What The West Is Good At Exporting

I have been lucky enough to travel to a decent number of places in my life, especially in recent years. I love to travel. There is nothing else I love as much as traveling and travel planning, save for maybe going to concerts. Like a lot of Americans I love to travel to Europe because, let's face it, Europe is by and large so much cooler than America. But I also love to travel to countries outside the "Western" world.

My wife and I have traveled to SE Asia twice now, most recently this last autumn when we took our 5-year-old daughter with us. It is an amazing part of the world to see, beautiful with a rich history and very lovely people. It is not like we are the only travelers who know this secret. This part of the world sees an amazing amount of tourism now. You walk down the streets of Hanoi, Luang Prabang, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, among other cities, and you will be surrounded by a lot of other white people. Generally this is really god for the local economies as we bring a lot of money with us to spend in restaurants, on hotels, museums, and gift shops.

But a lot of Westerners bring something else with them besides their money: Asshole-ish behavior. Ass-hattery may be our biggest export from america and Europe.

Siem Reap, Cambodia is one of the most special places on Earth. It is the closest town to the wonders of Angkor Wat and a nice little city to hang out at night. It is also overrun with tourists. It really was amazing to see the difference in the six years between our trips there. The number of hotels they have there now was shocking. So was the number of tourists walking the streets and partying in the bars at night. Not just the numbers are what's shocking, but the number of hipsters. It appears Siem Reap has become an "it" location for the young hip people from The U.S. and Europe. This wouldn't really be a problem if they didn't bring their asshole behavior with them.

An example: We were in an ice cream and coffee shop in downtown Siem Reap around an area called Pub Street and "The Passage" where a ton of restaurants are located. These are all places that are generally cheap for us but your average Cambodian cannot afford to eat or drink at them. All of central Siem Reap caters to tourists. There were a couple of very Eurotrash-looking Italians who ordered espressos. When they got thir drinks they were not exactly what the guys wanted and they got very angry with the young girl serving them. They basically yelled at her that this was "not what I wanted" and to "take it away."

They acted like a real couple of dicks. Both parties are speaking a second language to their own, English. The fact that you can travel to a place like this and not have to try to converse in Khmer is really convenient and things will be misunderstood now and then. Is it really necessary to act like an ass about it? This is vacation after all.

I think travelers need to show a little more deference and patience when in a country where the main language is one you don't know. I'm a guest places like Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam yet somehow I am able to do all my business with hotels and restaurants in English, my language not theirs. I should appreciate the generosity of that. We had a mistake happen in a restaurant in Luang Prabang. My daughter wanted basil on her pizza and it took a while to get the waiter to understand it. When the pizza came it had black olives on it instead. We didn't send it back and my daughter ate it, though we picked off the olives. It just is not a big deal. I'm in a country where I don't speak their language which means the language barrier is my problem and not theirs. I'm really happy about my kid learning that lesson that day. She's already a more mature and respectful traveler than some of the people we came across.

Like this middle-aged English woman in Hoi An, Vietnam.She ordered a caffe macchiato at a nice restaurant we were having lunch. she got all pissy with the waiter when her drink came because it was a shot of espresso with just a dollop of foamed milk. You know, a caffe macchiato. She then lectures the waiter on what a macchiato is, telling him there should be a lot of milk in it, that it is a big drink. She makes him take it back to fix it. And the very stupidest thing about this is that she was wrong! She learned her coffee lingo from Starbucks back at home, she is the one who didn't know what she was ordering.

After the waiter left to "fix" the "mistake" the tone in her voice to her travel companions was one that said, "stupid foreigner," not realizing she was the stupid foreigner, not the waiter who brought her the right drink in his home country.

The rudeness you can see sometimes toward people whose country in which we are guests is stupefying. So is the inappropriate behavior.

In Siem Reap we would see a lot of girls and guys walking around in short-shorts and tank top shirts Now, if you've done even the most minimal bit of research on Cambodia - like 3 minutes worth - you know that they are culturally a very conservative people who dress modestly and that revealing clothing is a big no-no. But apparently hipsters can't be bothered with learning anything about where they are going. Even worse, they would go to Angkor Wat that way. Sacred holy ground. Signs that actually tell you that kind of dress is inappropriate.

I'm not one to hold a lot of respect for religion, certainly. But a traveler must have respect for the people whose country they are visiting. Their culture is still theirs no matter how much money we spend there. The problem with some of these Western travelers is they treat these countries as if they are in the SE Asia section of Epcot Center at Disney World and not in a country where people live, work, pray, raise families, and try to live a life. If your only goal is to party and get drunk in bars with a bunch of other white people then what the hell is the point? I can get drunk with fellow American at home.

