Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

This morning I woke up at 4:45 am to catch a 5:00 am tuk-tuk to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. We agreed to pay our driver $12 for the entire day (and we think the going price is more like $8-$10). That's what I mean by saying that transportation is expensive, but only relatively so. Well, I was ready by 5:05, and knocked on Ryan's door, and he hadn't even woken up!

We didn't get out until 5:30, and got to Angkor by 6:00....a little too late for sunrise. It didn't matter though, because Angkor Wat was beautiful. There were tourists there for the sunrise, but not a ton of people. I have heard that the place is overrun by tourists, but it was not the case this morning. After exploring Angkor Wat, we went to the Bayon, which is where there are the giant faces. I expected the faces to be surrounded by trees, but these were a part of towers surrounding a temple. Very cool. We then hit up Ta Prohm, where the trees have taken over the temple site. The site is manicured, but they left the largest trees in place - straddling temple walls. Very cool.

Around all of the temples, especially Ta Prohm, we were followed by little Khmer girls trying to sell us their goods. These were either books, bracelets, or t-shirts. They just wouldn't leave us alone! At Angkor, I watched a couple give a little boy some money just so he would stop pestering them. When you exit the temples, you are forced to pass market stalls selling food and water, and cheeky souvenirs. If your skin is white, you can expect to be bombarded by stall owners yelling "mista', you want cold drink?", "mista, you want good food?", "mista, you buy scarf? very good price". The most memorable salesperson was an 8 year old girl trying to sell me a "scarf for your girlfriend." She followed me all the way to my tuk-tuk, and as we drove away, she yelled "you want no scarf, you have no girlfriend!" Either she was making fun of me for not having a girlfriend, or saying that I'll lose my girlfriend if I don't buy the scarf. Either way hilarious.

As tourism grows at these temples, the aggressiveness and abrasiveness of the market stall owners and children will only increase. My advice - get here before it gets worse.

At the last temple for the day we were bombarded by young girls again - trying to sell us t-shirts and bracelets of course. Their english was fantastic, and Ryan and I talked to them for a while. We were losing interest in temples by this point, and the girls were much more fun to talk to. When we started walking back to the tuk-tuk, the girls got more persistant in trying to sell us their goods. I guess they felt that in exchange for conversation we should buy their goods. As we hopped in the tuk-tuk, we heard from a 10 year old girl "you are very friendly, but you are not kind". Another girl, probably 7 years old yells out "yeah, thanks for nothing!" and another of similar age yells "yeah, thank you for no hope!". God, what a way to make you feel bad - "thank you for no hope."

We took the tuk-tuk back into town and decided to check out a 'local' restaurant. We walked through town and noticed one restaurant with a few locals sitting at the tables. We sat down, and I ordered fish with mango sauce, and Ryan ordered beef lok lak (which I learned to make when in Battambang). Both were pretty terrible. So much for local restaurants. I'll stick to decent looking restaurants (where you pay $3 for a meal rather than $2), and street food (where you pay $.50).

We then checked out a workshop called "Artisans D'Angkor" where they bring in underprivileged and handicapped youth and teach them a trade. Very cool setup - although I would like to know the wages of the workers. There are men making wood carvings and stone carvings, and women painting silk (soooo tedious) and laquering boxes. I reallly wanted to get a large stone carving - like a stelae or a stone head....but they were $1000 and shipping costs would be ridiculous. A little out of my price range - like my budget for over a month hahaha.

After the stone carving workshop, we decided to go see the sunset from a temple atop a mountain and hired a tuk-tuk for $4. However, when we arrived at the base of the mountain, lots of people were walking down, and nobody was walking up. We began running up the hill, but encountered three guards who told us that the mountain and temple were closed for the night - we arrived 5 minutes too late. Shit! And we had just paid $4 for the tuk-tuk. I plead with the guards, but with no avail. I then offered each of them $1 (I know that's inceredibly immoral - promoting corruption in a country where corruption is rampant, but I really wanted to get up to this temple). They wouldn't accept any money, and started to get pissed off. Ryan wanted to run past them, but I knew that definitely wasn't worth it. As we walked back to our tuk-tuk, I noticed a back trail marked by a sign depicting an elephant. This was the trail the elephants walk up and down to take tourists to the temple! We immediately began sprinting towards the trail, and didn't slow down until halfway up the trail for fear of being chased by guards. We made it to the temple! And we had more fun getting up than had we encountered no resistance. The sunset was gorgeous, and we could see several temples, the city, and part of Angkor. Beautiful.

On the way back, we stopped to grab a snack of 'sticky rice bamboo'. Ryan saw this being made when touring around outside of Battambang, and introduced it to me tonight. It is a section of bamboo filled with a mixture of rice, coconut milk, sugar, and black beans. You peel apart the bamboo like peeling off pieces of string cheese (if that makes any sense), and you are left with just a cylinder of very sticky, very delicious rice. The stuff is not too sweet, and is WONDERFUL. I don't understand why this isn't sold on the streets of cities in the U.S. I think it would be a hit. Maybe I'll start up a business...

We grabbed dinner at another Khmer restaurant, and were served a fantastic assortment of fish, chicken, and beef amoks. We then decided to check out the bar scene in on 'bar street' of Siem Reap. Draft beers are about 75 cents, (50 cents at our guesthouse), and mixed drinks are about $2.50. We met two british girls traveling for 4 months of their 'gap year' who swore that we sounded british. What? Haha, either I'm surrounded by so many brits and aussies on this trip that I'm changing the way I talk, or whatever they were drinking from buckets (yes buckets) was affecting them.

When we left the bar and walked back out onto 'bar street' we encountered a group of children and prostitutes dancing to music playing from a boom box. They seemed to be having a great time, and were pouring talcum powder all over tourists (for the Cambodian New Year). I immediately received a facefull of talcum powder from a gorgeous prostitute - talcum powder up my nose and filling my mouth. Gross. Two prostitutes grabbed my arms and (quite forcefully) dragged me into the circle to dance. They were all dancing the southeast asian way - with their hands. Thank god it wasn't any more dancing than that - (read on). These prostititutes were really very attractive. They wore a lot of makeup, but I was truly surprised how naturally attractive these girls were. I didn't see any harm in dancing with prostitutes, so I danced in the in the circle for a little while, and then Ryan and I were ready to head back to the guesthouse. As we walked to the end of the street, and tuk-tuk driver points to our faces and laughs. We explain we got covered in talcum powder by the girls in the street, and he laughs again and goes: "Girls? You mean lady-boys?" HOLY SHIT. I guess Cambodia has attractive men because these girls (guys) were hot! What a surprise. Good thing I'm not into prostitutes or else that would have been a really, really big surprise!!

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