Heat rashes and giant cockroaches
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2005
1
14
20
Trip End
Apr 13, 2005
Battambang,
Cambodia
Monday, March 21, 2005
Once upon a time,
in a land far away,
a beautiful, independent,
self-assured princess
happened upon a frog as she sat,
contemplating ecological issues
on the shores of an unpolluted pond
in a verdant meadow near her castle.
The frog hopped into the princess'lap
and said: Elegant Lady,
I was once a handsome prince,
until an evil witch cast a spell upon me.
One kiss from you, however,
and I will turn back
into the dapper, young prince that I am
and then, my sweet, we can marry
and set up housekeeping in your castle
with my mother,
where you can prepare my meals,
clean my clothes, bear my children,
and forever feel grateful and happy doing so.
That night,
as the princess dined sumptuously
on lightly sautéed frog legs
seasoned in a white wine
and onion cream sauce,
she chuckled and thought to herself:
I don't fucking think so.
***
after wandering around phnom penh for a few days, jess and i hopped on a bus and headed 7 hours north to the town of kratie. our main reasons for heading there were to break up our trip to ratanakiri province in the more remote northeast, and to see the rare irrawaddy river dolphins in the river not too far north of town. there are currently only about 80 of these dolphins living in the mekong river in lao and cambodia. we actually spotted quite a few while in our boat!
after kratie, we squeezed (almost literally) into a share-taxi headed to ban lung, biggest town in ratanakiri (and its capitol, i believe). there are 4 'public' modes of transportation to get around cambodia: in the back of a pick-up truck (kind of like the songthaew in lao), on one of the buses run by private companies (which are mainly just available to some of the more major destinations), via boat, and via share-taxi (basically a guy with a car driving as many people as will fit). jess and i squeezed into the front passenger seat and to our left was the driver.. sharng his seat with another person. the back seat had 4 adults, plus 1 child sitting on her mom's lap. needless to say, it was a very tight fit, and did not make for the most comfortable 7 hours. remember way back when i talked about the 'worst road in lao' that our bus travelled on? well, it was bad but not as bad as the road between kratie and ban lung, particularly the last 5 hours between stung treng and ban lung. dust, dust and more dust (the dirt is so dry during this season that it was more like sand.. but so fine that it's basically dust), and really big craters (move over, moon!).. all made for a very bumpy ride. we mostly drove at about 20km (on the worst stretches) to 40km (on the 'better' stretches) the whole way.. woopee!
ban lung is a small town that has the feel of an outpost town (to me, anyway) and is known to be dusty in the dry season and muddy in the rainy season. they weren't kidding about the dust. we spent 3 days covered in dust that made us look as if we had a really bad, fake orange tan. in ban lung, we hired a young moto driver named simton to take us to various sites around the area: waterfalls, yak loam volcanic crater lake, and a town called voen sai. he also taught us a couple more phrases and words in khmer such as "da-uh-nyah tmua awai?" ("what's your name?").
cambodia is noticeably poorer than vietnam (where we were last) and this affected me most in ratanakiri province. we met a white canadian guy in the share-taxi going up to ban lung and he said he liked cambodia better than thailand because it "has more culture". like so many western tourists, he equated poverty with 'traditional' and therefore, 'culture'. traditional khmer homes are stilt houses built with materials such as wood and straw.. but in the here and now, i doubt any of the poor khmer villagers we passed would have wanted to keep their straw and bamboo houses if they had the money to build a cement house or tin to build a more secure roof (instead of their straw ones). by the way, this is annoyingly somewhat akin to white people in canada saying to me they wish they had a 'culture' like i do cuz only us 'ethnics' have any real 'culture'.
anyway, we ended up getting a ride with the owner of the ban lung hotel we stayed in back to the south. mr.leng is a wealthy man and likes to flash it by wearing big, ugly, purple and gold gemstone rings, expensive versace sunglasses, talking about how he's "the big boss", and driving powerhouse 4WD vehicles. in fact, he was on his way to phnom penh to buy another car and that is why we got to hook up with him for a ride. in the car with us were also 3 of his friends who also happened to be vietnamese government officials from pleiku. i immediately wondered if they made a lot of money from bribery, a very common thing in the corrupt nations of southeast asia. i decided it would be best not to ask them this.
