Pack Your Bags And Go!
I am convinced that every person should travel outside of their own country at least once in their life. I had never been outside of America’s borders until May of 2018. I traveled to Cambodia with a group of students from my local university, and I’ll never regret it.
I had just finished my final exams, and the day of departure was swiftly approaching. I was almost as nervous as I was excited. I had not traveled much up to that point. I had only been to a handful of the fifty states in America.
Cambodia is located in Southeast Asia (sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam). There isn’t any further I could have traveled from home. I was 23 years old and packing up to go over 8,500 miles to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
I love flying. I love the whole process. Security gets a bad reputation, but it goes pretty quickly unless you get selected to have your bag checked. I’ll let you guess who that happened to (both flying out and coming back). I got to talk to a few more people I would have otherwise, and that’s a win for me.
I flew to Cambodia (and back) on EVA Air, which is a Taiwanese international airline. It was the most amazing experience I have ever had on a plane. I will admit that I have flown just a few other times, but this beat those other times. I could barely feel the plane take off or land. We got snacks and beverages before the plane even took off, and the crew handed out pillows and blankets.
There are a few particular reasons why I believe every person should travel outside of their own country. To this day, when I think about Cambodia, I think about the culture I saw, the food I ate, and the selfless, sacrificial nature of the Cambodian people.
For the two weeks that I was there, I discovered there truly is more to the world than I thought.
I like to eat, and I am assuming that you do, too. While in Cambodia, I stayed at Western-style hotels. We ate breakfast at the hotel and other meals in the communities while traveling. There is one thing that showed up everywhere — rice. There was white rice, brown rice, and fried rice at every corner. There was one time I ate sticky rice out of a bamboo stick. It was sweet and had black beans in it if I remember correctly.
Outside of rice, I tried a tarantula, frog, and a few bugs on sticks from the street markets. I was surprised to find that my mind had me convinced they would taste worse than they did. The tarantula was chewy, the frog reminded me of chicken, and the bugs were chewy and crunchy.
The food that we encountered speaks to Cambodian culture and history. The Cambodian tour guide told my group about the Cambodian genocide that took place between 1975–1979. She said that many people had to survive by eating bugs. Now, it’s seen as a delicacy.
Through the experience that I had with Cambodian food, I learned about Cambodian history and how it impacts the country.
One of the first things that the group did when we arrived in Phnom Penh was visit a genocide museum. It was an emotional experience, but I’ll never regret the experience. It is an important piece of world history and an important piece of Cambodian history. The genocide has, in a way, shaped the Cambodia that we see today.
While driving throughout the country, something was missing that I believe would create mass chaos in America if we were suddenly without it — stoplights and stop signs.
I traveled to three major cities in Cambodia, and I only saw one stoplight and one stop sign in the entire country. The rule of the road is the bigger you are the more power you have. I was surprised that we only witnessed one traffic accident during the entire two weeks.
We went to visit a mall one Saturday night and ate at Burger King. Yes, Cambodia has Burger King. There was a movie theatre on the second floor. We thought there was a wedding or a formal dance, but people dress formally when they go to movies in Cambodia.
We visited a local village where the children were running around with no shoes on, and they were running around in dirty water filled with trash.
We stumbled upon a festival that was taking place in front of one of the hotels that we were staying at, and we got to witness traditional dancing and art.
We visited the biggest Buddhist temple in the world (built in the 12th century). It is now used as a tourist site. There is so much history and culture carved into the walls of the temple, and it is the largest religious monument in the world by land area.
I may have only been in Cambodia for two weeks, but there are simply too many things for me to write about in this short blog. Through the things that I have included here, and so much more, I learned about another world that exists in Southeast Asia.
All of the things compiled above are my defense as to why every person, if they can, should travel outside of their own country at least once.
Do you ever wonder what’s out there? Do you wonder what you could stumble upon if you just packed your bags and went?
In just two weeks, I learned more about the Khmer people group’s rich history and culture than I could by reading a book or sitting in a classroom. I spoke face-to-face with locals and learned hands-on what it means to be Cambodian.
It’s time for you to stop thinking about traveling and just do it. You won’t regret it!
