Siem Reap, Cambodia

a kinder, gentler third world

9/21


The sun has intensified ten-fold as we walk off the plane out on the tarmac and into the airport. The mid-day sun clocks in at 93 degrees. A lean, dark haired Cambodian holds a sign curbside reading Eric Sherma . We hop in the back of his taxi, our bags in the trunk. We travel on fairly good roads mostly, with the occasioal potholes here and there. Giant stalks of grass overfilled with monsoon rain fill our view. The lush countryside seems endless. We reach Siem Reap, hop to nearby Angkor Wat, Cambodia's wonder of the world, the country's ticket out of poverty.

Sim, the driver described above, has surprisingly good English. Much better than any of his Thai counterparts. The usual questions come up. Sir, where you from? How long you stay? We answer truthfully, knowing in the back of our heads that there may be a sense of insincerity coming from his part. It doesn't matter. It's nice to have a bit of air conditioning at the moment.

He takes us to our guesthouse named the Red Piano. A nice place to stay but unfortunately there is no red piano. There are clean sheets, air conditioning and hot water. And for $20 a night, the piano becomes secondary. The Red Piano guesthouse was put on the map in 2001 when Angelina Jolie and her crew for the movie Tomb Raider came to stay. Their sister restaurant in town glorifies this with Plaques from the movie.

We settle into the room and walk into town. Immediately the tuk-tuk drivers come up to you and ask you for rides. Children run up to you and ask you to buy their post cards. I remember this now from before. Different country, same poverty. Although the Cambodians are much more gentle and much more humble about it. And when you get to read about their dark past of the Khmer Rouge it puts things in perspective. 2 million people died. About half of the children lost either their mother or father. Many have lost both. While the ngo's and the government have improved things quite a bit, you realize these guys don't have that much.

And you begin to realize that even after all of the violence and bad times of the last twenty years, the people are just as peaceful as ever. They come up to you, they smile, they laugh. And of course they wish you to buy something. A conversation may go like this:

Sir you want Tuk Tuk?
No thank you.
How about cold drink?
No, I'm sorry.
Maybe when you come back you buy from me, ok?
Ok. Thank you. Bye-bye.

I currently hold about 75 of these short conversations per day. But they don't bother me at all. I actually enjoy the dialogue. The first night in town we find the Siem Reap Night market. We talk to the vendors and find out they represent abused women's organizations and orphan organizations. All the merchandise they sell is made from orphans or abused women who have learned their new skills. All the proceeds go back to these people. A far better rate of return than Sally Strouthers or the United Way.

---------------------------

9/22


Lisa is still bruised up from her night before yesterday's bout with the mosquitos in which she lost. Her eyes have some swelling and her temples have some bumps. I feel like I should dip her in a bowl of DEET. The rash I'm having starts to agravate quite a bit. Some misery kicks in with the both of us. The hot tropics brings a degree of uncomfort.

But two cold showers later gets us a little less negative. We meet Charlie, our tuk-tuk driver this morning. He stands roughly 5 foot, 5 in, dark wavy hair, with a wide, goofy grin. Charlie has one long strand of hair that comes out of a mole on his skin. My guess is 7 inches long. He enjoys swooping it away occasionally as he drives the tuk-tuk, like an ancient Chinese sage.

For those new to tuk-tuks, they can only be described as carriages run by second hand japanese motorbikes. The carriage has two wheels in the back, bucket seats, and a roof overhead for the elements. It seems to be the desired mode of travel in Siem Reap. You can rent bicycles, but they run twenty years old, and you have to fight the oncoming traffic in seven directions.

-------------------------------------------------
Angkor Wat and The Temples

It would be ridiculous to try and describe every temple we visited over the last few days. The Angkor Wat complex covers about sixty square miles (more than the entire square mileage of San Francisco). Here's some of the ideas I've left with the Angkor Wat complex over the last few days.

-The majority of the temples focus around a few key characters.

1. Rama. Short for Ramachandra. The mythical King. An incarnate of Vishnu, he battles Ravanna...who seduced his wife. Ravanna and Rama battle it out. The good guys win, and Rama is forever the king.
2. Buddha. What more can be said except they have sculputures of him in every position. Lying down, standing up, sitting cross legged. The constant in Cambodia is that Buddha was a fan of pastel colors. According to the reliefs and sculptures, he enjoyed wearing orange with a yellow crown and purple earrings.
3. Naga. A Seven Headed Serpent who is the original ancestor to the Cambodian people. Serves as a bridge to the gods at Angkor Wat.
4. Garuda. A half man, half bird diety who usually gives the God Vishnu a ride to most places. Him and Naga don't get along too well.
5. Sita. Rama's wife. See #1.
6. Angels, nymphs, and wise men. For ornamental decoration.

95% chance that one of these six characters will be correct when describing the sculpture or statue.

