Cambodia, Phnom Penh: comments on Cambodia, to Saigon tomorrow!

Well, after two weeks in Cambodia, here are Tien's Rules for Surviving Cambodia:

(1) Moto drivers are *not* hitting on you. 1/3 of their approaches will be stylistically indistinguishable from Western come-ons, but honestly, they just want you to hire them, and are of the mistaken opinion that following you for half a block or murmuring seductively while circling you on their moto is the best way of convincing you to do so.

Really, they're harmless. Incredibly annoying, but harmless.

(2) Moto drivers have NO sense of direction. They also don't know the town, despite being taxi drivers by profession. Don't assume he knows where even the biggest tourist attraction is (even if he's nodding); look at his face to see if he *really* understands.

If you wind up in the middle of nowhere with a moto driver who obviously hasn't a clue (this seems to happen about 50% of the time, even with precautions), tell him to stop, pay him off, and flag down another moto driver. Eventually you *will* get a guy with a clue...and at 50 cents a pop, you can afford to go through two or three before getting to your destination. Don't panic; the world is full of motos, and in daylight, you're safe--the muggers only really come out at night.

(3) Ignoring someone in Cambodia isn't rude; just a sign that you aren't interested. Meeting someone's eyes--or any sign other than blank disinterest--means you're a potential customer, in which case you'll NEVER get rid of them.

Failing to observe this rule scrupulously will result in endless harassment by moto drivers, who will fall on you instantly at the slightest sign of interest. (This also applies to amputee beggars.)

(4) Don't bother with friendly conversation with vendors/moto drivers. They're just trying to get you off your guard. Other service providers, etc. are fine.

(5) Don't get fazed when even a decent hotel mysteriously turns off your electricity, removes the toilet paper from your bathroom, etc. This is Cambodia, after all.

In general, while I think the Cambodians have done a phenomenal job of rebuilding their country from the rubble left over from the Khmer Rouge and subsequent Vietnamese invasion, I'm not particularly fond of Cambodia. Phnom Penh isn't very interesting--the only real gem in the area is the National Museum, which has stunning artifacts from the Khmer Empire. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much deaf to both history and art, and sculpture isn't one of my crafts, so it didn't do much for me...if I hadn't been sick for the last week, I'd have gone to Saigon by now.

I also went to the Tuol Sleng (Holocaust) Museum; but I'll talk more about that later. I found it underwhelming, but I think that was because I initially found it overwhelming, and simply shut down.

Moving on: in a nice compromise between bus (slow, grueling) and plane (fast, expensive), I've discovered that you can get to the Vietnamese border by boat! and, better yet, the boat leaves at a decent hour in the afternoon, so I'm forfeiting my 6am bus ticket to catch the afternoon boat to the border, and will catch a pickup-taxi from the border to Saigon. This cuts a 10-hour grueling bus ride down to about a 3-4 hour journey by boat and taxi (the Vietnamese pave their roads--fancy that!).

I'm a little nervous about finding a taxi on the other side, and finding a guesthouse in Saigon, but I know (intellectually) that that's absurd; I'll be met by 10,000 hotel touts and about 4,000 taxis at the border.

To Saigon tomorrow!

Tien

Cambodia, Phnom Penh: A whole new insight into traffic laws

..umm, there *may* be some in Cambodia, but if so I haven't noticed them yet.

Today, after five hours in an Internet cafe uploading my Website (I said it had a *faster* connection...I didn't say it was *fast*!), I decided to go see the Royal Palace, in hopes of getting a glimpse of the Silver Pagoda.

So I walked out of the hotel and summoned one of the circling buzzards, er, I mean moto drivers. I did avoid the ones directly in front of the hotel (six or seven of them perch nonchalantly on a sidewalk over the savannah, waiting for the kites that indicate a dying, no, I mean emerging tourist), on the general principle that someone who's been waiting an hour or so to pounce on you is going to want to extract extra blood for their trouble. In other words, as in Bangkok, never get into an idle taxi.

But, as it turns out, this did me no good at all. The fellow I flagged down and paid $1 to take me to the Royal Palace actually dropped me off on a completely gratuitous street somewhere in Phnom Penh, nowhere near the Royal Palace and, in fact, near absolutely nothing at all (as far as I could tell). Since he apparently didn't speak a word of English, I never did work out whether he knew where the Royal Palace was and simply dropped me there for the hell of it, whether he thought he was taking me somewhere else, or whether he had no idea what I was saying in the first place and just took me somewhere random. Traveling is kind of like that in Cambodia.

