Career Adventures: Take A Walk On The Wild Side

On a recent trip to Cambodia, I met three generations of people having career adventures in South-East Asia - 50 somethings reinventing themselves, 30 somethings re-energising themselves and 20 somethings finding themselves. Their common attributes included embracing risk, a sense of adventure, independence, empathy, pragmatism, curiosity and cultural sensitivity. Here are some of their stories with a few of my reflections.

Danny is an Englishman from East Anglia, in his 50s and has been living and working in Cambodia for the last six years. Quietly spoken, with John Lennon shades and a spidery frame, he is our guide for a tour of the local area in the forests and coffee plantations of Mondulkiri in the East of the country. Three of us sit in the back of his open-top pick up truck bouncing down the dust tracks past fields of pepper, through villages of indigenous tribes and to stunning waterfalls.

There is more to Danny than meets the eye. He owns a hotel in the capital, Phnom Penh, and lives in the far North-East of the country where few tourists go, teaching computer skills in the local schools. His philosophy is summed up in a few words:

I don't give money, I just do things for people. 

Jackie and Graham, their children now grown up, sold their house and gave up their professional jobs to go travelling. We found them nine months into a trip that had covered half a dozen countries in the region. They were actively developing ideas for a new virtual business based on their travel experiences for others to follow in their footsteps.  

Steve turned up at a nature lodge where we were staying dressed like a Ninja Turtle, padded up from his motorbike adventure across Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. He left England three years ago after a messy divorce and a failed business, teaching English on his travels. Next stop a teaching job in China.

Jack and Liz, 23 year olds from Manchester, had just finished a TEFL stint in Phnom Penh and were heading for South America in the new year for more teaching work. Jack told me that he enjoys living in the present and is happy to let his future unfold as he goes along, with a desire to do some kind of job in a mountain environment. He believes 

Everyone should travel to find themselves and get a sense of perspective. 

We met other young people from the UK, America, France, Holland and Hong Kong all of whom were living and working in the country either in permanent jobs with construction and energy companies, as teachers at international schools or interns for NGOs and the United Nations.  

I encountered inevitable and fascinating cultural differences between working life in Cambodia and the UK.  We have much to learn from each other. For example, we shared a tuktuk by chance with a successful young Khmer entrepreneur, 25-year-old, Bunt, who owns five restaurants in partnership with an Irishman. He is off to the market to buy made-to-measure curtains for his latest one that is opening shortly. From a poor rural background, his schooling was limited from the age of 11 to 16, yet he has since got a degree, and lived and worked in Germany. Bunt has not forgotten his roots, sending rice through an NGO to those less fortunate. He belongs to the largest demographic in the country - 68% of the near 15 million population are under the age of 30. Not surprising given that 2-3 million people (out of 7 million)  were killed or died of disease and malnutrition during Pol Pot's regime in the late 1970s. I rarely saw an old person.

Our guide around the famous temples at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap is 36-year-old, Kim, intelligent, funny and with a brilliant work ethic. He speaks fluent English, French and Japanese - all self-taught. His family background is a tough tale. His mother died when he was young and his father was killed by the infamous Khmer Rouge. He grew up with seven siblings and nephews who fended for themselves throughout the civil war that raged from 1979 to 1998. They moved constantly in the forests and ate whatever animal they could to survive, enduring Dengue Fever and Malaria several times. Resilience is in his DNA.

Kim pauses and looks quizzical when we ask him if he enjoys his job, as if the question is alien.

Enjoy is irrelevant as I work to live.  

He explains that most jobs are transient, six months at the most, so you get what you can and expect to move on. Tourism is relatively new to Cambodia, having grown from 200,000 annual visitors in the early 2000s to over 4 million today.

Kim works for a travel company run by a smart, generous, easy-going Tasmanian called Dean. He kindly took us out for breakfast and told me about his business and what it's like being an employer in Cambodia. Beyond Unique Escapes employs eight people, all local Khmers, and is committed to setting professional standards in customer service in one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world. The company ethos is away from being authoritarian and compliance and towards collaborative working and mutual benefits between company and employee. Many employers do not adhere to the few employment laws that exist, but Beyond is seeking to lead by example. Like Bunt, they give a percentage of their profits back to the local community.

Not for nothing is Cambodia known as 'the Land of Smiles'. In the years of the 'killing fields', a smile cost you your life. There is still massive inequality between rich and poor, a fragile political climate with a hunger for change from its young population. Despite the impoverishment and lack of first world infrastructure, nearly every person we meet - adults, young people and children - responds to or initiates a smile and a wave. Rejected tuktuk offers are met with good humour, there is no sign of road rage anywhere despite the chaotic traffic, strangers help strangers, education adverts are everywhere extolling the virtues of study and a good job. I'm going to smile a lot more in 2016.

(All photos by author)

If you liked this post, please share it and click the FOLLOW button above to get more! Or consider subscribing to my mailing list at www.learningtoleap.co.uk and get a free e-book '10 Critical Attitudes For Exceptional Students'.

David (@David_Shindler) is an independent coach, blogger and speaker, associate with several consultancies, founder of The Employability Hub (free resources for students and graduates), author of Learning to Leap: a guide to being more employable, Digital Bad Hair Days and co-author with Mark Babbitt of 21 Century Internships. His commitment and energy is in promoting lifelong personal and professional development and in tackling youth unemployment. He works with young people and professionals in education and business.

To read more of his work - visit the Learning to Leap blog and download the app to receive his weekly blogs on your mobile (iTunes and Google Play).

And check out his other published articles on LinkedIn:

Accountability, Productivity And Saving Lives

Being Human In The Artificial Age

The Unwritten Rules Of Graduate Employment

3 Soft Skills Paradoxes

Healthy Job And Career Transitions

Solutions For Closing The Gap From Classroom To Career

The Multiplier Opportunity In The Generation Game

Culture: The Quantified Self And The Qualitative Self

Purposeful Leadership To Create The Life Of Meaning

The Uber Effect: Opportunities For Job Seekers And Employers

Hierarchies are tumbling as Social soars

The Emergence of the Holistic Student

New Graduates: Following Is A Rehearsal For Leading

How Redefining Success Helps You Succeed

Why Developing Yourself Is A Matter Of Life And Death

Generation Now: The Imperative Of Intercultural Skills

#If I Were 22: Choose Insight Before Hindsight

How To Align Talent, Careers and Performance

Liberating The Talents Of All Your Employees

6 Professional Practices for Job And Career Searching