we ended up spending a full day and a half driving with these men. they were nice enough people and very generous (they paid for our hotel expenses and all of our meals during the journey, and wouldn't take any money from us for the ride), but we got very tired of hanging out with them. for some reason though, they really enjoyed our company (though jess could only speak english with mr.leng, and i didn't speak that much since i don't feel fully confident with vietnamese and didn't feel like talking much anyway).. they ended up driving us all the way back to phnom penh because they didn't stop in the city of kompong cham like we had wanted them to (so we could catch the next bus from there to siem reap). we then had dinner with them in phnom penh and they insisted on having beer with us that night (jess and i barely drank any though.. i am strangely losing my taste for beer lately). vietnamese men drink beer really fast - there is none of the sipping business we lightweights do in canada. they chug the beer after each clinking of the glasses (you have to clink and 'invite' everyone to drink every time you want to take a sip). they polished off numerous cans of tiger beer during the course of dinner, and then later on that night. apparantly, mr.leng (who is actually khmer/chinese and not vietnamese) often drinks whole 24-cases of beer without getting really drunk. hmmmm.
the ride itself back to stung treng was much worse than the ride there since this time, we sat in the backseat and the bumpiness of the ride managed to make both jess and i carsick throughout most of the 5-hour drive. no puking action though, fortunately.
anyway, we finally broke free the following morning (after spendng 12 hours in the car with them the day before, and 5 the day before that) and made our way to siem reap by bus - though one day late because of the lay-over in phnom penh! - and spent 4 days there, completely exhausting ourselves and bruising our butts by cycling everywhere on our rented 3-speed bicycles. our first day, we biked over 40km in total out to the tonle sap (lake) and back in the hot hot hot hot hot hot sun, and the next 2 days biking out to the closer temples.
the famous ancient temple ruins of angkor are the reason we went to siem reap. the most magnificent ones were built during the heyday of cambodian (angkorian, at the time) civilization during the 11th and 12th centuries, one of the main purposes being to glorify the reigning 'god-king' at the time. angkor wat is the most famous of them and a national symbol of pride for cambodians - in fact, it appears on their flag! i was simultaneously amazed and disgusted by angkor wat.. amazed because how can you not be with its intricate detail and grandiosity - all the stunning towers, intricately carved walls (virtually every surface), etc.etc., but disgusted by the missing history: all such grandiose historical structures are almost always built using indentured labour (and slave labour?), and i wondered how many died during its construction? i was also disgusted that one man could decide to tag himself as a 'god' in order to justify his reign, power and wealth (several men during the reign of the 'god-kings', actually), and then force (likely poor) people to build these beautiful (and undoubtedly difficult to build) structures in his honour. anyway, i'm not allowed to critique the 'god-kings' and say "fuck the monarchy!" here cuz many cambodian people still hold them in high esteem.. blahblah.
my favourites, however, were ta prohm and the bayon as they completely captured my imagination! ta prohm is a temple that is slowly being swallowed up by nature. huge tree roots creep between the stones of the temple and while the other temples were carefully restored (or still are being restored), the roots and vines have intermingled so intimately with this temple that cutting the jungle away would cause the temple to collapse. the bayon is this crazy temple located within the ancient walled city of angkor thom. from afar, it looks like an intriguing pile of rocks, but up close and inside, it is a place full of 'secret' corridors and these amazing, huge heads carved into the rock.
by the way, did i mention they filmed 'tomb raider' at some of these places?
we also visited another smaller pre-angkorian temple whose name i've forgotten, and preah khan (which i also liked).. and then got a tuk-tuk driver to take us out to the farther away temple of beng melea (swallowed up by the jungle even more), and to see the riverbed carvings of kbal spean. we also paid a visit to the landmine museum, run by a de-miner who in his youth had helped to plant mines as a child soldier of the khmer rouge. cambodia is one of the most heavily mined places in the world, and this is very evident by the many people who beg on the streets (or who play instruments for money at the tourist sites) with missing limbs, etc. according to info at the museum, 3 people per day are killed or maimed by landmines or unexploded ordinance (UXO) in cambodia. just one of the many lingering effects in the aftermath of war...
we are now in battambang (as of this morning), on the other side of the tonle sap. there is not much for us to do here so we are just laying low for the day. it is hot here.. really fucking hot, in fact! we figure it's just helping us to acclimatize to the heat and humidity in thailand once we get there (we plan to go tomorrow), but this doesn't make us feel much better. apparently, april is the hottest month in thailand.
i still have a ton of photos to post but i'll do that later so come back soon!