So anywhere, there I was on some completely unrecognizable street in Phnom Penh, with absolutely no idea where I was, thinking vaguely that I should have have brought my map. Fortunately, the *second* motorcycle I flagged down turned out to be driven by a much better driver, who not only charged me only half the first rate (2000 riel--50 cents), but actually took me to my destination (!). Cambodia is like that, too.

At the Royal Palace, the palace gates were closed and locked--since King Sikanoukh returned from exile the Palace has been off-limits to visitors. Well, I knew that, but I also wanted to find the Silver Pagoda, so I started walking around the Royal Palace grounds. Unfortunately the little episode with the random delivery motorcycle had cost me a good bit of time, so the sun was setting...I stumbled across the National Museum, realized I wasn't going to see the Silver Pagoda before sunset, and (in my ongoing quest to try every form of transportation ever invented) flagged down a cyclo.

What is a cyclo?, you ask? As far as I know, it's a uniquely Cambodian invention, and is (if you think about it) rather grisly. Cambodia, as you know, has an oversupply of land mines. As a result, it also has a large oversupply of amputees (about 1 in 250 Cambodians has lost a limb to landmines), and because the amputees do eventually get fitted with replacement limbs and crutches, it also has a large oversupply of wheelchairs. So what does one do with the excess wheelchairs? Well, if it's Cambodia, you cut the front end off a bike, weld the wheelchair to the bike, and presto! you have a cyclo. The rider sits in the wheelchair up front, the cyclo driver mounts the bike in back, and off you go, through the traffic.

(I should say that these are not the small wheelchairs you see in the U.S. These are high-backed wheelchairs. The upholstery is plastic and generally quite ratty, although many of them cover the cushions in fabric to make them look a trifle better.)

I should pause here to mention that I did finally learn the trick of crossing a street in Asia. Douglas Adams mentions (in his wonderful book _Last Chance to See_) that streets in China are remarkable--full of drivers passing through intersections with no apparent awareness of traffic laws--or, it would seem, the laws of physics.

"Just as you'd swear they were going to hit one another, the cars seem to pass through each other like beams of light, missing each other by no more than six inches" he wrote. And in fact crossing the street is just like that.

You don't wait for a break in traffic, because there won't be one. Instead, you wait for a slight break, not enough to cross the street but enough for drivers in the first lane of traffic to see (and presumably avoid) you as you step into the street. Now you're in the middle of the first lane, with cars and motorcycles whizzing by on either side. You inch slowly further into the road, always making sure that you're far enough from nearby traffic for drivers to react before hitting you.

But, they won't *always* swerve for you--that's the hard part. You have to look into the eyes of oncoming drivers and judge whether you or they will give way. If you judge wrong, you get to leap backwards at the last moment, which can be problematic since another car is probably swerving to fill the gap you left in traffic. All this makes it a rather nervewracking process for the hapless Westerner, who's used to more orderly things like crosswalks and stoplights. I still have to suppress the conviction that I'm about to die.

(Phnom Penh *does* actually have street-lights, unlike the rest of Cambodia. Some drivers even take notice of them... ;-) )

Anyway, that's crossing the street in Cambodia. Traffic in Cambodia works quite similarly. Nominally, traffic runs on the right-hand side of the road. But, since crossing traffic is complicated on foot and nearly impossible otherwise (no traffic lights), the Cambodians have discovered a "better" way of making a left turn.

One starts out driving on the left-hand side of the road (against traffic, but on the shoulder). Then,upon spotting a small gap, one starts driving head-on into traffic, but angled slightly, so that eventually one pops out on the other side of the lane and can join traffic in the right direction. If you imagine a fish swimming head-on into a school of other fish, at a slight angle, and emerging on the other side, you'll get a good idea of how this maneuver works.

However, this is not the sea and these are not fish: this is a motorcycle headed straight against traffic, with you behind the driver staring at three lanes of oncoming traffic and wishing you had a deity to say your prayers to. Imagine driving the wrong way down the 101 at rush hour in a motorcycle, trying to get to the other side, and you get a rough idea.

Amazingly enough, none of these people hit you.

Okay, that's the experience on a motorcycle. That's easy. Now, repeat it in a cyclo: you up front in a wheelchair (sitting there peacefully reclined, with an absolutely wide-open view of four lanes of impending doom) with an overgrown bicycle behind you, pedaling nonchalantly against traffic. It's a whole new vision into terror, especially if your cyclo driver is nonchalantly running a red light at the same time. As I said, there may be traffic laws in Cambodia, but if so, I haven't discovered them.

