On the second day of our trip we had two Plenary meetings, the first with the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation and the second with the Ministry of Education. This ended up being a schedule change from our original itinerary as the Ministry of Education meeting wasn’t scheduled until just the day before. The meeting with the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation was really interesting. The Minister described how in 1970 only 70 people lived in Phnom Penh and now the city housed over 1.5 million people. To help ensure Cambodia’s success, the Cambodian leadership has had very liberal investment rules for FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and how as Phnom Penh is located at the center of many asian countries, “over 651 million customers are right at our doorstep”. Because of this, creating and extending highways was clearly the Ministry’s main objective. Below is a picture of the Kellogg group on the left and the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation’s administrators on the right:
After we left, we were able to have some free time, so a few of us decided to do a little shopping and eat lunch. The pictures don’t do it justice, but it was amazing how large these shopping areas were. Below is a picture from the main one we visited, but just imagine these tunnels going back as far as the eye could see, and then many different areas within the tunnels to find other items to shop for. It basically seemed to be a WalMart with literally anything you could need except instead of one big store it was hundreds of small self-run shops:
When we were done shopping and eating, we headed back to the hotel so we could board the bus for the Ministry of Education. By far one of the more interesting conversations we had was during this meeting. The Minister of Education went over stats about their success rates in schools and how they were trying to get into computer education, but by far the most interesting part of the conversation stemmed from the question “How do you rebuild schools and create teachers when during the Khmer Rouge communist regime (from 1975-1979) over 2 million people were murdered and over 80% of the educated people were killed?” Essentially, if there are no teachers left, who teaches the children to then teach the next generation? It really made me realize how, as obviously bad as 2 million deaths is, that wasn’t the only terrible thing to happen to Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge had essentially put Cambodia back 10’s if not 100 years behind where they could have been from a national development standpoint.
Below is a picture of my good friend Melissa thanking the Minister of Education for his time with one of our Professors (Dan Keeler) standing behind her:
Once our meetings were over, we headed to dinner on a large boat on the Mekong river:
Additional pictures from day 2:
Click here to go to day 3 of our trip, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields.