The Brothers Grime

SEA Part 9

The journey was nearing the end. It was Friday in Siem Reap; we would leave Sunday evening from Ho Chi Minh City. Two days and 500 plus kilometers. But today, we would go nowhere.
We began the day at our usual breakfast joint a short walk from our hotel. Situated near the river and bordering the large souvenir market, furnished with plastic chairs and tables, friendly chatting staff and buzzing black flies, its storefront left open to the cool morning breeze, this nameless establishment offered cheap but delicious Khmer food. For fifty cents a pop, why not sample all their fruit shakes, except once you tasted one it was impossible to imagine anything better. Jeff got stuck on the banana, I was partial to the papaya. The dishes were pilled high with sautéed vegetables and rice, the quintessential Asian meal, the breakfast of champions.
With filled bellies, we walked over to main avenue I described earlier, where the banal and ostentatious trappings of a Universal Tourist Mecca prospered. The street was lined with bars and restaurants offering every kind of food, from Mexican to Middle Eastern, pop music drifted out from each bar and beer and liquor advertisements proved that, as far as spirits went, Cambodia was as advanced as the rest of the world.
We chose one place with a name like, The Silk Tiger, chiefly for the fact that they could supply a chess board with which to while away the hot afternoon hours. And this is what we did, playing chess and staring at the passersby.
First a young European, tanned the color of tabbaco stained fingers, long gnarled dreadlocks wrapped in a faded bandana, sandals slapping against the pavement. Next, a middle-aged man with no arms, a box of bootlegged books slung around his neck, an inimitable grin on his prematurely aged face. After reading the message attached to the box about his four children’s empty stomachs and his need, not for charity, but for hard-earned money from the sale of his product, Jeff bought a biography of Pol Pot for the ludicrous cost of six dollars. But, it was for a good cause.
Tourist and beggars and tuk-tuk drivers passed all day long. There were funny little fellas with bare feet and third- or fourth- hand shirts and contagious smiles, roaming up and down the row of bars, collecting empties. They'd wait outside the railings of the bar, and when you made that final deep neck bend to get at that last warm sip of your Tiger Beer, they'd be right there to demand the empty carcass. One kid, a little older than the others, would even make a go at the can himself, sucking up whatever beer might have been left behind. It was funny at the time, but writing about it makes me wonder how funny it actually is.
Later that day we went to the souvenir market to get the necessary gifts for those we needed to ameliorate back home. It is an open-air market covered by one large roof, filled with a maze of stalls selling basically the same shit. Postcards, shawls, T-shirts, jewelry...there is a wide range of products, but it is the same list at each stall. It would seem one large monopolizing manufacturer sells the same catalogue of junk to every merchant in the village, homogenizing the market and making shopping a very dull experience. We got what we needed and got out.
Our last night in Siem Reap dissolved into space after our final happy pizza of the voyage. The bars were brilliantly lit in the warm night and a dulled gaiety permeated the town center. Tired tourists filled the bars and restaurants, filling their stomachs with food and drink, full of wonder after a day at the temples and the minor decadence achieved by the wealthy west in the indigent east.

Legoman Jeff and Magnificence

That's me @ Angkor Wat

SEA Part 8

The issue now was money. I was the only one with a card that could work in Cambodia, and the two times I had tried it in Phnom Penh I had failed. Of course, this was pathetically mere user error, and when I finally figure out the correct option to choose, we were once again in the money.

The night was cool and there was a festive feeling throughout the tourist area of Siem Reap. This part of town could have been anywhere in South East Asia, any tourist area in the world, really. The strange and thrilling aspects of Cambodia were mostly kept at bay outside the brightly lit, well-kept bars and restaurants. It was a glowing oasis in the dirt and destitution. There were paper-white parents and their little children, older teens dressed in the sad fashions instituted by western pop culture and fragile old couples whose sensibilities would not have survived the realities of the surrounding country, but here in Siem Reap they were perfectly at ease. I felt a sense of comfort at these familiar surroundings, and also a sense of disappointment. It was an uneventful evening.

The next day we headed out with the crowds to see what we had ostensibly made this trip to see, Angkor Wat. It was impossible not to find a tuk-tuk to take us there, and we joined an entire entourage of tuk-tuks headed in the same direction.

The title temple, Angkor Wat, we saw first. As we entered the park we saw the tops piercing through the forest canopy. When we turned a corner and began following the moat that borders it, this marvelous structure slowly entered the frame and was soon laying before us like the skeleton of a once eminent king.

Once eminent, but now crawling with little parasites who fed on its extinguished glory, smoking cigarettes, taking yottabytes of photos and shouting their oohs and aahs across its hollow, though no longer hallowed, halls. Jeff and I, just two more little germs out to discover what has already been discovered and lost again, bought a beer a piece at the crowded and obnoxious market located not 10 yards from the magnificent bridge and crossed the moat into one of the grandest examples of ancient architecture in the world.

