Dear Friends and Family,

For a girl who was practically dying from laptop deprivation in Cambodia, now, back in Bangkok, I’m having a very hard time picking up where I left off in my journey. I’ve asked myself why and come up with the answers that partly I’m busy with putting together my next destination, compiling a teacher-oriented CV (resume) and agonizing over which countries that I should apply to jobs in. But I also strongly suspect that I’m overwhelmed by what I could tell you and I continue to be cautious due to the desire to provide an accurate picture. Well, to budge my reluctance, I’m going to revert to a chronological account and we’ll see how that goes. Eh?

After a delightful first morning shower that involved spraying down my toilet paper for the first but unfortunately not the last time, my friend and I met downstairs in the open air restaurant for breakfast of rice + shrimp + pork porridge called “Bo Bo” (for me) and a stack of 4 fried banana pancakes (for my friend). Delicious. Awakened by our coffee and excited to see the town, we did what all good tourists do: we examined our maps, made a resolution to explore, passed through our first set of children beggars and immediately ended up in a market sorting through treasures. Really, it was very clever of the Camboge tourist authority to place myself and my textile-loving friend less than two blocks from the “Old Market” – a market that serves as a supermarket for Siem Reap residents. The heart of the market is dark with streaks of light through plastic skylights: vendors spread out vegetables, dried fish, raw meats, fruit, flowers and other edibles in a fashion just orderly enough to create rows for shoppers to walk through muddy aisles scoping out future meals. The sides of the fresh food section are lined with actual stalls touting foil-covered wrapped snack food packets, water bottles, glass soda bottles and all sorts of items that I frankly could not identify. Due north of the food section are more stalls this time filled with rice cookers, brooms, cleaning supplies, and every day serving porcelain (often beautiful). The old market is definitely an earthier version of one-stop shopping.

It wasn’t long before my friend, and consequently myself, discovered the textiles. The more time I spend with her, the more I grow to appreciate textiles and that morning certainly caused an up-surge in my appreciation. We dazedly wandered from booth to booth, running our hands over the colorful silk piles (which my Siem Reap friend had warned often truly come from Laos… after a while we decided not to pursue that idea too deeply), entranced by the myriad of designs and yet finding much that we had already seen in Bangkok stalls. Indeed there was a lot that we had seen before… that is until we came across one booth run by a lady who took one look at the item that my friend picked up and escorted us both to behind her counter where she dipped into a special bag and pulled out special hand-embroidered silks. In shimmering gorgeous colors such as steel blue, gold, & mauve, the silks were apparently the product of months of artisan work – and philistine that I am, even I could see the skilled even stitches coupled with original patterns and subtle tie offs on the back. I don’t know how long we spent with that lady but I do know that the vendor managed to sell a great length of blue silk embroidered with geometric purples and greens as well as a gold length of embroidered silk with subdued blue, green, cream that will shimmer on any wall. The vendor also managed to part with a gorgeous yet smelly length of rough hewn turquoise silk – all for a price that both my friend and her were pleased by. The vendor was so pleased that she gave my friend a free silver rabbit in a heart box and even I obtained a lovely silver apple. Everyone was pleased… and my friend and I quickly repaired to a small walled-in ATM to withdraw money, crowded by two mother beggars with babies slung on their shoulders, holding milk bottles and a legless man on crutches.

The official currency in Cambodia is the Riel and 4000 Riel = $1 dollar. But it is the dollar, the green now tinged with peach American dollar that ATMs deal out, that hotels and vendors alike accept. This is due to practicality, I suppose, as in order to pay my $90 for a week guesthouse bill, I would’ve needed 360,000 Riel – and the highest Riel denomination is 1000. That is a heck of a lot of paper bills. But I must tell you that it was truly surreal: sitting in a country that was so obviously not my native country, looking at menus that list dollars ($3 being an average tourist-priced entrée), handing over the bills that I’ve been using my entire life, and suddenly again able to count bills like a native – well, unless I needed .50 – which then necessitated the Riel and immediately slowed my comprehension and counting abilities.

Anyway, after the silk acquisitions, we walked the muddy streets, alluding beggars, peering in to shops and restaurants, construction sites, music stores, book stores, bars, and massage places. There were not always sidewalks to walk on and crossing the street necessitated hopping over puddles, skirting squelching mud and ensuring that one wasn’t run over by motorbikes or tuk tuks. Everywhere people cried out to us “madame, buy…” or “madame, I need…” or “madame, want tuk tuk?” We smiled and refused all, while accumulating sadness and pity with each refusal. Eventually we stopped walking in favor of an open air restaurant (that I never did figure out the name) where my not-hungry friend watched as I sampled fish amok served in a banana leaf basket and a banana blossom salad. I couldn’t truly eat two entrees so I asked for my salad to go – it was packed in Styrofoam and placed in a small plastic bag that immediately began to drip. I carried that bag until I was in a street stall and the vendor got so interested in selling me a t-shirt that she snatched my bag away, flinging banana blossom dressing all over the glass counter which necessitated wiping down with pink toilet paper. Her efforts paid off, though, as I did splurge on a t-shirt. Soon after buying that t-shirt, we were on our way to the Shadow to meet our escort to Angkor when I was approached by a young beggar boy asking for money. I refused - so he requested my salad and I didn’t hesitate to give it to him.

