Fighting the Cambodian Jungle

Tree vs. Temple, originally uploaded by Christiane B.

We left BKK with much left undone. Most prominantly featured on the outstanding items list is the vagina ping pong, an event I will like to take part in as a spectator rather than a participant, because oouch.

Our time was mostly taken up by
a) trying to get up in time to see some tourist attraction involving gold domes or temples or buddhas, which was largely unsuccessful
b) trying to eat at least a few bits of every meat group for every meal such as maybe beef satay, chicken coconut soup and then some nice pork balls to round things off, which was very successful
c) sitting in AC rooms
d) eating drinks with ice cubes in them

All in all I am disappointed at our wholesomeness when BKK is just oozing raunchy raunchness according to everyone and their mother and all I could think of how clean and wonderful it was. But we will be back.

Crossing the border into Cambodia was like going to East Germany in 1989. Baaam, you hit pot holes large enough to house entire villages, the road is one solid mud bath the color of pumpkin soup, the ride knocks your brain against your skull and the motor rickshaws are once again abound and lawless. The major difference to India is that here a bike rickshaw really is a motorbike that has a fancy plywood carriage strapped onto the seat where the second person would sit or the seventh person really. In India the vehicle has been permanently fused but here one can take the carriage part off much like small scale white trash caravan can be disconnected from a 1959 el camono. I will try to demonstrate the difference photographically as soon as I can. The skill of balancing large items, entire families, ice blocks, pigs in crates, infants and rice sacks stacked high into the sky on motobikes is perfected in Cambodia as well. And maybe because they are piled so high with stuff there is something colonial and decadent in sitting in that plywood rickshaw fanning oneself gently whiel passing those heavy burdened motor beasts.

The vendors are communists I must say. It is almost insulting how half heartedly they are trying to sell you a t-shirt. They cannot really be bothered to raise their voices, let alone chase us around the block with their flutes and guide books. It makes me want to buy something. I think the bangles ear is over and I must expand into the sarong market.

The border crossing itself was littered with dark souls wanting our dollars as it is notorious to be, but I have heavily invested in the local snack foods industry which churns out brilliant homemade snacks that are sold on every corner so that I can outwait even the laziest commi to get his price right and then hop into this vehicle and demand he peddal faster. As I was lucky enough to get the front seat for the second half of our four hour journey from the border, along the blvd of broken backsides to Siem Reap, I even had the pleasure of starting the car for the douche commi who decided that he did not want to take us to our hotel. In unimpressive passive agressive manner he pulled over and tried to pawn us off to a bike rickshaw but I did not spend seven weeks in India and Nepal for nothing, so no way was I getting out of his car. Especially not because it was airconditioned. So I turn the key in his ignition, he shrieks, turns it back off and explains he has to go back to the border now and varies excuses from the road is closed to he does not understand English to he does not know where the hotel is. I shriek and turn the key again and so it continues until he drives us the three minutes to our hotel, which apparently does not give him a commission. Poor bastard.

Now in Siem Reap I am loving Cambodia. The food and is devine, or shall we say, amok: the best concoction of coconut, chicken, egg, tomato, various spices and then some more. The Angkor Wat temple ruins are amazing and there is nothing much to do other than eat amazing food, fan oneself in plywood rickshaws, wander around temples and call it a day.