Siem Reap

I took a minivan from Bangkok to Siem Reap. It's not a bad way to go. The stops are more flexible than a forty passenger bus, which came in handy when I had a sudden onset need to use a toilet or twenty minutes after our last bathroom stop. We pulled over quickly and I unloaded into a squat toilet with a single violent eruption. I was worried that this could continue for hours, but I took an Imodium and was fine for the rest of the drive.

There was a smooth handoff of passengers from one van to another at the border. Someone from the van company took a picture of our group and sent it their employee on the other side of the border, so after we passed through the Thai side we had a guide looking for us to take us through Cambodian customs. I hadn't obtained an e-visa in advance, so the rest of the group (a British couple and a Filipino family) would have had to wait for me while I passed through an enormous line. While I was waiting in line, the father of the Filipino family had the street smarts to ask our guide if there was anything that could be done to expedite this. As luck would have it, five bucks would move me to the front of the line. He laughed, paid the bribe, and our guide waved me out of the line to join the rest of the group.

We were supposed to be delivered to a spot in Siem Reap that was a five minute walk from my hostel, but the driver took us way off course and no one in our group had working internet to update our respective routes. The van driver ushered us over to a group of tuktuk drivers and the scam became more clear. They charged an exorbitant amount by Southeast Asian standards, but still a paltry amount compared to what you might pay to go the same distance in an Oldtown Scottsdale golf cart taxi.

My car mechanic in Arizona recommended a tuktuk driver named Visut in Siem Reap, so I had already connected with him to schedule a tour of Angkor before arriving. When I checked into the hostel, they advertised a group tour of Angkor in an air conditioned van for a very good price, but I really trust my mechanic and figured he wouldn't be recommending a specific tuktuk driver from a trip he took five years ago unless the experience was extremely memorable.

Angkor

When I stepped out of the hostel fifteen minutes early to meet Visut at 9:00, he was already outside with a cooler full of water and beer. I thanked Visut and told him I didn't drink beer, but that didn't stop him on pulling one out of the cooler and encouraging me to drink it every hour or so.

Our drive to Angkor was beautiful. I was immediately grateful to be in the open-air tuktuk enjoying the fresh air, the uninhibited view, and the forest as opposed to being packed into a van with a group of strangers.

Angkor was the historic capital of the Khmer Empire, The word "angkor" actually means "capital." Before coming here I didn't realize that "wat" means temple. So "Angkor Wat" is the temple of the capital city. Or maybe the capital of temples. I suppose I still don't know what's wat.

Angkor Wat is beautiful in person, but none of the pictures came out. I haven't been taking particularly artful images anyway, but you'd need better lenses or a better vantage point than what was available to me to even get a sense of the scale and grandeur of that temple complex. It's the largest single religious structure in the world. Considering the quality of the ruins, it was relatively uncrowded, too. The most minor attraction I visited in Spain (the fake castle outside of Malaga) had just as many people concentrated in an incomparably smaller area.

The art is an interesting mix because the builders switched religions during the process of building the temple. Nearly every interior surface of Angkor Wat contains ornate bas-relief sculptures depicting Hindu religious stories (mostly dedications to Vishnu) but there are also Buddha statues all over. I met an artist who said he bribes the police to go into the temples at night and make artwork to sell by rubbing impressions of the bas-relief. Unfortunately Thai art thieves must also have bribed the police throughout the 1980's and 1990's when they lopped off the heads of nearly every Buddha statue to sell to assholes.

I was particularly impressed by the language ability of the Khmer guides. In addition to the languages you'd expect like English or French (Cambodia was a French protectorate for nearly a hundred years), they spoke enough German, Spanish, and Chinese to conduct tours in those languages.

The Khmer Empire lasted from 802 to 1431. At its peak it controlled most of Southeast Asia and was larger than its contemporary, the Byzantine Empire. Scientists now know that Angkor had been the largest pre-industrial city in the world by surface area. Its ruins stretch all over the damn place. There are impressive walls and moats and backdrop for Indiana Jones's adventures.

Some of the smaller temples were my favorites. You could get lost inside of them or just wander around the outside and rarely encounter another person. I felt serene solitude standing out in the open jungle admiring ancient temples.

Some people spend three whole days making sure to see every single temple in the area. I was starting to get pretty burned out from the heat but Visut insisted that we see one more before lunch, one that he called "Tomb Raider." I think everyone has seen better photos and videos of these fine fellows who said "i see what you're doin' temple but imma be a tree right here" but I'll post my crappy photos anyway.

