Japan in Cambodia
I recently came back from a trip to Cambodia with HOPE Japan, an NGO that builds wells and provides micro-loans in the very poor rural areas of the country. Our team members were all either Japanese or people living in Japan, so we were quick to notice the influence of Japan in Cambodia. When we were driving out of the capital city of Phnom Penh headed for the rural areas, we encountered a massive, under-construction bridge that was nicknamed the “Toyota Bridge”. Apparently, the money for the bridge was provided by the Japanese government, with Toyota and friends providing the expertise. I suppose that both are anxious to get more Toyotas flowing into the country.
But Japan’s involvement isn’t all corporate and governmental. In the following video we headed out to a floating village near the village of Krakor where we encountered something completely unanticipated (about at the halfway point of the video):
Contributor Bio: JJ, shockingly, teaches English, but would prefer to do other things (shockingly). So he writes songs or comedy or the occasional theological treatise. Sometimes he tries to combine all of them. This is most easily observed at www.youtube.com/fatblueman.
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- Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
- dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
- Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)
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Great video, you really went to an amazing place, thanks for sharing.
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what’s unexpected?
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they encounter a japanese operation in a vietnamese settlement area, where some Japanese are teaching the Vietnamese students, Khmer (the official language of cambodia) so that the kids can enter cambodian schools.
it’s interesting.
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What’s the “something completely unanticipated?”
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The Cambodian children have constructed a 7 meter tall, fully operational replica of Mobile Suit Gundam. They used discarded sheet metal, scavenged car and boat parts, and hydraulic components from a downed aircraft. It’s really quite good.
It’s at 5:10 in the video.
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lol for some reason i actually believed in this comment rather than the much more logical comment right above it
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I wish it were so. I was definitely amazed by what I saw, but that would have been even better…
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thank you so much for sharing, what a wonderful experience you had. really enjoyed this.
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Going to other countries just to go build/help yourself is just self-serving bullcrap. It’s ridiculously inefficient if you actually want to help. Even if you worked night and day, you’d only done the work of what 1 hired local labor could have done for far cheaper, in which case just sending money that would’ve been spent on lodging, plane ticket, and food would have been more help to the people you’re trying to “help”.
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Good point, lots of self-serving “volunteers” out there, but by the same token, there are a few noble souls out there who do it because no one else will.
But there’s something to be said about “finding one’s self” in a foreign land, and in the end, that person, by learning more about his/herself, becomes one more slightly enlightened person … Something, I’m sure we can all agree on, is in short supply.
btw, it’d be better to tone down, though, and give JJ some credit for sharing aspects about Cambodia you won’t find in wikipedia. You’re now a little more “aware” of Cambodia, albeit unconsciously aware, and that’s good in itself.
As you can infer, the commercial fishermen are acting to be accountable only to their shareholders, oblivious to the havoc they’re inflicting on the floating communities.
Don’t be a commercial fisherman by looking only at “bottom-line results”, “productivity” and “efficiency”. You are forgetting that “creating goodwill” is one of the toughest categories to place a value on in any situation.
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Thanks UB for your comment. As for you weirdo, I would agree with every word you said, and that is why a responsible NGO is careful to be sensitive to the sorts of problems you raise, and I addressed this in other videos in the series. Maybe you could tell us how you are engaging/helping, as it seems you have thought deeply on the subject.
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