Tales of dirt and deceipt
Trip Start
Dec 05, 2006
1
16
24
Trip End
Ongoing
Sisophon,
Cambodia
Saturday, February 24, 2007
I'm currently sitting in an internet cafe in Sisophon, a dusty little town in western Cambodia. The layers of dirt covering my body have given me a nice brown tan, which unfortunately will come off when i shower, exposing me as the pasty western backpacker who clearly does not belong here.
Today i journeyed out to Banteay Chmar, a jungle temple complex created by the great Khmer Jayarvarman VII, a 12th-13th century leader revered throughout the nation. Overall it's a 100km return motorcycle ride deep into the remote north-western corner of Cambodia. This was to be my warm-up before visiting the famous Angkor temples near Siem Reap and it didn't disappoint.
Yesterday afternoon upon arrival at Sisophon by bus I set out to find a motorcycle driver who would take me to Banteay Chmar
House
. I read about it in Lonely Planet and was really keen to explore. I met a young guy whose name i can't remember who offered to take me for US$ 10, quite a steal i thought considering it's 2 hours to get there on a bumpy, dusty road and that the others offered me closer to US$20. This morning we set off about 9 and arrived just after 11. The journey was quite harsh. The driver had to avoid several large holes which surely would have ended in our demise, and everytime a vehicle came past it was accompanied by a large amount of dirt sprayed in our direction.I was lucky enough to be shown around the temple by 2 local kids who seemed to know it inside out despite it being a massive complex with a perimeter of about 1 km. They were able to show me obscure sanskript carvings which i otherwise would have missed and explained to me the meanings behind the bas-reliefs pictured on the temple walls. Banteay Chmar is in ruins due to nature and looters, who famously staged an armed raid on the temple in 1998, making off with entire walls the heads of statues. It's now largely reduced to rubble but the foundations remain, along with some of the buildings. For me it was a real treat. There were no other tourists there today which made it quite tranquil.
Visiting rural Cambodia is a bit like going back in time
Local guides
. I've been told that the houses and the traditional dress worn by the locals has changed little in the last thousand years, and if it weren't for the motorbikes and trucks buzzing past along the dirt roads you could easily forget that you were in the 21st century. I haven't seen another foreigner in the last couple of days except for when a bus came past my guesthouse on the way to Siem Reap. Livestock are scattered along the roads and cows seem to wander the streets aimlessly. Somebody asked me the other day about the differences between Cambodia and Australia but i didn't really know where to start.One of things that has struck me about here which i have not encountered anywhere else is the number of small children. In Cambodia 80% of the population is under 25, largely due to the Khmer Rouge who massacred a significant percentage of people here in the late 70's. Those born after then are now having kids, and in a big way. Most of them are really friendly and love to torment the tall white foreigner. I did have a bit of a 'Children of the Corn' moment today though when i saw a kid coming towards me with a stern look and a giant meat cleaver, which kind of freaked me out. I smiled at the kid and he eventually smiled back, much to my relief.
The Cambodian people are quite feisty, somewhat of a contrast to what i experienced in Vietnam. In the backpacker area in Phnom Penh i witnessed an angry shirtless man cursing and threatening a family with a meat cleaver. Myself and a friend were also abused angrily by a young child when we wouldn't buy his book. But as we were deep into our Happy Pizza we just laughed our arses off, which only got the kid more riled up. In my experience though (9 days to precise) if you smile and are friendly 90% of them are fantastic
Local kids
. I arrived in the town of Battambang 3 days ago with the intention of visiting some temples and old Khmer Rouge sites. On my first afternoon there i was taken to a temple on a mountain named Phnom Sampeu, which the Khmer Rouge also used as a makeshift prison from 1975-1979. I was shown a giant pit where victims were people were thrown in due to them being seen as a threat to the government. A large cage full of the remains of those killed was left at the site as a memorial, along with their clothes. It's really hard to avoid the nightmare that was the Khmer Rouge here. So many people are missing limbs or have stories of lost land or family members and parts of the country are still littered with landmines.
On my second day in Battambang i got invited to a Khmer wedding, when a guy named Ran pulled up beside the road and offered me a lift. He took me back to his place in the countryside where i met his wife and daughter and we had a traditional bath with sarong and the like. Arriving at the wedding was a bit like that scene where John Travolta goes into that nightclub in Saturday Night Fever for the first time; everyone turned around and drinks were thrust in my hands from every direction with shouts of "Down!" They cheered as i downed every one. The wedding was set under a big tent in a small village with massive speakers blaring out Khmer music
The wedding again
. There were probably about a hundred guests sitting at round tables, ready to toast the couple. I sat down to a table with about 10 other guys all in their twenties and there must have been about 30 toasts in the afternoon. I was at a disadvantage because locals from other tables would hand me drinks in between toasts which i had to skoll or risk losing their respect. I couldn't lose the respect of the Khmers so i duly obliged to each one. And, armed with the false sense of confidence brought on by alcohol i managed to pull off a few moves on the makeshift dancefloor in the dirt with a large group of sweaty, drunken Khmer males. For 3 hours i lived my dream of being John Travolta...By the end of wedding everyone was hammered and after the locals got all their pictures with the lanky white dude Ran took me on his motorbike to some random field in the country side. Three of us fell asleep on a ball of hay, sheltered by a roof from the hot sun. I got up and smacked my head on a wooden ceiling which a normal sized Cambodian male would have easily avoided. Ran took me back to his house where we feasted on rats on a skewer which kind of tasted like chicken.
Later on i was lying in a hammock at Ran's place when he mentioned that he taught an english class and would i like to go along to help him out that evening? As Ran was even more hungover than me i thought i'd give it a shot
Tuol Sleng torture
. I managed to get through the class quite easily-i really only had to speak, whilst Ran sat in the corner looking weary from the day's proceedings. Afterwards he took me to a local brothel after telling me he'd take me straight back to my hotel which i'd apparently drunkenly agreed to earlier. The girls were all over us but I wasn't really interested. Most Cambodian guys lose their virginity in brothels and it is quite acceptable (if not openly discussed) to visit them. And it seemed inconceivable to Ran that i wouldn't want to frequent one. This was when things between us got a bit tense. I lied by saying i didn't have any cash on me which angered the manager and made Ran look like an idiot for taking me there. Ran took me back to my hotel then started making all sorts of demands for the day we'd spent together. He wanted me to buy presents for his daughter and give me cash. I reluctantly agreed to buy a present for his daughter, a firetruck which cost me 4 bucks. I figured we were even. After that he again took me back to my hotel and demanded money for petrol, saying he didn't have enough to get home. I explained to him politely that i wasn't a money tree and that i didn't owe him anything. He put on the pleading dog look (they've perfected it here) and said he would have to sleep out on the road. He wanted 5 bucks for the 10 minute journey back, when a tank of petrol here costs about 1 dollar. I told me he could sell the firetruck back to the people we bought it from if he was desperate and left.
Well i'm off to Siem Reap tomorrow. I plan to spend at least 4 nights there with 3 days at the famous Angkor temples, after which i assume i will succumb to 'ruin fatigue', a common disease plaguing Angkor visitors. I've been reading up on it all so you'll probably get a boring lowdown on them in my next entry, but it should be accompanied with some glorious pics of the temples
Peace out