Visut really showed up with the lunch recommendation. We went to a local spot with no tourists. He ordered a bunch of small orders that we shared family style. I don't recall any specific dish, but I feel like nearly anyone would enjoy most of what we ate. I'm not a great judge because I have a higher tolerance for challenging food than the average American—I appreciate the flavor bones add even though they're tough to eat around gracefully, I dig unusual textures like organ meats, I can handle a "hurt me, daddy" level of capsaicin, and I don't mind if the intact head of my meal is staring at me in judgement—yet I think you could give most Cambodian food to kids in an American grade school cafeteria and they'd eat it. Most of it didn't look unfamiliar despite being brand new to me.

Pub Street

Later that evening I walked around Siem Reap's answer to Khaosan Road: Pub Street. Maybe it's too early in the tourist season, but Pub Street was kind of sad. They completely eliminated any Cambodian character in order to appeal to as many tourists as possible. It wasn't appealing anyone the night I walked through. Most of the bars and nightclubs were completely dead with no one other than the staff inside, yet every business of every kind had the Khaosan-style girls out front advertising specials and attempting to beckon you in.

I saw several little shops near Pub Street that had a bunch of fish tanks out front, but the fish were all too small to eat so I wondered what they were for. Eventually I noticed a sign that said "Fish Spa" and then I was really curious. I was told that you put your feet in the water and the fish eat all of your dead skin. That sounded horrible so I signed up immediately.

I was told to ease my feet in slowly so that it doesn't scare the fish away. It tickles like crazy, but it doesn't hurt. I was pretty squirmy, and it attracted a crowd of onlookers that the employees failed to convert into any new business. I only lasted about fifteen minutes. I'm sure if I was actually concerned with removing dead skin that I could have withstood more, but I wasn't a priority. I just wanted the experience.

It was only later that I thought to look up fish spas. In addition to some medical safety concerns that I'm not particularly concerned about, there are some ethical concerns. Fish have to be pretty well starving to be interested in eating dead skin off of a potentially dangerous foot. Those are definitely not happy fish. I've decided that it's done now and that I've learned something, and that's probably the right perspective. Guilt and shame aren't useful emotions for the liberation of fish. I'm not responsible for the conditions that put the fish in that tank, but I was responsible for feeding them a little. Would the fish be better off if I had known enough about their plight to abstain from giving them a meal?

Floating Village

The next morning, Visut and I headed out to the Floating Village and got an earlier start to avoid the heat. The breeze from the tuktuk in the early morning was extremely pleasant. Just before the edge of town, I got my first glimpses of real Cambodia. Households had a single skinny cow tied to a tree in the front yard. A tiny little girl sat on the back of her mother's scooter holding on vaguely with one hand and eating her breakfast with another while mom held an even tinier child on her lap. Chickens as lean as crows clucked around the street. Street vendors with dirty storefronts were everywhere, some selling a yellowish liquid (perhaps coconut water?) out of reused soda and liquor bottles.

We turned down a bumpy dirt road and Visut jumped out to grab some fried snacks for us. The bananas, sweet potatoes, and a kind of crepe were particularly memorable.

Eventually the jungle let up to reveal open rice paddies, some of which were too flooded to start planting.

It was November 1st, the very first day of the dry season. Tonle Sap, a lake that stretches from outside of Siem Reap to nearly Phnom Penh and Vietnam, was as full it gets from the previous months of monsoons. We saw rice farmers casting fishing nets over their rice paddies.

We met the edge of the lake and Visut explained that it would be a longer boat trip than usual. At the end of the dry season you could drive far past the point that we stopped. Visut negotiated a price with a boatman and came back disappointed with that he couldn't get a lower number. I didn't have any expectation of how far we were going or what it should cost, and we had already traveled all the way out there, so I paid the fare.

This floating village felt much more functional than the floating market near Bangkok. The homes were all built on stilts because their land was flooded for half of the year. That seemed a lot less arbitrary than building homes on an irrigation canal because it looks cool in a James Bond movie.

The village contained homes, a school, a temple, and whatever else you'd expect from a village.

There was more jungle past the village, then a wide open lake: Tonle Sap. This lake was critical to the success of the Khmer Empire. Southeast Asia experiences too much rain for half of the year and too little for the other half. Empires were built on the infrastructure and engineering for the retention and distribution of water.