They not only embarrass themselves, they also embarrass those of us that try to travel in a way that honors and respects the place we are visiting.

This is not to say I don't think people should go to places like this or that they are ruined for travel. Despite its crazy crowds, the asshole-ish behavior of some, and the inevitable scams that go along with crowds of richer people being in a poor country, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and the rest of the countries in SE Asia are truly wonderful places and I'm that much richer for having visited. I would encourage everyone to go there some time in your life.

But don't bring your asshole behavior with you.

Dodging Motos in SE Asia

I was recently in SE Asia with my wife and daughter for what has become our annual international vacation. We started taking these trips with our daughter a couple of months before she turned two and she would celebrate her fifth birthday on this last one. As we were anticipating this vacation and telling people about it we were often greeted with a look shock from many people and even a "wow" every now and then at the idea that we would take a five-year-old to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Some people were impressed by us, others thought we were crazy. I think the ones who thought we were crazy didn't think we had really thought it through really well. But we had quite a bit. Before this trip our girl had been on four foreign vacations and in a total of eight countries, all in Europe but having taken a step in to Asia by being in Istanbul.

In all the traveling we've done with her she has been fantastic and easy on the flights and pretty much all aspects of the trip. Sure she gets tired and cranky on occasion but that can happen at home, too. Having done the 12-hour flight to Istanbul and back with no problem we figured we were ready to up our game with our choice of vacation destinations. And my wife, who traveled much more than me when she was younger, really wanted to get out of the Europe trend we'd been in since our daughter was born..

My wife and I had gone to this part of the world as our last trip before trying to have a kid, six years earlier, so we knew what we were getting in to. Sure SE Asia is a hectic place, but it is also so beautiful and full of wonderful people.

But there was one part of the trip that maybe confirmed our craziness for taking a five-year-old to this part of the world. They drive like lunatics over there.

It is really hard to explain to people who have never been to this part of the world just what the driving is like. If you go to cities like New York, Chicago, or Boston and think that the driving is insane there you have no idea how much worse it can be. The best description I've ever been able to come up with is imagining you are on a crowded New York City sidewalk with all the people weaving back and forth and going around each other, coming within millimeters of one another, getting out of an oncoming person's way just before you would bump in to each other. Now imagine that with everyone on cars, motorbikes, and bicycles instead of walking.

Nowhere that I've been is it any worse than Hanoi. And it got worse since we were there six years ago. Sure traffic was bad with all the motorbikes but when you got off the main thoroughfares you could usually find some breathing room on small streets like in the charming Old Quarter. Not any more. Traffic seems to be a constant flow on those small streets just like in the more urban looking parts of the city. And a lot more of the vehicles are cars (as opposed to motorbikes) now that more and more Vietnamese can afford them.

This makes crossing the street very tiring, especially when you are trying to do it with a five-year-old. We spend so much time as parents trying to train our kid the rules of crossing the street only to have to throw them out the window. I explained to her that we she had to hold our hands and when we said "go" to just start walking and don't stop for any reason. Telling her that when there are motorbikes and cars coming at us they will swerve around us. Rightly, she looked at me like I was crazy.

I had such a great memory of how charming Hanoi was when I visited before but that's been replaced by sheer hatred of the place. It is just exhausting to be there. Luckily we were only there for one day as a stopover on our way to Hoi An. We were staying away from the bigger cities on this trip and after the stay in Hanoi I knew we made the right decision. And a big reason that Hoi An was one of my favorite places - on top of the fact it is a charming town with lots to do and see - is that for several parts of the day the Old Town section is closed to motorized vehicles. The calm it creates in contrast to the chaos of the traffic is as wonderful as being in a typical European pedestrian plaza.

It is as crazy as Hanoi all over this part of the world. There is no sense that there are any rules to follow. Major roads are clearly marked with solid or broken lines to indicate a passing or no-passing zone but they are completely ignored. Drivers will pass going in to blind curves without giving it a second thought.  They will also begin an overtake even if there is oncoming traffic only 100 yards away. The right-of-way rule seems to be whoever is bigger gets their way. It is like the bully on the playground method of traffic control. For instance, there was an oncoming truck that started flashing his lights at the car we were in on a trip between Hoi An and My Son, telling our driver to make way from about 200 yards away. Except that the truck was the one that was passing and was in our lane. But if we hit him, we would lose.

This applies to pedestrians as well. No way should you assume that if crossing the street at an intersection with a stoplight that the cross traffic will stop when they have the red. You should assume they won't.

This of course was not new to us since we had been there before. We knew the traffic and driving there would be crazy, that people in these countries were nutty and aggressive drivers. But one thing did change in the time we had last been there:

They all have freaking smart phones now!

