Cambodia? What the hell.....

Phil, as a high school lad, stumbled across some pictures of ancient temple ruins in Cambodia. As he is a bit of a dreamer, and into photography, he told me that he was determined to get there some day. I smiled condescendingly - that's what parents do - and said..."Someday you will." Last week we did.

The temples are in a little town about 150 miles from Phonm Penh called Siem Reap. Since Phil is quite the seasoned traveler, and has had great fun mingling with the locals, he wished to opt for a local guest house rather than a western hotel. Since I am the cheapest woman on the planet, I checked out the prices of said guest houses (around $6/night/person) vs. the hotels (around $75/night/person). The cost difference was huge! And...and I must say this will go down as one of my favorite advertising ploys of all time...the Guest House boasted a full restaurant, serving meals between 5AM and midnight, which they guaranteed contained no dog, cat or rat! Well! Sign me up! We decided to stay there.

We arrived in Siem Reap at 7AM. There is exactly one flight out of Singapore into Cambodia per day. It leaves Changi airport at 6. You wanna go to Cambodia, you get up early. The Happy Guest House picks its guests up for free - a young Cambodian was there to greet us. He led us to a motorcycle with a covered wagon on the back. This is called a tuk tuk. We hired this kid as our personal driver, and we bounced around the roads of Cambodia in his tuk tuk for the next 5 days. For this privelege, we paid a daily wage of $12.oo, $3 of which went to the guest house.

The first day there we went to the city. The city is on a dirt road full of shops and restaurants. There are two traffic lights, mostly ignored. We got a kick out of the 'walk' and 'don't walk' signs. The red light is just that, but the green is a moving light graphic of a guy running as fast as he can. We were inundated - people everywhere trying to sell us stuff. The old and the young with limbs blown off by land mines, restaurant owners who wanted us to eat or drink there, motorcycles and bicycles weaving around the muddy streets, and children everywhere. There is no public education in Cambodia. Parents who wish to educate their children must pay for it, and the cost, at $5 to $10 per week, is an astronomical sum most Cambodians cannot afford.

Later in the evening we headed out to a 'floating city.' The people live aboard boats - most of them all of their lives. They don't really leave - there are stores, a school and a floating park with a basketball court. They fish and make clothes to sell to one another and the tourists who come by. They catch alligators - ostensibly for food, but mostly to keep them from eating the children. Kids can swim by the time they are 2 - families have smaller boats to use to get from one place to another - many of them need the whole family on board...one to drive the boat, the rest to bail out the water that leaks inside.

My favorite day by far was the day we headed out to a temple on an island. We arrived at noon and decided to have a picnic first. We bought our food, then negotiated our way out to the picnic spot...platforms suspended over the water that we could only reach by balancing on planks floating on the water. One wrong move - you're wet. We ate, laid on hammocks then got in one of the rickitiest boats I have ever seen. When I asked the guy for life vests he threw in 2 jackets and an innertube. The engine was so loud it was better to crowd onto the bow to avoid inner ear damage. Once we got out there, we got stuck - a storm rolled in. And we were lucky enough to spend an hour with a group of the most delightful children I have ever met. They were school kids - just home for the day. They wanted to practice their English on us, one girl asked me to help her with her math. They feel blessed - they can afford to go to school. The do have to row their boat 2km per day to get there, but as long as they leave by 5:30AM they get there in plenty of time. Three of them go, which is perfect. One rows, one steers, and the other bails water. The boys gave Phil and Andrew a ride around the island in the boat...Andrew was the baler. They had things to sell too, but I didn't buy anything. I gave them tuition money for the week. Best 15 bucks I have ever spent.

We visited the temples, which were amazing. We went to a local park, mostly for Cambodians, but we found ourselves at a 'show' where they needed a bridegroom so they asked Phil to help them out. The locals went crazy when the white boy hit the stage. We ate great food, slept in a humble guest house, tried to stay hydrated while avoiding the water and met travelers from all over the world who had set out to see what they could see. A retired gentleman from Sweden whose wife had recently died, an old British Navy Guy who figured, at age 79, that he may as well see the world, and a lot of European and Australian kids whose parents had sent them out to find themselves. All in all, I would count this as the experience of a lifetime. And we didn't even get sick....