We spent two days wandering through the various other temples scattered throughout the park, occasionally stumbling across a quite pile of rocks towards the rear of the park where a quiet contemplation of the religious beauty was possible. There was the Bayon, a crumbling old temple reminiscent of a drip sandcastle with tipsy stupas adorned in each of the four cardinal directions with large, smiling faces. There was Ta Prohm, untouched in regards to reconstuction and restoration, where large trees literally grow out from the fallen stones, giving the temple a magical quality I had previously only experienced in my dreams. This is probably why it was featured in the movie Tomb Raider, and also the reason for the flood of people that poured incessantly through the entrance, eddied in crowds around the main attractions then rushed on through the rest of the temple. It was amazing to see...the temple I mean, not the human sewage flow.

We had one final day in Siem Reap before we had to begin our two day journey back to Ho Chi Minh City. While we had paid for a three day pass to the temples, we decided against returning for a third day. We had, with our own eyes, witnessed the glory of Angkor Wat and dozens secondary buildings surrounding it. We had seen the beautiful Khmer script engraved in the rock walls, the graceful Buddhas posed enigmatically in dark, cool chambers and atop towering walls; we had seen the tourists and their trash, the little children selling useless junk in jittery flocks like pigeons; we had seen what we had come to see and had no desire to return.

SEA Part 7

Itchy feet and ltd. time got us up early, wandering once again through the city, seeing what we could before we boarded the bus to Siem Reap. We went to Phnom Hill in the north of the city, where we missed the temple because we refused to pay the dollar entrance fee; it did not look very interesting besides. We also found out that the Silver Pagoda, which is the Kingdom of Cambodia’s royal residences, closes at precisely the time we arrived and reopens at the exact moment we would have to depart. We had scant money and a little more than a hour to kill. Did we enjoy another happy pizza? Outlook is good. Did we spend the last of our cash on an extra one to bring with us on the bus to Siem Reap? All signs point to yes.

We barely made the bus in time, and were immediately on our way. The terrain passing by outside the window of the air-conned bus was beige, dry as a bone and so destitute that in some areas it appeared not so much poor as ancient, belonging to a time before any of our modern conveniences had yet to be dreamt of. Houses constructed of wooden slats and raised 5-10 feet off the ground on stilts lined the dusty road. Naked children played in the dirt and behind the houses their parents and older siblings toiled in the hot and not so verdant fields. I felt like a chump in the bus' cool, upholstered interior. Occasionally catching the eye of an other on the outside, I could feel the abyssal gap between our two perspectives.

Nonetheless, the 4 hour trip moved slowly onward. The pizza churned in my stomach and Jeff and I mindlessly gaped at Mr. Bean and his ridiculous slapstick playing on the bus’ television monitor. They had also played Mr. Bean on our trip from Ho Chi Minh, and they would play him again on both buses back to Vietnam. A truly unique form of torture is Rowan Atkinson.

Our arrival at the Siem Reap bus station must be documented, for it shows just how reliant the town has become on tourism, and the absurdities faced being a foreigner in such a poor and struggling country. It was as we stepped off the bus, into a dusty lot encircled in a chain link fence, that we heard the noise. It was dark and we wanted an ATM; then we wanted a cheap hotel to drop our bags and catch our breath; finally we wanted a quiet bar with cold beers where we could relax after a long bus ride. We did not want a mob of thirty or more Cambodians massing up against the only exit from the lot, shouting and pushing like a pack of starving hyenas, their hungry eyes trained like fangs on Jeff and me.

We paused a moment, just to take in this awfully ridiculous sight. The guard manning the gate could barely keep it shut and he gave us a meaningful glance, like, ‘OK, you ready?’ Jeff and I exchanged bewildered expressions and the humor of the situation hit us both at the same moment. Assuming the ready stance, we nodded at the guard, who nodded back and opened the gate just a crack to let us through.

Like running backs busting up the middle on a 3^rd and 1 rush, or the Beatles escaping their hotel through a mass of hysterical teenage girls, we lowered are heads and pushed through the crowd. I could feel hands grabbing at me from all sides, shouts of ‘You want ride?!’ and ‘Where you go?!’ melded into one terrible howl. I kept my head down and pushed on, dodging the human obstacles that tried to block my path and finally reaching breathing room about twenty yards from the gate. We now made a break for freedom. At not quite a dead sprint, but certainly more than a stroll, we distanced ourselves from bedlam. But it was not over yet as the tuk-tuk drivers mounted their vehicles and gave chase. We walked fifty yards with four or five tuk-tuks following us, hollering nonsense. After another fifty yards only one persistent driver was left. We very well might have given him our business, had there been any business to give. But he, too, eventually gave up and motored back to his pack of fellow drivers.

