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Published: September 4th 2007
Me and Den
Our man in Siem ReapAngkor Wat. It's the part that everybody does when they travel to Southeast Asia, and there's good reason for it. The Angkor Empire was a civilization who were seriously on top of their game. 700 years ago, they ruled over the entirety of this part of the world, and built temples and buildings so huge and intricate that one would have assumed they would be around forever. While they died out after ruling for seven centuries, their structures have not, and they are definetly one of the marvels of humanity.
To get to the temple complex, everyone stays in the tourist haven of Siem Reap. How touristy is it? Believe it or not, we actually stayed in an Irish bar while we were there. Siem Reap is full of restaurants, guesthouses, massive hotels, bars, and clubs. Since Angkor is the reason to come to Cambodia, all these places get used. Especially the clubs.
Every night of our stay we were awoken at 4 am by blaring techno music across the street.
Our first priority was to find transportation to the ancient ruins. This is an easy thing to do, but also a frustrating task. There are many, MANY, tuk-tuk drivers in Siem Reap, and all of them are asking you if you'd like to go to the temples. Overwhelmed and trying to avoid the scam, Ryan suggested another approach. He simply walked up to the first driver who
wasn't hounding us, and asked him to take us to the temples.
Lucky for us, it just so happened to be a really good guide. He introduced himself as Den, and he would be more than happy to show us around.
Den has a story that is probably similar to many other Khmers who work in Siem Reap. Living in a town north of Phnom Penh, Den had really wanted to help his people recover from the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and decades of war. He learned English, and decided to become a school teacher to help with the massive lack of education that poverty had left the new generation with.
One of Our Many Flat Tires
Den jumps in to get us going. But Den became very disheartened by the corruption in the public school system. Teachers were paid extremely poorly, and it had become common for them to blackmail parents into giving them bribes in order for their children to pass. This on top of an ill-funded system that charged it's students 5 cents a day in order to attend class, plus uniform costs. The majority of the population could not afford to send their kids to the public schools, much less bribe them. Wanting no part of it, Den left to work for a private school, and hopefully a chance to really teach.
He found success teaching at private schools, but another problem arose. They also paid very little money, and Den now had a family to support. He was lucky enough to know someone who got him a job in a bakery, but when the bakery closed he was stranded like many other Khmers who were looking for work and unable to find opportunities. Things got desperate. Teaching didn't even matter anymore, he had to feed his family.
Den's brother told him about Siem Reap, where he had been working as a cook in the Irish bar. He
had seen how the tuk-tuk drivers were being paid by the tourists. You could make $15 a day off of one tourist for a tour of the ruins, and all you had to do was drive them around and wait. It sounded like easy money, especially with his English skills, and Den moved his family as soon as he could.
Nothing is ever as easy as it seems, and Den found the easy money came with a price. He had to rent his tuk-tuk for $5 a day, and pay for any damages that occured on the rough and pothole filled roads. Even with his excellent English, competition was fierce and it seemed to be more about being in the right place at the right time. Business was sporatic. Still, when it was high tourist season, he did OK with money, and he could help deliver groceries to his brother's restaurant on the side.
When we met Den, he had been a tuk-tuk driver for about 6 months. In order to make his services more valuable, he was reading a gigantic book on the history of the temples and the Angkor Empire. He had already soaked in a
The Main Attraction
Tracy in Angkor Wat's courtyard lot of information, and in addition to the most commonly visited temples, he knew the smaller ones and their history as well. With Den, we not only got a driver, but a knowledgable guide.
The only problem was the tuk-tuk itself.
A taxi in Cambodia is not like the ones in Thailand. It is not a specially designed vehicle. It is a simple 125cc motobike that is hooked up to a carriage that can hold 2-3 people. Since there were four of us, and we didn't want to split up, we all piled into one carriage. This was fine with Den, as he didn't want to share the fare with anyone else, but it was not OK with the tuk-tuk. The bike took a while to gain speed, and overheated on long trips. The carriage was not used to the extra weight and we popped a tire before we even made it out of the city limits on our first day. We waited by the side of the road while Den helped a tire repairman fix the flat. We could have grabbed another driver and gone on, but we were convinced that our soft-spoken guide with the big
smile was worth it.
And we were right. For the next 3 days we were taken to as many sites in the temple complex as we could fit in. Every morning Den arrived with a tuk-tuk full of water bottles and new rain jackets. Anytime we had a question about what we were seeing, Den either knew the answer, or was willing to look it up. You could count on him to run you to the nearest toilet when all the water started working, or have a dry, covered carriage when it started to pour. No matter where we were, Den knew where to get a flat tire fixed in 20 minutes (and we had a LOT of them). At the end of every day we arranged to see him the next, no matter what our plans were. Den was our man.
So James, what about the temples? There really isn't a whole lot I can say about them, other than it is like walking into an Indiana Jones movie. It is a giant city from a lost civilization: buildings swallowed by the jungle; statues of mythical creatures; covered in strange and beautiful writing. It's all made from
huge, impossibly moved blocks of stone. Some buildings are carved with ornate designs. Some are simply giant faces that follow you. Angkor Wat is in the middle of a restoration that will probably take another 100 years to do it all. If they don't keep finding more ruins. It's that big. It needs to be a man-made wonder of the world, and for anybody coming to Southeast Asia, it is a
must to visit.