The amazing part about this is that the entire time we were nearly being crushed, almost hit, sliding narrowly through oncoming traffic, etc. my cyclo driver was chattering happily along, telling me about all the wonderful sights in Phnom Penh and trying to convince me to hire him tomorrow for extortionate amounts of money. He seemed blissfully aware of our imminently impending doom.

(Okay...after about three days on AIDS Lifecycle I was kind of like that too...but at least *I* didn't have passengers!)

Nonetheless, I have to admit I was grinning like a maniac for most of the cyclo ride. It's fun! You get to see traffic from out front! instead of behind the wheel, driver, hood, etc. of an automobile. Sort of like sitting in the middle of the street, watching the traffic pass by, except that you're moving, too!

Cyclos are way cool. If you ever go to Cambodia, I suggest you try one, at least once. (Skip it if you've got a heart condition.) After one cyclo ride, though, roller coasters will be blasé for the rest of your life.

Anyway, that was my exciting day today. Tomorrow I'm going to do a lightning tour, including the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, and National Museum in the morning, Tuol Sleng in the afternoon, the shooting range at night (?), and then take a plane to Saigon sometime Monday. At least, that's the plan. I have no idea what will actually happen...this is, after all, Cambodia. ;-)

Cambodia, Phnom Penh: Website updated

First, happy Yule to everyone, and I hope you enjoyed Solstice! ...if you celebrate it, that is. (Happy Christmas, Hannukah, and other winter solstitial holidays if you don't.)

That said...you folks have absolutely NO idea how lucky you have it. I'm not just talking about your miraculous access to hot water ;-) , but T-1 Internet access...! The stuff dreams are made of. You have not lived until you've tried uploading 12 MB of Web photos from an Internet cafe where all the terminals share a single wireless modem line. And then the information has to squeeze through Cambodia's lone 56K modem line to the outside world...

...okay, I'm exaggerating. A tiny bit. But not much. I think Cambodia might have one T-1 for the entire country. it's certainly true that 2-3 times a day, Internet access slows to an unusable crawl across the entire city, and all the Internet cafes shut down. presumably this happens whenever a Liberate engineer checks in his/her code...is that like a kid saying "I don't believe in fairies"?? (one more packet winks slowly out...)

However, I have braved all these slow-connection horrors, staggered through the Phnom Penh streets relentlessly pursued by amputee beggars and roving gangs of motorcycle taxi drivers, and more prosaically popped through four or five Internet cafes until I found one that is equipped to handle laptops *and* has a fast enough connection to upload my Angkor Wat photos. (I am tempted to ask them if they have Robitussin cold medication, DHL service, and a couple of cute geeks (available for short or long-term rental ;-) ) on tap as well, but I suppose that would be pushing my luck.) So, the photos are now up on my Website--go check them out. http://www.travelingtiger.com/index%20pages/travels.htm (note: I have reorganized the structure a bit, bookmarks may need to be redone)

Not much to report the last two days--I have been down with a very nasty cold which has not been helped by the awful air pollution in Phnom Penh. So I have spent the last two days pretty much dead to the world, only shuttling between the essentials of life--sleep, Web development, and email. oh yeah, and hot showers. (Actually I have worked out how to get a hot BATH...! Luxury! Okay, it takes forty-five minutes to get enough hot water to fill the tub, but the result is blessedly hot, not lukewarm. I would probably sell my soul for a real live hot water heater, if I could fit it into my pack. ;-) )

At any rate, I'm showing vague signs of life this morning, but if I'm incoherent in this email, forgive me--I'm on the uptick, but nowhere near normal yet. I'll probably spend most of today holed up in the hotel, although I may take a field trip in search of more cold medication and a DHL shipper. (Cambodia has a small problem with medicine: the Khmer Rouge killed off all the doctors. So while they do have medicine, knowledge of how to apply it is somewhat scantier. Fortunately, this is not rocket science; I have two tabs of Robitussin to wave in front of pharmacists until I find one who has it, or something approximating it.)

Sights to be seen in Phnom Penh: the Silver Pagoda, whose floor consists of 1-kilogram plates of solid silver (a wonder the Khmer Rouge didn't loot it!), the Royal Palace, and the Tuol Sleng Holocaust Museum. I'm also hoping to shoot off an AK47...I think that should be great fun, although undoubtedly less exciting than it sounds. (I saw someone else's photos and they were, um, uninspired.) once I manage all of those, I'm flying out again, this time to Saigon. 2-3 days, most likely.

