noodle quest 2006

the bus to siem reap was pretty painful. i was in a really bad mood in the morning and everyone was puyshign and being abrasive. the bus ride was long and bumpy and lasted about 7 hot air conditioned hours. i took something to sleep and passed out for most of the ride. no screaming babies or cell phone rings so we were blessed. even the kareoke videos that usually play on the bus were turned down very low. we get to siem reap and the “bus station” (read; muddy swamp with tons of buses half stuck in various sized puddles) is teaming with tuk tuk drivers, moto drivers and representitives from various guesthouses throwing themselves against the window trying ot take you somewhere, anywhere. a friend sita, from sihanoukville reccomended the happy guesthouse to we spotted limney the happy guest house tuk tuk driver guesthouse rep extrordinaire through the window and gave the wave of agreement. he took us to the guesthouse and we got a room on the first floor. YES! no stairs with the heavy bags. surprisingly and somehwat alarmingly, my bag has shrunk. i am down one flashlight, one pair of flip flops, a couple pairs of underware, some bug spray, and my favorite long sleeve sihrt. more on where these things could hjave gone another time.
at the guesthouse we were strving as per usual, so we went on a hunt for a japanese restauarnt with limney and a guy named tee from the hotel. to no avail. we ended up eating at this restuarant called the happy buddah or something like that. jess ordered pasta and a ssalada and i ordered meat and potatos and a salad. when my pottatos came, they had a medium sized white bug in it, so i sent it back and ordered the same thing again. when that came, i ate a few bites of potatos and saw a smaller black bug living and crawling around. i sent that back and decided to just go for a soup and salad which after two bites i discovered had another bug in it. disgusted and exhasperated we got up and walked out as the manager had agreed to pay fopr the buggy food and something i could eat sans bugs. seeing as how i never had the opportunity to eat bugless food, we figured jess’s food would count as the free bugless food. as we were walking out the manager started hysterically screaming at us. we calmly explained why we were leaving- i didn;’t want to cause a commotion at his restauartn which wasa full. then he told me i must be crazy and i decided to prove him right and i started screaming about his horrendous service and uncleanly conditoins in front of everyone at the restuarant. hyopefulyl people left after this. so he is like screaming that we MUST pay for the fod we ate (i.e. jessie’s food). we refuse and he calls the police who come running down the street after us. AAAGH! then a huge crowd forms of all the motot drivers who want to watch this go down. the manager come running down the street and starts speakign fast n khmer to the police. i was furious as he was speaking english to us before and told him he was a fuckign asshole for giving us such problems. blah blah blah i cried blah blah blah he left blah blah blah we had to pay him 5$ for jess’s food. ugh. the most, and actually really the only unpleasant experience in this country. what really pissed me off is that he said “you are atourist, you came here to have dinner so you must havbe money to pay” in fact, i did have money to pay for my dinner, but it was so obvious that he just knew he could give me any kind of problem and that in the end 5$ was not owrth it for me to go down to thge police station and file a charge against him. the police’s role in the situation was very amusing to jess. he kept looking at her and pointing to his badge and saying; “look, i am the tourist police!” whether this means he is there to protect the tourist from scammy assholes like this guy or whethr this job title requires him to round up tourists for senseless crimes, we do not know.
the next morning we bought our 3-day passes for the angkorian temples and began the pilgrimage to these atsounding religious sites which i do not want to disrespect by speakning about in this same entry as this horrible human. also today is the last day of the pass so we must get an early start. Le hi!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.