Tuk-tuks, motos, feet, and boats...

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Do you remember the movie, "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" with John Candy and Steve Martin? They had to take all these different modes of transportation just to reach one destination. Well, I just got back a couple of hours ago on a trip exactly like that, except I took a tuk-tuk, moto (on a road and up a river), my two feet, and finally a boat.

I have actually spent three incredible days at the temple ruins of Angkor Wat. The place where Tomb Raider was shot was pretty damn cool. By the way, Angelina fell in love with Cambodia when shooting that movie, and that's when she adopted Maddox. Lucky little Cambodian kid. Anyway, I read in my Lonely Planet guidebook about a village where all of the homes are built on stilts to help protect against flooding from the nearby river. I wake up this morning at 6 to go there, even though there are no organized trips there whatsoever.

So I grab my hotel's driver and ask him if he knows where Kompong Phhluk is. He informs me that he's taken a few people there, but not often. So off we go in his tuk-tuk, which in Cambodia is simply a small motorcycle with a attached trailer for passengers to sit in. Throughout Asia, tuk-tuks are popular ways of getting around.

The trip begins without incident and takes about 20 minutes on this main road. It then cuts into a smaller paved road, then into a graded dirt road, then into really bumpy dirt, then finally thick-ass mud. It got to be so muddy that the guy gets off and says we have to take the moto for the rest of the way. He unhitches the trailer, I hop on the back of the moto, and we're off again.

For about 5 minutes more we go down this muddy and bumpy dirt road out in the boonies. The we come to this dude with his moto, and he's just standing there looking down the road, which is looking pretty bad at this point. My driver asks something, the other dude says something, motions towards the road, then looks towards the river/stream just feet away. What were they saying? I don't know, since I don't speak Khmer. But I am smart enough to realize this is an uh oh situation. So then my driver says something to the other dude standing there, looks back at me, and then says we must take the river. OMG WTF?!

Without a chance for me to protest this crazy-ass scheme of his, or even to think about what the hell we were about to do, we start going downriver. Or was it upriver? I literally mean that we were going up @#$% creek without a paddle. Okay, maybe it was more like a stream we were going traveling in; it was a maybe two feet deep and 7-8 feet across. But my feet and legs got soaked. Finally, after about 5 minutes of playing Lewis and Clark and riding a motorcycle up a river, we cut up back to the dirt road and meet up with the boat people. Then it's another 20 minutes to our destination on an old wooden boat on a deeper and wider stretch of river.

The return trip was even more interesting. On the boat ride back, I was sitting there enjoying the views when I hear this loud, awful-sounding clunking noise behind me. I look back and see this guy looking at the engine and a minute later a pulls of this part and shows it to the driver. So the two of them fiddle around with trying fix this, and I'm thinking, "great, now I have to get on the back of my driver, so he can carry me back in the river to get back to the moto." Luckily they fixed it in like 10 minutes, so there was no riding anyone. Yet.

The entire journey to this village was absolutely worth it. I got to see probably the most authentic and untouched-by-tourism area in my life. During the couple of hours I was there, I saw only two older tourist ladies walking around with a guide, though there were a few more coming in on boat as I was leaving. The place was kind of surreal. And pretty primitive. No electricity, no running water, no garbage collection, no markets, nothing. Just homes on tall ass stilts with a few tiny homefront-type food places and shops.

Kids were running around bare-ass naked, which is what I do at home also. Seriously, the kids were a trip. I saw this group of small boys playing, and I stopped to look. I didn't get down the specific rules of the game that they were playing, but it involved kicking a flip-flop around. They were kicking around a flip-flop for fun! And they seemed to be having fun doing it, too. A lot the kids kind of broke my heart because they were so wretchedly poor. Several of them waved at me and said "bye-bye" happily. But as sad as these experiences are, it really does put life into perspective. Yes, that's a terrible clique, but there's no other way I can put it. These kids have no internet, no PS3, no iPods, no theaters, no tv, and they were smiling and having fun. With a flip-flop. It was a truly moving experience for me.

My trip to Angkor was awesome as well. The place was sort of like Machu Picchu in that it really blew my mind and sent chills up my spine when I first laid eyes upon it. They there were quiet times where I would just sit, take things in, and think about the history and mystery of the place. Angkor Wat was built over a thousand years ago, and is believed to be the largest religious building in the world.

Ta Prohm was visually spectacular with huge trees overgrowing onto walls and buildings. If you looked closely, many of the buildings had plants growing from them. I took a balloon ride, that scared the crap out of me. I couldn't film or take very many pictures because I was so freaked out and shaking like a leaf. Seriously, all I could think of during the 15 minute trip was crashing down with the busload of Japanese of tourists that were with me. On my last of three days visiting the temples, it started raining. And hard for more than an hour. I was at the Tomb Raider temple when it pouring started and was stuck there. So for more than an hour, I tried to tour this one small temple room until I had enough. By that time the place was flooded. I was soaked down to my boxers, and my shoes made loud squishy noises. Or was it my boxers that was making the loud squishy noises?

By far, there are more European and Asian tourists at Angkor Wat than anyone else. And everyone speaks English fairly fluently. There aren't that many Americans here that I noticed, even though my tour guide told me that he sees quite a few. My tour guide cracked me up yesterday. After our tour, he took me for coffee. During our conversation we talked about languages and tourists. He just started taking Spanish, but it's not good at all. Even my Taco Bell Spanish was better than his. So like last year in Peru with one of my guides, I asked if he noticed any differences between tourists from different countries. The guide tells me that Spanish-speaking people "are very bad people." He didn't elaborate because then he immediately started saying how bad British and Dutch tourists would be actually bargaining with little kids selling postcards. These poor kids are selling postcards 10 for $1.

So I never found out why he didn't like those despicable, good-for-nothing Spanish speakers. I was very close to stopping by a Mexican place and ordering a taco, but I don't travel to Mexico to order fried rice or egg rolls. Okay I did do that in Guadalajara two years ago, and it was horrible.

Here's one last observation: the showers here in Cambodia suck. Literally. The water pressure is so low, that it's kind of like having someone spit on me. Okay, that's an exaggeration. Spit implies that some force is involved. So it more like someone is dribbling on me. All of the bathrooms here in Asia that I've been to so far are set up in the same way: with the shower (no tub), sink and toilet in one room. You can literally take a shower, turn 90 degrees, take a leak, turn another 90 degrees, and brush your teeth, all at one time. Well, I don't anyone who pees and then brushes their teeth immediately afterward without washing their hands, but you get the picture. Speaking of which, I did take photos of my lovely accommodations. I will show you of action shots of me taking a shower, turning, peeing, turning again, and brushing my teeth.

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