Conservation in vain

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I woke up at 3am with an awful stomach discomfort. Started throwing up until there was nothing left in my GIT, couldnt puke anymore even tho I forced myself to. Then, the purging took over thru to the next morning (am still having diarrhoea even tho been back in M'sia for a week). I haven't been eating hawker food since I left Laos, so I pindowned the source to the probably contaminated spider I ate at a Phnom Penh market. But the onset for food poisoning is usually less than 6 hours, I only started having the symptoms after over 12 hours, so maybe it was something else I ate (at a decent restaurant!!) after the spider. I think I'll probably die if I had ingested Cambodian hawker food. If you think the roadside/mamak stalls in M'sia are filthy, well check out our Khmer counterparts. You'll find dishes of precooked food and whatnots lying out in the open without being covered or warmed up. And to make matters worse, the stall is a mere 0.964m away from the laterite road... dust and soil undoubtedly make up part of the ingredients for Khmer local cuisine.

It was the day before I fly back to KL, and it was my only chance to see Angkor. I gathered myself up and headed out just before noon. It was nice going around on the electrical bike and overtaking pple on manual bicycles and even tuk-tuks. Well, that's until my peevish stomach started aching again. To top it up, I broke my 3rd pair of slippers and had to walk around barefooted. Later, I found myself pleading with Lord Buddha and telling myself to hang in there :p Then sassy Lloyd turned up, telling me how much fun he's had visiting more than 75% of the temples and only a few more temples left to go, so to make the most out of the US$40 he paid for the 3-day pass.

Nevertheless, I am quite proud of myself, having explored Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm, Pre Rup, and sunset at Bakheng with a bad stomach and low spirit. The bas reliefs in Angkor Wat is so intricate and complex that you can spend hours trying to decipher the story and meaning of the carvings. But the other temples dont boast such exquisite relief and structure, most of them lie in ruins. It's also sad to see that conservational work is not extensively being carried out. Visitors are allowed to climb these ancient monuments even tho a lot of the structures are not stable. Blocks of ruins are not properly protected, I saw a particular one that was tied with a rope to hold up a marquee.

According to my source (which should be quite accurate ;p), the economy of Siem Reap is monopolized by this gas/oil company. The company has control over the whole of Angkor, they manage the site, collect profit from ticket sales, but only allocate less than 20% for conservation purposes.

Siem Reap (and islands of southern Thailand) is by far the most expensive place I've visited throughout this trip. In a country that deals with 2 different currencies, it doesnt make things easier cause you end up spending more US dollars than expected. To sum it all up, Cambodia is dirty, pricey (coz u need to eat in a clean and proper restaurant), depressing (historical-wise), has widespread child prostitution and a more relaxed attitude towards drug usage. It's good that this place actually makes me wanna go home...cause I'm leaving tomorrow.

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