See You Again Vietnam

I wake up the next morning feeling horrible in both mind and spirit. I feel bad in the mind because I am hung-over. I feel a little down from the night before and the general loneliness of being in a beach town alone. I think the second feeling is compounded by the fact that I am hung-over. I decide I need to leave, but I have two problems with this decision. First, I think the hotel might not be happy of the short notice and charge me an extra day. I am also worried about my bus trip. I am supposed to give one days notice for my open ended bus ticket to secure a seat on the bus.

First I walk down the stairs and tell the receptionist I am leaving at 6pm, and I ask if I can leave my things at the hotel while I hang out at the beach. She said no problem, and that I just have to be out of my room by noon. First problem has been taken care of. Next, I settle the second problem. I walk down to the travel agency and I ask the girl if there is anyway I can get on the bus that leaves at 6pm and apologize for the short notice. She does not even blink an eye and confirms a reservation for me on the 6pm bus. Both problems were easily taken care of in a matter of fifteen minutes.

I still have one problem though. I have six hours to kill with a hang-over. I was planning on seeing some of the sights around town, but the horrible feeling in my head prevents this. I decide to head down to the beach. The beach just amplifies my loneliness. I am however able to successfully kill some time down at the beach. I run into a fellow named Murray from New Zealand who is also traveling alone. He has come from Hanoi, so he is a useful source of information for my trip north. My next stop was supposed to be Hoi An, but talking to him I feel like this town can be skipped. It is only four more hours to the next stop Hue. I am feeling like time is of the essence now because I want to go back to Thailand for a week or so and then I will spend three weeks in the Philippines, so I cannot spend a whole lot of time in Vietnam.

Finally the bus picks me up and I head north to Hue. It will be a long trip made longer by the fact that I have a hard time sleeping on a bus. The highlight of the bus trip was some spectacular views of the ocean from high cliffs right along the coast that the highway followed. Once it got dark you could see thousands of little fishing boats out on the ocean as far as the eye could see. Each boat uses this bright fluorescent light that lights up the boat very bright. It is an absolutely dazzling view with the boats and their lights. I am told they are used to attract the fish. They use to use dynamite, but it was found that the explosions damaged the ocean floor, so now they use fluorescent lights instead.

Since not much happened on this day it is a good time now to explain one of the favorite English expressions of people in Cambodia and Vietnam, which is “see you again.” This is said in a heartfelt way to tourists hoping that you have enjoyed your stay so much that you will want to return to their country/city/hotel/guesthouse and that they will in fact see you again.
Three stories that represent this expression or feeling:

Story number 1:

I was staying in Nha Trang in Vietnam at this family owned hotel. A wonderful place that I think I have raved about in previous sections of the story. The daughter of the owner is named Huong, and she may be one of the sweetest persons I have ever met. Every time I come in she greets me with a huge smile and wants to know where I have been and how I have liked it.

One night I was thinking about going out and on my way out I ended up talking to her for an hour. The conversation was basically just a repeated set of questions that I have answered now it seems a thousand times. It was funny because she would ask “is this your first time in Vietnam?” Yes, I would answer. Then she would think really hard and then ask “how many people in your family?” I would answer three, then I would ask how many in hers. After an hour of this I grew sleepy and decided not to go out and went to bed instead. When I went to bed she said “thank you for talking to me.”

The day I was leaving I approached her and I asked her how she was. She told me she was sad that I was leaving. My bus was leaving at 6pm, and check out time was noon, but they let me leave my bags at the hotel, and I hit the beach until my bus came. I ended up walking around a lot and got kind of sweaty, so I asked when I returned to the hotel if I could take a shower before my bus came, and I would pay for it. She said no problem and took me to a shower and refused to take any money. Then I had a picture of us together in front of the hotel and got her email and told her I would email the picture. When the bus came she followed me out to the bus and waived at my window until it was out of sight. I was almost in tears. Here is a girl I have never kissed or held hands with was seeing me my off to my bus like a girlfriend seeing a soldier going off to war. The last thing she said to me was “see you again.”

Story number 2:

When I booked the booze cruise trip through a travel agent the girl asked what hotel I was in. I said Blue sky hotel. Then I thought, wait it is Blue Star, so I said no sorry it is Blue Star. She said Blue Sky again and wrote this on my ticket. I wasn’t quite sure what the name of the hotel was, so I did not say anything. May be she knew better than I did. Later when I was back at the hotel I realized it was Blue Star and that she had written Blue Sky on the ticket. This is a problem because they pick you up at the hotel. Instead of taking care of it right away, I blew it off and said I would deal with it the next morning.

The next day I was running late and like a jerk, I showed up at the travel agency five minutes before the bus was supposed to pick me up and told her that I was not staying at Blue Sky. She told me there is a Blue Sky hotel in town also. She calmly picked up the phone and called the bus driver, and she asked if it was okay if I waited there for 30 minutes. No problem, I said. She then asked me almost to a tee the same exact questions that Huong had asked me the night before. The bus had to totally reroute its schedule to come back and pick me up. This is no big deal because Nha Trang is small, but I appreciated the fact that they did not roll their eyes and say stupid foreigner. They just did what they could to make it easier for me. The driver came and picked me up and the travel agent Vy said to me “thank you for talking to me. See you again.”

Story number 3

When I arrived in my next town yesterday, called Hue, when I got off the bus I had left my hat in the bus. I was taking a shower when I realized in a panic that I forgot my hat. My hat cost me 3$ in Chiang Mai, but I have become kind of attached to it for sentimental reasons. I hurriedly dried off and ran down the stairs. A guy from the hotel greeted me with a big smile. I told him I had left my hat on the bus. I asked if we could call the bus and ask that they drop it off at a travel agency, and I could get it later. He got a serious look on his face, and he said, “come with me, we will catch the bus.”

I got on his moto-bike and we were on a madcap dash around the streets of Hue looking for my bus. We stopped at a couple of travel agencies and he yelled something in Vietnamese to the girls behind the desk. They replied back in Vietnamese and pointed, he pushed the pedal on the gas and we took off again in the direction they pointed to. Finally, we found the bus stopped in front of a hotel. He asked the hotel clerk and the clerk said the driver is sleeping. He said that I could come back at 5pm. I said ok, but first let me make sure it is in there. I tried to look through the dusty windows to see my hat. I got to the door side of the bus and realized it only had one door. The bus I was in had two doors. Just at this same moment my driver was informed the same thing. I told him, “this is not the bus.”

He pointed to the back seat and we were off again. We stopped at another travel agency and he yelled at the girls in Vietnamese. They replied in Vietnamese and pointed to a seat. He told me the bus would be here shortly and we could wait. Five minutes later the bus arrived and I retrieved my beloved I am a tourist geek hat with a huge shit eating grin on my face. He took me back to the hotel. I was expecting him to pander for money, and I was going to give him some anyway, but he did not. I gave him 2$, and he at first genuinely refused, but I insisted and he thanked me. 2$ was almost more than the hat, but he deserved it for such a helpful attitude. I have not left this hotel where he works yet, but I know when I do if I see him again before I leave that he would say “see you again.”

Cambodia to Vietnam

The morning I got packed and ready to depart Cambodia. The gal at the front desk told me they would pick me up around 7am or 7:30. I was outside the hotel when the bartender walked up. This bartender told me she makes 14 US dollars a month for her salary. Evidently she does not get many tips because I tipped her 1$ the night before after having a couple of beers and she was confused when I gave her the tip. She held the dollar up and looked at it strangely, and I said “for you.” Then she smiled and thanked me.

She arrived around 7:30 and I saw her the night before cleaning up the bar around 10pm. Not only was she paid horribly, but she also had a very long day. When she saw that I was leaving she smiled and said “see you again.” As I was waiting for the bus a couple of very young kids came up in Buddhist monk clothing. There were four of them and each one said a little prayer in front of the hotel. When each was done with their prayer the proprietor of the hotel bowed down in front of each one and gave them a little treat. It looked like she was giving each a package of rama noodles or something like that. It was like a Buddhist trick or treat and in return for giving them food, they blessed the establishment.

As I was sitting waiting to leave Cambodia, I started to reflect on some observations I felt in this very strange land. One observation that occurred to me was that Cambodia was in dire need of another hero. Jayavarman VII is one of the most revered rulers in Cambodian history because under his rule he kicked the Thais (then called the Siamese) out who had briefly conquered the Angkor empire. This happened somewhere around the 12th or 13th century. The town of Siem Reap was named after this even as Siem Reap means Siam defeated. Since then their heroes have been few and far between. The closest thing would be Hang Ngor who survived the Killing Fields and won an Oscar as the best supporting actor in the movie the Killing Fields. He may have survived Cambodia’s Killing Fields, but he did not survive ours. He was shot and killed a number of years ago in Los Angeles in a robbery attempt.

The extent to which the Cambodians admire their ancient Angkor history is amazing and signs of this reverence can be witnessed everywhere. I was in the hot as the towering inferno market having a drink at this little café and started talking to the owner who happened to be sitting next to me. When I told him I had been to Angkor he said that Angkor was like their George Washington. The lonely planet mentions this too saying that many Cambodians feel very proud about these temples because if Cambodian people could build something as beautiful as that then they have something to be proud of. Angkor is also the name of their national beer, they have a cigarette brand named Angkor, and icons of the temples can be found everywhere.

This dedication to the past is all fine and good, but the sad thing is that this was over a thousand years ago, and there has been nothing great to come out of Cambodian history since. Then the Khmer Rouge came along and basically knock them back in history may be one hundred years with their ruthless killing and torture. Their adherence to the Angkor temples would be like Africa being really damn proud that they were the home of the first human beings. African countries might adopt a flag with a likeness of the bones of Lucy in the middle of it. I wonder if any African country brews a beer called Lucy beer or may be has a cigarette called Lucy strikes.

I left Cambodia today with very mixed feelings about the country. I have never been in a place so poor and it was definitely eye opening. I think Julia the bickering Canadian girl was right when she argued that Thailand is not third world. If Thailand is third-world then Cambodia is fifth-world.

