Words by Tim Patterson
Photos by Ryan Libre

A muscular man without legs drags himself down a beach. He stops to rest in the shade of a beach umbrella and lights a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros, using messily amputated fingers.

Behind the beggar, a young woman in a red bikini reclines on a pillowed beach chair, sipping from a tall draft of Anchor beer. Before long she finishes her beer, gets up, walks past the legless man, goes into a shed with computers and types out an e-mail to her friend back home. “Cambodia is wonderful,“ she writes. “We’re all having the BEST time!”

……

Welcome to “Snookyville,” Cambodia’s beach boom town, where sex is cheap, beer is cheaper and property values have sky-rocketed in the past few years. Most people come to Sihanoukville for one of two reasons – to relax and have a good time, or to make money. Doing either of these things well in a country as lawless as Cambodia necessitates - how shall I put this - a certain tunnel vision.

To fully appreciate Sihanoukville’s sunny skies, mango smoothies, cheap drugs, twinkling blue waters, fresh seafood or teenage prostitutes requires the remarkable ability to tune out desperate poverty and social injustice. Unless you’re one of the poor people, of course, in which case you’re no doubt preoccupied with trying to feed your family and send your kids to school.

But wait. There’s a catch.

The thing is, the young woman typing that e-mail was right – Cambodia really is a place of wonders. Focus too hard on the ugliness, and you risk succumbing to an equally dangerous form of tunnel vision, going numb to the possibility of beauty.

Whenever I need to renew my faith in humanity – or in other words, just about every morning - I duck down a dirt track next to the Samudera supermarket, turn left at a vivid pink bloom of flowers and enter the grounds of Starfish Project, a place that glows like a junkyard sunflower with the beauty of compassion.

……

The Starfish Project takes its name from an old parable that illustrates the importance of cultivating one’s sense of compassion, even when confronted by a whole world of suffering. Here is the story, reproduced from the Starfish website:

A Buddhist monk was on the beach with his apprentice the day after a fierce storm. Thousands of starfish had been washed up and stranded on the shore. Stooping down, the monk carefully lifted a single creature and returned it to the sea. His young apprentice wondered aloud why his master bothered to do this when it made little difference to the mass of helpless creatures. As they walked along, the monk picked up another single starfish and replied,

“It makes a difference to this one.”

Isn’t that a beautiful little story? Read More...