Beggars, Bangles, Bananas and BBQ's

We have just got back from Sihanoukvile - Costa del Cambodia !! There are some lovely isolated islands within a couple of hours boat ride where we had Christmas night in a hut on a deserted beach. The town itself is just putting its' toe in the water of tourism so some places are very fancy and some quite tatty. However, you cannot sit for more than a few minutes on the beach without a woman or child wanting to sell you fruit, jewellery or a manicure. There are also the woman beggars who carry their children along the beach and the amputees shuffling on their bottoms or showing you their stumps of hands. In the evening the beach bar shacks light the BBQ and the children sell fireworks and collect rubbish for recycling.

The children were very good at honing in on those toursists who would buy from them - a few words in Khmer (Ate akun - No thank you) had them scurrying off and we were bothered less and less - we obviously didn't look like tourists! All of this selling / begging is being discouraged through the local gavernment and NGO's. There is free schooling for all the children, there is vocational training for amputees, there is work for women yet it is more lucrative for them to be on the beach. The women who were carrying their children showed little sign of malnutrition and the child was able to walk, though this of course would not attracted the sympathy of the tourists.