It was worth it. And you know it must be pretty amazing here, if I can make that kind of statement.

So Much More

Cambodia overwhelms the senses, five-plus. I have never seen a more shattering discrepancy between those who have and those who have nothing. Sure, I've been all over Central America, and outside Tegucigalpa there were villages like human hives caked on the hillsides. I live in paradisiacal San Diego, a twenty minute drive and five minute walk to the slums of Tijuana, where dirty children sell chewing gum instead of attending school.

I knew Cambodia was one of the poorest countries in the world. I never could have fathomed the obscene number of five-star hotels. They are glowing behemoths that cater to the most prodigal in the world, those who jet-set from nations away to sleep away hundreds per night, while men and women slashed by puckered scars, missing one, two or more limbs, beg in the street with tears in their eyes less than one block away. These jetsetters must come in to take pictures of Angkor Wat and feel well-traveled, unless, of course, they come to buy women and children. And their money doesn't even touch these people at their feet; instead, it fattens the pockets of foreigners or men who made themselves rich by pillaging the heads from ancient Buddha statues.

We're white and obvious, and we're not fooling anyone about our means, but at least we're staying in guesthouses, eating at local restaurants and food carts, buying items only at the local shops. We are doing the best we can to give, and yet even when I buy a souvenir I wonder if I should just be giving the money away, or at least buying from a person who needs my money even more.




Angkor Wat


Despite our pastiche of aches and pains, yesterday our new Canadian friend Sean, Bryson, and I woke up at five am and climbed on a tuk-tuk to see Angkor Wat at sunrise. Apparently several hundred other people had the same idea, because the expansive stone steps facing the best postcard shot was overrun with tourists, mainly of the Asian persuasion, although a number were westerners like us.

Yet as soon as the bright dawn-colors faded to blue, the crowd dissipated. And when we shouldered through and began walking towards the temples, and very few people followed. They must have come only for that early money shot, and not to tramp around in the endless ruins.



But that's the best part. Bryson and I visited Tikal in Guatemala, the ancient Mayan ruins. Angkor is even larger, and much more complex. Every wall, every pillar, every fallen stone is impossibly intricate, a masterpiece of lost languages, warriors, stories and faces. There are stairs so steep the top step holds the sun, and deep dark passages squealing with bats. Broken artifacts with insurmountable histories lay strewn like pieces of rubbish. And behind every temple is another, and another, silent, musty with centuries.





Although yes, there were other people. Herds of Asian tourists looped with cameras seemed to filter by at the most inopportune times, like in the exact moment I'd lined up the perfect picture. When the rain began, their colorful umbrellas coming into passageways stung my eyes. But there were many moments in which we were alone, or the boys had climbed up something to high for me and I was alone at the bottom, with only the echo of my footsteps.



The rain was every monsoon we'd been lucky to miss before, and there the run to shelter was a long, wet one. I have never been rained on so powerfully. The water ran into my eyes, and I spit it out as I ran. Shelter was a string of cafes underneath an aluminum and bamboo roof, filled with Cambodian restaurateurs and their children. A few minutes after we sat down, the rain increased with a particularly potent blast of fury, and everyone screamed and ran as a tree crashed into the roof of the cafe directly across from us, all the way through to the ground.

Every child had something to sell, and some spoke English slicker than an American car salesman. "You look like Movie Star! You from USA? I from Washington D.C! (they knew the capital of every single country, it seemed) You only buy one from me, I make special discount just for you, for the beautiful lady," and so on and on and on. Of course we relented here and there, and at long last the rain let up and we hurried to our tuk-tuk.

The driver is quite a guy. I'll tell his story later.