Of course we have much to blame for this situation. In the early 1970s our government felt that the Vietnamese army was using Cambodia to hide and also as a supply route, so we decided to bomb Cambodia into the pre-Angkor days. I have seen some of the victims of this bombing begging on the Phnom Penh streets and it is horrific. When I was in the sweat your balls off market I was trying to walk through an area that was crowded with people. On one side was someone shopping and on the other side was this burn victim. She had half a face and worse she was wearing a tank top which revealed sickening burns all over her body. I had to walk through this constriction to get by and almost had to rub up against this poor gruesome woman. You cannot get very far in Cambodia without seeing someone with an arm or leg missing as there are still millions of unexploded land mines that litter this countryside. Lonely Planet warns not to stray off the beaten path when exploring in places not usually traveled.

The irony in Vietnam was that we were fighting to contain the communist threat, and we spawned an even worse regime in Cambodia. The result of the years of carpet bombing the Cambodian peasantry was to radicalize them against anything we represented like freedom and democracy and the following de-stabilization due to years of indiscriminate bombing allowed the insane regime of the Khmer Rouge to take power. It was kind of a reverse Marshall Plan. Instead of aiding countries that were thought to be weak economically and ripe for a communist takeover like Europe after World War II we bombed Cambodia into a weak economic country ripe for a radical takeover.

I had a lot of time to make these reflections because the bus I was waiting for had still not come, and I had been waiting there for over an hour. Since my reflections were not doing the world much good, and I finally had that this bus is never going to come feeling, I finally decided to stop reflecting and ask the girl at the hotel if the bus was usually this late. The girl at the hotel asked if I booked through them. I said yes and showed her the actual ticket. She said she would call. She made a phone call and had an excited and worried look on her face, but as soon as she got off the phone she assured me they would come. Suddenly, instead of a bus, a moto-bike driver approached me and said he would drive me to the bus station. He told me that he was sorry, but they forgot me. I drove on the back of this moto-bike with my huge backpack on. We stopped on the side of the road, and he pointed and said that is your bus. It was another mini bus, so I figured this was the pick up bus. I got on as it was completely full and we drove and drove and I soon realized this was my bus. That was the funny thing about traveling in Asia. The traveler was always the last to know about these things. The guy sitting next to me said they drove for an hour and that they then turned around because they forgot someone. I told him it was me that they had forgotten.

We then stopped at this ferry as there is no bridge over the Mekong River on this particular highway (only in Cambodia.) A few people on the bus departed at this point as they were taking a boat the rest of the way, which thankfully created space. After they left the bus, we had to wait for the ferry to come back from the other side. Meanwhile there were beggars and peddlers everywhere outside tapping on our window trying to get our attention. I bought a loaf of bread and water, but I did not need gum, sunglasses, and all the other crap they were selling. They were persistent and annoying. One kid tapped at the window and showed the man in front of me every single drink he had in his cooler twice. He would take coke out and tap on the window and the man would shrug no. Then he would take a bottle of mineral water out and tap the window and the man would frown no. Then he would take a pack of gum out and this persisted until he tried to sell everything in his little cart to the man in front of me They all had these vacant stares and it reminded me of being trapped in a van with a bunch of zombies like Dawn of the Dead or something like that outside waiting to eat us. We finally got through the ferry and on to the other side.

We hit the border and the Eastern border crossing of Cambodia was much easier than the Western border. It still took awhile, but it was a lot smoother and incredibly, no beggars. Plus, a cool front has hit SE Asia. Today it is only like 90 degrees with a nice breeze instead of the sticky 95 it has been lately. I did have some minor difficulty getting through as I had to complete an entry visa form three times for some reason. I had to duplicate the form exactly twice because they kept one copy and the other copy was kept by the tourist because when leaving the country the customs people would take the duplicate then. I only entered one copy so the customs man said I needed to duplicate the form. In the meantime I had loaned my pen out to another tourist, and he gave me a pen to complete the form. The pen was blue ink and my first form was done in black ink. When I showed him my two duplicate forms one was done in blue and one in black. When he saw this he frowned and gave me two new forms to complete because they had to be in the same color ink. I am not sure how the customs guy as I was exiting was to know that my entrance form was done in different color ink, but it is no use in arguing with these people because they have ultimate but temporary power over you so they must be appeased. I completed both forms again and smiled to my new friend and gave them to him and thanked him. He then finally allowed me to pass. Since I had now completed this form four times, I was now an expert. I should have stayed at the border and helped people complete the form for a fee. I could have been an entry/exit form consultant.

We piled on a big bus that took us the rest of the way to Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon. One of my best friends from high school Jon, married a beautiful Vietnamese girl named Christine. It so happens that her brother will be here in Saigon at the same time I will be. Once inside the city I was going to check into the same hotel as he was in. When I got there they said they were booked. I asked if Khoa Truong was there and the lady at the desk frowned and said they had no one by that name. I was perplexed because I had an email from both him and his sister with the address of the hotel. I got out his email and showed it to the clerk and she said “oh yes, Khoa Truong is here.” Apparently, I must have massacred the pronunciation of his name. He was currently in Hanoi, but would be returning the next day. Now that she knew that I was friends with Khoa, my troubles with the hotel were gone. She said she would give me his room until another was available for me later. So I put my things in his vacated room and am here at an internet cafe drinking a beer. Apparently, when I get back they will have my own room for me.

One of the first things I did when I got here was to book a boat tour to the Mekong River Delta. Since the tour started at 7:30am the next morning, and I had a long day, I wanted to get to bed early. I was just going to have a beer or two and some dinner and head back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

I started walking up and down the backpacker area of Saigon for something to eat. It is interesting that every city I had been in has had a back packer tourist area part of town. Since many of the back packers are young people into hippy type activities, there is a kind of US counterculture aspect to the atmosphere at each of these places. It is kind of something like one might find on Haight-Ashbury Street in San Francisco. I felt like trying some Vietnamese food. Many of these places in the area I was in had more western cuisine, so I turned off on a side street and found a cafe where a few Vietnamese people were eating as well as a couple of tourists.

I had a Saigon beer and choose fried octopus with a sweet and sour sauce. The Vietnamese man next to me started asking me general questions where I was from, and I spoke to him until my food came. I was impressed with his English as it was perfect. Then I started talking to an English couple next to me. My food arrived and it was awesome. More of a spicy sweet and sour sauce than what we are used to and it was topped with many different kinds of vegetables.

The English lady next to me asked what I was eating and she ordered the same. We started to talk and they were really nice. She all of a sudden started talking about her son that was visiting Australia, and I smiled thinking she was going to start telling some story about how proud she was about her son. Instead she said he was in Australia for fourteen days then got sick and died, and she started crying. I was still smiling when I realized to my shock what she just said. I tried to console her, but there is no way to console someone for something like that happening. I told her that my brother had died when I was 16, and she then consoled me. I guess her son basically had a heart attack at age 28, and he was in almost perfect health according to her.

I was still kind of talking to this couple when another Vietnamese man next to me tapped on my knee and said he wanted to talk English with me to practice. I said ok, but I was a little worried because in Cambodia many people told me this and then asked for money, plus I was still talking to the couple next to me. He turned out to be a really nice guy though and he talked a little bit about remembering the American GIs being here.

The man who tapped my knee soon left without asking for any money to my relief, and I continued talking with his friend named Tho who was a Vietnamese businessman here in Saigon that worked for British Petroleum as a purchaser. This was the man that was talking to me before my food came. He learned English when he was seven from the GIs. All of a sudden another older Vietnamese gentleman approached and extended his hand and groped mine and held it and smiled at me. I thought this kind of odd, but I could sense that he was a nice person. He started talking in really broken English, and I had trouble understanding. Tho interpreted for me, and he told me that he was very happy to see foreigners talking with Vietnamese because this is an international city and he told me that he was happy I was here. I told him thanks and that I was happy to be here.

Through interpretation from Tho, I was able to discern that this older fellow used to be in the Navy, and apparently he trained in San Diego and Philadelphia prior to the Vietnam War. I had trouble understanding him as he talked in broken English and when he realized I was not understanding spoke Vietnamese so Tho could interpret. He then threw up his hands and declared “I love the American GI.” It was actually nice to hear this. We hear so many negative things about our army these days with the prison scandal and other things, so I was pleased that when he was in the presence of our troops that he must have been treated very nicely by our American soldiers. He had this beatific glow on his face as he remembered his time in America.

Tho was with a Pakistani tour guide that worked here in Saigon named Bobby, and all of us had a great political conversation and also a great conversation about different languages. I had finished my second beer and had forgotten all idea of going to bed early. The older guy bought everyone another round and we continued to discuss. Somehow we got on to the subject of world peace and Bobby the Pakistani excitedly yelled “what is peace?” Tho replied that peace is “within our mind, in the way we deal with others, and in our heart.” I could not agree with Tho more. We eventually began to wind down as I was tired from my journey from Cambodia earlier in the day. I was going to pay for my bill, but Tho would not let me and paid for both mine and Bobby’s and said it was his treat.

Bobby made some point that although he was foreign he was now local and had started to learn the language, so he was becoming less foreign here. He then said to me that I was really a foreigner. I agreed that this was true, but I said that I appreciated for one evening being treated as not a foreigner, but a human being by the first people I met in Vietnam. It was great to have such a positive first experience in this country. In Cambodia it was really weird, and I never felt like I had any positive communication with any local people. They were always trying too hard to please and wanted money, so it was difficult to interact with them. My first experience here was thankfully much different. I also learned quite a bit about Pakistan. We had a good conversation about Pakistani’s ruler President Mushareef. Apparently, President Mushareef cut his country’s debt in half by agreeing to lease out bases to the US. This has put him in hot water with some of the radical groups in his country, but economically, it has benefited the country tremendously, and Bobby really admired his diplomacy in this regard.

I got back to the hotel and just as I was getting in bed, Christine’s brother Khoa called, and he said he was still in Hanoi and would be back in Saigon the next day. As soon as he hung up the front desk then called and the most confusing conversation ensued. He said something about Khoa wanting to buy something for me and it was no problem, but I could not understand him and he could not understand me. We finally gave up. Then a minute later Khoa called back saying if I wanted anything to eat the front desk would take care of me. I thanked him and then went to bed.

