Last night was Gaz’s birthday drinks in the prostitute infested Temple Bar. I left early feeling tired and overwhelmed by the loud crappy dance music. It seems most others stayed for quite a while as everybody appears to be with hangover from the night’s shenanigans. I am just in the mood for relaxing, so I spend much of the day in the hotel lounge area.
It’s here I meet Rachel, a twenty two year old American who is staying at the hotel. She is here regularly, splitting her time between Siem Riep and Phnom Penh. She has lived in Cambodia for one and a half years running an arts and crafts workshop for HIV +ve women. This started off as a partnership with an older woman, but the latter left her to it not long after it started.
Rachel explains to me that in Cambodia a woman is a either a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ girl, i.e. she gets married and only ever sleeps with one man, or she is a prostitute. Cambodia is also a known stopover for those with paedophile tendencies. There is a prominent campaign in Cambodia called ‘ChildSafe’, a helpline to report incidences of abuse, such as children being sold by their families to become sex slaves. She explains that many prostitutes originate from this practice. More commonly, families ask their daughters to become prostitutes to raise money. Family bonds are very strong in Cambodia and most relent to such pressures, bringing new meaning to the term ‘family values’.
According to Rachel, 1% of Cambodians carry the HIV virus. This is down from 2% in the 90s because most of the first generation of carriers, mainly prostitutes and their customers, have died off. Now, she says, the biggest transmission of HIV is from husbands to their wives, and then pregnant mothers to their children. Most of the women she deals with are those that got HIV from their husbands who have since died, although the skeptical voice in my head says many are likely to be telling her that without it necessarily being true. Because those who have HIV are assumed to have been ‘bad girls’, they are looked down on by the broader society.
For lunch, I join Laurie and Gary who have come back from a morning tour of floating villages and a croc farm. After lunch, they go to the Landmines Museum. I have had enough of depressing stories in Cambodia, so I decide not to go with them.
I meet up with them again for dinner and we go back to Pub Street where I have a tasty Mexican dinner. This is followed by another fish massage and then a few games of pool at the Funky Munky bar. There are a number of the fish massage tanks on the street tonight. It turns out that it is not just one particular fish used for these. Any small ones that like to nibble of dead skin will do. You would probably be reported to the RSPCA for this in the UK, especially as not all of the fish in the tank are alive.
Tonight, we have to wipe our feet before putting them in the tank, so there is not so much of a fish frenzy, although my feet still seem to be top of the fish hit parade.
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