I am currently posting from the cafe at Palm Village, Siem Reap, Cambodia. It’s been interesting so far. Unfortunately, the connection is slow enough so that uploading pictures is impractical. However, it’s great that there is internet connectivity at all.
Getting into Siem Reap was quite interesting. Silk Air did feed us, even though we’d had an execrable meal at Swensons in Changi Airport. The Silk Air meal was even worse, if you can imagine it. “Chicken” was actually some kind of chicken roll in pastry. ‘Nuff said about that.
The e-visa I got online worked perfectly. The immigration officer, when he saw the paper, delightedly exclaimed “E-visa!” and I was processed and through long before my Singaporean friends, who do not need visas here, had gotten through. The immigration officer showed me his computer screen with the picture that matched my e-visa on it as well. I congratulated him and Cambodia on their forward-looking visa policies.
The food and service at Palm Village is wonderful. We really are enjoying it. Full pictures will come a bit later. The male staff are very cute indeed.
The first thing you will notice is the welcoming committee in front of every temple. Young girls, mostly, selling everything from jews’ harps and flutes, to bangles and books. They are the same at every temple, only the faces change. The children are all very short and look to be around 9 years old. The guide asked them their ages and most of them were 12 or 13 years old. Life expectancy here is 53 for men and 56 for women. Grinding poverty and subsistence farming are evident everywhere.
Cambodia, to a Western eye, is very untidy. There are house lots that have nothing in them, only a fence around them. The houses have been taken by the elements years ago. Oil drums with a clear gas tank above them serve for a filling station out in the countryside. Traffic is mostly motorbikes and bicycles, with as many people as you can fit on the motorbike riding on it. Few of the roads are paved, and on the ones that are, drainage is abysmal, so you wonder whether taking a boat would have been more effective than a van.
The temples are old. Very old. The oldest ones are 200 years older than Westminster Abbey, and the youngest ones are about contemporary with it. None are in what one could say was good shape. The climate and the jungle have taken care of that. Trees with enormous roots stand on top of walls, with the roots looking like nagas (snakes) or elephants’ trunks. As in England during the Reformation, many heads of statues have been removed or defaced. The original religion in which many of the temples were dedicated was Hinduism. Buddhism then became the majority religion of Cambodia, but there was a period in which the two religions vied forr superiority. So there are few Buddha’s heads remaining undefaced. By the time Buddhism had won, the temples were lost in the jungle, only to be rediscovered in the 1800’s and 1900’s.
Most temples have moats, or the remnants of moats. There are causeways up to the door of the temple, guarded by the Hindu equivalents of angels and demons on either side.
We saw more temples than you could shake a stick at. To go there, you need a temple pass, which has to be shown at every temple. The guidebooks say that you must bring two passport photos for the temple pass, but they are behind the times: your picture is taken at the gate and printed on the pass.
The main sensory impression I got from the temple areas was auditory. Cicadas are everywhere, and their high-pitched whine vies with the cries of “Wanna buy a book mister, fi’ dollas…buy a book?” There are parrots too, which you cannot see in the tops of the trees without binoculars but whose raucous cries fill the air when they are settling down.
Tourists are, of course, everywhere. People asked me how they could help Cambodians. My answer is: come to Cambodia and spend money. There is no industry here because there are no efficient transport networks to get raw materials in and finished products out. Education is spotty, although most go through primary school many do not continue on to secondary school and few go to university. Leaving your money here is most effective in helping the country feed itself and eventually develop the infrastructure necessary to move from a subsistence economy to a production economy. They do export rice, I gather, which is interesting in that most countries in this area that produce rice save it for their domestic markets.
The currency of choice is the US dollar. There is a local currency, but it is worth something like 4000 to the dollar. Everyone takes dollars, all the menus have prices in dollars. The children selling things ask for dollars.
One child yesterday was selling postcards. I had already bought some from another child two days ago, but this girl was counting in English how many postcards she was selling: “One, two, three…” and so on. Then she counted in French “Un, deux, tres, quatre, cinq…dix” and in Spanish “uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco…” So I said (as a joke) “What about Chinese? She immediately said “yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.” I said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” and bought a postcard set from her. As I left I said “goodbye” in Chinese and she immediately replied, “Zaijian!” Now this girl, who was probably 13, should be in school learning languages, and how to be a tourguide. Instead she’s running barefoot in front of a temple selling postcards for “one dolla, meester!” It is heartbreaking.
Today we were supposed to go to Angkor Wat in the morning, then to the carving school in the afternoon. It was pouring rain. Bucketsfull of water were coming out of the heavens and flooding the land. One of our number was not feeling well (intestinal) and was very rocky. In addition, when we got to Angkor, the rain made it a very unfortunate pool with some carved stones within it. We decided to go to the carving school (also flooded) and see what that was about. It trains people to make the items that tourists buy all over the area. They especially train deaf and speechless people in these arts. Pots of gold leaf were carelessly scattered about the place. I bought four rush placemats, four rush coasters, some soap, and a Cambodian CD. Tonight we are going to Siem Reap for dinner and to go to the one gay bar in town.
I must also mention the very beautiful young man who waited on us when we had lunch Tuesday and Wednesday. The tour guide brought us to a restaurant which I thought quite good, and the most beautiful young man, obviously very swishy and camp, was our waiter. His name is Touch (pronounced like “toot”) and he is a 24 year old orphan who works in the restaurant 7 days a week, studies English at night, and lives in a temple with monks. He earns $15 a month for 7-days-a-week work. I gave him a $20 bill as a tip and a picture was taken which I will upload presently.
The food here is something like Thai, but a bit less spicy. They use less shellfish and more fish. Amok is a kind of thick curry served in a banana leaf bowl–chicken, pork, or fish. I had the chicken variety and it reminded me of That green curry without the sauce and the baby aubergines. There are many kinds of soup and curry, as well as spring rolls that are Vietnamese-like (white paper wrapping and fresh, not deep fried). Coconut is in almost everything. There is less Chinese-influenced cuisine here than in other parts of Southeast Asia. Fork and spoon are used, although visiting Chinese can have chopsticks if they want them. The local beer is, of course, Angkor Beer (not to be confused with Anchor) and is quite good, kind of fruity light and not too hoppy. A very good lager.
I realise that this has gone on much too long, but as I’ve been away since Monday morning I felt the need to get it all down before the WiFi conks out. I hope you’ve all enjoyed it and will try to get to Cambodia someday.