Right around when it was time for Tracy and Ryan to leave for their trip back to the U.S., Suz's mysterious illness claimed another victim. Ironically, it was Ryan, who had been telling us how foolish we were for not going to a hospital every time we were ill. He had a terrible fever that wouldn't quit, complete nausea, and was totally wiped out. All on the day before they had to catch a flight to Bangkok. Needless to say, Ryan didn't go to a hospital either. I'm happy to say that Tracy somehow escaped from catching this strange bug, although she probably suffered her fair share by having to move Ryan around in the shape he was in.
With time on our side,
Suz and I didn't stop exploring the temples of Angkor. But with most of the world heritage site covered, we didn't know where else to go. Den once again came to the rescue and suggested a remote, jungle covered temple, if we were up for the 1 1/2 hour drive to see it. Suz was in love with the temples that were swallowed by the jungle, and jumped at the chance to see another one.
It was a great drive through the remote villages around Siem Reap. The road was atrocious, but the weather co-operated and provided the best scenery that we had seen in Cambodia. we passed by a wedding, farms, abandoned huts, and countless green rice fields. Suz saw a whole slaughtered pig being butchered for a celebration. When we finally arrived at the temple, Den asked if we would mind if he joined us. He had never seen this temple before. Climbing around the massive structure, it was interesting to see it for the first time through a Khmer's eyes. He was as full of wonder and awe as we were. Den also talked one of the park attendants into giving us a tour of the
Ice Delivery
Cutting a block for the local restaurant. temple. He allowed us to climb over piles of rubble, walk tiny paths over walls, and enter the dark and barely inaccessible rooms. Being far away from Angkor Wat, there were just a few tourists at this site. Because of this, rather than a tour it felt more like exploring, and we spent a solid 2 hours at the ruins.
After a continuous 5 day temple tour, we had seen it all. Even if we hadn't it was all starting to look the same anyway. Suz and I had taken a cooking class, but we still had a couple of days before our flight and we figured that we could use our time to do something constructive in honor of mother's day. We had wanted to volunteer at a school, but were told by both Den and a teacher who we were in contact with that a public holiday had closed all schools for the next three days. Unsure of where to look for a way to help out the kids of Cambodia, the answer sought us out one night at the local bar.
We had started frequenting a place on the main tourist strip that had a
The Front Door
The main entrance to Angkor Wat. great happy hour special. One of the waiters there had gotten to know our faces, and we spent our early evenings learning about life in Cambodia while he got to practice his english. While sitting there trying to figure out what to do with our extra time one particular evening, a young woman with a shaved head rolled up in a tuk-tuk, jumped out, and ran up to our table to help herself to a seat.
"Hello, mind if I bug you for a second?" she inquired as she sat down.
"Um, no." we replied, a little taken aback by the look in her eyes. It was a strange mix of confidence and panic.
"See, I just got back from the children's hospital, and they are in bad need of blood donations." I noticed the bandage on her arm. "They are the only hospital in the Siem Reap area for children to go to, and the only hospital in Cambodia that provides free health care to the poverty stricken people. Like, 3000 kids would die every month if it wasn't for this Doctor who started these hospitals. I have just a half-hour before I have to catch
On the Table
Giving blood at the children's hospital. a plane, and I figured I would try to get as many people to go up there as possible before I left."
"Uh, sure. We'll think about it." I responded.
"OK, cool." She handed us a flyer and made her way back to her tuk-tuk that was waiting with the engine running at the side of the street.
"You know", she said on her way out, "it would be truly amazing if everyone who came here did something other than just going to see the temples." She hopped in her tuk-tuk and was gone.
Of course she was right, and it was the answer we were looking for. Den drove us up to the hospital the next day and we made our way past a huge crowd of women who held their children in the rain for a chance to get inside the large hospital. Once inside, we walked past a lobby where many more families waited for their child's diagnosis. They were sitting in chairs and on the floor, all eyes watching us as we walked into the laboratory. Even with all those people, the place was so quiet I could hear the rain hit
Churning the Sea of Milk
One of the many gates into Angkor Thom. the puddles outside.
The hospital was really professional, and we walked back outside in a half-hour, after we had donated blood and made a donation to the foundation that made this place possible. It had taken no time at all to make a difference. On the way out we passed by a wild-haired, tall gentleman who gave us a playful smirk and a "thank you". I didn't find out until later that it was Dr. Beat himself, the man who had left Europe to start the string of hospitals that now helped to prevent the slow genocide of Cambodia's youth.
Den awaited us with a big smile among the throngs of families outside. We were about to jump into the tuk-tuk to head off, but he stopped me and looked into my eyes.
"Thank you for helping my people", he said.
If you are interested in helping the children of Cambodia, click on Beatocello
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mompat
non-member comment
amazing!
words cannot begin to express the emotions evoked when reading this one! Having been there, I could understand the plight of the children and then to hear about Dr. Beat and what he is accomplishing it blows my mind. What a gift to humanity and what a gift to you!