Cambodia photos

Three days in the jungle in flat shoes

I was a tiny bit leery about going to Cambodia, but I decided to channel Catherine Deneuve in "Indochine" and it turned out to be a very good decision.

We landed in Siem Reap, and the airport is very small. Our plane had propellers, for god's sake. When it parked on the tarmac a woman in a wrapped silk skirt, sandals, and a yellow safety vest led us inside to the visa line. There were about thirty of us on the plane, so counting the officials stamping passports there were about 35 of us in the airport. It was so quiet, and the sun was coming in through the banana leaves -- beautiful. Especially since the forecast had called for rain.

Our guide and our driver met us at the airport and drove us to the hotel. Slowly. The roads are paved, but not very well, and cows and chickens and people on bikes constantly ran across our path. The afternoon light shone through the dust coming up off the road and everything looked gilded.

The Angkor Star Hotel is conveniently located -- just around the corner from the traffic light (which our guide was very proud of) and next door to the Lucky Mart (which our guide was very proud of). It is staffed by the nicest people I've ever met. There are large brass-and-marble ashtrays near the elevators. Every time you approach a door it is miraculously opened for you.

Our room on the fifth and top floor had a huge patio, and we couldn't resist walking outside immediately. As soon as we did, a mosquito flew into our room. Malaria is a problem in Cambodia. We had opted out of taking the malaria-prevention drugs because the side effects sounded horrible -- our plan was to spray ourselves liberally with toxic bug-repelling chemicals and avoid being outside at mosquito time.

Bugs LOVE Barry -- remember that horrible incident in Ayudiyah? So as soon as he saw the mosquito he ran inside and slammed the door. I then proceeded to DEET the hell out of him. I made the mistake of not covering our drinks first -- I am here to say that DEET tastes like very bitter lemon. Yuck.

Our room came equipped with bottled drinking water, but we knew we'd need some to take to the temples the next day so we headed out to Lucky Mart. It's actually a small two-story mall. Lucky Mart is a surprisingly well-stocked grocery store holding down the first floor, along with a souvenir shop and a cosmetic boutique. Upstairs is Lucky Burger and a home electronics store. The merchandising is very straightforward -- they put open boxes of stuff in the windows!

We walked out a little further for dinner the first night, to a place down the street called Nest. There is a Nest in Bangkok, too. It's a lovely, airy dinner-and-drinks establishment with a great graphic for the logo, white curtains, stretched lycra roof, and beds to recline on whilst imbibing. The one in Bangkok is on a rooftop. The Cambodian one is open-air. There are small benches around the ponds, and the benches are lit from underneath. From an event manager perspective, the place is amazing! And the food is good, too. We both had Cambodian specialties -- I had a green mango salad and B had a curry.

Our guide was due at the hotel at 8 am, so we wanted to get to bed early -- but first we had to check out Cambodian tv. We saw a video of the Lionel Ritchie song "Say You, Say Me" that was translated in the verses but English in the chorus, and 100% hilarious -- soft focus, butterflies, and meadows. We also saw a strong-man competition, CNN, and something that appeared to be an Asian version of CSI dubbed from one Asian language to another. Badly.

Our room came with "AFB" -- American full breakfast -- so the next morning we made our way to the dining room to see what that meant. The dining room is like something out of an old movie. It's big and quiet, with heavy dark furniture and white tablecloths and lots of waiters. The coffee was good, the noodles were good, the hot dogs cut into little floral shapes were weird, and the pineapple pancakes were divine.

Our guide and our driver picked us up and we headed out. Before we could go to the temples we had to get tickets -- there is a huge operation in a government building that deals with this. It costs $20 and takes just long enough for them to snap your picture and print it onto a pass, and then we were on our way.

The temples are amazing. Words cannot express how enormous they are, how intricately and extensively carved, how truly overwhelming the experience of looking up at a three-story rock face -- a face! Four of them! One facing each direction -- can be. Changrong, our guide, is extremely knowledgeable about the temples, and showed us many many things we would have missed on our own. And our wonderful driver dropped us close to everything and magically appeared again when we were done at a site.

It is astonishing to think of how the temples were built, how much labor and time and assorted resources went into them. For example, there is a moat 250 meters wide, 15 meters deep, and about five miles long around Angkor Wat. Can you imagine digging that??

We saw the temple that made an appearance in "Tomb Raider," apparently -- it has a 400-year-old tree of astonishing stature growing right on top of it. We saw a mural about 200 meters long and 10 meters high that depicted a story starring Hanuman the Monkey God. You could see the horses' teeth and the bite marks on the soldiers from the monkey warriors. I'm telling you, it is breath-taking.

The original Buddha statues had all been beheaded by Thai soldiers hundreds of years ago during wars, or else the heads had been removed by looters. For whatever reason, any remaining original Buddhas had replacement heads. There were altars set up around some of these statues in some of the temples, and I said some prayers and waved some incense and made a few Namaste bows. I prayed for all of you, and I prayed for increased gratitude for all the blessings in my life -- and you are chief among them.

