I am still alive.
Odd is the best way to describe Cambodia thus far. Poor and odd. I don't know if it's simply the fact that I've become acclimated to Thailand in such a way that its glaring oddities seem homey and normal after two months, but as soon as I crossed that border, things became strange.
Today I walked past a prosthetic leg sitting next to half a bottle of wine on a filthy street corner. Perfect Cambodian still-life: Suffering, a bit of intoxication, and a bit of shrewd business. I saw the man who owned it around the corner, begging on crutches. More effective panhandling that way.
The beggars here are artists. They have perfected the desperate, pleading "horror that is my life" look in their eyes. The children attach babies to themselves, and walk around the tourist streets and the temples with huge hats. They all know a little bit of English.
"OneDollarGoToSchool," is a popular phrase.
I'm sure they make a decent amount of money in one day. I found out school is free here. They probably support their parents at 6 years old. An average Cambodian makes about one dollar fifty per day. These kids surely make more than that.
It's hard to live in a place like this. I have been in Siem Reap for almost two weeks, making my way through people's lives, trying to get a sense of what it takes to grow up in Cambodia. You get exhausted from seeing the way people live. I’m tired of watching the same sad old woman every night make her rounds at the street market begging for scraps. I am tired of children sitting on the street and staring at me while I eat my food, making hand-mouth motions with pleading eyes. I am tired of being attacked by screaming hordes of kids and adults trying desperately to sell me something as soon as I get off my bicycle.
"MEESTA COLD DRINK!!! YOU WANT I SELL 1 DOLLAR!!!!"
YOU NEED POSTCARD, TSHIRT, BATTERY, GUIDEBOOK, FLUTE YOU WANT I HAVE!!”
Then you put your hands over your head and run away yelling “Nonononono!” for a few hundred meters until they leave you alone.
“MEESTA YOU BUY FROM ME I REMEMBER YOU!!”
It’s traumatizing business, being a potential customer here.
This is a very difficult place to be a generous person. I think any complete altruist would simply implode here, unable to hold molecular integrity. There is simply too much need, too much suffering. You adapt, and filter it out so you can function, so you can eat without a knot in the back of your throat.
My first week here I was on a hard budget, watching my funds dwindle from visa fees, transportation and tickets. There was this dynamic I noticed about myself after a little while, where my tight three-dollar budget for food and drink was much less than the money I was giving out every day the desperate people around me. That stopped one night when this kid who had been staring at me for an hour at an internet cafe took the 2000 Rael I gave him for food and then pocketed the money in a very businesslike manner and moved on to the next tourist, with the same desperately hungry plea he gave me.
Very poor experience.
Two full months in Thailand and I did not get sick, not a cough, not a cold nor even a tummy ache. My first full day in Cambodia I received an adequate dose of food poisoning. Not horribly so, just enough to lay me out in bed for 15 hours and force me to eat nothing but french bread for 3 days. Plenty of it here. In the midst of my delirious illness I crawled to the gas station down the street and bought some ephervescent asprin that tasted like bubbly fruit-flies and rotten orange peels. I was desperate for pain and fever relief.
I'm feeling much better now, but I’m very tired.
But right, that had nothing to do with my poor experience. Well it did, I suppose, if you count the poor sanitary conditions that led to it. This place is simply poor, in a very extreme way.
After recovering, I saw Angkor.
Seeing the temples of Angkor requires a lot of intense work. The passes are ridiculously expensive for Cambodia, and there are simply too many temples to see them all. So you wake up at 5:30 AM hop on a motorbike and try to find a photogenic place for the sunrise. It’s not hard to find the biggest and most spectacular temples, but it is hard to avoid the rest of the tourists. They block off Angkor Wat until 6AM, but on my last day while it was still dark at 5am I padded around the huge walled complex, avoiding the security campfires, past the giant stone Nagas guarding the southern gate, and into the temple beyond the blocked central walkway.
Angkor Wat is perhaps one of the most incredible architectural achievements of the ancient world. A massive funerary complex of laterite and sandstone, the largest religious monument in the world. I climbed these huge steps in the darkness as bats flew over my head and chirped in the rafters. In the dim morning light I found the central chamber with the twenty foot, saffron-draped funerary statue of King Jayavarman. I sat there alone with the Godking for an hour, watching the sun glow orange through the mist.
There are these rich experiences here, and they contrast tremendously with how poor this place is. It’s difficult to judge such incredible architectural achievements. I have no idea what kids of suffering and hardship these temples took to construct, but they are here, and now provide the livelihood of thousands of Cambodians. The Godkings are dead, their kingdoms long forgotten, but this arrangement of stones continues to resonate today, bringing wealth here from all over the world.
Ancient wealth and modern poverty do at least make amazing photographs.
The other day I took my sunset at the Bayon. You've likely seen it in almost any photograph of Cambodia's ruins. It was beautiful, gorgeous. From a distance it looks like a huge pile of rubble, but when you get inside, you realize those giant piles of rocks are actually intricately carved, intricately placed, mammoth towers adorned with huge faces covered in black moss. Everyone goes to this other hilltop temple about a kilometer away to watch the sunset from there. I was there days previous and it was a beautiful place but there were hundreds of tourists there turning it into a circus. At the top of this hill there’s a temple and in order to get up there you need to squeeze around the fat German tourists stuck quivering on the topmost steps.
But I was at the Bayon, and I was one of the only people walking around this enormous temple and the light lengthened on to sunset.
There were these two monks walking around the temple, waiting and watching. They were especially photogenic; perfect contrast to the massive intricate stonework everywhere. One padded up to me, asked a few questions about where I was from, then offered to show me around the temple. He was short, gaunt, and spoke very bad english. I couldn't resist the idea of having this tiny little monk wrapped in saffron robes walk me around one of world's most mysterious and magnificent temples as the light faded. He proceeded to take me down into the depths of this huge complex, through pitch-black rooms and dim passageways. Every few minutes he'd stop at some carving which I could barely see, and speak in his thick thick accent about how THIS sculpture was broken by the Khmer Rouge, and THIS basin was covered in gold leaf back in the day. He seemed to be hurrying through his descriptions, and whenever i'd ask him something he'd say "Yes yes mm hmm." and continue walking. The darkness, his silent walk and hurried nature made me a little uneasy after a bit, and he pulled me aside in this passage and to the edge of this balcony on the ground level. "A well" he said, and fished this huge lighter out of his robes in order to show me that there was no way in hell light would reach the bottom of this dark, ancient shaft.
Then he blew out his lighter and said into the pitch-black, "I'm orphan."
"I'm sorry..."
"Give me money please. I want learn english."
"Hrm, ok. Right, Gotoschool."
"Yes yes. mm hmm."
I fished a dollar out of my pocket, glad that I had this authentic experience. I thought about it as we walked out of the temple into the dusk. Monks generally get plenty of money from the community and even teach english at their Pagodas... why would he need my mone... Ohh..
Then I remembered how he spit in the temple a few times, and asked if I had a girlfriend, and had a pack of cigarettes and really didn't seem interested in learning English at all while we talked. He was very un-monk like.
"You want girl tonight?" He said as we reached the stone walkway leading out of the temple.
"Um, no. Thanks.” I muttered, and walked off into the night.
He was far from being an authentic monk, but he was at least an authentic Cambodian.
Poor culture, rich experience.
Well worth it.
Photo Gallery: The Temples of Angkor
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