The Killing Fields of Cambodia

The next morning Peram was waiting for me in full force. May be he took a vacation day the day before to rest up, so he could harass tourists that much better the next day. I decided I could no longer thwart his zealous desire to guide. As soon as I saw him before I could even say good morning he came up to me full of piss and vinegar and said, “if you want to go to the hotel now, I will take you.” I told him let’s go. He said that he was looking for me the day before, but he did not see me. Since he was not around I began to fear that he found someone else, so I had told another guy that he could take me. Now that Peram had showed up I knew I had to let him take me. The other guy new he was out of a customer and kind of moped around. I apologized to him, but told him I had to go with Peram. He asked if he could help bring me over there, but I told him that all of my bags could be placed on Peram’s moto-bike. He was not happy, but accepted his fate.

We packed up and Peram took me on his moto-bike to the new hotel. The lake area was nice, but I was craving some AC and hot water. Phnom Penh was just as hot as Thailand, and I had been walking around a lot lately, so I also had Peram drive me around today to some of the tourist areas. After settling in at the hotel, we headed for the Killing Fields monument. This was a 15km trip through some more pretty harrowing roads, but we made it there with no problem. I walked in and the cutest girl said to me “you take picture of me, and 1,2,3 smile.” They are so good at pulling at your heartstrings. I took her picture and gave her a dollar and then unfortunately another 5 or 6 kids mobbed me for money.

After that I walked around the grounds. They have this huge pagoda that is filled with skulls from the killing fields as well as remains from mass graves around the area. This was an area that the Khmer Rouge took their opposition, which included former government leaders and anyone in the intelligentsia and killed them. They used the most barbaric means possible too. I had a guide whose mother and father were doctors and were both killed when he was 10 years old. He survived because he was sent out into the countryside with relatives and worked in the fields. If the Khmer Rouge would have found out that he was the son of two doctors he would have been killed. My guide also claimed to have shown Kofi Annan and Francois Mitterand around the place.

Since bullets were at a premium the Khmer rouge killed their victims in the most barbaric ways possible. Inside the pagoda my guide picked up several of the skulls and looked at each one and identified the way they were killed. One had a clean hole through the top of the skull and he said bullet hole, another had a crack in the side of the skull and he said hammer, and a third was broken completely to pieces, and he said several jabs from the butt of a rifle. He also showed me a palm tree and told me to rub the side of the branch that leads to the plant, but do it gently. I did and it was pretty sharp. He told me they used these branches to cut people’s throats. I could imagine this would work, but it could not have been very clean because these branches were not razor sharp. There was also a tree he showed me that was used to kill children. They would swing the babies and hit their heads on a tree. It is insane that such a ruthless regime was able to do these things in this peaceful quiet country. It makes you kind of paranoid sometimes as the regime was almost like a Lord of the Flies type regime as they used young children and adolescents as their assassins. This meant that anyone walking around that is around my age or a little older could have been a ruthless cold blooded assassin twenty years ago.

The sad thing is that many of the perpetrators of this regime remain unpunished. The leader, Pol Pot reportedly died a peaceful death due to a heart attack at age 73. This is something that he deprived his more than 1.7 million victims of. Many of the leaders are still living free and rather peacefully including brother number two Nuon Chea and brother number three, Leng Sary. Nuon Chea is living near the Thai border and the Cambodian government agreed not to pursue prosecution against Chea. I believe that the Cambodian government is doing this in an attempt to forget the past, but it is important to pursue these criminals in order to heal and also in order to obtain justice for the victims and their families. I read a news report where a lot of the actual henchman for this regime are living rather close to the victims or the victims families of people they tortured and killed. A war crimes trial is supposedly going to take place soon. It is to be hoped that the UN can convince the reluctant Cambodian government to pursue these criminals and bring justice. Note: This trial has finally come about and is currently ongoing.

The evidence of this regime is everywhere. This country is the most backward place I have ever been to. When a country loses more that 15% of its population, it takes time for normalcy to return if it ever can. It is hard to explain unless you have visited this place, but there just seems to be an underlying sadness in the people that live here. It seems that there soul is hurting. With time and from help from the outside world, I hope that Cambodia can improve itself and the lives of its people.

After the depressing Killing Fields, Peram took me to a market. It was called the Russian market because it was near Russian Blvd. It should have been called the sweat your balls off market because it was just unbearable in there. It was actually underground, and there was not much ventilation in there and the whole structure was basically a giant oven and everyone inside was just baking. I felt really sorry for the workers in there, but I guess one can get used to anything. I bought a shirt and tried to buy some flip flops, but they were too expensive. I just want a really cheap pair to get me through the rest of my vacation, and I am sure I can get a cheaper pair in Vietnam, which is my next destination.

Peram took me back to the hotel, and I relaxed until later. I went back to the Heart of Darkness hopeful to hook up with Mark and Mike again as they said they would probably show up there again. Unfortunately, they never appeared and neither did Tan or Yan from the night before. It was basically the same scene as the night before. I grew bored of the place and returned to my hotel rather early.

A Day in Phnom Penh

I wake up the next morning and I do not feel like doing a thing today. All I want to do is relax. I think about going out and getting some breakfast and coffee, but I am worried that Peram will be out there ready to harass me. I brave this possibility and go out to the lounge area and order some coffee. Miraculously, Peram is nowhere to be found. He must have nabbed another tourist. When I got some coffee, Sean from Australia was at the guest house. He came to the Sidewalk Guest house in Siem Reap the last night I was there with the really stupid English girl. Fortunately, she was nowhere to be found. Two guest house employees inquired if I am going to this magical hotel or not, but I let them know that I want to stay there another night.

My plan for today was to go to the National Museum and the Royal Palace. The National Museum was an absolutely stunning piece of architecture. It was shaped like a temple and had a dark red hue to it. The majority of the museum consisted of artifacts recovered from the Temples of Angkor, so it was a nice supplement to things I had already seen in Siem Reap. One exhibit I found especially interesting consisted of eight heads of Angkor statues that had been recovered due to an effort done by an agency that tries to find artifacts that have been stolen or are missing from the Angkor Temples. This agency sends information to museums all over the world about missing Angkor treasures in the hope of recovering plundered Angkor art. The effort has paid off as is evident with the eight heads in the exhibit. The efforts are continuing as there are some pictures in the museum, of other artifacts that are missing that this agency is trying to find.

I was planning on spending three hours at this museum, but it was pretty small, and I got through it in an hour and a half. The Royal Palace was closed, so I took a few pictures of it from the river and then hung out at the river. Phnom Penh, besides being the greatest city in the world with two silent Hs, is also well known for the being the confluence of three rivers. The Mekong, the Tonle Sap, and the Bassac rivers all converge at Phnom Penh. The rivers are huge, especially the Mekong. You have to strain your eye to see things on the other side of the river. I went down to the river and there was a lot of activity going on there. Kids were fishing and a naked baby was bathing in the disgusting muddy water as trash floated on to shore. It was not an esthetically pleasing scene, so I moved on.

Just as I was going to leave a young kid approached me and started talking. He said he just wanted to practice his English. The sun was beginning to set and a bunch of tourists had lined up at the spot to take a picture of the beautiful Royal Palace at sunset. My new friend could not understand why tourists were fascinated with sunsets. I tried to tell him that it was natural beauty and it is something to appreciate. He just shook his head in disbelief. It made me sad because I think when one is in real poverty they do not have the time or the feeling to appreciate the beautiful things around them. In the same vein, in America we are usually too busy in our lives, working, and making money to have time to do the same thing. It made me think that a middle ground needed to be found. Work hard and make money, but yet do not work so hard that you do not have the time to take a few minutes and look at the scenery around you. There is so much beauty in the world and it is a shame that many people are too poor to be able to notice it or too busy to have the time to find it.

The young man that said he only wanted to talk with me to practice his
English then pointed to a photographer. He said for 2$ we could have our picture taken together. I told him for free I could have someone take our picture together with my digital camera, but he did not seem too interested in this, so I left. In retrospect, I should have given him the 2$ and taken the picture. Looking back on my trip as a whole, I wish I would have given more to people like this. I always had money to buy myself a beer, but I got annoyed when a beggar wanted to charge me two dollars to take a picture. I am sure he could have really used that money.

There is a section in the Lonely Planet that says there is a bat colony that lives in the roof of the National Museum and every night at dusk they pour out into the night in the thousands. This seemed like something that could not be missed, so I went back to the Museum and waited patiently for this spectacle to occur. The whole two hours I was there I probably saw five bats, and none of them seemed to come out of the roof. This was one of the few times the Lonely Planet let me down.

I returned to the guest house and there were a few people on top of the boat again. I climbed on top and Chris and Rose were there along with Sean from Australia and Clem from Ireland. Clem informed me that the boat operator got so stoned that he accidentally rammed the boat into a few houses during the tour. Chris from England was one of the clumsiest people I have ever seen. In two nights of hanging out with him I must have seen him spill or almost spill his beer five times. I stayed up on top for a couple of hours, but I felt like I needed to get out. The Lake area with its colony of guest houses was nice, but it was too insulated from the rest of the city. I decided I had to get out and walked down from the boat and left the guest house and grabbed a moto-bike driver for a ride into town.

I got a beer at the Heart of Darkness bar and chilled for awhile. It was really empty at this point, but the Lonely Planet guide mentioned that this place did not start picking up until midnight. This turned out to be the truth as people started to gradually filter in. When I ordered my next beer I was at the bar at the same time as an Englishman named Mark. We started to talk and he told me that I was too quiet to be an American. I took this as a compliment and told him I had not met many Americans. He said that he had met quit a lot on his trip. He was staying at a medium upscale hotel and it occurred to me that may be the reason I was not meeting many other Americans was that I was doing the backpacking thing where most Americans that travel to Asia, usually stay at hotels. Mark was there with his friend Mike, and we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night. Mark and Mike also mentioned that the place really picked up late.

True to their word and the word of the Lonely Planet that is what happened. I did not like the change in the music though. Early in the night when it was less crowded they were playing songs from the sixties like CCR and the Doors, but when the place started to hop the place turned into a disco and played all of the same songs I had been hearing at other discos I went to in Thailand. The good thing about this was that the hotness factor of the women also picked up with the change of music. Mike was soon talking to this adorable Cambodian girl that he eventually left with, and Mark and I started talking to some Japanese girls.

