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Published: November 25th 2009
Well, you know me. It was only a matter of time before I did something dumb.
We awoke yesterday raring to go on our second day of touring Angkor. It was another perfect sunny day, despite weather forecasts to the contrary. Kong met us downstairs at 9am and off we went in our little tuk-tuk, passing (finally!) a caravan of elephants on the road. Our first stop was Preah Khan, a 12th century Buddhist monastery that once housed over 1,000 monks. It was quite run-down and overgrown, as most of the temples we visited that day were, but that was what was so beautiful about it. We wandered around outside the temple and found some beautifully overgrown trees shooting right up out of the wall. I couldn't get a very good shot from the ground, so since no one was around, I thought I could climb up on one of the smaller walls and get a better angle for the shot.
WRONG! (In my defense, there have been several areas of the temples that are blocked off or clearly labeled "no sitting" or "no climbing," which I'm very happy to respect, but there was no such label here...still, I
KNOW, I KNOW, I shouldn't have done it.)
No sooner do I snap the picture than I hear someone screaming at me from down below. Right on the other side of the wall I'd climbed, a police officer was stationed (in the middle of nowhere, really, as if just
waiting for someone to do what I did). Hurriedly I scrambled back down, but he came racing around and
took our photographs, shouting into his walkie-talkie almost hysterically. We freaked, thinking (at best) we were going to be slapped with a huge fine, or (at worst), be slapped with handcuffs and escorted to the oh-so-lovely Siem Reap Prison. Anxiously we headed back into the temple, noticing several police officers were watching us very closely and reporting in on their walkie-talkies. Near panic, we rushed through the rest of the enormous temple and prayed there wouldn't be a police car waiting for us at our tuk-tuk on the other side.
So, you can imagine our relief when we exited the temple and found Kong sitting there snoozing in the shade, no signs of police officers or handcuffs in sight. We were still a little anxious the rest of the morning,
expecting a siren behind us at any moment...but all was quiet. Our guess is that everyone gets one free "warning," and if you're caught as a repeat offender, maybe then you get fined or arrested or whatever it is that they do. And, in all honesty, since many tourists speak no English or Cambodian, I'm sure people brush past the signs all the time unknowingly and have to be shooed off by the police. At least, I'm trying to convince myself of that so I don't feel like such an idiot. Not to worry, I will not be scaling temple walls any time soon!! I had my heart attack for the trip, thank you very much!
Anyway, once the fear of imprisonment wore off, we had a fabulous day temple-hopping. The one drawback of this place, I must say, are the children beggars. Not exactly "beggars," as they are trying to sell you little junky trinkets and knick-knacks, but it amounts to the same thing. What boggles my mind is that these parents send out their kids, some of which can't be much older than five or six, from sun-up to sun-down to try and get a dollar out
of sympathetic tourists. We passed a primary school and saw many children of the same age attending, so you have to wonder, "Wouldn't parents prefer for their kids to be getting an education rather than chasing tourists all day to make a buck?" I understand that this a very poor society and that values are different, but it borders on child exploitation, really. And the kids can be so rude and obnoxious! I bought a T-shirt at a shop and when I emerged, I was chased all the way across the street by four little girls (all of whom had to younger than eight), screaming at me, "You no buy from us! You bad person! You said you didn't want anything! Bad, bad person!" Like,
what the heck? Here I am, trying to enjoy my day at the temples, and I'm getting berated by pre-schoolers (who, incidentally, had only bracelets to sell, not T-shirts like I wanted). We've had to be quite rude and shout at some of them, who simply won't take "no" for an answer and will follow you halfway across the temple asking you fifty times to buy a bracelet, but it's the only way to get
them off of you! They're like a swarm of gnats, and yes, part of me feels very sorry for them, but you can't give each of them a dollar. You'd have nothing left!
Alongside the children (but in smaller numbers and much more subdued), are the land-mine victims. Cambodia has more amputees than any other country in the world (how's THAT for a grim statistic?) from undetonated land mines that poor farmers and laborers unknowingly step on out in the fields. Poor men and women missing legs, missing arms, all trying to sell you something a make a buck. Some of them have even formed orchestras that play traditional Khmer music at the temple entrances, which is quite impressive, but it really breaks your heart to see their plight. One look at them makes all of my problems pale into insignificance. But anyway. It's an unfortunate reality in this part of the world, and you simply have to do your best to let it roll off.