SEA Part 6

Temporal and spatial details grow hazy at this point, but some time after dining we made our way to the Russian Market, which is far to the south of where we were staying. Somewhere along a deserted street, the tuk-tuk driver pulled over to the side of the road.

“Russian Market,” he said and pointed at a network of small shops and alleyways, dark and empty. The sun was set and public lighting was a mere faint glow from above that only made the surrounding darkness more disquieting. Our special meal was in full effect and I could feel the paranoia lurking in the corners of my mind. The previous evenings experience had robbed me of more than my money; much of my confidence in this city had been pilfered too.

But, we had come this far and didn't want to head right back. We decided, a bit tentatively, to walk down the road towards some brighter lights. About a block later we found the only open spot within sight. We stepped into the large room, lightly populated with a few groups of Cambodians, and were led to a table. The TV at the other end of the bar showed a typical Cambodian music video, two lovers chasing each other like innocent little rabbits through some sunny pastoral setting, and from somewhere a terrible voice poured through the room singing karaoke. A pretty girl brought us lukewarm beers. We protested, so a bucket of ice was procured, and we sat quietly and waited for out beers to cool.

Meanwhile, the girl had not left our table. The karaoke was blaring and the beer was cooling and the girl was smiling. Something wasn’t right; were we being scammed? Was this girl’s strange, unsolicited attention and care going to end up costing us more than we bargained for? In Ho Chi Minh City, we had been the center of attention with the waitresses at one unassuming bar until they began demanding we buy them drinks, when we refused they promptly ignored us. Is that the deal here, or is something even more devious at work?

“Man,” I whispered, “why is she standing there?” I looked up and she was looking right at me. I smiled, she smiled. I looked back at Jeff and he seemed to be thinking the same thing, or something equally paranoid. Neither of us could talk, unnerved by the girl’s unexplained presence, lost in our imaginary fears. About 5 minutes later, we prematurely opened one of the beers, or rather the pretty girl opened it for us, and we drank it warm, thankful for something to occupy our mouths and hands.

We were calming down, feeling a bit more comfortable. Then a group of 6 young men were standing over our tables. Alarm bells were ringing in my head. I eyed them suspiciously, but said nothing. In poor English, they asked if they could sit. They sat. Then, the one who seemed the most comfortable with his English looked at Jeff and asked, “Can you tell us about Christmas?”

At first Jeff didn’t know what to say. The question took him off guard, and whatever he had imagined these youths were about did not mesh with this innocent question. He looked at me and I shrugged. It turned out that they were high school students who were looking for a chance to practice their conversation skills with some native speakers. So, we joined them at their table with their high school English teacher. His conversation was worse than his students, yet he tried to keep appearances and I decided not to call him on it.

But something wasn't right. The problem with eating marijuana is that its effects become less predictable and more fluctuating than when you smoke it. Thus, just as I relaxed and let my mental guard down, I was flooded anew with qualms and questions. Why are these students drinking with their teacher? Why is their teacher trying to sell me a visa extension? Why has the one on my left said nothing, yet his wide-eyed glare has yet to leave my face?

It was around this time that Jeff and I realized our money was almost gone, and that another round would suddenly find us in debt to this establishment. It was a convenient excuse to jet, though I don't think our new friends actually believed us. The idea of a couple of tourist being out of money was absurd. Nevertheless, soon found ourselves out in the dark, heading vaguely north, without enough money for a tuk-tuk, hoping to find a couple cheap beers from a street vendor to see us back to the hotel.

We walked through a timeless panorama of darkened buildings and darker alleys. We would reach main intersections and the streetlights would welcome us back with their illumination. But soon the lights would peter out and the darkness would return.

We found beers and sat in the central park in Phnom Pehn. It was well lit, and the grounds were beautifully manicured. Families play in the open square, while young people and couples walked along the surrounding paths or sat on the many benches. Suddenly I was totally at peace. Jeff lay out on the lawn and took a nap; I sat and watched all the people, and wondered at the stark contrast to the beauty and love I saw here and the poverty and violence that seemed breath heavy, lurking at the edge of the luminance.

But the contrast is not surprising, because all the evil things that stand out so vividly throughout the city, all the terrible poverty, the weapons and whores and the sad history of violence created this peace, this perfect feeling. Such a scene in my home town would not move me at all. But here, the shrill shouts of children playing with a ball, a couple holding each other lovingly as they pass, a group of young boys and girls flirting awkwardly, it is all so beautiful. These scenes are as human as the frightened cry of that painted harpy from the night before, or the casual offer to shoot live chickens. These scenes, however, are certainly much more pleasant.