Btw, I did manage to get rid of the amputee beggars and taxidrivers--the key, once again, is hair: having taken my hair out of the Japanese-lady bun, and put it in a ponytail, i'm suddenly Cambodian. So all the taxis, beggars, etc. ignore me now, and the market women all speak Cambodian to me. Go figure. (When I get back, I'm going to write a book about traveling and title it "Hair and There".)

I also figured out that I wasn't being snubbed because I was female, but because I was a whore--yeah, I missed that career change, too. ;-) i keep forgetting how prevalent prostitution and "bag the wealthy Westerner" gold-digging is in Asia--to the point where an Asian woman accompanying a Caucasian man is automatically assumed to be a hired prostitute. It doesn't matter that you're speaking fluent American English or waving a U.S. passport--interracial relationships are only about one thing, and that's money. So as long as I'm around just one Caucasian guy I'm presumed to be traveling with him as his golddigger girlfriend/prostitute--if I'm with a gaggle of other tourists, though, I become a human again. *sigh* People are idiots. (Well, actually, they're not. They just learn from experience. That's the problem.)

It's quite interesting seeing how this assumption works, though. For example, I arrived at the Asia Hotel with Frank and the German couple. I checked in: no problem. Frank checked in: very confused hotel clerk turns to me and says, "Wait, you want your OWN room??" Umm, well, yes. The amazing part is that they knew him from five days previously, when he was traveling through Phnom Penh by himself, so they must have assumed he'd picked me up in the interim; just what kind of girl do they think I am?

Oh. Yeah. Thanks...I think. And all this *after* handing over a U.S. passport. *sigh*

At any rate, having pleasantly straightened that little bit out, I've recovered at least six-tenths of my temper. As far as I can tell, moto taxi drivers will pursue anything that moves, but are considerably more aggressive towards Westerners, and even more aggressive towards solo Asian female tourists--probably because Asian women just don't travel on their own (unlike Western women who are--sometimes--honorary men). Thus, the chivalrous male desire to rescue/escort the poor helpless little lady mixes with the mercenary desire to make a fast buck and the annoying male urge to hassle pretty girls to produce the Moto Driver From Hell. So basically, if I'm identifiable as a solo tourist, I'm in for it. Fortunately, I can actually pass as Cambodian, at least close enough to fly under radar. This is all very complicated and I can't help thinking life as a Pasty White Person would be much simpler--then this whole nationality/culture thing would coincide neatly in everyone's eyes and we could all be straightforward about our respective roles. Nonetheless, it's occasionally convenient, being able to blend into the scenery.

Anyway, that's it for the moment...having finished uploading my website, downloading my email, etc., I'm going to stagger off in search of food, and then go back to sleep.

Tien

P.S. If you see broken links, etc. please tell me--I put most of the Angkor section together during my brief moments of lucidity, so I make no guarantees about the quality.

Cambodia, Phnomh Penh: Hello from Phnom Penh!

I have finished up five days in Siem Reap, touring the ruins of Angkor (which are amazingly impressive if also amazingly overrun by tourists), plus a side trip to Les Artisans d'Angkor's silk farm, where I got a good look at Cambodian weaving and looms. This morning I took a boat from Siem reap, and just arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. I've moderately adjusted to the temperature, which is to say that while it's still insanely hot and humid, I'm at least no longer worrying about heatstroke. I've discovered that a vicious glare translates perfectly into every human language, and worked out most of the details for getting waiters to acknowledge my existence and get rid of amputee beggars. So all in all, I"m doing pretty well.

Today, and probably tomorrow, I'm going to be resting up and getting my website organized (whether I'll be able to upload it is another matter), acclimating to Phnom Penh, and trying to fight off whatever virus/bacteria thingie has hold of my system. (I'm actually not sure it's an illness; it could just be throat irritation from the amazingly poor air quality in Siem Reap. Someone is almost always burning *something* there; it makes Los Angeles look like the epitome of air quality, even at its smoggiest.)

After that, I'll be out to explore, probably spending a day or two at the royal palace and museum, and then their holocaust museum (I can never remember the name--Tuol Sleng?), before moving on to Vietnam.

More details later; I haven't had a decent night's sleep in days, so I'm going back up to my hotel room to nap, lie around, rest, etc. for the rest of the day.

