12thousand500's travel blogs:
|
|
  | |  |
Hangover in Cambodia
Entry 23 of 29 | show all | print this entry |
Perhaps I'm starting to tire a bit of being on the road, perhaps it was just the luxury of my accomodations in Phnom Penh but I really didn't get to see much of the city. Since I only had one full day in the city I got up relatively early, went to the Royal Palace and then jumped on the back of a motobike to the Killing Fields. As I left the Killing Fields, my motobike driver says, "So, you want to go shoot guns at shooting range now? Just up the road." Uh, no. Although to be fair, the Killing Fields have little to do with firearms, most of the killing was done with bamboo stakes.
Back to Phnom Penh, I spent the day getting seriously plastered in the FCC. Ended up hanging out with two Scottish girls who lived in Kuala Lampur and drinking way to many different types of liquor, and a few two many slices of pizza.
Anyway, the next day I had to take an early morning bus ride to Siem Reap (the closest town to the Angkor Temples. It wasn't until the bus got moving that I realized how bad an idea mixing about 12 different types of alcohol the night before had been. Hot, cramped, bouncing, starting and stopping--this is not what a hangover needs. And then. . . they put on the Asian pop music videos. Loud. I reached for my Ipod. Curses--battery is dead.
Midtempo, sobby, pop. Cambodian pop is about where we were when Richard Marx was hitting the top of the billboard 100. And the videos--unbelievably dreadful. Whereas music videos in the west (is there still such a thing anyway?) always operated on pretty basic male sexual fantasies, asian pop videos seem to operate on more feminine fantasies. No booty shaking--but a lot of soft focus scenes of people dancing and prancing through flower filled fields. Like soft-core porn without exposed tits. And each video is exactly the same--boy meets girl, they get in a fight, break-up, get back together (or maybe they don't--that's the real pay off). I didn't even have to watch, when the song hits the bridge, somebody is giving someone the hand--usually in slow motion and soft focus.
Six and a half hours of this--I'm pretty sure if I hadn't willingly paid and gotten on this bus, this could be condemned by the World Court.
The temples out here would have to be really good to be worth this. They are. First of all, the entire Angkor archaeological site is about 15 square miles, really an enormous area. What you're really looking at is an entire lost city, at one point probably about a million people, reclaimed by the jungle. There is no way to walk it--you wouldn't even be able to walk from the ticket booth to Ankor Wat--so I have a tuk-tuk driver through my hotel for the next two days. All told, there are over 100 temples of various sizes, Angkor Wat is the largest (I think I read that it had the largest building footprint in the world until the Pentagon was built).
The temples are filled with Cambodian kids trying to sell various trinkets. They mostly want to talk, though. I was followed through one of the Temples by a ten year old who claimed her name was "Corn," who tried to sell me a bunch of different things, but having a great time despite the fact that I kept turning her down. She asked where I was from, and when I said America she proceded to whip off the fifty states in no particular order, then, "I also know 33 American cities, want to hear: New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis. . . ." My American students couldn't do that, so I bought a table cloth from her.
One more day of temples ahead of me tomorrow and then I make the hardest (and really the last) leg of my trip--into Thailand across the border through an area that is only nominally under the control of the Cambodian government because of the continued power of the Khmer Rouge in this region. Actually, it could be worse. Thirty miles to the south of this border crossing there is a Khmer Rouge autonomous zone--recognized by the government as under the control of "Brother #3," where the KRs have agreed to behave themselves and not committ genocide again as long as they are able to profit from gem mines. Hopefully, all will go as planned and I will spend four days relaxing in a hammock on an island off the coast of Thailand. Worst case scenario--head on a stake.
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries by 12thousand500, from Cambodia or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
4 votes 
