Entries Tagged 'Cambodia' ↓

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the safest place to hide from wild monkeys is in the back of a stationary motorcycle taxi. Thanks to that prior knowledge Mrs K, Charmaine and I avoided serious harm in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat, one of the few true wonders of the world. The sunrises are spectacular. We woke at five o’clock on three consecutive mornings and managed to miss them all, though. The town itself is small and poky, a raggedy collection of touts and vendors, cripples and glue-sniffing five-year-olds.

Mr. Pros was our driver for three days. He picked us up, dropped us off and waited for us. He took us to the best place for lunch, ferried us around on shopping trips and yet we didn’t share a single word of a common language. He clocked on to the size of the girls’ bladders and stopped every fifteen minutes outside the public toilets without our asking, grinned, laughed and drove off again. I liked Mr. Pros.

It is said that Pol Pot nurtured his distaste for the monarchy and bourgeoisie when his sister was a dancer at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Having sat through a “cultural evening with buffet dinner” and an hour’s worth of traditional dance I can state with some certainty that I may well have become genocidal had I been forced to watch it more than once a lifetime. To top it off, Mrs K got food poisoning from some dodgy “morning gror-ly” and spent three days contemplating suicide.

Prior to that she had the following exchange with possibly the sweetest and shrewdest seven-year-0ld girl in Cambodia.

-Hello
-Hello
-ooohhh you very very beautiful and he very very handsome. What your name?
-Mrs K
-ooohhh very beautiful name. Where you from?
-Malta
-But where you born?
-Malta
-No, you born in a HOSPITAL.
-And you, where you born in a hospital too?
-No … I born at home. Because I Cambodian.
- …
-(pause, followed by devious smile and sideways glance) You want to buy baby?
-You’re selling a baby?
-Yes, baby over there (points out baby)
-Well, it’s certainly a very sweet baby. How much?
-Ten dollar.
-Well, that’s a bit too much.
-Okay, Mrs K. See you later.

Have only nine minutes left before my time runs out … so I’ll be brief.

Sat in a pizza joint on the Phnom Penh riverfront, trying to persuade the waitress - through the medium of mime - that if she insisted on me tasting the “happy” herb topping I’d likely pass out and/or be sick, when I saw a monkey.

The monkey was on a lead and being fed rice and Red Bull by its owner, a local expat. Quite a crowd had gathered. One gentleman, who had only one leg and was selling knocked-off paperbacks, was quite smitten. He then produced a rather large and very hairy spider. For a dollar, the monkey’s owner bought the tarantula and placed it on the floor in front of the monkey. The monkey pushed it around with its feet for a bit, before picking it up, plucking the legs off one by one and eating them with an enormous monkey grin on its face.

It was a special moment.

Off on a two day tour of the Mekong Delta, so lots of photos to follow. Felt like Colonel Kurtz today sailing into Vietnam.

PS the last email from my mum contained the words “morphosing into a gun slinging, beer swigging, morose alcoholic…” and she wasn’t talking about my dad.

I am sitting looking at what I think is the Gulf of Thailand in Sihanoukville. (I think the water is the Gulf of Thailand - I’m sure I’m Sihanoukville.) Journey was four hours from Phnom Penh, largely on the wrong side of the road, but that’s what horns are for, I suppose. I shut my eyes and nodded off, ignorance being preferable to knowing about a head-on collision. I woke up without my watch.

Sihanoukville is great but there’s bugger all to do. It’s a bit like the beaches in the south of Thailand, only less spoilt. I spent the day yesterday reading a book on the beach (Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee - thank God that’s over) and took to bed early. Had a swim after dark and got excited by the bioluminescence. I spent a few minutes pretending I was Mickey Mouse in Fantasia then got bored and tired.

Unfortunately time constraints mean I’m leaving Cambodia the day after tomorrow. As I write this my passport is with a barman, who’s either stamping it with a home-made Vietnamese visa or taking it to the Consulate. I hope it’s the latter. You can fill in visa applications in most bars here and pay one of the lackeys a couple of dollars to take it for the stamp. Which gives me more time to do nothing.

I’ve decided that solo travel works best in cities. Climbing a hill or pounding the beach are experiences better shared (”ooh isn’t that nice!”) whereas in cities you automatically share your experiences with the thousands of people you are studiously doing your best to ignore. Or perhaps I’m just a city-boy. I will happily plod the streets and peer into doorways for weeks on end. More than one day at the beach and self-mutilation becomes a good idea.

I’ve just booked our accommodation for Christmas in Siem Reap for Angkor Wat. I was corresponding with Gordon Sharpless of the excellent Tales of Asia and Two Dragons Guesthouse. He offered to pick us up from the bus station in Siem Reap when we arrive with the following words of wisdom:

“If it’s a bus from Phnom Penh we can pick you up at the station and save you the trouble of fighting with all the moto drivers.

“If it’s a bus from Bangkok, that is a bus you absolutely do not want to take under any circumstances.”

Categories: Asia, 2005