I should say that Cambodia isn't as bad as I initially thought; it just operates by an entirely different set of rules. Once you work them out, it's not too bad--though if you're not prepared to cope with, say, a six-year-old child beggar with one leg blown off by landmines, or an eight-year-old boy with his face rotting away, you may want to skip it. (Beggars hang out around the ruins because that's where all the wealthy tourists are.) Nonetheless, the ruins of angkor are just amazing. It's been exhausting and a fairly major ordeal, but I'm glad I came here. Considering what they've been through, too, the people are amazingly friendly.

Anyway, I'm going back up to my room, where I'm living in air-conditioned luxury (hot shower and a BATHTUB, can you believe that?!?); after a nap, I'll see if I can get my photos organized. I took over 500 photos in the ruins, and almost all of them are fantastic.

Tien

Cambodia, Siem Reap: Hello from Angkor Wat!

Sorry about the radio silence, but the last few days have been physically exhausting--touring the Angkor temples. (The temple complex is generically called Angkor Wat, after the largest temples, but technically there are 38-odd temples in the area.) I've now taken over 200 photos, but since I haven't been able to connect up my laptop or digital camera, and have been too exhausted to update the website anyway, you're going to have to wait for a few more days--probably until I make it to Phnom Penh, the capital.

Cambodia is much hotter than Thailand, or else more humid, or *something*--I've successfully adjusted to Thai temperatures (mostly) but am really struggling here--sweating like a pig and worrying a lot about heatstroke. (Fortunately I almost dehydrated on Day 6 of AIDS Lifecycle--so I'm familiar with the symptoms.) The sun is much more intense here than in Thailand--really too hot to be out around midday, even though my pocket thermometer thinks it's only 85-90 degrees. So we are touring the temples from 8am-11am each day, going back to the hotel from 11-3, then coming back to the temples in late afternoon.

I've also been suffering from acute culture shock, and a certain degree of pure frustration. Cambodians react to a solo Western traveler about the same way that male Caltech students behave around single women: latch on, hang on, and use every emotionally manipulative trick in the book to make sure that *they* are the ones who wind up with you. The good news is that once they've already got you, they're generally quite friendly and helpful, i.e. you can basically trust anyone you're already employing. Otherwise, assume anyone being friendly/helpful is setting you up for emotional blackmail. On the other hand, vendors generally set their prices fairly, and are fairly easy to spot when they don't. so it's almost the exact opposite of Thailand, where people are generally warm, friendly, and helpful, but in business dealings will happily overcharge you by vast sums without your knowing.

Anyway, having discarded the nice clueless-farang-please-help-me persona that worked in Thailand, and reverted to the suspicious Caltech-female ("Hi!" "Whaddya want from me?") persona, I'm doing much better. It's not a better or worse way of dealing with people, exactly--it's just different. I think one of the hardest parts of traveling is that in every area, the cultural pitfalls/expectations are different--so the first few days in a new culture are sheer hell as your danger signals go crazy and you run into the unexpected.

It's been particularly tough for me because I'm getting the worst of all worlds--I'm a Western traveler (therefore a good "mark"), but also an Asian female, therefore quiet/submissive/a good target for bullying--which is to say that beggars, moto drivers, etc. are two or three times more aggressive towards me than, say, the German guy I'm touring the temples with. Cambodia is also heavily male-dominated--waiters won't speak to me, for example; if a man's at the table, they ask him for my order, and so on. (I'm not sure if that's related to being Asian--they do seem to notice/talk to Caucasian women. I wonder if they think I'm a prostitute, now that I think of it. They certainly present him with the bill.)

Anyway, whatever the reason, I'm getting pretty frustrated with the whole thing--if this keeps up, I swear I'm going to kick one of these fuckers in the balls. I'm getting very tired of being "leaned on" continuously by guys who expect me to cave in because I'm Asian and female. For Christmas, all I want is a T-shirt reading "WESTERN FEMINIST BITCH".

(No, that is *not* a chip on my shoulder. It's a fucking BRICK, and I'm about to brain you with it. Sweet and pretty Japanese tourist lady turns into Ramba. Thank goodness I had eight years in mathematics--not to mention self-defense--to toughen up for it. Good gods.)

At any rate, having re-set my expectations, I'm doing a good bit better than I was two days ago. I have a guide, and am touring the ruins with three German tourists--our guide speaks very good english and I've asked him to take me to some of the rural weaving villages after the ruins tour. (No, we're not going into the forest looking at dyeplants and such--Siem Reap area was heavily landmined, and although temples and villages are safe, you don't want to be in the outback.) I've learned how to deal with the amputee beggars and the kids that mob every vehicle wanting to sell you postcards, T-shirts, etc.--they're largely harmless (not pickpockets), and actually very cute (I took a photo of Frank, the German guy, getting mobbed by some). As long as you don't get into conversations with any vendors, you'll be fine.

