On to Angkor
Monday, February 27th, 2006
Sunday morning and we were in Siem Reap, gateway to Angkor. We were off the road. The first order of business was to have a doctor look at Don. Neil and Don headed off to the Clinic while Normano and Bernie checked out the local breakfast scene.
The doctor was from Thailand. After inspecting the wounds, she numbed things up, and then cleaned and stitched the wounds. Neil took pictures. She complimented Neil on his wilderness emergency treatment. After watching her work, Neil was ready to add emergency stitches to his first aid repertoire (and getting some of those cool needles for his first aid kit). By 10:30 we were heading back to the hotel. Don had 7 stitches, prescription drugs, and instructions to come back tomorrow. (Because this is a family oriented blog, we are not posting Neil’s pictures – unless you ask)
We hired a car and driver to take us Angkor. For the uninitiated, Angkor is actually a very large area with numerous temples, including Angkor Wat. Neil had recently visited here with his sister Natalie and was well prepared to be our guide. We visited five temples over the course of day, with stops at the makeshift noodle shops and water/snack shops along the way for sustenance. Our driver waited for us between temples and dodged the police guards to avoid paying fees (he complained that they shouldn’t be out on Sunday, saying they were just out there to collect money for themselves on their day off).
While we were climbing through the temples a guy (Aussie by accent) came up and pointed at Don’s bandages and asked “Motorcycle?” Don said “yes” and the guy laughed and proudly held up his arm to show a really ugly scar. “I got that on a motorcycle in Thailand last year” he said. Don hoped his scar would turn out a little better.
I can’t really describe the temples other than to say they were awesome. The sheer scale of each temple site was hard to fathom, the size of the stones and buildings were most impressive, the carvings and detail were everywhere. Unlike the temples we’d visited the day before, there were also lots of tourists. Because the temples themselves were so very impressive, the tourists weren’t too much of a distraction – but I wonder what it will be like in 5 or 10 years when Cambodia really gets into the international tourism business (and you can see that Siem Reap is building the hotels for that future). We took plenty of pictures, but they don’t begin to capture the place; hopefully these pics below provide some sense of our experience:
The trees reclaim their territory from the temple
This monk said prayers for us (we would need them)
Neil paced our visit perfectly. By late afternoon, we were hot, tired and nearly overwhelmed by the beauty and experience of the day. We finished with Angkor Wat, the most famous of all the temples. What to say…except it is incredible. As we finished our visit to this most awesome temple, we stopped for a rest and a treat, and then contemplated the temple and our day.
The size, beauty and sheer mass of the temples are amazing. It is also sobering, to think of the wealth and power of the civilization that built it and then disappeared. Like the tides, civilizations rise and fall …and the jungle waits.
As the night fell, we headed back to town. We were ready for a rest, a shower, and then a taste of Siem Reap. It was a full moon…
That night we headed out to the streets to find dinner. There were a lot of people on the streets, and that made it kind of wild because the streets were torn up with sewer construction. It was even crazier because the crews were still working on the streets even though it was night time.
We headed over to an area where there were restaurants and bars. Music blasted out from the bars, mixing on the streets with the sound of construction and children selling books and post cards… moto drivers asking if we needed a ride – or a massage… disco music, rock and roll, traditional Cambodian music and barkers outside the restaurants extolling the virtues of their menus. Don stopped to buy some postcards from a group of children, and we picked and Indian Restaurant.
After dinner we headed up the street to find a pharmacy and a bar. One of the little girls from group that had been selling postcards followed, calling to Don and complaining that he should have bought her post cards instead of from an other girl. As we walked along, she became more violent and began to curse him. She was 9 or 10 years old. She called on him to buy her post cards. She followed along cursing and complaining…just a little girl but a very foul mouth. “You are a bad man. Fuck you. Bad things will happen to you” — it just kept pouring out of her (and we wondered where she learned English – particularly this brand of English).
We went into the pharmacy to buy some bandages. She waited across the street. When we came out, she took up her complaints again, calling out above the sounds of the street construction and music from the bars. As we were walking down the crowed street, with the little girl following and cursing, Norm felt somebody bump into him and try to reach into his pocket. The street was packed with people…locals, tourists, and who knew what else. It was getting pretty weird on the streets of Siem Reap.
We went to a bar for some Beer Lao. The little girl followed, cursing and complaining. At first it seemed like a “shakedown” of some sort, but she had now spent a good ninety minutes in this pursuit. She seemed to have totally lost it. “You shit, you bad man, you motherfucker, I curse you” etc, etc. She just went on an on and seemed totally possessed by her madness. We stopped for another beer and she stood outside and continued her cursing. Finally Don went out to talk to her.
She said that Don had talked to her first but then bought postcards from another girl…he should have bought her postcards. She told him she was ten years old and got stuff to sell from her boss. She began to calm down a bit. Don paid a dollar for a dozen cards. He said it was for his karma, and he wondered about post-traumatic stress.
We finished our drinks in peace and headed back to the hotel.
That night, “Undercover Brother” dubbed in Khmer with English subtitles was on cable TV. Who knew how it translated or if the locals knew it was a comedy?
Dharma Don
