Cambodia

It's been almost a week since I've left Taipei, though it seems like it's been longer because I've done so much, yet time also feels like it's flying right by for I've been having a really nice time here in Vietnam.

Cambodia had its good points and bad. I was a bit skeptical about the food there since I'd never seen a Cambodian restaurant before that. Actually, I much more excited about getting some Vietnamese cuisine onto my eager taste buds. It turned out that Cambodian food is simply fantastic. It's rich in curries - thick curry with coconut milk, thin curry with noodles in the morning, red curry, green curry - it was just all so good. They also use lemon in their dishes so it can be a bit sour like in Thai food.

I landed in Siem Reap and caught a motorcycle ride from the airport to town for one dollar. Stuff can be really cheap there but it still bothered me to know that they were charging foreigners two to four times more than they did the locals. A typical meal there for a tourist would be anywhere from 3-5 USD but if you were a local you could get the same meal for under a dollar, maybe 60 cents.

Cambodia, especially Siem Reap may be one of the poorest areas in the world. There were many families living in grass huts along the highway without any worldly possessions. It made me a little ashamed of my relative wealth I was strutting about with. Yet one thing that really put a damper on my stay there was the constant begging to buy things that I just didn't have any use for like scarves, bracelets, travel books, postcards by the dozen. It wasn't like they would ask you once and then go away. People of all ages usually very small children would ask again and again after I would say no thank you. But they just don't take no for an answer. Not only will they follow you down the street, more will buzz toward you like flies on raw meat. Soon I was enveloped in this crowd of little people. It was actually hard to maintain composure. I just wanted to scream, "GET THE F*&% AWAY FROM ME!" but of course you can't really do that. You have to remember that they're only 7 or 8 years old.

There was this one kid though who did the normal persistent marketing of his goods. After the usual 5 minute routine of saying "No thanks, I don't want any" he asked me one last question, "You buy when you come back?" which I thought was such a strange question at the time. If I don't want it now why would I want it when I came back?
"Okay, sure." anything to get him away from me.
So I come back from the bathroom.
"So now you but my book!"
"No, thanks. I don't want a book."
"But you say you buy my book."
"No, I didn't."
"You say you buy my book when you come back."
"No, I didn't." Wait a minute, yes I did. He took me seriously.
"You lie. You lie."
"I didn't lie."
"You number one liar."
"What?!"
"Oh my God... Oh my God... You number one liar..."
And he pulls this whole act on me the whole way back to the main road thinking that he can coerce me into buying his book. This is after I had already given him money for pity's sake.

That was how much of the time was spent walking around the downtown area and the area just outside Ankor Wat. Ankor Wat, the name given to a city of enormous temples built by a people 8-900 some years ago, was amazing. Walking through the ruins of this ancient civilization was like walking through and touching history. I have photos to come.