokes...

In total I spent six days on busses. Hours went by on the not-so-specious seats; staring at flat landscapes, being nervous about wreck-less driving, watching local karaoke videos and engaging in conversations. Cambodian bus tickets are rather expensive, plus some surprise fees exist, such as paying $12 extra for taking a new road. To balance off the tiring bus rides we stayed at posh but easily-affordable hotels. For example, we paid just $15 for a stylish 4-star room with a city-view balcony.

Bus stop (lenght: 15min - 90min)

Traditional Khmer furniture

Our first stop was Siam Reap. As a must-do, we went to see the impressive Anchor Wat at sunrise and continued the day among other temples. Unfortunately the museum we had visited the previous day had given us little insight to Khmer history and culture, so the temple tour was left content-wise quite shallow, yet worth it.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Thom

Ta Prohm

Actually I preferred our sightseeing day near Battambang. We rented a motorbike and drove around to see a couple of small, charismatic temples on top of hills. My favorites were colorful paintings of Buddhist stories, even though my general knowledge of the religion is quite limited to some meditation techniques. Thanks to an inaccurate map we made a few detours to drive across tiny farming villages, where local kids greeted us enthusiastically and skinny cows stood on dry fields.

Shit cave

The two towns themselves have markets, guesthouses, restaurants and some NGO run shops. We were delighted to meet many smiling and polite Cambodians, who spoke excellent English compared to their Thai and Lao neighbors. It was easy to see that the country is in development, as many new roads and buildings are under construction and people seem enterpreunally minded. The only big disappointment was a back massage; the ladies had no skills but brutally stepped on our spines, leaving them aching for days and giving no discount despite our complaints.

Battambang view from our hotel balcony

Our common journey ended to Koh Rong, a southern paradise island with clear turquoise water and fine white beaches. We escaped its party beach to quiet Koh San beach. There are plans to build a proper ring-road, luxury resorts and even an airport to the island, but for the time being our beach had only a handful of simple bungalows accompanied with waterside restaurants. For me it was good to stay for a while in a beautiful place lacking activities. All we did was laying on the beach, doing body weight exercises and read books.

The coolest boat driver

Survivor was filmed on the island!

I continued on to Kampot by myself. I spent almost a week in the expat-favored peaceful town; going for morning runs along its riverside, writing job applications at my hostel and meeting interesting people at dinner venues. One day I went to check out Climbodia - a newly developed small crag where Belgium David runs adventure tours for climbing, via ferrata, caving and abseiling. I was extraordinary lucky to run into my two French friends there. Wearing a helmet was justified on the new routes, as we frequently kicked down small rocks and even broke a few holds.

My Kampot office

Climbodia main crag

Happy reunion :)

My last destination was the capital, Phnom Penh. The most interesting, although depressing, places to visit were the Killing Fields and Security Prison 21. It is very hard to understand how only some 30 years ago it was possible to create a regime systematically killing thousands of people, without any international actors stopping it. The memorials are discreet and minimalist, and after learning how widely the Khmer Regime destroyed the country - its people, education, culture, business - I became even more impressed by its future driven spirit. On contrary, the most relaxing spot was a small community movie theater, where customers can lay on mattresses and pillows while watching well chosen films.

National Museum

Central Market

Posh rooftop drink

To sum up Cambodia, it was definitely worth visiting. However, three weeks is just enough for me to tour around sights resembling each other. I think I can mark Cambodia as checked and head towards new places to discover.

Polluting Koh Rong Island

- Oh F***! [hitting my little toe on a piece of garbage] I just hate walking barefoot on this dirty sand road! Why do not they keep it clean!
- Stop complaining about the same thing every day. There is nothing to be done about it.

This conversation got me thinking about the pollution problem on Koh Rong Island. Tourism is quite new there and most of the island is still under-developed, thus relatively free of garbage, smoke and smell. However, there are various examples on other South East Asian islands about pollution harming their nature and tourism. Could Koh Rong be saved from the same destiny? Could governmental bodies, local entrepreneurs, international investors and individual tourists act proactively to develop the island in a sustainable way?

Clean Koh San beach

The Government. There are no systematically working municipalities on Koh Rong taking care of waste management. To prevent garbage getting piled up on the island, there should be collection points and cargo ships to transport it away. Taken that Cambodia is a poor and corrupted country, its government most likely has not got ability or interest to consider the long-term consequences of pollution.

Local people. For some reason, many Cambodians seem to be keen on buying lots of cheap trish-trash items, as well as packing everything on styrox containers and plastic bags. All this garbage gets thrown away on their backyards, roads and waters. It might be difficult to convince people, who are used to messiness and miss environmental education, to change their behavior. I wonder if it comes down to laziness, missing alternatives or long-sightless thinking.

Resort companies. Unfortunately some multinational companies follow good environmental policies only in western countries, but act irresponsibly in countries not having strict anti-pollution laws. It has been noticed that they simply move waste out of tourists' sight, until it eventually bursts out of its piles. These companies should have enough intelligence to foresee the prevailing problem, and therefore build real waste management structures to protect their resorts.

Tourists, like me. If a big enough number of tourists chooses eco friendly service providers, maybe the trend spreads wider and changes overall standards towards greener ways of acting. However, at the moment most tourists tolerate some amount of garbage. When one place becomes too polluted for them, they abandon it as a travel destiny and go somewhere else, but at that point it is already too late to change things.

No more swimming here

To summarize, my thoughts seem negative and hopeless. I think that the key to change could be money. If these different stakeholders could exercise long-term thinking, they would realize that environmentalism benefits everyone: tourism stays as a prospering livelihood, companies generate revenues past the next quarters, tourists have destinations where to go, inhabitants can live healthier lives etc. I wish that people in power would think beyond their political terms, careers or holidays and invest in lasting sustainability.

- So while I took a shower I thought about the issue. Could this financial reasoning be explained to the interest groups? If they all acted on their own behalf, making some longer-term investments, would there be positive changes? How could it be organized?
- Maybe you should make a project out of this. It could be your new job.

Trash truck on mainland

My week's water bottles