The Buddha said that “It is better to travel well than to arrive.” I am reminded of this as we voyage in five star luxury on the Viking Orion. Our port for the past two days was Sihanoukville, Cambodia.
Last year we visited Phnom Penh and witnessed the sites of the horrifying genocide committed against the Cambodian people by their own leader Pol Pot. More than one million Cambodians were slaughtered by their own government in the late 1970s. The world stood by silently and watched. The story of genocide is not a new one. Every corner of our world has been bloodied by murder at the hands of despots and dictators. We are wise to be aware of the signs around us.
This trip, we toured the port city of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. The people are poor. The infrastructure appears in need of upgrading. Prices are cheap but if feels unsettling. I cringe when I hear others with my palid skin tone bargaining for a discount. We pay asking price without question. It is still ridiculously cheap. $20 for a beautiful lunch for two including tip. $32 for a 90 minute massage at the local spa.
We toured the local market and saw children working in the family fruit stand, grandparents making pennies weighing produce and even people who don’t have a scale at home, and a general onslaught of humanity shopping for their evening meal.
We toured a Buddhist shrine and snapped pics of young Buddhist novices playing in the yard. As we ventured in our cantankerous tuk tuk that often hesitated to start in the hot afternoon sun, we too grew a bit restless, managing to get on each other’s last nerve until choice words were said, and we pretended to enjoy the rest of our tour in deafening silence, punctuated by the self imposed gag order of our driver who had the good sense to remain quiet and keep his eyes forward during the offensives of our marital warfare.
Not every day of vacation feels like it. We are careless with our words when we should be thoughtful. We are ungrateful even when surrounded by poverty. We are unkind even while watching Buddhist monks at play. Worse yet, we recognize our good fortune and yet we persist in our stupidity.
The Buddha reminds us to be better; to live fully in the moment and to love each other not in spite of, but because of our flaws.
The Buddha says…”In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”
