June 5th, 2001

S'sua dei to all, from Cambodia (henceforth to be known as Cambodge, as the French called it -I kinda like the sound of it!)

I'm currently in Siem Riep, Cambodge and enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of yet another Asian country, and once again, (say it with me now) "this place is a trip!". Every time I enter another country in Southeast Asia I get a completely new experience, despite their close proximities and wildly intermingled histories over the centuries.

Cambodia is a place with a seriously bad reputation with regards to safety and petty (or not-so-petty) crime, and my first day in it did nothing to persuade me otherwise. Serious crime (read: murder) is down significantly, though the odd bodyguard or bodyguard-wielding businessman does get offed occasionally. The days of random tourists ending up on the bad side of a bandit raid are becoming quite infrequent now. And the "tip"-demanding army checkpoints of a couple of years ago aren't seen anymore (these checkpoints were the motivation for the businessmen hiring bodyguards - they figured it was cheaper to run through them with guns bristling than to pay up every mile or so. And a damn sight quicker.). I met a German here who's writing for a German guidebook - he's been coming here regularly for the past 9 years. He related the story of being a passenger in a long-distance taxi here (a pickup truck) and getting stopped at one of these checkpoints. The grim-faced guards refused the usual bribe, a worrying sign, and turned down an offer of a higher amount, which was an even more alarming development. Turns out what they really wanted the pickup truck driver to do was to take possesion of a plastic-wrapped body they had and get it the hell out of there! Seems one of these gun-toting businessmen had fought it out with them the previous day and lost, and now they were at a loss as to how to dispose of the corpse. Thinking quick, the driver stated that, though he would love to accomodate them, he was full. But there was another truck coming along behind them that had room! And off he sped.

Unfortunately what the low murder statistics don't show is deaths caused by criminally stupid driving, a pretty common occurrence around here and something not helped by the fact that most vehicles here are Thai (and therefore right-hand drive), despite this being a drive-on-the-right country. (Hallelujah - at last!). But the petty stuff is still around and my first 30 minutes in the country taught me to be a bit more careful. Not that I suffered for it, luckily, but the past couple of countries (Bangkok excluded, of course) persuaded me to put my guard down quite a bit. And so, within the first half hour after reaching the border between Thailand and Cambodia, I'd: 1) rejected (almost forcibly) 3 attempts to help me do my entry paperwork for fees (which I didn't need anyway, having already received my visa in Bangkok), 2) declined a visit to quarantine (where they force two "cholera and typhoid" pills on you - actually doxycycline - and charge you $5 for "health" purposes. Rumor is that they don't even make you take 'em, just pay for 'em!), and 3) successfully fended off a young pickpocketer with his eyes on my money belt (foolishly stuffed in my pocket instead of being worn). Since then, needless to say, I've had my eyes open just a little bit more and the money belt securely tucked away..

Despite all this, I feel pretty secure here, as it's been nothing but smooth sailing since. After having been touring for 4 days and talking to numerous people (both locals and expats), I've concluded that its pretty safe and rapidly getting better, not worse. Cambodia is REALLY concerned with its safety image, at least as far as tourism goes. People here in Siem Riep (home of the famous Angkor Wat) have told me the officials are paranoid about Cambodge in general, and this place in particular, getting a bad rap so they really crack down on petty crime. Ripoffs abound, of course, but that's hardly the same thing. Caveat emptor seems to be the universal law in Asia, whether its with locals or tourists. And the hawkers, though numerous, are really pretty mild. If you refuse them politely, rarely do they get insistent and most will quickly settle down into fun small-talk (with the occasional sales-line thrown in, of course - they do have to earn a living). But, wow, do many of them speak great English! One little 12 year old girl at Angkor Wat had a spiel that must have come straight from a US corporate sales manual. She had an answer for everything I said or did, from "I must earn money to continue my English lessons" (the hell she did - she spoke better English than me!) to "Ok, since you put my bracelets on the chair (after she refused to take them when I handed them back), that's bad luck. Now you must buy them to get rid of the bad luck!" (Go 'way, kid, ya botherin' me!)

The road from the border to here was red, dusty, and dotted with enough potholes to rival a mortar range. Road maintenance was canceled as being too expensive for Cambodge around the time Angkor Wat was built, like 800 years ago. Or at least before asphalt was invented. No, that's not completely true. I occasionally passed groups of what I took to be chain gangs, but were actually clusters of squatting young adults and adolescents, busy turning big rocks into little rocks on the roadside. They must have been making gravel for the few repairs that are made. (Repairs are undertaken on important projects only, not little stuff like washed-out road sections or collapsed bridges. Seriously.)

The landscape here (and in much of the country, I understand) consists of totally flat rice paddies stretching off endlessly in all directions with the occasional line of trees sticking out pointlessly. For the most part, the only elevation changes occur on the little bridges used to allow flood waters to cross from the upstream side to the ocean side. Folk here are rural as heck and, therefore, extremely friendly. Tons of smiling greetings all 'round, though they all use "hello" and "goodbye" exclusively, even the youngsters! It's very rare that I hear a Cambodgian say it in Khmer. Speaking of Khmer, what a difference between it and Thai, despite the fact they have a long border in common! In Thailand, rarely do you find back-to-back consonants (or many consonants at all, it seems), which means that when a Thai says "eye coffee" or "terrain" he means "iced coffee" or "train". Whereas in Cambodge, consonants are king and to hell with the vowels! This means us falangs have a helluva time with Khmer words like k'tlai. (Actually we're called barangs here, prounounced "badang!" - makes you think they're pretending to shoot at you as you ride by: "badang! badang!"). And Cambodgian bears little resemblance to any of its other neighbors, either. Come to think of it, if you want to find a similar language to it, you have to come the other side of the world to Europe. If there was ever a linguistic match made in heaven between two completely different countries, I think it'd have to be Cambodgian and Welsh! Just imagine the average Cambodgian's reaction to a country with a language where the only vowels are "e" and "y". Heaven!