Lunch was at an open-air restaurant in the jungle. It had a roof made of thatch and weird old plastic boxes on the supporting posts that held packs of off-brand cigarettes -- I think for the patrons' smoking pleasure? We each ordered Cambodian food again -- it came served in coconuts! Very very tasty -- basically curries. A gentleman two tables down availed himself of the proffered cigarettes, but the lazy overhead fans blew the smoke out into the trees so he didn't disturb our meal at all.

At one of the temples we saw in the afternoon there was a band made up of men who had been injured by land mines -- they are still a big problem in Cambodia. I'm a soft touch for musicians at the best of times, so I gave them some money. Up until then I had been adamant about resisting all the sweet little children hawking wares -- I'm a hard-hearted bastard but Barry is much nicer, and I could hear him behind me almost buckling at the knees as he refused to buy things from the cute kids begging him for a sale. Poor B! Eventually he broke down and got a t-shirt. The girl he bought it from had a sister selling postcards, and I couldn't let the postcard kid leave empty-handed, could I? So you'll all be getting postcards from the temples!

We toured until I started to feel like I couldn't squeeze one more gorgeous view into my head, and then it was over and we went back to the hotel. I tipped the driver and Barry tipped the tour guide and they both seemed genuinely surprised, grateful, and delighted. The preferred currency in Cambodia is the US dollar, not the Cambodian riel, so I think they were extra pleased because we gave them US money.

We were very hot and very dirty -- the temples and the jungles are not very clean. They sound wonderful, though -- as you walk along you hear frogs and crickets and birds and monkeys. And there are butterflies EVERYWHERE! My favorite one is purplish-black, as big as my hand, with scalloped edges on her wings.

Our hotel had an inviting pool, which turned out to be saltwater -- I love that, you feel so buoyant it's hardly an effort to stay afloat! The swim-up bar was not operating as it's the off-season right now, but we did have the whole pool to ourselves, and we lolled in it for quite a while.

Feeling much revived we turned our minds toward food and drink. Not necessarily in that order. First we took ourselves back to Lucky Mart, where -- for the princely sum of $7 -- we bought a bottle of Johnnie Walker. After consuming most of it on the patio, we headed out for food. A tuk-tuk driver who had been chatting us up every time he saw us finally got some business out of us -- he drove us down to Pub Street, not very far from our hotel and the local tourist area. We strolled along until we saw something that looked good. The place was all orange and gold inside -- if you can call it "inside" -- orange curtains billowing in the breeze, brass candle holders, mirrors. Again we went with Cambodian food -- B had something curry-ish (surprise!) and I had duck.

Next door was the band we'd seen during the day, and they seemed to remember us and waved. I gave them more money. I couldn't help it. The band was sitting in front of a place that offered fish pedicures -- you sit on the edge of the pool and tiny fish nibble at your toes. Seriously. It doesn't sound appealing to me, but I know that Jen is eager to try it!

We strolled some more, shared an ice cream, and walked back to the hotel. More dust rising up off the pot-holed streets, more urchins begging us to buy something from them, more crazy low-speed traffic. You can feel very safe in traffic there because it can go only so fast due to the road conditions!

In the shower that night I forgot for a minute that you absolutely cannot drink the tap water, and got some in my mouth. When I remembered I spit, of course, and I'm happy to report that it must have been a low-microbial-count day, because I didn't get a horrible jungle disease. Or else I was protected by Johnnie Walker.

In the morning we had the AFB again -- this time it included a rice dish and fried pineapple rings along with the usual hot dog florets, toast, etc. The pineapple was dipped in a tempura-like batter and then fried -- good LORD was it tasty! Cooks among you, please figure out how to make these for me? Thank you.

Our driver met us in the lobby and drove us slowly back to the airport. We didn't want to go! When we went about the process of leaving we discovered that it costs $25 to leave Cambodia. No idea why, and none of the reading we'd done about visiting Siem Reap mentioned it. Nevertheless, a cheerful man in a uniform behind a glass window under a banana tree required $25 from anyone leaving Cambodia. So there you have it.

Our flight -- one of four at the airport that day! -- was delayed by half an hour, so we had more time to peruse the offerings in the airport shops. We had fun looking at all the junk available and noting how ridiculously high the prices were at Duty Free. I hadn't brought perfume with me -- mosquitoes! -- and they didn't have No. 5 so I contented myself with spraying on a generous amount of Yves St. Laurente's "Paris," which I love.

Once again we were on a tiny plane. The flight attendant looked like an Asian Phoebe Cates. When we landed in Bangkok it was like we had been gone for weeks -- all the bustle and steel seemed so loud and cold and urban after the banana trees and monkeys and golden dust. We caught a cab and luckily hit no traffic. Came home and got in the pool.

I unpacked my suitcase and found the postcards -- every one pictured a place we'd been, something spectacular we had actually experienced. I wish I could convey more of it -- not just the ruins but the people, most of whom have lived through civil war, and the countryside, which still bears testament to war, and the free-range livestock and the begging children and the dust and heat and jungle noise. You have to go, and soon, because more and more people go every year, and before long it will be Bangkok. And as they say, "You've seen one crowded dirty city, you've seen them all."