Now, about the ruins...

The Angkor Wat region contains some really amazing temples--Angkor Wat itself is absolutely stunning, about 1.3 kilometers on a side, with a giant moat around the entire complex. (We are not talking a little moat, as is common for European castles. When I first saw the Angkor moat, I thought it was a lake (!). It's HUGE.) The complex itself is enormous, with five levels (I think), almost every square inch of which is covered with elaborate (and beautiful) stone carvings, from the Angkar sigil (repeated on every door and window) to bas-reliefs of various historical and mythological events (almost the entire outside wall), and apsaras (divine maidens) everywhere.

It's impossible to convey it in words--there isn't any modern work the SIZE of Angkor, let alone with the beautiful stonework. If you took the Pentagon (please! ;-) ), transformed it into an elaborately architected cathedral, and then covered every inch (and I really do mean every inch) in gorgeous stonecarvings, you might come close, but I still don't think it would capture the sight. It's beautiful.

And it's only one of the many temples in the area--not even the central one. Almost all the temples are similarly impressive, in one way or another--the Bayon has 54 towers, each with 4 giant stone faces carved into it (each head maybe 2-3 meters across), the "Jungle Temple" is filled with giant trees growing out of the ruins, and the other temple we visited this morning (I forget the name; it was a tribute to the king's teacher) sported what our guide described as a "swimming pool".

Okay, it's a swimming pool. It's just about the size of, oh, four or five football fields....500 meters by 300 meters, the size of a small lake. About ten feet deep originally. Dug out by HAND, about 800 years ago. Ye gods.

*That* is the scale of Angkor.

I'm running out of time, as I have to get lunch before going back to the temples this afternoon--I'll try to write a little more about the experience of touring the ruins tonight, but not sure if I'll get to it; the heat is exhausting and I'm also enjoying hanging out with my fellow tourists, so there isn't much time in the evenings. Tonight we may go to Le Bayon, one of the best restaurants in Siem Reap, per my guide.

I'll probably hang around in Siem Reap for a day or two after I'm done touring, both to write stuff up and to take a day "off" from traveling. Phnom Penh has better connectivity, but I really need a break.

Tien

Cambodia, Siem Reap: Hello from Cambodia!

...and welcome to the Third World.

Yesterday I made the border crossing at Poipet, then took the bus to Siem Reap. It's about 325 miles total, 14 hours with a two-hour stop at the border. The Thai side (250 miles) took 4 hours. Covering the 75 miles in Cambodia, well, that took 8 hours. Roads in Cambodia, well...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I should start by explaining that I got massively overcharged for the trip. I paid 1200 baht ($30) at a travel agent on Sukumvit Road, near where I was staying. The other ten passengers paid anywhere from 150 baht to, well, 1200. I've pretty much given up on being angry about people trying to rip me off; it's nothing personal, just a fact of life. If you stop being paranoid for one instant, it happens. So why be upset about it; it's going to happen, you just can't do anything about it. (See previous commentary about "normalcy".) Fortunately, it's not generally for a large sum, by Western standards.

(What annoys me far more than the money, I think, is the idea of being treated "unfairly". The Western idea that all people should be treated equally is the real issue--after all, all tourist areas massively overcharge tourists; it's just comforting to know that everyone else is in the same boat as you are.)

At any rate, after four uneventful hours on the Thai side, we reached the border town of Poipet.

Poipet: dusty, unmechanized, full of boxes and crates being moved across the border. almost all carts are human-powered--imagine a pony-cart with a crossbar nailed across the hitches, and a man standing inside the "traces", pushing the cart along. Women and girls ride in the carts sometimes, hair and mouths covered against the dust, protecting themselves from the sun with umbrellas as their "driver" plods along.

More often, the carts are filled with boxes, since it's a border town; in fact, I saw one impressively massive cart being hauled by a team of five men. Amazing sight: about 300 boxes about the size of an orange crate, rising up like a giant mushroom from this little cart, with the men pulling and straining inside the "harness". Much to my surprise, they were actually able to move it; I even took a few photos.

