Khmer Kountry

After Thailand we flew to Cambodia to continue our tour of South East Asia. Cambodia is a strange country..it seems plagued by really bad luck. Since the fall of the Angkor empire in the 15th century they have been pillaged and plundered by their neighbors the Thais, Chinese and Vietnamese, they have been sweltered and stifled under the unbathed armpit of French colonialism, fought a civil war and war with Vietnam, then endured the genocide of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime. It's as if Cambodia has been wearing a 'kick me' note taped to their back for the last 500 years. Only since 1998 has Cambodia enjoyed a relatively stable and democratic independence.

Needless to say that when we landed in Phnom Penh it was markedly less rosy than it's glossy plasticized neighbor Thailand. Still we decided to give the city/country a chance. We decided to do some homework and visited the killing fields and Tuol Sleng prison. Tuol Sleng was actually a converted high school (how's that for irony), it was where the Khmer Rouge maintained, interrogated and tortured it's political prisoners before sending them to the killing fields for their disposal.

In Tuol Sleng we saw the various torture rooms and photographs of the victims.







In the killing fields, where millions of Cambodians were executed, we walked amongst the many mass graves and circled the 6 story memorial tower filled with exhumed human skulls.






Having satisfied our curious morbidity we opted for a lighter scene and headed towards Boeung Kak, a flood lake of the great Mekong, for some beer, fries and sunset where we were joined by young boys offering 20 minute paddle powered boat rides around the tidal muck for 1 US dollar.






The next day we ventured to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. Why it is named the Silver Pagoda we're not sure as we never actually found a 'silver pagoda' but still it was refreshing to see some of the country's more resplendent past. While riding our tuk tuk back to the hotel we crossed paths with saffron clad reincarnates of the fab four.








We then toured the Russian market, named for its popularity with Russian ex-pats (i.e. KGB operatives and other ideologists) in the 1980's. The market was kinda funny..real dark and grimy..like an old industrial warehouse..but with food stalls and everything from gardening tools, to machine parts, to children's crayons and finger and food stalls for sale. Made for some good fotos.









Unfortunately, PP began to grow on us. The city's children are sent out by their parents to sell various goods (water, books, trinkets, etc) to the tourists..problem is the kids aren't nice..or at least they don't take 'no' well. One of the things Helen and I have gotten good at on this trip is the polite decline, "Oh no thank you." or "No Thank you we already have" and so on. To our dismay these well honed niceties didn't work on the precocious prepubescent peddlers. They had a two fold technique. First, they would lure us in with their highly trained 'how to sell to tourist' educations, which, by the way, far exceeds the standards of American education.. in geography and foreign language skills at least. To start they would say hello and then bonjour..then ask where you're from. When you answered they would name the state/country capital and then say 'hello' in your countries language (from my observations they seemed to know 'hello' in German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Dutch). If this first approach didn't work and we tried one of the aforementioned excuses why not, they would counter with a rebuttal. Here's a real example:

Child "Hello"
Helen "hello"
Child "where are you from?"
Helen "California, but my parents are Korean"
Child "California, capitol is Sacramento, USA. Korea, capital is Seoul, 'Ahn young hah sae yoh' "
Helen "wow, you're very smart!" -- actually impressed
Child "would you like to buy a book"
Helen "no thank you we just bought a book and we haven't read it yet" -- this is true..I had just purchased the book from a previous tadpole and had it sitting on the table in front of me..
Child "well maybe you buy this also" -- holding up a different book..
Helen "no thank you"
Child "why not"
Helen "because we have many books already"
Child "well maybe you buy for your family then"
Helen "No thank you, we have too much too carry already"
Child "I sell to you for 2 dollars"
Helen "no thank you we don't need"
--after another five or so minutes of this..
Child "you're a stingy girl..STINGY GIRL!..." -- then he stomps off about 15 feet and begins pouting and muttering under breath 'stingy girl' for the next 15 minutes..

after several days and several rounds of this our conscious was on the ropes..we needed to escape. So we took a bus north to Siem Reap to visit the famed temples of Angkor Wat.

Halfway into the 6 hour bus ride our bus breaks down and affords us the opportunity to see rural Cambodian life.







After a 20 minutes wait we hitched a ride on another bus going the same way, which was great because the first bus was sooo gauche...and was also still broken down.

A couple of hours later we arrived in the tourist town of Siem Reap and found a bed for the night. Next day we ventured into the ancient city of Angkor.

Angkor was amazing. The scale of this city and its buildings were impressive, putting most of Europe's grand designs to shame with it's intricate temple spires towering over acres of carved rocked and hundred foot high heads..all encircled by concentric rings of columned walls and square moats. But despite being the country's largest national monument it is still a living place with tribal Khmers farming the land and native trees clawing their way down through the ancient edifices; with incense peddlers, Buddhists wats and monks, and Khmer crafts ladies and school children.




















Painstakingly it was those pugnacious pipsqueaks that again drove us from the area. This time it was my fault apparently as I 'promised' that "maybe I buy a water later" and then after explaining to me loudly that in Cambodia maybe means 'maybe yes..not maybe no' she said some things in Cambodian to or at me that I'm sure weren't pleasant.

In summary the temples were great..I liken them to the temples of Chitchen Itza in Mexico. PP is an ok town if you're interested in Cambodian history otherwise it is unremarkable and apparently has a gun problem. Siem Reap is good for a couple of days to see the temples but otherwise is very crowded and touristic.

We felt bad for Cambodia actually. They have had such a rough past..and we really wanted to do our little part to help the economy and support their burgeoning tourist industry..but the attitude of the touts, especially the little ones, is unrelenting and eventually unbearable. We stayed 7 days in this country, the shortest time in any country we've visited to date, before flying out to Laos.

on the bright side got some more monk and buddha fotos.