The numerous beggars in Siem Reap cannot be avoided and the need is such that one cannot give to all. And even worse than saying “no” is handing money out because if one hands money to one deserving soul, immediately a dozen appear more materialize demanding their share. And if one doesn’t give to all, one is followed down the street with hard to elude, determined demands for more. An indelible experience that my friend and I shared on our first day was that we had stopped shopping in favor of exploring the town when we came across a group of young girls hawking books and postcards. I wanted a book about Angkor Wat and decided that this was a good time to buy one so I negotiated an $11 price for a book called Ancient Angkor – and come to find out, I could’ve paid a lot less and the legality of the print is questionable. Oh, well. Anyway, my friend decided that she’d like a copy of the same book but the girls didn’t have another but they could acquire one if we’d wait. We agreed and sat down with the girls – who took every opportunity and then some to convince us to buy woven wooden bracelets, postcards, additional books. One little girl, clothed in a dirty lavender top that had the word spangled word “princess” scrawled across it, was especially dogged and insistent that we buy postcards from her while other girls, content with our purchases, sat together on a cement slab, requested our names and wrote us both notes in English. My friend and I also sat and waited, smiled, resisted, and talked in our best graded language. The little princess was difficult but the rest were giggly and happy until a taller with a pony tail and big, brown eyes rushed up to us with the book that my friend intended to buy - but this was not the same girl that my friend had promised to buy from and the results were rather terrible. The girl was insistent that my friend buy from her and was tearful and became mean when my friend told her that she was buying from the girl that she promised she would buy from. Eventually the promised girl showed up, we purchased the book, happily accepted our English good luck notes and rushed away. But we were followed by the tearful girl and little princess who walked beside us or behind us shouting mean things at my friend such as “I hope you never marry” or “I curse your family.” We eventually couldn’t stand it and ducked into a tiled restaurant for a drink. The two girls waited outside for a while but they finally gave in and went away. We were shaken… not because of any danger to ourselves (well, besides my friends’ teeth inexplicably rotting) but because of the desperation radiating from these girls. Neither my friend nor I needed to have nightmares about this… our daytime reality was bad enough.

Throughout our time in Cambodia, I almost always said “no” to the beggars. And I’m not proud of this. My Siem Reap friend has learned to deal with this reality of Khmer life by learning to say “no, thank you” in Cambodian and by sponsoring a promising student at a local school. He obviously takes an interest in the people around him and does what he can. I am resolved to do something... I do know that I will never view poverty the same after Cambodia. I’ve always felt a bit guilty about being born into good circumstances and to this day, I have yet to resolve (read rationalize) how to deal with this. The feeling I have is so deep that I cannot even cry over it. Later there was one point when we were on Angkor grounds at an interior wall of something called “The Lepper King Terrace” and there was a beggar with barely even stubs for legs sitting in one corner. I pictured what it took for him to get to his snug corner betwixt wondrous carvings (he had to have been carried or he hid his crutches well) and pictured how myself and people like me look through him or say “no” (which is what I had to do – I didn’t have a lot with me at the time) and I felt a pain akin to the time when I had my wisdom teeth out. I wanted to scream and run and cry. How is it that we have so much and they have so little? Why was I born with legs and health and the ability to widely travel and why does he have no legs and little food? As I cannot credit any God or Karma, I must conclude that this is purely circumstance and dumb luck. I type away at my computer and thank my lucky stars while he sits in a corner and begs. Is it wrong to want a better world for him than that? What is my part in this? More questions that I cannot yet answer.

We met my Siem Reap friend at 4:15 in the Shadow restaurant and soon were joined by a Cambodian national treasure: our driver, guide and friend for the next 3 days at Angkor. Theara (pronounced Teara/Tira) is an earnest, young, Cambodian gentleman of humble roots, who studies English and dreams of better days for himself and his family. His English is coming along nicely enough that he could tell us legends and facts about Angkor and Cambodian history. Although please note that he is a driver not a guide – a guide is a position that in reality requires less (albeit carefully practiced) English and a more important $800 fee per annum payment to the right people (official explanation for this is that the Cambodian government wants to quality control its guides). Drivers are not allowed to escort their customers through the monuments themselves.

Visiting the Angkor Wat Archeological Park requires a passport photo, a fee of $20 for one day, $40 for 3 consecutive days and more for an entire week. One can buy the pass the night before one’s first day and enjoy the sunset over Angkor itself – but we were denied this pleasure by a sudden and fearsome afternoon rain. However, that Sunday evening, Theara donned his rain poncho and motorcycle helmet, we climbed into the padded seat of his tuk tuk and we drove over to the park for our first taste of the Angkor - crossing a sandstone bridge leveled over a square man-made lake (truly, a large moat) leading to the big Wat. We were excited about the days to come and that night my friend, myself and Theara sat down to a lovely evening of good food and talk in the open air restaurant at the Shadow.

And now, you must endure several blog entries regarding the wonders of Angkor Wat.

Love, Laura