I think I've about got this rainy season stuff figured out: contrary to what I'd expected, it doesn't rain all day every day, at least not here. What does happen is that each morning starts out dazzingly bright and blue and the clouds start to build up about 2 or 3pm. Sometime between then and dark you can expect from 5 to 30 minutes of a torrential flood that'll have you fantasizing about arks and mountain peaks. Or at least trading in the bike on a boat. And then its gone, leaving bedraggled bikers and shivering moped riders behind, splashing along on roads that now more closely resemble canals. And the potholes! The only thing you can hope for if you hit one is that the water in it will be deep enough to cushion the impact when you hit the other side. Or that you'll hit the still submerged body of the guy that took a nosedive in right before you.

The money situation is pretty interesting, too. The official currency is the riel and there are about 3800 of 'em to the dollar. So a 1200 riel can of Coke is really costing me, lesse - oh forget it - here's the money, just gimme the damn thing! But in reality, there are 3 currencies in use here - riel, Thai baht, and the US dollar. And guess which one is king! ("Oh, say can you seeee...!") What does this mean for the average tourist? That you can get screwed 3 ways instead of just one! The situation invariably ends up as the following: whatever currency they quote the price of something will be the one you don't happen to have on you at the time. So they get to "convert" to what you DO have, charging a commision in the process, of course, that ranges from "ouch" to "gimme an effing break! I'm not putting your kids through college!".

The Angkor complex, with its dozens of temples and ruins scattered throughout the better part of 30 square kilometers of jungle, was as impressive as everyone said it would be. Having the dual advantage of my own efficient and nimble transportation for traveling between sites, and the low tourist volume at this time of year, I managed to see some incredible wonders in a short period of time, and to do much of it in relative solitude. Amazing - with both great grandeur and fine detail, all carved out of solid sandstone that was quarried miles away and floated in on rafts. Erected over a period of 500 years, between 800 and 1300 AD or so, pretty much each king during those times built his own temple or palace in a different spot on the grounds, some small, others huge. Angkor Wat is the best known of these, though others are just as nice in their own way. One, Ta Phrom, has been left mostly unrestored to give you an idea of what the 'discoverers' found in the 1800's: tons of collapsed rubble surrounding a still quite complete structure of towers, walls, and corridors; trees growing around and even through the walls and roofs; and the thick jungle around crowding in on it. Absolutely amazing. I've included pics, but they just don't do the place justice.

Two things I realized while touring Angkor were: 1) I really enjoyed talking to even the sales guys (especially the kids), once I got the message across that I didn't want to buy but was still friendly, and 2) traveling alone makes it SO much easier to do things like that, both from their point of view and my own. If I was accompanied by someone else, it would be too easy to ignore them and concentrate on my partner. And if I DID want to stop and talk to them, I'd have to make sure that my partner did too, something that most people (myself included) quickly lose patience for. Being alone also means, to a certain extent, being lonely sometimes and even a poor-English speaking vendor can be good company at times like that. Not that many of them WERE deficient in the English area! So I had a great time with some of these guys, trading oranges for low-denomination Vietnamese notes, giving rides at 35 kph to kids on my bike rack (they're fearless!), and just generally chatting. I'll miss them all.

So, overall, I'm pretty happy with the place, though amazingly fatigued at times. I think it's a combination of a short term drop in fitness (3 weeks off the bike is a long time!) and long-term tiredness - 8 months worth. With that in mind, I'm gonna take a truck for the next 150 km. It'll save me 2 days of riding through some pretty monotonous terrain (the rice paddies have their own charm, but not for 7 days straight!) and allow my butt to recover. Damn Greek saddle.

All the best,
Mark

The border melee between Thailand and Cambodia.	Typical scenery (apart from the lycra) in western Cambodia.
The way nearly all agricultural work is done here.	Mobile dim sum vendor in Siem Riep (the city nearest Angkor Wat).
The famous profile at the entrance to Angkor Wat, the main temple of the Angkor complex (one of literally dozens, though this is the biggest).	The entrance gate to Angkor Thom, one of the bigger temple complexes here..
For the tourists. This actually elephants that have become unemployed due to changes in lumber harvesting, but are unreleasable to the wild because of their tameness.	A detail of a carved relief in Bayon, Angkor.
Detail of a 10 ft carving in Bayon.	A vendor riding my bike the only way he can!
Steep stairs at Angkor Wat.	The "jungle" temple of Ta Prohm, left partially unrestored to show the jungle's reclamation efforts.
Kids basket fishing in the Angkor complex. The mark on the right kid's chest is a big temporary tattoo!	Huge trees growing through the walls of Ta Prohm.