It turned out these girls were actually Vietnamese. They looked Japanese due to their really light complexion. I figured they might be fellow travelers, but they were local. They did not speak very good English, but they were fun to hang out with. They were a couple of jokers though. One of the girls, Tan, put her hand on my chest and when I looked down she smacked me in the face. Then she put her hand on top of her head and with her other hand motioned for me to touch her elbow. When I touched her elbow, she swung her whole hand down from her head and again smacked me in the face. Her and her girlfriend then laughed hysterically. It was clear that Mark and I were hanging out with the Cambodian three stooges.

Mark and I then followed the two jokers to another bar down the street called the Walkabout bar that was open 24 hours. You have to love a bar that is open 24/7. We then played a couple of games of pool. I was amazed how good these girls were at pool. The girl I was hanging out with was named Tan, and she was amazing. She was not much taller than the pool cue, but she hit the ball with authority and she was very accurate. I had never played with a girl that played so well, and in fact, there are only a few guys that I have played with before that was as good as she was. I was glad because she was my partner and I won a few games due to being the beneficiary of partnering with her. I played terrible, but she more than made up for it. There were a couple of her friends there and they played a pretty good game of pool as well. I guess there is not much for these girls to do in Cambodia except to play pool with foreigners.

First Day in Phnom Penh

My hiking boots showed up as mysteriously the next morning as they disappeared the night before. When I was checking in I saw some hiking boots that were similar to mine in the rack. Someone probably grabbed mine by mistake and brought them into their room for the night and the next morning realized they were not theirs and returned them. I went into the eating area of the guest house and reported to the workers there that I had found my shoes and smiled. They smiled back and asked if I wanted breakfast. I ordered a banana pancake and some coffee. Waiting for me in the eating area was my driver from the night before named Peram.

I was soon to find that the Cambodians have embraced tourism with a fervor I have not seen surpassed in the history of fervordom. I got a glimpse of this in Siem Reap, but in the capitol they are even more zealous to treat the traveler like a king. They are so ready to please that it is almost obnoxious and hilarious at the same time. When I got off the bus I accepted a ride from a moto-bike driver here. Ever since I accepted this ride, this guy has wanted to become my servant and has also served as my shadow. As soon as he dropped me off he carried my heavy bag to my room and said the next day he would take me wherever I wanted.

He was not joking either. The next morning I woke around 9am and came out for some coffee on our guest house platform that overlooks a lake. The platform is actually built on the lake and there is a big booze cruise boat that leaves every night at 5pm. It is really a pretty place. I get my coffee and here comes Peram, the moto bike driver from the day before. He asks me where I want to go, and I told him I was probably just going to walk around on my own today. He tells me he will take me to the Killing Fields, or the National Monument, or the shooting range wherever I want to go. I politely decline and tell him I will probably walk. He sits right next to me and waits while I drink my coffee. A couple of times during my coffee he reiterates his willingness to take me wherever I want. This is getting pretty annoying because it is nice to drink one’s coffee in peace and not be hounded.

Eventually he leaves, and I finish my coffee. I slip out and go put on my newly found hiking boots. All of a sudden I look up and there is Peram again hovering over me as I am lacing up my boots telling me he will take me anywhere. I again decline and leave. As I am leaving the guest house I am offered all different drugs and several moto-bikers ask if I need a ride. In fact at one point there are six moto-bike drivers in a row and as I pass the first driver says “moto-bike?” I say no thanks. Two seconds later I pass the second driver and he says “moto-bike?” Even though he heard me decline the first driver he asks again. All six drivers repeat the question. If this was not so goofy I would be really irritated, but it is almost like some sort of silly vaudeville comedy routine. I walked about a mile to the Tuol Seng S-21 prison museum, which commemorates the brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime and honors its victims, and I was offered at least 50 rides by passing moto-bike drivers on my mile walk. I am not joking. If you count the six right near the guest house it only took 44 more to get to fifty.

The museum was very moving. It was a high school that was turned into a prison cell by the Khmer Rouge and used to torture and kill many of their opposition and intellectuals or anyone they felt like. It was your usual testament for the brutality that we inflict on each other. The Khmer Rouge regime has to go down as one of the most brutal of all brutal regimes as the carnage they inflicted was probably the worst per capita of all the terror regimes. They are credited with over 1.5 million deaths of their countrymen in a country that only had a population of around 9 million. The museum even had pictures of the people that were interned here. Since only about .05% of the interned lived to tell about you know that you are looking at pictures of people that were imprisoned, killed, and likely tortured. Since the Khmer people are such cute people it is very painful to see these pictures of cute people that were brutally killed.

I later read that the regime was able to take power due to the instability caused by the bombing done by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. The U.S was trying to inflict damage on the supply route for the North Vietnam army, but many times they simply wiped out entire villages of Cambodians. The result was political instability and the fanatical Khmer Rouge was able to take advantage and overthrow the government. They wanted to return to a pure agrarian society were everything was shared. The result was complete madness, terror, and famine. They actually evacuated the cities and forced everyone into the countryside to help farm communal plots. All suspected intellectuals were immediately killed.

After that I walked to their independence monument. While at the independence monument I walked pass this man and women playfully fighting. I say playfully because from afar they were smiling as they were sparring. When I got right up to them the guy grabbed the long hair of the women and smacked her pretty hard on the face. She was crying. I was of course appalled, but I am pretty sure they were doing some kind of game because there was an older lady right next to them that was laughing. I walked away and turned around and the two had stopped and were both smiling again.
It was very strange.

From here I went to the main temple in town. It was $1 to enter the temple. After all the temples I have been to lately, I decided this was one I could miss. I opted for the drive by temple tour and snapped one picture from the gait and moved on. I got some lunch at a riverside restaurant. The view was nice, but unfortunately it was spoiled by an array of beggars, land mine victims missing limbs, and moto-bike drivers that stopped right in front of the restaurant and tried to get my attention while I was eating. I did my best to ignore them and focus on my chicken and pineapple dish. I have become addicted to dishes with pineapple as it is so delicious here. The combination of mouth watering pineapples sautéed with a sauce mixed with other vegetables over rice is amazing.

I got back to the guest house and my shadow Peram was waiting for me asking where I wanted to go tomorrow. It was really, really hot again today and I was thinking about upgrading a little to a hotel and get some air-conditioning. I told Peram this thinking he would be disappointed that I was leaving the guest house. He actually was delighted with this information. “I find good hotel for you,” he said in a very excited voice and he threw his finger in the air to add weight to his declaration. He asked me how much I wanted to spend, and I said about 10$ a night, and he said “no problem.”

No problem is the answer you will get to any request here in Cambodia. It may cost you some money, but whatever your request is it will be met by these friendly Cambodian characters. I would like to shoot a live cow with a bazooka, and it might cost a couple of hundred dollars for the no problem response, but that response is what you will get. This has kind of sad connotations some times too as people come here for their anything goes attitude and take advantage of it. That is why Cambodia is a popular place for drug runners and pedophiles. I would like two seven year old girls to my room please and you will find someone in Cambodia that will unfortunately say no problem.

There was a boat docked at the guesthouse and it takes a nightly cruise from 5pm to 7pm for sunset over the lake. I purchased my 2$ ticket, bought an Angkor beer, and I got aboard and started talking with Jerry and Nancy from the Niagara Falls area. They were Bills fans, so I told them about the Buffalo Bills bar in Chicago I go to. There was also Clem from Ireland, Chris and Rose from Manchester, England and Lea from London. One thing that was kind of funny was that Chris and Rose had hung out with two Americans in Laos for a week. It turned out to be Sean and Mike from Seattle that I had met in Chiang Mai.

The boat cruise was beautiful. I got some great shots of local Cambodians fishing in their little pirogies and also the sunset. Beers were flowing freely on the boat, and we were all having a good time. The boat returned to the dock at 7pm, but we asked if we could still hang out on the boat. They said “ok, no problem.” As I said I think this is the Cambodian motto. They told us we could sleep on the boat if we wanted to. So we continued drinking and talking on the boat until 11:30pm. The people at the guest house passed up food and beer to us from the bar as we continued to hang out. All we had to do is tell them what room we were in so they could charge us as they used the same type of system as the Sidewalk Guest house did in Siem Reap.

At one point Peram jumped up on the boat and said “tomorrow I take you to hotel.” At this point I was having a good time here and was thinking that may be I will stay one more night at the guest house. I told Peram that I might like to stay another night here. Again he started pitching the hotel, and again I said that I will make up my mind in the morning. He then said “you tell me at 8am.” I told him no probably around 11am. I am not sure why he wanted to know when I would make up my mind, but I can only venture to guess that he wanted to know when I would make up my mind so that if I decided to leave the guest house for the hotel he could then take to the hotel the minute I had made that decision. He wanted to make sure I was taken care of the minute my decision was made. He then asked again if I wanted smoke. I told him no thanks, and he said if you need I have. I thanked him and he left and I continued talking to the people on the boat.

There was this other guy that came up on the boat with Peram. When Peram left he stayed and he then started asking me about the hotel option again. I was getting a little exasperated at this point and told him what I had told Peram while he was two feet next to him that I might stay another night at the guest house. He said the hotel is very cool and has hot water. I told him that is great and what I am looking for, but I think I will stay one more night here then go. Chris from England was listening the whole time and decided he would help me with my predicament and jumped into the conversation and told the Cambodian that I did not want to talk about the hotel anymore that night, and he could ask me tomorrow. The guy said ok, tomorrow. There was a moment of silence and then the Cambodian again started pitching the hotel. Chris and I threw up our arms, but this time the guy was thankfully joking and he laughed hysterically at our reaction. It is funny because I just casually mentioned I might want to stay at a hotel and it seemed to be the hot topic of the guest house. I got down to go to the bathroom and got a beer from the bar and the guy from the guest house who got me the beer asked if I was going to the hotel. I told him I was going to stay an extra day. I think the cover of the Phnom Penh post was going to come out the next day with an article on the front page stating, “U.S. tourist contemplating a movement to a hotel,” because it seemed all the Cambodians were wanting to talk about it.

I am pretty sure the reason they want me to go to a hotel so bad is that they can make money off of it too. They take me to a 7$ or 8$ hotel and I pay 10$, so they make a little money. Also, though, I think they are obsessed with getting tourists whatever they want. They truly want to make life as easy as possible for you. I think they understand that if they treat tourists well that more will come, so they are desperate to make you feel comfortable. It has its good points and bad points and it is pretty funny to watch. The motto for the Cambodian tourist industry is See you again, and they live this motto. They want to treat you right, so that they will see you again.

