One of the most shocking things I saw in Cambodia..

Our bus stopped for a short break at a roadside market. Women and children carrying roasted spiders piled high in shiny, black mounds on oval trays, bags of fresh pineapple, and plates of donuts were making their rounds among the tourists fresh off the busses. Flies hovered over the open, steaming pots of curried vegetables and fried rice that restaurant owners put on display to attract customers (food is food in Cambodia--it sells itself even if the flies lay claim to it before humans do because...well...food keeps people alive). All the white people stretched their sore muscles and tried to kindly say ``No`` to the children, mothers with infants in their arms, and land mine victims who begged for change (change in any form--be it money, miraculous re-growth of lost limbs, a hot shower, a bus ticket to anywhere else--anything). Another bus that opened its doors and spilled out its passengers, another ray of hope smuggled across the border (against the odds, in spite of Poverty`s love affair with Despair) in the bloated wallets of foreigners.

Amidst this heartbreak, as I was surrounded by people with barely enough energy to color their distant dreams, I saw something shocking, something that I had never, ever seen before:
Twenty feet from the open door of our bus, six backpackers in their early 20`s stood in a circle. With bloodshot eyes and silly grins painted across their faces like cheap masks, they smoked a bowl of pot and chatted away.

At first, I was surprised to see foreigners acting so...at home, so comfortable in such an emotionally draining environment. I wondered what sort of impression they were making on the local people. Did these immature travelers not wallow sluggishly in an air of ambivalence? Were they not preaching a vicious intolerance with each laugh, each pass of the bowl? As I walked forward a few paces to get a look at them from a different angle to check and make sure I wasn`t seeing something that wasn`t in fact happening, to make sure I wasn`t prematurely writing off these travelers as arrogant, ignorant twats, I saw something that made my draw drop.

In the middle of their circle stood a young, dirty child who looked as if he was five or six-years-old. The child was begging for change, looking up at the backpackers with his hands pushed together as if he were praying and his eyes wide and glossed over with sincere desperation. The backpackers neither gave him money or walked to a more private place. Instead, they chose to simply stare down into his eyes and continue smoking. The child watched the bowl go around the circle and eventually stopped asking for money. He continued to stand in the circle and he just stared at the six heartless fools encircling him.

I watched the child age in a flash before my very eyes. He went from being five-years-old to 15 before the first backpacker in the circle could exhale his first puff of smoke into the rancid air of a Cambodian rest stop clinging to dear life.

I also watched six young people hit rock bottom...at the same time.