There’s such a lot of world to see

My mother is a wonderful woman.  Apart from raising two intelligent, charming, and astoundingly good-looking offspring (so I know at least Michael is on my side in this post), she is talented and can turn her hand to pretty much anything she wants to do.  With one notable exception.  For the 29 years I have known her – and, I would imagine, at other times as well, she has a complete inability to ride a bike without falling off.  One of my favourite times was at Centre Parks, when we were younger, and like the devoted children we were, Michael and I only stopped laughing long enough to take a photo.  Apparently as well, on her recent trip to China, the same thing happened.

Well, those of you who are fortunate enough to have met both me and my mum know that we look like a version of “Send in the Clones”.  We act like it, too.  So I guess when I hired an electric bike to take myself round the Angkor temples for a day, I should have seen it coming.  The day was going so well, as well…

Jessica and Matt had left early that morning, so I was on my own for the day, and decided to make the most of it by getting an electric bike.  It was the best of all scenarios, really – I would have the independence of my own transport, without the pain and suffering of riding a push bike in temperatures approaching 40 degrees.  Electric bikes, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, look like normal bikes except they have a battery unit on them which powers it.  You can pedal if you desperately want to, but really, who wants to?  They have a top speed of around 20 mph, so you pootle along in quite a sedate fashion.

I wobbled along the road (OK, these things take some getting used to), and made my first stop at the Aki Ra Landmine Museum.  This is a fabulous, important institution that educates about landmines, campaigns for their full ban worldwide, and supports young people who have been directly (and indirectly) affected by this blight on civilised society – including funding some of these young people to go to university and have something approaching a ‘normal’ life.  I might write further about landmines in a later blog, but for now, I’ve put a link to Aki Ra’s site on the right, please take 5 minutes to read it and see what we can do.

So, once I’d been there, I set off for the temples.  I intended to actually re-visit the ones we’d seen the day before – they are so huge, and varied, that I think I could have visited them 100 days in a row and never grown tired of wandering and discovering their hidden treasures.  I’d charged up my camera battery, and wanted to get some of the shots I’d missed the previous day.  Giving Angkor Wat a miss until later, I headed off to Ta Phrom, where the trees are coveing the crumbling temple, and to Bayon, the one with the faces carved into every wall. 

It was getting pretty hot, so I sought refuge in a cafe, and then headed out to find my two postcard girls.  The temples of Angkor are overflowing with local, insanely cute children, all selling you postcards, and pretty much anything else you would care to buy, all for “One dollar” (You get used to hearing that cry all day long).  I’d promised two of these girls (one of whom was called, seriously, Spidergirl – is that the coolest name in the world, or what?), and found all the children in a circle under a tree, paying rapt attention to a teacher.  I was intrigued, and stayed to listen for a while.  Apparently, they were having ‘politeness’ classes as to the best and most appropriate ways to deal with tourists, including approaching them in groups no bigger than three.  I was told later that the classes also take in wider social topics that these children might not normally have access to, such as AIDS awareness (vitally important in a country such as this, where unfortunately prostitution is rife, usually – as in most cases – amongst the most weak and defenceless in society).  Spidergirl spotted me, and, after class, came over and I bought her postcards, along with one set from her friend, as well.  They also gave me (and they insisted, before you start rolling your eyes in disgust at my freeloading) two bracelets.  I’m not THAT much of a scav, and I tried to give them back, but they insisted, without pressing me to buy anything else.  They waved me off, with an admonition to be careful on my bike.  If I had only heeded their warning.

Going back home, I realised it was Siem Reap rush hour, and the traffic going both ways was busy – I was getting overtaken constantly, as the battery was getting low, so I was going about 12 mph.  I’ve mentioned before about crazy Asian traffic, and this was no exception.  Suddenly, a guy swerved in front of me, I panicked, and the bike veered off to the side.  I hit the kerb with a thwack, and did a most spectacular Starsky & Hutch style catapult right off the bike.  Some lovely people stopped to see if I was ok, and I did that thing where you grit your teeth and smile through your tears and cry, slightly hysterically, “NO!  I’M FINE!  NO PROBLEM!  NOW, YOU BE ON YOUR WAY!”.  I limped back on to the bike where, to add pain to injury, the battery had just died a death, so I had to cycle the rest of the way back to town, leg bleeding, and feeling like I wanted to cry (admittedly, more from the ego bruise than anything else). 

I had to look at my leg myself – the medical advice for Cambodia is “get back to Bangkok”, which I thought might be a tad excessive for a cut leg, so, with virtual advice from my lovely medical relatives and friends (CL and JP take a bow, and a big thankyou), had a go at patching it up.  Let’s just say I’ll never make a nurse but now, thankfully, it looks like it’s well on the road to getting better.  I might end up with a huge jaggedy scar, but still, think of the sympathy I’ll get.

Understandably (well, for me, anyway – I do like to dwell on these things), I woke up the next morning in somewhat of a grump, feeling most ‘woe is me’.  Cycling round that day was out of the question, and I didn’t want to particularly splash out on a tuk tuk just for myself – my budget is quite tight here in Cambodia – so I’d pretty much written off my last day at Angkor.  Dejected,  I went to a lovely cafe for breakfast, and that is where my day took a massive turn for the better.  As I was on my way out, I looked up to see a lovely familiar face – my old friend (well, in travelling terms, anyway) Brad, who, with Michelle and Gary, I spent a great week with all the way back in India.  I couldn’t think of a more welcome sight. I knew he’d be in SE Asia at around the same time I was, but didn’t know that Cambodia was on his itinerary, so it was pure fluke that we were in the same place at the same time. It seemed to be a case of that marvellous serendipity that’s following me around. We spent a couple of hours just catching up, then decided to get a tuk tuk together and head off for more sights of Angkor.

Angkor Wat was our first stop, which was great for me, another chance to recapture some of my lost photo opportunities from the day of the dead battery, and then we went on to some of the lesser-known and lesser-visited temples, including a stop at a monastery with a huge (although very shiny and new) Buddha, where we ended up chatting to an interesting monk who was telling us about life in the monastery. He was older than us – I’d guess in his 50s – and had only been a monk for a year. I love the culture clashes that seem to go with these monks – you see some on the internet, some with mobile phones; this guy smoked a roll-up as we chatted.

Our final stop was another steep temple, facing Angkor for the sunset and, although there were a few other people up there, it was nowhere near as crowded as the first sunset I’d seen at Angkor. Equally as entertaining and as distracting as the beautiful falling light were the beautiful children who crowded round us, enticing us to buy their wares. We ended up playing games with them, especially numbers games, and speaking about our countries – most children know some basic facts about a lot of countries, presumably gleaned from one tourist and then used to impress others. A typical encounter goes something like this:
Child: “Where you from?”
Me: “England”
Child: “Capital is London. One of four countries all together – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Population of England is 51 million”.

My personal favourite, though, and one I’m dying to know how it entered the lexicon, is:
“England – lovely jubbly”. Maybe Del Boy passed through Angkor one day.

After sitting and watching the sunset, and again marvelling at my good fortune to see Brad just when a friendly face was most welcome, we headed off to see some Aspara dancing (traditional Cambodian, usually involving highly decorated dancers making slow and precise movements), and – the real reason why we went to this place – an all-you-can-eat buffet. Not having eaten lunch, we filled our boots.

At the end of the evening, Brad and I said goodbye (for the second time!), and I limped back to my hotel room, but this time I was smiling. Maybe my genes aren’t so bad, after all.

Tags: Cambodia, Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Cambodia, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.