After partying on the boat, everyone went their separate ways at 11:30pm. I got off the boat to the sitting area and ordered another pineapple dinner with fish and watched the funniest American movie ever made. This was Rocky III. The announcer asks Clubber Lang “Mr. T” what he predicts for the fight. Clubber Lang says in the most mean and serious voice possible that he predicts “PAIN.” Everyone in the guest house just cracks up laughing.

On the Road to Pnhom Penh

I woke the next morning packed, returned my bike, and got a bus to Phnom Penh. Then I had breakfast and paid my bill for my five night stay at the Sidewalk Guest house. My bill included the five nights (one was free because I slept in my tent), about eight 24oz Angkor beers, three lunches, three breakfasts, two dinners, and a bust ticket to Phnom Penh and this all totaled only forty dollars. What a bargain.

A small bus picked me up just like the one from the border. This was not a good sign, but at least I was the first one on and would not be crammed in the middle.It was very hot though and I was drenched as we drove around to other guest houses in order to pick up more travelers. Fortunately, this bus was just a pick up bus. It deposited us at the bus station, and we got on a nice big bus toward the capitol that was air-conditioned and played Thai pop music videos on this big TV up front. I was told that this trip would be easier than the one from the Thai border as the roads were better, but I was not going to believe it till I experienced it.

I got off the bus in Phnom Penh and was mobbed by Cambodians trying to get me to go to their guest house. There was like six moto-bike drivers grabbing my shirt to try and get me to look at their placard. I had been told by Ivan in Bangkok that I needed to stay by the lake. I took one that was where I wanted to go. He was a very friendly fellow named Peram. The drive was free if I stayed at his guest house. I got on the back of Peram’s moto-bike and he asked if I needed smoke. I told him no thanks. He said if I changed my mind I should talk to him. He also said he would be happy to take me wherever I wanted to go. If I wanted to see the Killing Fields, he would take me. I told him I would probably just get a bike, but he ignored this comment and reiterated I should come to him if I needed anything.

The guest house had 3$ rooms and the place was right along the Bong Kok lake. As I was checking in the sun was setting right over the lake and it was gorgeous. The place also had a nice bar area right over the lake and had a boat that took nightly tours, so I was pleased with my choice. I took off my hiking boots and placed them in the shoe rack at the entrance and got settled. When I wanted to leave to check the internet I could not find my hiking boots. I think either someone stole my boots or someone took them by mistake. If they are gone the first thing on the agenda tomorrow is to get some shoes. My flip flops broke in Thailand, and I have not replaced them yet, so I am sans shoes right now. The people at the guest house lent me some slippers that were way too small so I could walk around the corner to check the internet. I was a little upset about losing my boots, but the people at the guest house did not seem to feel it was a big deal, so I tried not to worry about it and hoped they would show up in the morning. For now I was shoeless in Phnom Penh.

Cambodia and the Temples of Angkor Day II

The next morning I finally had a chance to sleep in at my guest house, and I woke up around 10:30am. I did not get a chance to get out to the temples until kind of late. I wanted to visit some of the more obscure temples on the outskirts of town. The difficulty with this is the temples are few and far between once you get outside of the center area where there are a lot of them clustered together. With a bike and the hot Cambodian sun this was going to be a challenge. This day turned out to be a mistake. I should have just got a guide to take me on a moto-bike or a tuk-tuk. Sometimes when traveling one should spend some money and do things right instead of trying to stubbornly save money.

It took me almost an hour to get to my first temple, and I was a sopping sweaty mess when I got there. I guzzled water and sat in the shade and tried to get my body temperature down, so I could actually enjoy what I was seeing. Again, I was mobbed by kids while entering the temple trying to sell me things. I thought that there would be fewer of these out here, but that was not the case. Even though there were less people visiting these temples, there was still a large contingent of peddlers. Since there were less customers this made the peddlers this much more desperate.

The group of temples I chose to visit today was called the Roulus group, and there were about five or six of these temples in the general vicinity. They were older and more wore down than the temples around Angkor, but they were still very interesting and beautiful. I think these temples were built around the 9th or 10th century where the others I had visited so far dated from the 12th and 13th century. The first temple I visited today was called Bahkong. Once I cooled a little, I walked around the temple for about twenty minutes and took some pictures and left.

When I entered the temple, a girl had accosted me and tried to get me to buy a drink. Since I had some water, I did not need any. She said maybe when you leave you will be thirsty. I said perhaps and started to walk away. She then said “mistuh, you come to me,” and I nodded and walked in. As I was leaving I was thirsty and searched for this little girl with pretty long black hair. I saw her again and bought a drink and took a picture of her and got on my bike and started to peddle away. All of a sudden another girl came up to me angrily when I was drinking and said, “mistuh you promised to get a drink from me.” Oh crap, I realized I had bought a drink from the wrong girl. I apologized for the mistake and said I thought that she was you. She said, “are you going to buy a drink?” I lied and told her I was not ready to leave, and I would go to her before I left. That seemed to appease her and she left. As soon as the coast was clear I started to get on my bike and drive away hoping the girl would not notice. She must have been waiting for the betrayal as she ambushed me as I was leaving and demanded I get a drink from her. I told her I just had one and did not want another, so I said “maybe next time,” and started to peddle away. I turned around to see large tear drops falling off her face. I quickly turned around and pleaded with her not to cry, and told her that I sure would get a drink. I went back to her stand and bought a drink, some food, some film, and a purse that I ended up giving to my aunt. I don’t think the tears were faked to get me to buy something because it was obvious that it was true emotion of hurt. If they were she was a great actress.

The first picture below is the girl that I thought was the girl I promised to get a drink from. The second picture is the girl after she stopped crying with her aunt.

I finally got away and decided to hit some more temples, but this turned out to be problematic. The temples out here were few and far between and poorly marked. I drove down the dirt roads passing little huts with barking dogs, but I had trouble finding temples. I did manage to find one more, but this one was not too spectacular. I drove around endlessly in the heat trying to find more interesting temples as I was dripping with sweat. I finally said the hell with it and started to peddle back into town. I was thinking about hitting the hilltop temple for sunset, but by the time I got close to there I did not feel like facing the mobs, so I just peddled back to the guest house.

There was a group of Europeans and Canadians that had hired drivers from the guest house to take them around and when I got back I was jealous that I did not go this route. I am glad that I rented the bike for the first two days, but a driver was definitely the way to go for any other touring outside the main circle of temples. As I got back today they had just returned from Tonle Sap lake and where all refreshed after swimming all day while I was a sweating mess after biking all around the Siem Reap area in the jungle heat.

That night I sat around with the international crew for awhile, but my three days of biking in the heat had taken its toll, and I felt terrible. I started to feel a little like I did in Chiang Mai when I thought I was having an allergic reaction to upset stomach pills that my guide had given me. I now realized it was not an allergic reaction, but just a reaction to exhaustion and heat. Too much drinking, exertion in the sun, lack of sleep really takes its toll on the body I realized. It would not be the last time I felt like this on the trip. After a short stay at the table, I excused myself for sleep around 10pm.

Cambodia and the Temples of Angkor

The night before I was given my own room as the pilgrims here for Chinese New Year had started to go home. It was still crowded at the Temples, but the guest house had considerably thinned as many people left the next day for other guest houses closer to the Temples and to town. I woke up at 4:15 and pedaled through the Cambodian night to the Temples and was there by five am. Even though it was early, it was already very crowded. Many people awoke at the guest house early to get there as well. I saw Ollie and Harry as I was leaving. I think they were just returning from probably some crazy adventure.

Again the crowd at the temple was dominated by Japanese tourists, and I was amazed at how many people woke up for the daily event. I was able to find a comfortable place on the grass in front of the temple that was not too crowded. It was still completely dark by the time I arrived there. I was armed with both my digital camera and my 35mm. My 35mm at first would not even take a picture because of the darkness. The sunrise was spectacular and would have been gorgeous in of itself, but the fact that it was rising over one of the most famous temples in the world made the experience sublime. It was a bright reddish orange and the sight of the Cambodian sky behind the spires of Angkor is another sight I will never forget.

My grassy knoll in front of the temple was so comfortable that I was soon asleep. I woke up and the temple was desolate, as everyone had left. I had now fallen asleep at two of the most famous temples at Angkor. I only had 135 more to go. I got myself up and dodged the postcard peddlers near my bike and had an omelet and coffee for breakfast. The kids waited patiently for me to finish. They eyed me as I ate and a couple came up and talked to me while I was eating. One complimented me on my soul patch. When I got up to leave they began to antagonize me again while going back to the bike. It is really sad because they are such cute kids that I want to buy all their postcards, but I already have ten Angkor postcards and that is enough.

The roads around the main temples are broke down into two loops, and I basically rode my bike around both loops accomplishing over thirty miles in the hot Cambodian sun. The highlight for me was this one temple with giant jungle trees growing right out of the ruins of the temple. The giant roots of the trees wrap right around the giant rocks right into the ground. I revisited some of the temples I was at the day before and hit many others. Another highlight was the intricacy of some of the design. There is this one wall at the main Angkor temple where there is a depiction of an ancient battle. This wall is as long as may be fifty feet and the whole wall is etched with fighters, horseman, and weapons. It is really incredible.

I had intended in the morning to start the day watching the sunrise at the Angkor temple and finishing the day by hitting the sunset at Pnom Bakeng, but I realized early in the afternoon that this was way too ambitious. The hot sun was too much, and I decided to pack it in around 3pm and return to the guesthouse. On the way back to the guesthouse I stopped at this gas station for some cold lychee drinks. I bought two drinks and the store had a bar against the window with seats for eating and drinking. I sat and enjoyed my delicious lychee shake drink and also thoroughly enjoyed the cool air-conditioned room. I could drink one of these 12 ounce cans in literally seconds they were so good. As I entered the store a begging boy put his hands together and approached me. I walked right past him and into the store. As I was sitting by the window the begging boy came right into my line of view and pleaded for money, food, or a drink. I tried to ignore him, but he kept moving to try and get into my line of sight. He then moved to my bike and picked up my water that I had in the bucket and made a motion as if to ask if he could drink it. I made a go ahead gesture from inside the glass and he started to drink my water. This water was in my bucket all day and in being in the sun all day had become kind of putrid as I think some of the plastic from the bottle was melting. I felt pretty terrible at this point that he was drinking my hot, putrid water while I was enjoying this delicious lychee drink, so I drank half of the second drink and went outside to leave and gave him the other half of my lychee drink. At least he had something sweet to rinse the taste out of that horrible water out of his mouth.

