just another day in paradise..

so im travelling back from phnom penh to kampot. a three hour taxi trip. usually i make sure we leave plenty of time to get home before dark. but this is the first time for a night drive. my thirteen year old son is with me.

the sunset is spectactular. i make some very feeble attempts at capturing the display. pretty hard to do through a window of a moving car. the palm trees are silhouetted against the pink and purple sky. this is cambodia at its very finest. we eventually ask the driver to pull over so we can just stop and absorb the beauty around us.

we continue our drive. its now dark so my focus shifts from the horizon to the actual road. i notice that we are passing a lot of trucks. when i have a closer look i realise that the trucks are JAM PACKED with young women. seriously...these women are so crammed in that they dont even need anything to hold on to. some of the trucks have a few young men hanging on to the back of the truck.

reality slaps me in the face. sweat shop workers!! coming home from their 12 hour shift. we are more than an hour and a half out of phnom penh. so after a long long day of sewing our factory made clothes...these young people then have to climb onto a truck and be herded back to their village a couple of hours south of the city. which can only mean that they started their day in the same way.

my son is mortified when i pull out my camera.  "muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!!!!!  you CANT do that!!"  he's got a point.  but when i hold the camera up it looks as if they are waving at me.  so i wave back.  big smile on my face.  thinking how great it is that they dont mind having their photo taken.  thats when i realise.  it wasnt their hands waving.  it was their scarves blowing in the wind.  and no one is smiling.  damn it!  i was hoping to capture the scene to show people back home another harsh reality of sweat shops. but i was also sort of hoping that i wasnt totally trampling on these people by snapping pictures.  but yes...i have just trampled.  and feel like an absolute moron.  my son explains to me that surely their situation is bad enough...they dont need some western woman in a comfortable taxi...with spare seats...and air con...to snap away.  and of course he is right.  uuuuggh!

so yes.  yet again the reality of cambodia strikes hard.  this incredible beauty.  yet in amongst it this absolute poverty and mistreatment of people. 

as my friend Any said after seeing an episode of "animal rescue".  in australia animals are looked after more than people in cambodia'"   and yes...sadly Any is right.