Cambodian people, Siem Reap

Siem Reap! It's a tourist town without doubt due to the proximity of the city to AngKor Wat, one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world.

I've managed to hit rainy season here also although the rain doesn't last long (it's like a Texas downpour for 5 - 30 minutes). Spent the first 3 days wandering around the town, getting sucked into buying stuff at the market for a ridiculous price. The cost of goods here at the open air markets (this is standard shopping for Asia; malls are a recent arrival and have NONE of the flow, personality, cconviviality, human-ness and fun of these wonderful markets. Bring 'em to America and Europe I say!) is shockingly cheap - I felt bad paying $2 for a beautiful hand-dyed cloth bag, having haggled her down from $3 (by haggle I merely suggested a lower price, which is how they do things here)! Anyhow, bought more than I had budgeted for but the bargains were irresistible!

Tricia and I checked into a room together - making sure it was locally owned and not one of the huge, foreign-owned places - which we use for nothing but sleeping which is just as well as there are 2 beds, a hatstand and a bedside table in there and nothing else! However, it is clean and has both a fan and an extractor fan (to remove hot air, which we are both capable of producing in equal amounts). We also have our own bathroom with cold water shower (standard in Asia; hot water and air conditioning cost up to twice as much and really are not needed unless you're a total softy!). All for a silly $3 each per night!!! Why would ynyone stay at the (boring, dead, lifeless) Holiday Inn for God's sake? Unless of course you were completely numb to the world....

Eating out is equally cheap - $3 - 5 for a beautiful dinner of lak lok or amok, both Cambodian (or Khmer, as they prefer to be called) dishes. Khmer cuisine is delicious - less chilli and more variety of spices and herbs used. Coconut milk is widely in use (50 cents for a fresh young coconut to be cut open for you and a straw inserted at the market!) in dishes and desserts as in Thailand. Many restaurants in Siem Reap are owned by foreigners (argh! makes me so mad!) so we made sure to eat at the family owned Khmer restaurants (which had the best Khmer food anyway), so we knew our money was going directly to the Cambodians and not to some rich bastard in the USA or England.

Tricia and I went out one night for a dinner and free Khmer dance show which was actually really beautiful. The Cambodians are without exception the loveliest, kindest people I have ever come across. I know that is quite a statement to make, but once you come here (and you would be crazy not to, given the beauty, ridiculous affordability of the place and the child-friendliness you will see for yourself. I found myself behaving in a kinder, softer way also - it rubs off on you! Khmers and Thais adore children, and treat them with sincere love and kindness - no doubt a product of their Buddhist culture, so family travel is super easy here from what I've heard. Travelling with children in SE Asia immediately ingratiates you with the locals and they easily interact sweetly with babies and children of all ages, even playing with children while parents choose from a menu.

Given the history of their country (see the movie "the Killing Fields" for reference), it is mind-blowing to see the kind and courteous way they behave and treat each other and visitors to their country. 2 million people were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Unspeakable brutality was experienced by them, so to see that they came out of that untold genocide with their hearts and souls intact is nothing short of a miracle.

They are so courteous it would be easy to delude yourself into thinking that you were somehow superior to these people (they 'sompeah' to you as a greeting - hands in prayer position in front of the nose and bow at the waist), and they do everything to avoid conflict. It is considered very poor form to get angry (to 'lose face') or get irritated with anyone, so you never hear shouting/ raised voices/ harsh words on the street, which actually makes for a very nice interaction with everyone - you can be guaranteed that nobody will get angry with you in Cambodia (and therefore , as a guest in their beautiful country, you should never be so discourteous as to get angry with them either).

Cambodia is the 5th poorest country in the world (according to GDP, gross domestic product, but remember, GDP considers such things as crime and prisons as a boost to the economy! It's not a measure of wealth rather than a measure of how much paper money is circulating in a country. TRUE wealth is measured in terms of happiness, comfort and standard of living after all) and you can see the poverty everywhere. I happened to walk along the river one day, taking a different route home from a Buddhist monastery (95% of Cambodians are Theravada Buddhists, i.e. of the sort of Buddhism which I studied in Suan Mokh), and ended up wandering through a ramshackle collection of huts on stilts in a very VERY muddy area. The huts had enough room for a path around them and not much else. Areas under the huts are used to store the few belongings these people have (there is virtually no crime in Cambodia - there is nothing of value worth stealing), such as woven bamboo baskets and containers of various shapes, as well as bicycles (no locks), dogs and firewood. In Europe or the USA I would be guaranteed not to make it out alive from such an area of poverty. In Siem Reap, I was greeted by a man who had lost both arms and had lacerations across his abdomen (no doubt from a land mine going off in his hands) who asked me in very good English where I needed to go. He was barefoot and smiling at me. Cambodians smile all the time - at each other and at tourists. "Duek" had been a police officer at one point in time (after the Khmer Rouge era) and while I refrained from asking him about his lack of arms - which would have been horribly insensitive and intrusive - I asked him if he lived here, which he did. He showed me how to get back out to the main (paved) street, and waved me goodbye with a genuine smile. On the way children smiled at me and asked me where I was from (in English). I never felt anything other than gentle welcome from these people and did not get the impression they spent their days in bitter regret that they had virtually no belongings. (Lesson....?)

I later saw Duek around Siem Reap selling books about Cambodia (many are written about the Khmer Rouge (meaning the 'Red Cambodians' or Communist Khmer era, about which I'll write a separate entry - too much to include here), and at night he sat with other landmine amputees who played (really nice!) traditional music on the street and sold CDs. Each time he saw me he waved to me and called out my name.