Journey Through Laos and Cambodia

This is a diary of my current experience working in two developing countries in south-east Asia. Its not a 'travelogue' in the usual sense of the word, more a factual account of my experiences and impressions of working with the people to develop and run a technology-based business.

Sunday, July 04, 2004

The Finishing Post Is In Sight

Unfortunately, I am no longer living the USAid high-life; my kindly benefactor has decamped to Saigon for business, and after a couple of nights in Guesthouse-land I am staying with a friend of one of the ex-pats that used to work at DDD. The nicest guesthouse I've stayed at is probably the Bodhi Tree, which is directly across the road from S-21, the former Khmer Rouge concentration camp, and now a museum. Situating a guesthouse in a location like that smacks of bad taste (anyone interested in going in on a MacDonald's franchize on the road to Auschwitz??) but the good food and secluded colonial feel made up for that for a night.

I've ended up spending as much time in Phnom Penh as I have in Vientiane, and to be honest I'm not complaining. I feel far more optimistic about the future of Cambodia than that of Laos, they have a lot more going for them in terms of aid, economy, infrastructure, etc. I've gotten to know a few of the employees here , they're from a mixed background. Some of them speak English really well, and some speak with a clipped robotic voice, a bit like that Stephen Hawking guy. Maybe it's the legacy of rote-learning, but it can be hard to keep a straight face sometimes. DDD has a "social mission", which means they employ a quota of people from special-needs training programs, which trains people with physical disabilities, former prostitutes, land-mine victims, etc. It's a form of positive discrimination. The average data entry operator gets $70 a month, with the more specialized personnel (HR, finance, IT) getting higher rates. $70 a month may not sound like much, but it is higher than the average wage here. Cambodia is one of those places where the phrase "another day, another dollar" can be take quite literally.

In case you're wondering what type of work the employees are doing at DDD, there's a broad category of data entry projects; currently they are working on a project to type a Lao and Khmer dictionary, a project for a Virginia newspaper from the 1860's, and another project that involves preparing Ku Kux Klan records from the 1920's for loading into a database, for some social research group in the States. The sight of young Khmers typing the names, addresses and phone numbers of former Klan members is slightly surreal.

I've planned about 10 days relaxation before heading back to the bright lights of the western world -- in a way, that's going to be a big culture shock, but I will enjoy the feeling of coming home as well as treasuring the experiences I have had here of isolating myself in a completely different culture and making real and valuable connections with the people here.