Somehow, in the middle of that wide open space, a paddle boat appeared with a woman selling junk to tourists. I don't know what kind of witchcraft she practiced to detect a tourist and appear instantaneously, but the suddenness of her appearance on that wide open lake was almost magical. I wasn't interested in any of her snacks or beverages, but when she offered books for the schoolchildren in the village, I figured I could make a donation. She quoted me something much higher than I would have expected, so I turned to Visut to ask whether the books would really be donated to the school. He looked uncomfortable with the prospect of betraying his countrymen by expressing any doubt of the woman's story and said "It's up to you. It's up to you." I decided to chance it, and the woman gave the books to me, which was confusing.

On the way back we stopped by the school in the floating village and I was told to get out and distribute the books to the children. There wasn't any official channel for donating, we just approached schoolchildren and handed them books. Like feeding pigeons. But Visut asked me to hold off until we had drawn a little crowd and I had a proper photo opportunity. So now I possess this uncomfortable virtue-signaling video of myself handing out books to third world schoolchildren. Hello Facebook.

It's embarrassing to be so naïve, but if I was more critical or had more street smarts, would Cambodia be better off? The vendor got paid and the schoolchildren got some books. The spa fish were fed. And even though I felt awkward about participating in this contrived feel-good moment, I really enjoyed watching the delight from each kid who received a book. I was sad when I ran out of books and two remaining girls didn't get one.

As Visut was driving us back through the jungle village, the chain on his motorcycle broke and we had to push the tuktuk for a mile or so. Visut was profusely apologetic and quite embarrassed, but I assured him that it was all part of the fun of travel. Very few vehicles passed us before someone stopped and offered to tow us. Visut offered him a beer but he was happy to accept nothing. The shop replaced the chain very quickly while we watched. The mechanics didn't speak any English, so I suffered quietly for a moment, disappointedly unable to participate in motorcycle talk, before asking Visut how often he lubed his chain and whether he checked for tight and loose spots. He didn't do any of that stuff personally. The mechanics handled it. I reflected about how differently poor Americans behave.

By poor Americans, I'm thinking specifically of the rural poor. The poor descendants of Scots-Irish in the American South who were poor when they arrived in the country and have managed to stay that way. They've always survived on hillbilly ingenuity. They value rugged individualism and expect to be able to do any normal repair themselves without reliance on anyone.

Southeast Asian poverty is more interdependent. Nobody charges much, nobody earns much, and yet they can all afford one another's services. The expensive stuff beyond their reach seems to be the products that arrive through the global supply chain, like scooters or tractors. Their service economy seems to function pretty equitably. There's no margin wasted on far away middle managers who fly in occasionally to tell them how to make their business more profitable.

Visut made another excellent recommendation for lunch. I started to put together the criteria for the type of legit local spot he visits: they have a rotating menu every day, they cook in the morning, they serve lunch only, they sell out every day, they clean up in the afternoon, and they shut down and go home in the evening. It seems like a great way to do business. There's no waste and you only have to manage one shift.

While we enjoyed our Jasmine and lemongrass tea, I asked Visut about the number of storefronts I had seen in town with pictures of Angelina Jolie (and sometimes Brad Pitt). He explained that she came here to do a movie and adopted a child. That was a hilarious explanation to me. I always assumed that developing countries were bitter about foreign adoption. Apparently the perspective in Siem Reap is more like "We've got great babies! Angelina Jolie appreciates our great babies!" They felt very validated by Jolie's decision. "She can acquire any kind of baby she likes and she chose one of ours!"

As we drove back to my hostel, Visut passed one of the mysterious coconut water storefronts. It's gasoline. They sell gasoline in reused bottles from food carts on the side of the road. Incredible.

Later that evening, I went for another walk around town. There were a dozen massage parlors between my hostel and Pub Street and the girls out front practically chase you down the street with the menu of services, which start out at just a dollar for a head, neck, and shoulder massage and range up to $12 for a full body oil massage. I had been enjoying the habit of regular Thai massages, where they dress you in a special costume so they can stretch you and manipulate your body, so I signed up for a full body oil massage.

Cambodian massage didn't share the therapeutic benefits of Thai massage. The experience was more like a time share presentation for additional services. I don't have a great track record for turning down a good offer even when I'm comfortably at home and receive a late night text message from an old girlfriend, so lying on a massage bed is a particularly compromising situation. I couldn't help but think about the fish in the fish spa.

Next stop: Phnom Penh.