Poorer on paper

I was in Cambodia for the first time. Phnom Penh, July, shortly after eight in the morning. The air was already warm and heavy, the city long awake. I just started walking, no plan, camera in hand.

The first thing that gets you is the traffic. Scooters from the left, tuk tuks from the right, people in between, handcarts, market stalls spilling onto the street. There are traffic lights, but they feel more like a suggestion. And yet it flows. It honks, it jolts, it works itself out. In all that time I did not see a single angry driver. Maybe I was lucky. Or maybe a system can simply work without a thousand rules, as long as everyone expects everyone else to make mistakes.

At the market, meat hangs openly on hooks. Next to it crabs in big bowls, vegetables, colorful umbrellas, plastic stools. It smells like everything at once. By our standards, probably none of it is up to code. And at the same time people have been shopping there every morning for decades, and life goes on.

The bank account

I opened a bank account in Phnom Penh. As a tourist. In one morning.

I am not telling this because anyone needs a bank account in Cambodia. I am telling it because the whole time I kept waiting for the catch. I am used to something else. Appointments, forms, documents, follow-up questions, waiting. Here it was simply done in one morning, and I stood back on the street almost a little confused that this was supposed to be it.

The question

At some point that day, this thought arrived, and it has not left since.

Why does a country that is poorer on paper than mine feel freer in some places?

On paper the case is clear. Income, infrastructure, safety nets, my country leads everywhere. I would not trade places with anyone there, and I believe many there would trade with me in a heartbeat. That much honesty is necessary.

But on the street, in everyday life, in the small things, there was something I do not know from home. A matter-of-factness with which things simply get done, instead of first being checked, applied for and approved. I do not know yet what to make of it. I only know that it stays on my mind.

What I do not want to forget

I was a visitor. With a return ticket, with money that is worth more there than at home. Freedom feels light when you can afford it. The woman at the market stall probably works harder than I do, with no net to catch her if something goes wrong. I do not want to romanticize that. Poverty is not picturesque, even if it sometimes looks that way in travel photos.

Maybe the honest version is this. Both are true at the same time. The country is poorer, and still I learned something about freedom there that my whole orderly life could not teach me.

What I take with me

Cambodia did not give me an answer, just a better question. How much of what is regulated at home would sort itself out without the rule. And how much of my own caution is truly mine, and how much is just habit.

I filmed that day, the video is on the channel. For those who prefer reading, I will say only this. It was different than expected. In both directions.