Dear Family and Friends,

I have never watched the movie The Killing Fields. At no level of
school did I ever study Pol Pot nor the Khmer Rouge nor even the
Vietnam War. In fact, I have not acquired any in-depth
understanding of Asian history, geography, architecture or culture.
Only during the last few years have I begun to keep an eye on Asian
films that become comparatively mainstream and I have begun topical
exploration into several Asian cultures by reading works of fiction.
In other words, I'm quite ignorant regarding the countries that I have
been traveling in. I am not proud to admit such ignorance but it
makes journeying to a place like Cambodia easier – I may observe it with
fewer preconceived notions. That said, I am a bit afraid to write to
you all about Cambodia because I do not wish to play into stereotypes
or make judgments of a place and a culture that a week is clearly not
going to give me a clear picture of. My friend that lives here told
me that I should talk to many people because "everyone has a story" – and I
wasn't long past the border when I began to understand why he might have said this.

Cambodia is poor. Really poor. You could review lots of pictures,
read first account descriptions, look at official NGO reports, listen to stories... and you would still find Cambodia beyond your imagination poor. There is garbage everywhere, the typical house is flimsy when exposed to the elements and there are few paved roads – and all this was readily apparent as our taxi pulled out of Poi Pet. Why no paved roads? The road from the Thai/Cambodian border to Siem Reap is mostly unpaved, my friend informs me, due to a Thai airline that has put up major commercial roadblocks so that Cambodians do not offer a
competing journey to the tourist destination of Siem Reap. At times,
the Thais and the Cambodians are not fond of each other due to
centuries of... issues... and in this case, the Thais make such a
generous profit charging tourists for airline tickets to Siem Reap
that the road has remained less than civilized.

In Poi Pet, our taxi took off down the street and immediately hit a bump. Our bodies jolted at impact. Then our taxi hit a pothole. Our bodies jerked. And then we hit another pot hole and then another jolt. I gotta tell you: this pattern repeated for the majority of the 3.5 hour car ride from the border to our destination. At first the scenery was not at all beautiful: the town that we were in was dirt poor, alternately dusty and muddy, garbage and blank stares were everywhere. As someone who has never experienced true poverty – no one in the US qualifies – I was alternately fascinated and horrified by the abject poverty that flashed by the cab windows. The road was (as mentioned) bumpy and populated by motorbikes, regular bicycles of all shapes, sizes & ages, medium-sized industrial trucks that I’ve taken to referring to as “lorries” (the British term for trucks), pedestrians, cows, and small buses. The bikers – be-engined or not – almost never wear helmets and weave in and out of obstacles. All traffic is intended to drive on the right but truly drives wherever happens to be convenient at any given moment and this is often on the left or center or right or all directions. This is terrifying to the uninitiated and my Siem Reap friend kindly sat in the front to protect us from this terror – but I could those lorries heading directly towards us just as well from the back! Luckily, it was not long before we realized that we had a good driver and while the on-coming traffic was frightening, never during the ride did I observe a truly close shave. As we joltingly went along, I began to wonder about the health of our cab driver. It stands to reason that with so much stressful, detail-oriented, bone-jarring activity, plus the ever-loud accompanying noise, taxi driving in Cambodia cannot be anything but a life-shortening job. And yet, our driver is lucky to have a job... and that could be the scary part.

Cambodia is a mostly agrarian country with a rough political situation (to this day) and at this point, not a lot of hope for an improved future. I shall not write of politics now but I can assure you that I’ll be doing some future reading, thinking and writing on this subject. However, while Cambodia does not have an abundance of natural resources going for it, it is geographically gorgeous. Bright red soil, dark green grass, lime green rice fields, big trees, small trees, and a few noticeable hills. As we drove along, we could see miles of red road ahead and flat greenery stretched on both sides of the road. We passed villages composed of slightly larger buildings, markets selling fruit, vegetables, eggs, baskets, schools (usually we could only see the gates), and wats. We passed fields that were flooded to the point that they had turned to rivers or lakes... it is rainy season here, now. We must’ve looked quite foreign: two women and a man and a Khmer driver in a Toyota Camry with leather seats (and a trunk that had to be taped closed – twice) – but the people that looked back at us seemed happy to see us and often smiled or waved. Cambodian facial features are different than what I’m currently accustomed to (i.e. Thai): the male face is typically longer, darker, their nose is a bit “less delicate” (as my friend put it), and there is a shape to the jaw and chin which is getting on towards pointed. The women tend to have darker, gorgeous skin, rounder faces and mirror the sharper jaw shape so notable in the men. And the Khmer smiles...! A smile from a Cambodian literally lights his or her entire face. Beautiful.

