Another World Pt. II - Siem Reap, Cambodia

Back to the Guatemalan reference...I thought of it because like Guatemala, this place is beautiful with very warm people and a prevelance of poverty that boggles the mind. Also, the two countries have had a very turbulent past, although all the problems of Central America can't compare with the Pol Pot years here, to be sure. Another thing is amidst all the very humble and meager living conditions is this town of Siem Reap. The town exists for one reason and one reason only: The Temples of Angkor Wat. Surprisingly, despite everything, the downtown area is teeming with smart hotels, great little restaurants, hip bars and coffee shops, etc. It's like an oasis...again, like the cty of Colonia in Guatemala. The prices in this area are still Cambodia-cheap, however! Last night I had a 6-spring roll appetizer, a Khmer curry dish with chicken and 2 Angkor draft beers for $6. The food thus far has been pretty good. It's kind of like Thai food, though not as spicy. For lunch earlier in the day, I went veggie: spring rolls and tofu in a lemongrass-based sauce over rice. Breakfast is included in my $28 for my hotel room. They bring it to your room where you can have it outside on the patio.

It's been not quite two days and I'm getting the feel here. This morning, I hopped on a bike at 5:15 am and pedalled about 9km. to begin to take in the temples. The advantage is that it's cooler and there are only a fraction of the hordes that appear within a few hours. My plan is to spend most of the next three days seeing as much as I can. I plan to go for a few hours in the mornings very early and late in the afternoons. I'll spend the middle of the day taking it easy waxing philosophic in internet cafes and trying to keep cool. But back to those temples...in a word: stunning. I literally was able to watch how as the sun rose, different aspects of the ruins were revealed, little by little. The fact that there was next to no one there made it all the better, especially for the photos. I explored some more and by the time I left three hours later, seemingly all of Siem Reap had shown up. The place was crawling with people, tuk-tuks, mopeds, tour buses and elephants too.

Glad to say that there is not a McD's nor a Starbucks in sight, though I did see a KFC yesterday. Ironically, moments earlier the driver and I were talking about the economy here and how foreign countries are beginning to invest and all. I cautioned him that though this had the potential to be good for the locals, the trade off was corporate America messing with the purity of Khmer culture. You know, my usual anti-imperialistic rant and two seconds later: the Coronel's mug on a huge red sign. Sigh...

Normally I dont'buy souvenirs until the end of a trip so I don't have to carry them with me for weeks and weeks. However, 3 t-shirts for $5 may be tough to pass up. So if I hand you something from Cambodia, understand that the value in it was the many miles it travelled with me, not the riels I spent on it. The riels are going for 4,200 to the $1. The U.S. dollar is the currency that is used for everything pretty much. You get riels in change, almost like the way we get coins when we purchase something. Well, it's hot and there's a 2,400 riel beer out there awaiting my parched self.

Cheers.