A bit of History with the Angkor Complex

• Started in around 800 A.D.and went until the 1400s, the Angkor empire of cambodia was the largest in southeast asia.
• There were more than ten kings that ruled the Angkor Complex. Suryavarman II builds Angkor Wat in the mid 1100s, while Jayavarman came later and built Angkor Thom - A home within the Angkor wat complex. Inside Angkor Thom, Jayavarman VII (i'll call him J 7 ) builds a temple named Bayon, which sculpts 250 faces of in all around the place. J7 has a bit of an ego complex.

-Lisa and I spend three days with driver Charlie in the Tuk-Tuk visiting the temples. We marvel at the towers, the sculptures, and the steep steps. We spend roughly an hour at each temple (except for the mighty Angkor wat where we spend 4 hours over the course of two days). At the end of each temple visit, I walk back to the Tuk-Tuk with a bunch of notes, Lisa comes back with a bunch of pictures, and our driver is sleeping in the back seat all the while. For $12 a day and a free lunch, he's living on the Cambodian easy street, or bumpy ditch where the case may be.

Some of the temples that stick out in my mind

1. Angkor Wat. The original and the best. It is said to be a creation of the spiritual universe, and originally stored Shiva in the main central tower. You walk in through a hallway and see a 10-foot statue of vishnu. You walk through a promenade, through two pools to the main entrance. Its layout resembles the Taj Mahal as it was designed with a similar philosophy in mind. Each level can take hours to walk through. We walk around the first floor to look at the stone reliefs, trying to play "Where's Waldo" with the lonely planet descriptions. Heat fatigue sets in while we are here, as we both begin to resemble glue sticks. We come back two days later to climb the tower to see where the historic Shiva laid. We walk down the tower after waiting 20 minutes for the Korean tourists to waddle down as they hug the railing for dear life.

2. Bayon. For the reason mentioned before. 250 plus faces of an egomaniac of J7 (see the abbreviation above). All in beautiful pink sandstone.

3. Banteay Srei. A temple a bit out of town, it's also known as the lady temple. The reason being that the carvings of the angels and nymphs were so amazing, no mortal man could ever do it. A bonus is that there is a lilly pond in the back where we take a break from the action and almost fall asleep.

A Trip to the Enchanted Water Forest

9/25

Today, Charlie has taken us into the country. We see half naked children fishing for frogs. Using only rope for fishing line, wooden sticks for a rod, and muscle and carcasses from who knows what for bait. Charlie stops and talks to the boy. He comes over and shows us his frog of the day. The children are nice enough to have Lisa take their picture and they wish us good luck, it's more like them who need the good luck.

Charlie parks the Tuk-Tuk as we make the transfer to the boat. It's a rusty wooden motor boat. Blue roof with red trim. Dining room chairs are the seats of the journey. We are also joined by an older orange-shirted Cambodian woman. Her two year old rocks on her lap. She smiles at us hello with her beautiful holed-teeth smile.

Charlie, our tuk-tuk driver

The boat driver engages the motor. We putter along a swampy pass that makes for a short river. The green lush trees have overgrown from either side to make a pleasant tunnel. The dragon flies encircle in and out of the boat, but keep their distance.

The driver asks for a Band-Aid. The black vinyl steering wheel has burned his hands to a first degree. You wouldn't see it on his face, as Cambodians seem to be trained by birth to hide any physical pain. I notice the steering wheel is connected to a single frayed steel wire that encircles the boat and attaches to the rear rotor. I'm sure he'll have to take it in to his nearest dealer to get it replaced soon enough.

We haven't seen a person in the last twenty minutes. We come around the bend. We see a town of stilted bungalows twenty feet high. This is the flooded forest of Kompong Phluk, created out of the overflow of the Mekong River during the monsoon season. Wooden beams, tined walls and straw roofs. Charlie tells us that over three-thousand people live out here. Each bungalow has piles of wood on a lower level for a week's worth of cooking. A woman in polka dots is washing the laundary. Little boats appear in the water. The kids come up to say hello. The little boats are the mopeds, the feet, the bicycles of this village. Every errand runs a risk of tipping over into muddy wetness.

We read that the best way to see this water is to take a little boat further into the thick forest nearby. We transfer over into a dingy boat. 6 feet long. One 12-year old kid on each side paddling. No problem.

The ride is incredible. We go deeper into the forest. The sun disappears completely. Viny tree branches weave their way to the top. Fish hatcheries are positioned throughout for the village food. I feel like a dream in Pan's Labyrynth.

We thank the little ones for the ride as we make our way to the lone Island in the vicinity. We take in some local lunch of fried fish and rice and fanta that taste like day old bubble gum. I begin to chat with a local at the restaurant who is practicing his english. He keeps asking me "What is your language?", like he can't believe my first language would be English. So much for humility.

We finish lunch, and make our way back to whence we came. Back through the swamps, back through the country side, and back to Siem Reap. Tonight we rest. We leave tomorrow for the capital city of Phnom Penh. I'm sure there's something around the bend.

-Travelling Sherman