Arie Goes to a Cambodian Amusement Park

One of the things I had been meaning to do while in Phnom Penh was visit the amusement park. Lonely Planet claimed that about half a mile from my apartment (at the eastern end of Sihanouk Boulevard) was a carnival of some kind, and I could sometimes see the lights from it, but I hadn't found time to visit. My second-to-last day, I walked over to see it.

There was no admission charge, so I walked right in. As best as I can figure out, the amusement park isn't run by a single company so much as it's a large number of independent vendors who all just staked out some land and set up booths. The park straddles a major road, and traffic just goes right through it. (Similarly, people ride motorcycles through the park at high speeds, so sometimes you have to jump off the paths in a hurry.)

The first thing I noticed when I came in was booths where you throw darts to pop balloons. There were dozens of these booths, and a lot of them had customers--I guess this game is very popular in Cambodia. It looked sort of fun, but not very fun. I don't entirely understand why the amusement park needs 30 identical booths, but that's how it was. They also had giant bags of pre-inflated balloons to replace the popped ones, I suppose every carnival does that.

There were also a lot of rides. I guess all amusement parks primarily target children, but this one especially so--there were a lot of slow, not scary rides on tracks and swinging cars with cartoonish decorations. There was one roller coaster, and it looked kind of fun, but it wasn't very large or fast. Most of the customers were families with children, though there were some teenagers and post-adolescents around.

This being Cambodia, it was also filled with food vendors. A lot of corn, both boiled and popped, for some reason. One thing I couldn't quite figure out was a number of large areas that looked sort of like restaurants, but instead of tables they had hammocks. I didn't see anyone in the hammocks, which makes me think that they may just have been where the carnival workers sleep at night. I'm not really sure.

One thing that looks better about this amusement part than ours is the roller skating. Ours are just boring rings with bad pop music. But this roller skating rink had a big wavy floor section, and the more daring kids would get up a lot of speed and then go up and down the bumps, or just try to jump over the whole thing. It looked fun.

I took a lot of photos. I expected to draw a lot of attention; last time I was out with my camera, I attracted a small crowd of men who poked and prodded my tripod and zoom lens. But this time, no one paid me the slightest bit of notice. This was a bit more surprising because I was the only white person in the place. Usually the reaction I get depends on whether I'm at a tourist attraction-- either "good, another westerner, try to sell him something" or "why would a westerner come here?". But at the amusement park, no one cared one way or the other. No one tried to sell me anything, no one looked at me for more than half a second, no one poked my tripod. It was surprisingly pleasant.

I spent some time in front of a ride where people sit in cars that swing around, and then the cars can also spin freely on their mounts. A pair of workers were employed to stand around and spin the cars by hand as they spun around on the motorized ride. I guess this isn't surprising, but I was struck by how the whole scene could have been in the United States. I had seen them all back home--the twelve year-old boy who wants to spin as fast as possible, the two teenage girls who keep trying to stop the guy from spinning them around, the boy trying to impress his date by acting like he's enjoying the ride when they're both trying not to vomit, the father who really didn't want to be on the ride, but is there to hold his incredibly excited six year-old son.

It's not surprising that the best word I can think of to describe Cambodia is "foreign". A friend pointed out that being a westerner in Phnom Penh is alienating because you see people every day and have no idea what they're doing. You see people sitting around, cutting up food, doing intricate things with metal bars, and you don't know who they are, what they're doing, why they're doing it. She notes that when you get on the subway in New York, you can make up a story for every person in the car--and the stories might not be right, but they're plausible--recognizable. To live in Cambodia is to constantly think, "I have no idea what's going on", all day, every day.

The amusement park was a wake-up call. Phnom Penh is foreign because it's a different culture, because it's very poor, because I didn't grow up here, because the weather is different, because the food is different, because the government is corrupt. But it's not foreign because of the people--the people are the same. Poverty is painful because we're all the same. I'm a wealthy American instead of a starving moto driver only because of an accident of birth.

There's a sort of racism you sometimes hear from westerners who have lived here for a long time. I think maybe it's a defense mechanism, a way to justify being well-off and surrounded by poverty. And maybe there are elements of Cambodian culture which contribute to its structural problems. But ultimately, Cambodians are just like everyone else. They're us, except they're what we would be if we grew up where they did.

For me, the most difficult part of living in Cambodia has been seeing children working. I had a fairly idyllic childhood, as far as they go, and while I've been aware for some time about how fortunate I am to have parents who were both willing and able to provide that, it's hard to face children who are being denied that opportunity. One of my favorite restaurants is run by a family, and the eleven year-old son is the waiter.

Visiting the amusement park was a reminder that Cambodia isn't all like that, that there are children riding roller coasters, nervous teenagers on first dates, new parents, just like everywhere else. When I think back to these days, I'm glad that I will have these memories as well.