I took a cold shower when I returned and then hit an internet café before returning back to the guest house for dinner. There was a full international contingent represented at the guest house when I returned. There were five Germans, two French, a Swiss, two Canadians, four Italians, and I was the lone American representative. We had a great conversation as we put away many Angkor beers.

One of the Germans there was named Jorg, and he had quite a story to tell. He had traveled around the world for a year with his video camera. He began to interview other travelers and ask them questions on why they were traveling and had them share a story or two. He ended up with over ninety hours of video tape when he returned to Germany. He took some of the tapes to several German stations pitching his idea to make the video into a little travel documentary to be aired on TV. One of the stations liked the idea, and he will soon be returning to Germany to edit his footage into a forty-five minute segment with the possibility of more to come if it is successful.

Three months into the trip, Jorg had fallen in love with a Thai girl from Kho Pha-Ngan. Kho Pha-Ngan is an island in the Gulf of Thailand. Even though he was smitten with this girl, he continued on his trip promising to return. When he left she was devastated, which in turn tore him up as well. They communicated often on the rest of his trip and as promised he returned nine months later hoping to rekindle the flame. Upon his return, she informed him that she had taken up with another German in his absence. She told him she was too torn up when he left, and although she loved him, she did not want to go through that again. It was now his turn to be devastated. He is now traveling with his father for awhile, and he is returning to Kho Pha-Ngan in a month to try and win her back, and I wish him the best.

First Day in Cambodia

The guesthouse is a really strange, but cool place. The people that run it are friendly, and the lonely planet even makes mention of this fact in its review of the place. The bill is done on the honor system. Each room has a book, and in that book you are responsible for keeping track of your charges. You can walk right up and grab your own beer. If you order food it is your responsibility to write it down and how much. Then when you check out you pay for everything. Water and coffee are free, which is a big change from Thailand. I loved Thailand, but sometimes the Thai proprietors can be a little stingy and will charge you for every little thing they can.

One thing that is interesting in traveling is observing the differences between countries. Since this is my first border crossing of this trip, it is my first time to observe the differences. Thailand obviously wins when it comes to roads, but Cambodia surprisingly beats the Thais in my opinion in a matter that means a lot to me. Angkor beer is one of the better beers I have had. It is not as good as Czech beer, but it is close in taste to Polish beer. I love Polish beer, so this says a lot. I used to really like Singha, which is a Thai beer but after drinking a lot of it on this trip the more of it I had the less I liked it. It has too much of a bitter aftertaste. Chang beer in Thailand is quite the same. Leo and Tiger beer from Thailand are a little smoother, but not very interesting. They are kind of like an American domestic beer. Angkor from Cambodia is both smooth and has a very fresh hoppy taste.

People from America make the mistake all the time of thinking that Asia is just one country and a kind of mono-culture exists throughout the whole continent. This is far from the truth and the differences between the countries in Asia are much more extreme than the differences in American culture from one region to the next. In Asia, each country, although some of them are quite small, have their own language, culture, and history. Although they are similar in many respects they are also quite different. I noticed this the minute I crossed the Cambodian border. Although Cambodia was an Asian nation like Thailand and a neighbor, I felt like I was in another planet once I crossed the border. One big difference is in the appearance. The majority ethnic group in Cambodia is the Khmers. They are short and very dark skinned with a small nose and dark hair. In Thailand, there seemed to be two major ethnic groups. The Siamese were darker skinned and those that had a mixture of Chinese were a lighter skin. They also had black hair, but were a little taller than the Khmers on average. I admit to not knowing much about the ethnic groups in either country, so this is kind of a generalization, but one based on observation.

It can be difficult to adapt to these differences in the countries while traveling because it is a lot of work to try and acclimate to the culture you find yourself in and then by simply crossing the border, many things have changed. I spent a month in Thailand and was on the verge of becoming comfortable even in places off the beaten track where not much English was spoken. With my limited Thai I could get my point across. For instance while eating lunch the day I left the country I asked the waitress for chilies to make the food spicier. She did not know what I mean. I recalled that “phet” meant spicy from my classes. I said that and she repeated it, turned around, and retrieved the chilies for me.

Also, you have to get used to a new currency. Cambodia makes this pretty easy as they love American dollars. Just about everywhere posts their menus with American dollars so you can use either American money or the local currency. What is kind of odd is that they do not use American change, only dollars. I was standing behind a guy in the gas station and he paid for two waters that were 75 cents each. He gave the clerk two American dollars and the clerk handed him back 2000 riels. I was given advance knowledge of this and brought plenty of American 1$ and 5$ bills, which helped a lot. Once in Siem Reap I learned that the exchange rate was 4000 riels for an American dollar. This meant that they totally ripped us off on the bus at the border as they told us we would get 2000 riels in Siem Reap and offered 2300. Fortunately, I only converted twenty American dollars here, which was a loss of about eight dollars, but it is pretty annoying anyways. I felt sorry for people that converted more.

After waking up and feeling a bit exhausted from the night before I kind of lounged around the guesthouse and had some coffee and tried to figure out what to do. There were some people at the guesthouse that were trying to pressure me into hiring them for a guide, but I wanted to tour the temples by bike as that was suggested in the Lonely Planet, and I did not want to go down there right away anyway. I decided to walk into town and found an internet café. I had to dodge many moto-bike drivers along the way that wanted me to hire them for rides.

After two hours in the internet café writing up my crazy day of travel from the day before I had lunch. The lunch place had several town bikes advertised for 1$ per day. I decided to take them up on that and rented a bike. I really had no idea where the temples were, but there were some signs that pointed me in the right direction. About a mile from the bike place my bike all of a sudden lost all power to move forward. After closer inspection, I realized the chain had completely snapped. I had to walk the bike back to the place. This was really a pain because it was really hot, and I was hung-over, so extra effort like this was definitely not welcomed on this day. I returned to the bike place and they gave me a new bike and it was take 2 for my departure for the Temples.

I found the road to the Temples with no problem and cruised up to the entrance and an official looking policemen pointed me into the park entrance where I paid 40 US dollars for a three day pass. Now the Temples were amazing and more than worth it, but what was strange was that this price was way out of whack with the local economy. I guess they put a Seven Wonders of the World luxury tax on the tourists. This is even more expensive than any Western attraction of the same type. I would not have a problem paying this fee, but it was doubtful it was going to the ones that needed the money from these funds, which is the country and the people of Cambodia. There was a rumor that some Australian company had bought the rights from the country and all the money was going to this company. If this is true it is absolutely heinous. From first hand observation I could say that the country could really use the proceeds from this source to fund a better highway from Thailand to Siem Reap.

I pedaled on to the main temple which was the first stop. I parked my bike and I was surrounded by young kids hocking postcards and guides. There was like 10 of them all yelling at the top of their voice, “mistuh, you buy my postcahd.” Thinking that if I bought something they might leave me alone I bought a group of postcards from one young kid. This strategy backfired as the rest of them just tried that much harder thinking they found a free spending sucker and they followed me with a fever pitch of voices and cries. The funny thing was they were selling postcards just like the ones I bought. I tried to reason with them and say I just bought ten postcards, why would I want to buy more? Ours are same, but different they replied and laughed. Unfortunately, this was the one of the annoyances of Angkor. At each stop you were attacked by these kids and also people selling drinks. It was great that you could buy cold drinks while driving your bike in the heat. It was not so great that there were 8 drink vendors yelling “mistuh, you want cold drink,” at me at the same time. It was also very sad because they were desperate for money and they were just so adorable. You wanted to buy something from each one, but that was just impossible.

This first stop was actually the main temple of the whole group and it was called Angkor Vat, and the rest of the area was named after this temple. I could see a ruined temple in the distance as I walked away escaping the vendors, and some spirals even farther in the distance. I was impressed with the first part, and took some pictures of the ruins. I then walked through and then there was a long walkway that led to the next set of temples. My breath escaped me as I walked through the back of the entryway and could see the Temple in all of its beauty set in front of a clear blue beautiful sky with several coconut trees on each side. I was speechless while looking at this beauty, which was natural since I was by myself, but even if I was with someone talking I would have stopped talking once I caught sight of this wonder. I will always remember that first glance of this temple.

The whole mystique of this place is just indescribable. You have these amazing ruins that just rise out of the jungle. Thankfully, Siem Reap is much prettier than the dried brown landscape we passed through on the bus to get here. Half of the park is covered by a blanket of many trees with an abundance of birds and monkeys. The spires have jungle plants growing out of them and there are birds, who probably live in the temple that are constantly flying around them. It is hard to capture in words how amazing these ruins are. The ruins date from around the 10th and 11th century I believe. At this point Europe was pretty much in the dark ages. I was thinking this would be a good lesson to teach students. It would show that Asian people were doing incredible things while Europe was just getting started with their civilization, which would discredit many stereotypes that Western Culture is far superior to the rest of the world.

After walking around for awhile, I hit the next temple. There are over 137 temples in the area. The most spectacular are found in the general area around the main Angkor temple. After a 1 km bike ride, I arrived at the next temple and stiff-armed a few more postcard peddlers and made my get away. This one was on a large hilltop, and I was huffing and puffing as I got to the top. This temple was called Pnom Bahkeng and was a series of terraces that culminated in a little square pagoda at the top. I had to climb these stairs, which were pretty steep, but eventually got to the top. Siem Reap is for the most part pretty flat, so this temple on this hill looked over everything, and it was an amazing view. There was jungle as far as the eye could see to the north, the temple I just visited to the south, a lake to the west, and farm land to the east. Swallows were flying all over the place and they made this surreal noise as they buzzed past your head. It was pretty windy and as they buzzed past your head it made this strange swishing sound, and there many birds up there, so this cool noise was almost constant. I also saw two beautiful bright green parakeets fly over in the jungle area to the north.