Poipet is a pretty rough town; my guess is that it's a major clearinghouse for smuggling, among other things. At any rate, there is a great deal of poverty and a fairly aggressive set of locals: on the Thai side, it's beggars, and on the Cambodian side, it's thieves. Ten seconds after our group arrived at the rest stop and sat down, the inevitable swarm of vendors appeared, and a slew of child-beggars. One of them, a little boy of about six or seven, just wouldn't go away--he circled the group for thirty minutes, watching us like hawks, constantly moving into our field of view, hand outstretched. If any of us moved our hands towards our pockets, he was there instantly. Looking at him, I decided not to take any more photos; I didn't want to call any more atention to my digital camera than I already had.

Which was a pity, as the crossover arch to Cambodia was quite beautiful. It had the triple towers of Angkor Wat rising up out of the arch--every Cambodian government has flown Angkor Wat on their flag, even the Khmer Rouge, which says something about the magnificent architecture. (The Khmer Rouge, in fact, actually called themselves "the Angkar" for most of their reign.) And Poipet itself has many sights worth snapping: for example, I really wish I'd gotten a photo of the guy who rode by on a motorcycle, two live chickens dangling by their feet from the handlebars. (Insert mandatory rubber-chicken joke here. ;-) They really do look like rubber chickens, hanging like that--I thought they were dead, until I saw one blink.)

At any rate, hiding the digital turned out to be a good idea, because the Cambodian side is populated by some very bold thieves. (See previous comments about "rough town".) Five minutes into Cambodia, they struck our group--we were sitting in the pickup-taxi, a German woman had her backpack next to her, and in an instant when she wasn't looking, a passing Cambodian reached in, lightning-quick, and got his hand inside the back pocket of her backpack. She yelped and told the driver to stop, but he was already sauntering off, and vanished behind a crate. Just that fast, with all of us there in the taxi.

(Fortunately she didn't lose anything--she wasn't keeping any valuables in outside pockets. Neither am I; my pack and daypack are locked with little combination locks that I bought before leaving. I felt really stupidly paranoid in Thailand, traveling like that; I don't now. I'm also very glad I had my pants made with pockets that zip shut; near the Thai border, we met a man who had had his wallet stolen one minute (literally!) into Cambodia, and was returning to Bangkok to get his traveler's checks reissued.)

Anyway, after the border crossing, we got on the main highway to Siem Reap. 4 hours got us 250 miles into Thailand; it took 8 hours to travel 75 miles in Cambodia. Welcome to the Third World.

Cambodia is indeed very poor. In Thailand, the poor live in corrugated tin shacks; in Cambodia, corrugated tin means wealth. Most people live in wooden huts/houses raised up off the ground on stilts; the poor live in thatched huts, with thin bamboo-lath frames holding the thatched walls together. They look like they might fall down at any moment. Pigs, dogs, and chickens run around with sporadically naked kids; people travel by foot or bicycle, or sometimes by pony-cart (I saw two on the way).

Roads in Cambodia also come in many varieties, most of them poor. The road we were on is one of the main highways, and is in substantially better shape than most because of the tourist trade: the Thai underwrote most of the paved sections. Nonetheless we averaged under 10 miles an hour for the trip, which tells you something about the other portions.

A brief category of Cambodian roads:

Paved roads. These come in anything from smooth, paved road (a godsend for the 10% of the mileage it covers) to heavily potholed (marginally more common), to this stuff that I swear looked *exactly* like someone had tried to duplicate a washboardy, potholed dirt road in asphalt. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but it's, um, memorable. Just like the same version in dirt, only much bumpier. (Fortunately there wasn't much of it--presumably the paver came to his/her senses eventually and left for a career in modern sculpture.)

Between paved roads and dirt roads is this very special stuff: sharp, ridgy rocks about the size of half-bricks (but more like shattered brick, all edges and bumps) packed into the roadbed. The ride makes cobblestones look smooth, but at least those sections aren't full of potholes--you can drive through them without breaking an axle or ripping the bottom off your vehicle.

And then there are the dirt roads. Ah, the dirt roads. SOME of them are flat and beautiful; you can travel almost as fast as on a smooth paved road, which is to say thirty to forty miles an hour. And then it gets worse. In the midlevel, there are the ones that look like choppy ocean waves--more a series of potholes punctuated by ridges (the ridges are just to allow more and better potholes ;-) ) than a road. And then there are the bad sections--with "potholes" big enough to swallow an elephant (or a minivan) whole--I honestly wondered if they weren't landmine craters, but they're not deep enough, only about a foot deep despite their impressive size. Still plenty big enough to break an axle, or strand a vehicle, and there are LOTS of them.

