SMILE!

What is it with Cambodians and their endless smiles?

The thing is, if you smile at a Cambodian, be they man, woman or child, they will, almost without exception, smile back. Broadly. Without any hesitation or fear. Even if it's a motobike driver who's stopping to pick you up, but you don't want to get picked up, right, so you smile and wave them off. The moto drivers almost always smile back.

Think about it.

In Canada, in Toronto, if I wave a cab off as it approaches me, smiling all the while, is the cabbie going to smile back? I'm betting no. If I'm walking down the street, and I happen to see a stranger, and I simply smile, will he smile back? Probably not. He will, most likely, high-tail it to the other side of the street, glancing back over his shoulder every now and then to see if I'm following him.

Maybe it's because I'm a foreigner here. That could be it. Foreigners are strange, exotic specimens of existence that most Cambodians don't interact with on a daily, monthly, yearly basis.

But I think it's more than that.

There's a certain lack of, well, cynicism here. In Japan, too. That lack of cynicism allows other, more noble human emotions to peek their way through to the surface more readily, I think.

In the west, right, we're told that we can be anything we want to be. If we try hard, work hard, the world is our oyster, our treasure, our Domino's pizza with pepperoni on top.

In Asia, it ain't like that. People grow up knowing their place, for the most part. There isn't a caste system here like in India, no, but it's much, much, muuuuuch harder to elevate yourself to where you would like to be in life in Japan, Cambodia, China. In the west, I think people begin to resent life itself as they get older, because they realize that (for them, at least) the dream they were promised was bogus. They worked hard, they paid their bills, they went to work -- and for what? The American (Canadian?) Dream eldued them. It ran away. Enter cynicism, stage left.

Cynicism emerges when we realize that the world is an unfair place. Well, a lot of people in Asia know that from the get-go anyways. Life sucks, we all die, we're screwed from birth, but hey -- what are ya gonna do? (Sho ga nai, as the Japanese say. It can't be helped. That's life.) So with that lack of cynicism comes a kind of gentleness that persists and endures.

Yes, yes, but what about the Japanese military in WWII, and what about the Khmer Rouge in the seventies -- you call that innocence, Spencer?

And my answer is: Hey, I'm from St.Catharines, Ontario -- whaddaya want? I don't got all the answers. I'm just bumbling my way through Asia, observing and, as Indiana Jones once said, making it up as I go along.

But it's here, that sense of spirit and open-hearted, unselfconscious generosity that we're somehow lacking in the west. It pops up when you least expect it.

If you doubt me, just come to Cambodia. Walk down the street. Wait for a crowded van full of smooshed together kids to come roaring by. Wave your hand and catch their eyes and let your smile beam forth.

And watch what happens.