The arrival of dusk coincided with the beginning of the cement portion of the road and the comparative smoothness was sweet. Oh, yes, well, the road continued to be a bit bumpy but not bone-jarringly so and we regained possession of our voices to the point that my Siem Reap friend called his girlfriend from his cell phone while my other friend and I tried not to listen. From my left-side vantage, I watched darkening fields and heavy gray clouds that were flashing with lightening. The lightening never seemed to veer towards the earth but flashed amongst the clouds... mostly to the left of the car but sometimes in front. It didn’t rain more than a few drops.

It was deeply dark by the time we reached Siem Reap at about 7:30 pm. Evening was a good time to arrive: the darkness obliterated detail and all we could see were the commercial lights of the swanky hotels that obviously cater towards the richer adventure travelers. Our Siem Reap friend exclaimed about a building that had been built, completed, and occupied during in his month absence and explained that the city is growing at a phenomenal rate. We kept driving, turned right and began to drive parallel to the river – our friend told us to mark the river – as our guesthouse is beside it. We glimpsed a few arched river bridges spanned with carved lanterns and the buildings on the other side of the river were lit with little white Christmas lights. The corner that our guesthouse resides on has more carved street lanterns and strips of white lights hanging from the spread branches of a large tree.

My legs were a bit shaky as we emerged from the taxi and I’d be lying to pretend that we were anything but relieved – make that profoundly grateful – to arrive. The Rasmei Angkor, better known as the “Shadow of Angkor” is picturesque both at night and during the day. According to the brief on the menu, it was built in the 1920s and to me, it appears to have been straight lifted from a Hemingway novel. The Shadow is 3-storied with striped awnings, potted plants forming the outside with a tiny open lobby flanked by several racks of shoes and a smooth as silk staircase that guides the shoeless guests to their quarters. The wood in this place is amazing. Hard and dark and smooth and polished. Not that we cared just then: we checked in, I gave someone my suitcase (really, then I could’ve cared less what happened to it) and we immediately walked ourselves into the restaurant for dinner. Tired as we were, we exclaimed a bit over the stone-tiled floor, tasteful commercial paintings, hanging cloth lanterns and gorgeous smooth chairs cushioned by a native-looking cloth. We all had the fried “fish of the year” with a mustard sauce, fries (my first since departing from the States) (oh, well, except for the ones snatched from a friend’s plate), and a salad for dinner. After dinner we were served a quarter of sweet pineapple sliced and rearranged and served with long toothpicks to stab and lift to our mouths. Now thoroughly exhausted, we bid goodnight to our Siem Reap friend and took our first trip up the stairs to rooms 7 & 8 for a good night’s sleep.

My room at the Shadow is scrupulously clean with two twin beds, a wood wardrobe and TV/bureau, shutters and a door leading to a balcony overlooking a construction site and the river. It sports a large air conditioner and a wonderful ceiling fan. I have yet to develop a fancy for the shower stall and bathroom being one and the same - although I’m informed that this is typical in many countries. I keep turning on the shower and accidentally spraying the pink toilet paper that was kindly left for me – so I then have to air my toilet paper to dry. But I have yet to sight any insect and the geckoes seem perfectly content to hang out on the courtyard wall near the computers and the clock. My room is a-ok... oh, and the towels are fluffy.

For the record, I’m actually four days behind in writing this. We spent the next day (Sunday) wandering about town and the following three days at Angkor Wat. I have lots to describe (big surprise) and a million + one pictures I could post – or worse, I could happily subject you all to an Angkor Archeological Park slide show with carefully choreographic music. Always nice to have something to look forward to, yes? Anyway, tomorrow we plan to spend most of the day with our Siem Reap friend: visit a few schools, maybe the childrens hospital, perhaps the landmines museum. I suspect that it won’t be a barrel full of laughs but it will be good in many other ways... and the following day my friend and I will find ourselves bouncing along the road to Bangkok. While I’m not looking forward to the pollution & the mediocre food, I’m dying for dry tp 24 hours a day and to form the ramblings of a week into words onto my own computer’s screen.

--Laura