Driving along these roads is quite simple. You drive along whatever section of road (right, left, center, shoulder) you can negotiate; if you meet another vehicle, the bigger one gets the right of way. Fortunately, you're not really going to damage anyone else's vehicle, at least on the worst sections: neither of you can travel faster than a few miles an hour, so you'll see the other vehicle in plenty of time. It's *much* more likely that you'll break an axle.

At any rate, it took about 9 hours of slow, bone-jarring crawl over one of the best roads in Cambodia, to get to Siem Reap. (If I sound like I'm obsessing over road surfaces...well...I had a LOT of time to think about them. and they are, um, highly memorable. I don't think my back and neck will forget them anytime soon. ;-) )

We did stop twice along the way; the first for a rest stop, where we got mobbed by a swarm of child beggars/vendors. "Sir, give me pen!" "Madam, give me five baht to pay school!" "How old are you?" "What's your name?" I was accosted by one fifteen-year-old girl (who looked more like eight or ten); she said she had five brothers and sisters *(5,6,7,8, and 10), and wanted a pen. I gave her one, since I had it handy; then she demanded five baht "for school". She eventually wore me down--I gave her ten baht. Then she demanded $1, or $5--at which point I put my foot down. I felt bad for her, but money wouldn't have been helpful; I doubt that either the pen or the money were actually going towards school. (With three brothers at home, there's no way she was going to school--Cambodians, like most Asians, educate boys first. Welcome to the world of male privilege.)

On the other hand, for ten baht and a pen I got the full gamut of beggars' tactics in Cambodia; which includes remarkable persistence (ten minutes after I fled into conversation with another group she was still outside calling "Madame Tien! Madame Tien!" trying to get my attention) and a wide array of conversational tricks. I don't think I've encountered such shameless manipulativeness and persistence since, hmm, well, never mind.

Anyway, the stop was only supposed to be for ten minutes but stretched to half an hour; almost unbearable, as we couldn't step outside without being swarmed by begging children, and they were all around the windows, reaching in to try to grab our attention. The only "safe" place was in the very center of the minivan (and you can bet I was watching my bags the entire time). I felt rather like I'd stepped into Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"--seriously under siege.

Still, there was lots of beautiful scenery, lots of surprisingly friendly people waving to us from the road, and lots of children splashing joyfully in the muddy ponds. Not to mention fishermen pulling nets from the shallow ponds by the road, and some very nicely muscled guys out bathing in the ponds (in sarongs, alas ;-) ).

Our second stop, which was much less trying, was at a Cambodian gas station. This is not your shiny clean petrol station with nice clean pumps and a convenient ATM/credit card device on the island; this is a little shack by the side of the road (tin roof; thatched sides, remarkably flammable) stacked with all sorts of makeshift/scavenged containers--everything from plastic jugs to glass soda bottles--full of gasoline. (As an aside, I now know that gasoline is yellow in color, about the same shade as urine left to ferment for three weeks. Sixteen years' driving and I never actually *saw* gasoline, since it was always pumped into the tank: weird, huh? (If you want to know about the fermented urine part, let's just say that some of the old-time natural dye recipes are a bit odd...leave it there, and we'll all be much happier. ;-) ))

Anyway, with Cambodian gas stations, you pull over to the side of the road, buy the appropriate size container, and pour it into your tank with your handy gas funnel. Not smoking while doing this is a nice idea, but (apparently) strictly optional. (!)

At any rate, it's getting late, and I need to be back at the hotel in fifteen minutes. I'm going to the best restaurant in Siem Reap (at least per the tour guide), which charges $11/head for dinner plus a performance of Cambodian dance. That's still outrageous by local standards--you can get a room for $4 or less, for example--but sounds pretty good to me. After yesterday's incredible ride and today's trying events (more on that later), I could use something easy/fun. Let's just say, I am now assuming that any Cambodian being nice to you has his/her eyes firmly fixed on your wallet. *sigh*

Tien

Thailand, Bangkok: Cover girl!!!! :-)

Well, in the latest bizarre turn on events, Richard called me up yesterday and asked how I'd feel about being on the cover of Farang magazine (a Thai travel magazine targeted at backpackers)...they want me for the cover of their January issue (!). Needless to say, I said yes...so he's put together a sample to send to them, and in a few days I should know if I'm going to be a cover girl or not. I'm pretty sure I will be, though--it's a damn impressive photo. (Unfortunately I couldn't get it on my web page due to technical problems--hopefully will work them out in cambodia.)

Tien