Despite the beauty of the scene, the author was feeling like hell. I was feeling the effects from the night before with Ollie and Harry. Also, it was extremely hot and the pedaling in the heat was also taking its toll on me. I sat in the shade and drank some water, and read a little. Despite the fact that this was one of the major temples, there were few people here now and it was very quiet. Soon I was fast asleep. The reason that this temple was quiet was because everyone herded to this temple to watch the sunset. Near sunset a horde led by Japanese photo tourists of concert going proportions flocked to this temple, but at other times of the day the temple was nice and peaceful. I woke up and felt a little better. I hoped that sleeping at a temple is not some bad luck or an offense. I saw a few Buddhist monks when I awoke, but they did not seem to mind that I was sleeping off a hangover at a holy place. I thought to myself that it would be cool to do a drunken hung-over tour of all the Seven Wonders. That would be great to say that you took a nap due to a hang-over at all Seven Wonders. I am not sure that it is possible though because I think that some of the Seven Wonders do not exist anymore. It would be difficult and probably impossible to get hammered and then the next day take a nap in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

It made me curious what the criteria is for a wonder being a Wonder. I wonder about a lot of things, but most are not true Wonders of the world or even anything that anyone but me would care about. For instance, at the moment on the temple I was wondering why I felt so bad after having such a good time the night before, or for that matter why so many fun things in general are deemed wrong. This train of thinking got me curious to what the ACTUAL Seven Wonders are. I wonder also if there was an ancient Seven Wonders committee that voted on this.

After writing this I soon discovered that there are different categories for the seven wonders. For instance there are the seven wonders of the ancient world and seven wonders of the modern world. There are even a seven wonders of the medieval mind whatever that means. In fact everyone is trying to get into the seven wonders thing. I even found a USA today seven wonders list. There is also a new seven wonders campaign that had a vote over the internet. Check the site below for the winners. Ankgor, unfortunately, was a finalist, but did not win. After my visit here I am inclined to think they got robbed. I am thinking of making a new list. The Seven got screwed wonders of the world.

http://www.new7wonders.com/

After waking I descended the steps and returned to my bike. I bought some drinks from one of the vendors while the other seven vendors seethed in jealousy and tried to sell me what I had already just bought. I said no thanks, and then they said “next time mistuh?” I told them sure, which was a mistake because I learned that they have long memories. Each temple was beautiful and amazing in its own right. What was really great was that each one was a little different than the one before it. I guess that each of these temples was made by the Kings of Angkor, and each one tried to out do the other. I saw many temples over the next three days and I did not get tired of seeing ancient temples.

The next temple was called Bayon and the highlight of this temple was that it had these faces of Buddha chiseled on these stone monuments, and the faces were chiseled identically on all four sides of these square pillars. The symmetry on all of the temple designs was really incredible. A lot of the temples were square and had stairs on all four sides and each side was identical to the next one. The precision to accomplish this was truly a great architectural feat and that they had the knowledge to carry this out during the ancient world is truly a phenomenon right up there with the Pyramids.

It was getting dark, so I drove a little farther to one more temple, which I believe was a wall devoted to a leper king. I was approached by some scary looking Cambodian teenagers who got me to take a picture in front of the wall and then gave me a little background. I normally would have been grateful for this service, but I did not ask for it and I knew it was going to cost me. I was a little afraid that they may take my camera and run while as I was in this pit in front of a stone mural. This was the one time I felt a little fear from another person on this trip. It was getting dark and the crowds were all gathering at the hilltop temple, so I was somewhat alone. I gave them some money and they tried to get more from me, but I swiftly walked away back to my bike and pedaled all the way back to the guesthouse. When I arrived back to the guesthouse Dave the Australian who hung out with Ollie, Harry, and I a little the night before was going to dinner. I told him I was going to take a cold shower and if he did not mind waiting I would join him in a minute. Dave was traveling around the world for a year. I thought that my three month trip was epic, but I am meeting quite a few people like him that are traveling around the world for a year.

We had a great dinner. We talked the whole dinner about traveling and shared experiences that we have encountered so far. Dave had the luxury of taking his time since he will be out for a year. He was going to stay in Siem Reap for at least a week and was not even going to get his three day pass for a couple of days. Like many of my friends that envied my three month trip, I was envying his year trip. After our dinner complete with a few Angkors we returned to the guesthouse. I soon went to bed because I wanted to wake up the next morning at 4:15am. The sunrise emerges right over the Angkor temples, and I have heard that the sunrise at the temples is not to be missed. One thing that is nice about South East Asian weather is that it is very predictable. In Chicago if you are a tourist and are counting on the weather it can be pretty iffy many times. In Cambodia during the dry season one can count that the sun will rise at 6am with no clouds and it will soon then be hot as hell.

Journey to Cambodia

The bus was leaving for Cambodia in front of the travel agent where I bought the ticket. I arrived in front of the travel agency around 7am and there was no one around. Finally another backpacker arrived and I asked where they were heading. They said the floating markets. Another tourist arrived and she confirmed that she was going to Cambodia as well. There were no Thai people around at all or any buses for that matter, so we were all a bit apprehensive. These round ups for departing are never very well organized, but somehow everything works out. Sure enough, a smiling Thai person arrives, and I show him my receipt and he gives me a bus ticket and tells me to go around the corner to find the bus. Around the corner was the bus, which was of the large, comfortable, air-conditioned variety. I had two seats to myself in the back, which is rare on these tourist buses, as they try to pack you in to maximize their profits. I laid back and stretched out and listened to my music and thought this trip was going to be a breeze.

When I was out in Patpong with the American friends I had met watching the Super Bowl, I was warned that this bus trip was rather hellish, by their friend Christian. Christian was teaching in Chiang Mai. He had never made the trip himself, but he had heard horror stories. I laughed and thought this was one of those rumors where the experience got worse and worse as the rumor mill turned, but yet the actual experience was not half as bad. I kind of knew in the back of my mind that things might be different once we reached Cambodia. As I watched the Thai countryside go by, I was sad to be leaving Thailand, but I was trying to figure out a way to get back here for a week or so before I left for the Philippines. There were still a few places that I had not seen that I really wanted to see. I had not had time to visit Kho Yai National Park, which is supposed to be a wildlife paradise, so I wanted to come back and see that if I could manage it.

The bus trip from Bangkok to the border was restful, peaceful, and easy. It took us about 3 to 4 hours to go the almost 200 miles to get to the border town of Aranyaprathet. Once we hit the border was when things took a turn for the worse. It happened to be Chinese New Year, and apparently many Thai people visit the temples of Ankgor, so the crossing into Cambodia was really crowded.

The guides said we had to take everything off the bus as the bus was going back to Bangkok. We all grabbed our things and headed for the border crossing. The line was incredibly slow, and we baked in the 90+ sun while waiting. There were two lines, one for Thai people and one for foreigners. They only had one person on each line. The Thai line moved briskly as they only did a cursory look at their passport. The foreigner line was painstakingly slow. At first this line spilled outside the customs building and around the corner. We all had our bags on and were dripping with sweat as we roasted in the Thai almost Cambodia sun. All around us were dirty beggar children pulling at our hands. The guidebook warned about these kids at the crossing and wrote that one needed to safeguard valuables from them. While baking in the sun we were all hoping to reach the building to get out of the sun. Once inside the room there was over 200 people in line with nary a fan to be seen, so it was just as bad. Inside we baked in the heat instead of roasting outside.

I finally made it through and was in Cambodia. It was hot and bothersome, but at least it was done with. We then started to advance towards the bus. We then realized we were not done yet. We then had to go through the Cambodian side. All we did in the first line was exit Thailand and now we had to enter Cambodia. We were currently in no-man’s land. Surprisingly the Cambodian side was much more efficient and we passed through this line in about a half-hour.

The first thing I noticed on the Cambodian side is two huge extravagant buildings on either side of the road and then the desolate, ugly, dirty city of Poipet beyond these two buildings. It turned out these two nice buildings were casinos where high spending rich Thais come to gamble as there are laws against gambling in Thailand. There were all these moto-bikes waiting in this queue and they all had these scarves over their mouths to protect from the blowing sand. None of the streets of Poipet were paved. I had no idea where everyone went to, but a Cambodian fellow saw me and waived me over to the waiting bus. I was the last one on. The new bus was a little dingier and older than the Thai bus, but it was comfortable, and I had my own seat, so I was happy.

The bus then drove to a currency exchange and I exchanged some American money for Cambodian real. I forgot to check the exchange rate in Cambodia. The guide on the bus said that they would give a rate of 2300 real per 1 US dollar, which is better than in Siem Reap. He said in Siem Reap the banks will only give 2000 per US dollar. He looked friendly, so we believed him and cashed in some money. I was going to exchange 50 usd, but I decided 20 would be enough for now. This was a good thing as we found out when we got to our destination that this was a major scam. All of a sudden some other Cambodians came on and said to get on another bus. We all thought it was just some scam to get us to pay extra for a VIP bus or something because these people were different from our driver, but it was not the case and we were moved. They told us a larger group needed to use this big bus. A much smaller bus not much bigger than a mini van came up around the corner and we were told this was our bus. I could not imagine how all us would fit as there were over twenty of us. I was one of the last in. I looked inside and all the seats were taken. They had these little mini seats that opened in the aisle that were low to the ground, which I had to take. There was a great ruckus from two German ladies who would not get on. They yelled at the Cambodians that this bus was unsafe, but they were eventually coaxed in and I got on my seat and we took off.

We drove through the town of Poipet and this had to be the ugliest town I had ever seen. As I mentioned before none of the roads were paved and were sand covered instead. Every bike, car, and bus kicked up big clouds of dust obscuring the view of the city as we drove through. This was not such a bad thing as this town looked like how I would imagine Fallujah or some other war torn small Iraqi town. There was garbage everywhere and the buildings in the town all looked like they had been bombed. If they had not been bombed, a well place bomb would have been an improvement.

As we left the town the view in the countryside was not much better. Since it was the dry season everything was completely brown. There were not many trees and the trees that could be found were pretty sad looking sights. The condition of the road was absolutely horrible. Now I know what Christian was saying was no lie. There were small sections where the road was paved, but then they would give way to dirt and gravel and huge potholes. When our over capacity bus hit these potholes, the driver had to slow down to an almost stop. When going through the potholes the whole bus lurched and bounced us around. Since it was so hot, the windows had to stay open and dust kicked up from vehicles in front of us poured through the open windows.

