Touring with a heart in Cambodia and Laos

SIEM REAP, Cambodia — Along the road leading to the ancient temples of Angkor, makeshift gas stations store fuel in empty Pepsi bottles and smoke rises from charcoal fires at roadside restaurants.

Temperatures here hover in the 90s, even at dusk, so when I spotted a sign advertising the spa services of a five-star French hotel, I was tempted to end a day of sweaty sightseeing in air-conditioned comfort.

That plan changed when I noticed another sign, this one at the entrance to Krousar Thmey, a foundation that helps Cambodian street children.

"Massage by Blinds," read a notice posted above a bungalow set in a garden of banana and palm trees.

The price was $5 an hour. "Two-fifty for 30 minutes," said the young manager. He introduced me to Mon Mollyna, 23, a student masseuse with silky black hair and a soft voice.

She led me behind a curtain and I lay face down on a table between two fans. Mollyna worked her fingers into my neck and shoulders. She told me that she became ill with a disease and lost her sight when she was 2.

"What is your job?" she asked. "I'm a journalist. Do you know that word?" "No," she said, "but tomorrow, I will ask my teacher."

There are few jobs for blind people in Cambodia, for anyone really. Thirty years of political violence and civil war ended in 1998, but recovery is just beginning. Cambodia is one of the world's poorest countries. The average per capita annual income is $280, with many in rural villages earning far less. Thousands of children live without families, schools or adequate health care.

The massage felt good, but what felt even better was knowing that instead of supporting a hotel spa, I was helping a young woman pay her $15 monthly rent and finance bus trips home to visit her parents and brothers in Phnom Penh.

Touring for a cause — eating, shopping and buying services that provide job training and economic benefits to disadvantaged people — is a rewarding way to travel, but tapping into these opportunities isn't always easy.

People before profits

In developing countries, outsiders typically control most of the tourist infrastructure. The Hindu temples of Angkor, for instance, draw thousands of tourists to Siem Reap, but investors from France, Singapore, Thailand and China own most of the big hotels, boutiques, spas and restaurants.

Enter groups such as Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human-rights organization dedicated to pointing socially aware tourists in a different direction through its "Reality Tours" to more than 30 countries.

These trips focus on politics, economics and social-justice issues, but there's also time for shopping, eating and sightseeing, and, as I discovered when I joined a group in Cambodia and Laos earlier this month, the opportunities to spend tourist dollars for the global good are wide-ranging.

Shops, restaurants and services that put people before profits are popping up around the world as charitable organizations find creative ways to capture tourist dollars.

At Friends-The Restaurant, an air-conditioned oasis in the heart of steamy Phnom Penh, young waiters and waitresses in yellow and red T-shirts hurry frozen Margaritas and papaya salads to wooden tables decorated with fresh flowers.

Friends is a vocational training center disguised as a Western-style restaurant, but eating here is hardly an act of charity.

On the menu are raspberry and vanilla shakes, coconut cake and spiced fish with palm sugar and green mango. The food is some of the best around, with dishes priced in the $1.50-$2 range.

Run by Mith Samlanh/Friends, a Cambodian nonprofit that provides job training to street children, the restaurant is invitingly out of place among its neighbors — a laundry and a shop that makes Buddha figures — on Street 13 near the National Museum.

In the kitchen the day I visited was Sok Someworn, 19. Until he was recruited into Mith Samlanh's training program, he was what Cambodians call a "trash picker," a person who survives by earning money collecting cans, plastic water bottles and other items that can be resold or used.

With his new skills, he hopes to get a job that pays around $80 per month, half of which he says he will give to his father, a bicycle taxi driver, who earns $25-$30 a month.

Fixed prices, fair wages

What was surprising was that Friends has competition. Other charitable organizations run Le Rit's, a white-tablecloth cafe set up to train poor women and Lotus Blanc, a French restaurant run by a group which provides education and vocational training to children living near the town garbage dump.

Other programs, many sponsored by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by religious groups, focus on training youths, village women and land-mine victims to produce traditional arts and crafts. The merchandise is then sold in shops at prices that insure fair wages. Profits are funneled back into materials and training.

In the village of Somsamai, 45 minutes from the Lao capital of Vientiane, cooking fires burn inside houses made of thatched palm. Once a month, Hmong women , some carrying babies on their backs, bring their needlework and cross-stitching to a buyer from Camacrafts, a Christian relief organization that supplies the villagers with materials at no charge and advises them on colors and patterns that appeal to foreign buyers. The women are paid $36 a month which they use to buy medicine and school books. The products are sold in Cama's store in Vientiane and in shops in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Japan.

I struggled with the idea of shopping in fixed-price stores in countries where bargaining is so much a part of the culture. But the prices were fair and the merchandise was of higher quality and more unusual than the mass-produced items in the markets.

These shops weren't always easy to find, but they were worth seeking out. Many were in low-rent districts off the beaten tourist parth.

Rajana is a Cambodian worker-owned enterprise set up to help refugees who escaped the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. At its shop on a dusty Siem Reap backstreet, I found gongs and key rings made out of spent bullet and bomb casings; notebooks crafted from recycled plastic water bottles and tiny clay pots filled with Cambodian turmeric and lemongrass.

At Wat Than, a Buddhist temple near Independence Monument in Phnom Penh, a cooperative called Watthan Artisans of Cambodia sells handicrafts made by people disabled by polio or land-mine accidents.

The shop didn't look like much from the outside. The floors were tile and the ceiling fans a poor substitute for air conditioning, but tables were stocked with piles of one-of-a-kind silk scarves, hand-stitched pillow covers, greeting cards made from recycled paper and wood carvings.

"People are often willing to sell you something for a few cents just to earn something," said Bhavia Wagner, of Eugene, Ore. Wagner guided our group of six, and runs Friendship with Cambodia, an organization that supports land-mine victims and poor women by marketing their handicrafts in the U.S. "In shops like these you are sure they are getting fair wages, and by cutting out the middleman, there are two benefits: You're helping the craftsmen directly and supporting their training."

How to help, even at home

I like this idea. If you do, too, but aren't planning a trip soon, there are ways to lend your support here at home.

One is to do some of your holiday shopping at a store or online retail site that supports alternative trade.

The Mennonite Church works with disadvantaged artisans in more than 30 countries to market handicrafts through its chain of Ten Thousand Villages stores. There's a location in Seattle at 6417 Roosevelt Way and in Portland at 914 NW Everett St. in the Pearl District.

Global Exchange sells fair trade coffee, teas, jewelry and crafts online at www.globalexchange.org and at its retail store in Portland at 3508 SE Hawthorne St.

Support one of these organizations and you'll be giving twice — once to your friends and family and again to the people for whom $15 pays the monthly rent.

Carol Pucci's Travel Wise column runs the last Sunday of the month. Comments are welcome. Contact her at 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com .