(On a lighter note, we had a guard at one of the temples with a great sense of humor. He watched the whole girls-chasing-and-screaming at me scene from across the road and
obviously saw how flustered I was. When he checked our passes, he smiled and said, "You want to buy me? I'm free!" Jeremy and I busted out laughing, and so did he, then he added, "No really! I'm free. Proficient man, for sale for free." I found it funny that one of his few English words was "proficient." It helped lighten the mood significantly.)
The final temple we visited in the afternoon, Ta Prohm, was far and away the most beautiful and awe-inspiring. Thought not as grand as Angkor Wat or as well preserved as some of the others, nature has taken over in the form of ENORMOUS trees, tangled and twisted through the walls, roots spilling over in every direction like a giant squid's tentacles. It's quite a sight to behold and makes you feel very, very small. Just goes to show that if you leave something alone long enough, nature takes over and eventually it all goes back to its original state.
Late afternoon we headed to the bottom of Phnom Bakheng Hill, where we boarded elephants to ride up the hill! I've had this obsession with riding an elephant since we got to Asia, so
at last we were able to make it happen. You climb a big platform and settle into a "bench" of sorts, mounted on the elephant's back. The driver sits directly on the elephant's neck and somehow steers it with his feet pressed against its ears. So cool!! We lumbered along up the hill for about fifteen minutes and my face hurt from smiling so much. I felt like a six-year old. We sadly dismounted at the top of the hill and joined the crowds gathered to watch the sunset (finally spotted a monk!) at the small temple up there. We chatted for a while with a couple from Wales (who are nearing the end of an 11-month trip through South America, New Zealand, Australia, and southeast Asia), exchanging, "I would pay $100 right now to eat _________" ideas...(mostly consisting of cheesy greasy things back home like Domino's Pizza and macaroni and cheese). The sunset was pretty, although walking back down the hill was torturous (where's an elephant when you need one??)...
Today we awoke with screamingly sore legs and feet from all our temple-trekking and decided to take a day off! We finally wandered into the town of Siem
Reap, which is small and clean and lined with literally
hundreds of day spas and restaurants. Lunch was at a phenomenal little cafe called Blue Pumpkin, where you sit on big couches (almost like beds) and lounge like you would at home. Jeremy had a delicious berry-and-yogurt milkshake, while I tasted the best chai I've ever had (puts Starbucks and Barnie's to shame)! It tasted exactly like a warm cinnamon-sugar cookie ("Snickerdoodle" cookie in some circles), pulled right of the oven. Only in liquid form, in hot frothy milk. I've never downed a pot of tea so fast! Lunch was stir-fried pork with big chunks of pumpkin and green pepper (tasty, but I could've done without the curry flavor), and fish with roasted red pepper sauce and red-skin potatoes. Yum!!
We walked outside and literally right next-door to a day spa which featured (brace yourself)...FISH MASSAGE. It is exactly as it sounds. Outside they had a pool of water filled with little silver fish, and you stick your feet and lower legs in and the fish give you a "pedicure," picking the dead and dry skin off your feet. I was horrified and creeped out beyond words at that
one!! Needless to say, we did not try it, though there were quite a few people with their feet in, laughing and saying it "tickled" to have fish gnawing at the dry skin. I will SO take their word for it! We opted for much-more-normal oil massages and, since it was ridiculously cheap, a couple of body scrubs as well (salt for Jeremy, tropical fruit and sugar for me). Fabulous but funny, as Jeremy's therapist got hiccups and couldn't get rid of them for the life of her, and we all giggled through it. Then she discovered that Jeremy can bend his fingers back almost all the way to his forearm, which elicited shrieks of laughter and disbelief and running to get every single employee in the spa to show them what a "freak" she had on her table. We were nearly crying, we were laughing so hard. Good times, good times. And immediately after the massages, we went straight back to Blue Pumpkin and ordered two big pots of Chai (I probably won't sleep for a week ha!), followed by souvenir shopping in the surprisingly quiet Old Market here in town (I guess they send all the obnoxious hagglers
out to the temples!)...
So it's been a great couple of days here in Siem Reap, hopefully to be followed by a couple more before we head to Phnom Penh on Sunday and prepare for our early-morning flight Monday to Singapore!
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Uncle Steve
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Haircut for the mug shot?
Great stories!!! Jeremy, it looks like your going to need to visit the local Singapore Cost Cutter's for a haircut before your next mug shot. Looking forward to more on your adventures! Love you, --Uncle Steve--