After two hours of this we stopped for dinner. Everyone came out of the bus and walked right in and sat down. No one even said hello to our Cambodian hosts at the restaurant. I said hello and our waitress looked shocked for a second and then said hello. The guy I was sitting with made some joke about the food being fried cockroaches. This kind of annoyed me. Everyone was in a horrible mood because of the strain of the day, but it was not the people’s fault at the restaurant. They still deserved to be treated with respect. As we were leaving the Cambodians said nothing except when I passed the waitress and she said “see you mistuh,” and smiled. I think she singled me out because I was the only one with the courtesy to say hello to her as we arrived.

We got back on the bus, and somehow I got in a worse position than before. One of my legs was wedged against someone’s luggage and the other was penned in by the seat beside me. This meant I could not shift my legs at all. I tried to shift my whole body back a bit and struck the person behind me in the face with my seat. I apologized and realized now I could not shift my back either. I basically could hardly move. To make matters worse, being in the mini seat in aisle I was lower than everyone else and my legs had less room in front of me because of this. I was also not near any open window, so I could not catch the breeze coming in. I am not sure being near an open window would have been any better as I would have been all dusty. It was either hot and stuffy or breezy and dusty. Everyone on the bus was uncomfortable, so I do not think it really mattered much where one was sitting, but I think I had the worst of the worst. Everyone else was probably thinking the same thing. Comfort was non existent on our bus.

Then an amazing thing happened. The horrible road got worse. The potholes became more frequent and we also moved more slowly because we encountered many bridges and each bridge was only one way. There were also these huge inexplicable piles of dirt in the middle of the road for who knows what reason that our driver had to avoid. I have thought long and hard why these were there because they were piled high and in a way that could only have been done by man, so they had to have some sort of purpose. One guess is may be a road crew dumped them there and then someone else was supposed to spread this sand over the road. Another guess was maybe they were there over big potholes that could not be driven on and by putting the dirt there the driver had to avert these dangerous potholes. Whatever their purpose, they slowed us down even more and made this strange trip even more bizarre as we veered back and forth through these piles of dirt. I think it is about a seventy mile trip from the border to Siem Reap. It took us over five hours to make the trip.

Usually when I am making a road trip music or reading is what saves me. I could not read since it was completely dark on the bus. I had a flashlight in my bag, but I could not move, so that was a problem. I did have access to my music though. I listened to one CD for a bit and then just turned it off. It was doing nothing for me in my misery. I was hoping the music would take my mind off of my current unpleasantness, but I was too uncomfortable to enjoy the music. Also, I was afraid that whatever music I listened to might in my mind be linked to this trip and I may forever not be able to enjoy it. I may listen to that CD again in the future and my mind would think of cramped legs, stuffy breathing, heat, and dust instead of the music and it may forever tarnish the songs. I turned off my CD and just sat in a trance trying to meditate myself into numbness. This was not working either. I had had it with this trip. I was hot, I was dusty, I was tired, I was pissed, and my whole body was aching and uncomfortable. I was just about to scream out loud in anger, frustration, fatigue, and any other word that evokes misery and discomfort when the bus started all of a sudden picking up speed. We amazingly hit a patch of pavement that was not broken by a pothole, or a one-lane rickety bridge, or a pile of dirt in the middle of the road. I did not want to begin to hope as I did not want to be cruelly disappointed when we hit the pot holes again. We kept going though picking up more speed. Soon there were buildings, lights, and road signs indicating we were entering town. Then we passed these huge hotels that could only be for foreigners visiting the Temples of Angkor. We all exhaled in relief. The bus then dropped us off at the guesthouse where a new adventure ensued. Our troubles were not yet over.

We were dropped off by the bus at the Sidewalk Guesthouse, which was the first guesthouse as we arrived in town. I was so thankful to get off the bus. I grabbed my things and dropped them off in a corner and smoked a cigarette and just stared off into space. I could hear people talking around me making plans on where to stay. I heard people say there were no vacancies here, and I also heard panicked talk of absolutely no rooms available in the whole town due to Chinese New Year. I did not care. All I cared about was that I was off of the fucking hell bus. I was happy as could be at that point. I would worry about a place to stay soon enough.

A small man then approached me and asked if I needed a room. I feared some scam as I thought I heard that there were no rooms in Siem Reap. I said I did, and he said he had an available room for 2$. He said to follow me. I was really confused at this point because a lot of people from the bus had already left in search of rooms as they were told no vacancies. I followed him into a fairly comfortable room for 2$. I could not believe my luck. I did not know why they refused many others who asked for a room, but approached me and asked if I needed a room when I was simply and quietly minding my own business at the moment. I was not going to ask questions, so I threw my stuff in the room and then headed back outside for a beer. After that trip I needed a drink more than I had ever needed one in my life.

They had this beautiful little table under a thatched roof right outside and a few people were out there having a drink enjoying the beautiful night. I took a seat and ordered an Angkor beer. Another surprise from Cambodia was that this beer was very tasty and much better than any beer found in Thailand in my opinion. I started talking to some of the survivors from the bus trip. The German couple with their mom who had made the big ruckus when we were moved to the smaller bus was there under the roof. There were also two German guys named Ollie and Harry that had arrived earlier in the day. They had had a long trip too and we all shared horror stories.

More people kept arriving and some were put into room and some were allowed to sleep outside. The workers at the guesthouse were doing all they could to accommodate these late arrivals. One gal slept right behind us in a hammock while we bantered away over beer after beer. I kept turning around, but apparently we were not bothering her as she was fast asleep. We did our best to talk lightly. Then the workers from the guesthouse began questioning us about our rooms. I was hoping to have a room by myself, but when they found I did they asked me if for half the price if I would share. I reluctantly agreed. Then more people kept coming and they continued to try and accommodate. I saw them talking to some Germans that just arrived. I could tell the Germans were in distress. I saw a patch of sand right next to the guesthouse and I had an idea. I told the man in charge at the guesthouse that I had a tent and asked if he did not mind I could pitch it in the patch of sand. I then told him if I did that then he could give my bed to someone else. He was very grateful and told me that would be great and there would be no charge for staying in my tent. As it turned out the bed I gave away was to an older German fellow traveling with his son Jorge. Jorge was very appreciative of this gesture and bought me a beer. I told him I was doing my part for improving German-American relations, and we had a toast to this. This was great for me. A free nights stay, a free room, a free beer, and I get to finally use my tent. I brought my tent thinking I would need it for camping, but in my month in Thailand I camped 0 days.

I spent the night talking to Germans, Australians, French, and English people. The Germans from the bus trip were named Ullie and Kerstin. It so happened that Ollie and Kerstin were from the same small town in Germany. I was the only American there. Kerstin worked for the BBC as a free lance producer and was in Sri Lanka one day after the tsunami hit and covered the story from there. We had to keep it down as there were people sleeping all around us. One man sat and read the whole night never once looking away from his book. He never once looked in our direction. A gecko made its shrill sound from under the rafters. I now know why it is called a gecko as it chirps out its namesake in a hoarse voice. G-E-C-K-O it kept repeating as we all laughed. We then heard someone throwing up in the bathroom. Someone made a joke and said it must have been a drunken gecko. We all laughed at this. The vomiting person sensed we were laughing at his misery and began to curse at us in a Russian accent out the window that he would come out there and kick the crap out of us. This made us laugh even harder.

I ended up drinking awful rice wine, smoking opium, and drinking Angkors with Ollie and Harry until 4am the next morning. I could not believe I was still awake after such a calamitous day. I must have been wired after all that had happened to me during the day. I had drunk this awful concoction known as rice whisky in Chiang Mai, and I could hardly stomach it. In Chiang Mai I usually took sips of this devilish potion every time it was passed to me, but Ollie and Harry were taking shots and pouring shots for me. I took a couple and every time I finished one my whole body shook in horror as it tried to cope with this awful liquid I was allowing to enter my body. It reminded me of a billboard for Jagermeister. The billboard has a picture of a man just finishing a shot and he has this awful look on his face and is half spitting out the drink. The caption on the top of the billboard reads “so smooth.” Jagermeister is like a kiddy cocktail compared to this rice whiskey.

As if there were not enough strange things to happen to me during this day, the strangest thing then happened around 2am. Out of nowhere during the middle of our drunken revelry under the thatch roof enters a young Cambodian with his mom and another gentleman. The young Cambodian has no shirt on and he approaches us and introduces himself to us. He tells me that he saw me in the bathroom and he heard me pissing. He then makes this fake pissing sound. I found that many times when I have met Asian people here that they like to inform you that they noticed you before you introduced yourself and then informed you what they noticed you doing even if it was the most mundane thing possible. In this case I was peeing and this person wanted to let me know that before we met he heard me peeing. That is great, I told him, not knowing what to say. If I noticed him noticing me peeing I could have told him that, but I was unaware that he was hearing me pissing, so I just said that is great and smiled.

It turns out that he is a martial arts student and the other guy was his teacher. When Ollie finds out about this he goes crazy because he is into martial arts too, so he challenges him to a fight. They agree to fight with no contact and Ollie takes off his shirt and they move away from the table in order to not wake the sleeping people around us. Harry and I follow with our cameras giggling as they start jumping at each other and doing these crazy pirouettes in the air. After they are done they give the Cambodian guy some rice whiskey. I am glad because the more people to help drink that awful concoction the better. Usually, when it comes to alcohol I prefer to have more, but this is not the case with rice whiskey. After a couple of shots, they offer him another, but his mom says no. His teacher and mom take him away stumbling, and he is bowing to us as he is being led back to wherever it was he came from.

We then retired to Ollie and Harry’s room for some more opium smoking. Thankfully the rice whiskey was finished. We listened to Kill Bill volume 2 soundtrack as the opium pipe was passed around. I finally got in my tent around 4am and slept for about four hours as the hot Cambodian sun plus all the activity at the guesthouse awoke me around 7:45. I had a splitting headache from the previous night’s activity, but it was quite a day. Today was time to see the wonders of Angkor, but I first needed to get rid of the not so wonders of my hangover.