Holy shit, if you thought driving under the influence of smart phones was bad in the States...well...you ain't seen nothin'. I was biking between the beach and town in Hoi An and a guy came by me on a motorbike while casually texting, face buried in the phone, while within centimeters of me. This was a common sight, drivers texting while swerving around pedestrians and other vehicles, sometimes while driving a motorbike with their toddler child between their legs.

Probably the most bizarre/hilarious/frightening example was during our ride between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia, for which we had hired a driver to take us on the four-to-five hour trip. While our driver was in the middle of passing another car at about 60 km/h on the patchy narrow highway (I use that term lightly) with oncoming traffic in sight he decided that would be a perfect time to take a picture of the sunset happening to our left. I suppose it is nice to see someone still appreciates the beauty of his country enough to snap a photo of a nice sunset. It was a really nice sunset.

There is something about traveling that makes you throw your usual rules out the window. "Why yes, we can have gelato for dinner." You know, things like that. This time we threw out pretty much any standard we have at home for transportation safety for our kid (except that we did do several of our trips by boat to avoid buses on the highways in Vietnam). At home we always make sure to have her booster seat if we are going to be in a car, we make her wait for the light at intersections, always cross in a crosswalk, etc. You know, responsible middle-class American parents.

In Cambodia we rode tuk-tuks so many times every day. If you've never seen a tuk-tuk, this is it:

The family on a tuk-tuk in Siem Reap

It is basically a trailer hooked on to the back of a motorbike and then a guy drives you somewhere in the previously described traffic. My daughter loved this more than just about anything else we did on the trip. She begged to take a tuk-tuk every time we left the hotel. And so we did.

At one point during out trip I was telling our daughter about how when I was a kid that we would just pile in the back of a pickup truck but how that wasn't allowed anymore because it wasn't safe. And then in Luang Prabang we went on a hiking and kayaking trip with a guide. And how did we travel the 40 minutes to where we were trekking? In the back of a pickup truck, of course.

When in Rome, I suppose. Even if it is the most dangerous thing you can do.

One tries not to judge the culture of another country while traveling. But on both trips to this part of the world I could not help but think that there must be a decent amount of people who don't like the status quo. There must be a high number of people that have lost children to accidents because of the insane lack of traffic rules that would like to see a change. I just wonder what it will take to change the madness. Looking at the situation it seems impossible to change. But it wasn't that long ago that there weren't any drunk driving laws in the U.S. Or seat belt laws, car seats for kids, and helmet laws.

There is, I discovered, a helmet law in Vietnam that came in to effect just a few years ago. So there seems to be the beginning of an effort to change things there. And I noticed a lot more traffic lights than when we visited before.

Some drivers even stop for them.

Day 6 (Part 1) - Life On The Tonlé Sap

Another early morning on our trip. We had to get down to breakfast right when they started serving at 6:00 because Mr. Ya was going to pick us up at 6:20. We had learned over the last couple of days that he was not one to be late either. This is one of the travel arrangements I was pretty excited about since we first planned the trip, taking the boat down the Tonlé Sap to Phnom Penh. I love any time travel involves something besides a road or a plane.

We climbed into Mr. Ya's car and he drove us down the dirt road toward Tonlé Sap lake, the main body of water in Cambodia, in fact the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. We passed through villages along the way, as well as dozens of kids in uniform on foot and bikes on their way to school.

We loved having Mr. Ya as our guide in Angkor. A gracious and friendly man who, like many living in Cambodia, lost family members during the Khmer Rouge rule. We didn't want to pry too much, obviously, but we know that he at least lost his brother during that time. He had been a school teacher before Pol Pot took over and now seemed to be someone who would do whatever he needed to survive and thrive. We know that one of his previous jobs was selling motorbikes in Phnom Penh, and now he was a driver/guide and probably a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy.

He also seemed tuned into everything that was going on in the area. He knew what was being built where and the nationality of who owned it (French, Korean, etc. - rarely Cambodian).

We pulled up to the boat dock area and we were, again surrounded by people wanting to sell us stuff. A couple of guys were going to grab our bags and Mr. Ya stopped them so he could ask us if we wanted to have them carry our bags to the boat for $1 each. Our bags were heavy so we had problem to that idea. Good thing too, when we got to the boat there was just a flimsy plank to get on, which was hard enough to cross without carrying anything except my shoulder bag.

We said goodbye to Mr. Ya and boarded the boat.


On the boat there were several young girls selling various food products - bananas, cheese wedges, little baguettes, water soda, etc. - before we departed. Their selling tactics were the same as what we had been seeing the whole time, keep asking you until you agree and then ask some more.

Granted, it can be a little frustrating to say no to buying some bananas only to have another girl ask you five seconds later, "Bananas sir?"

But that really didn't excuse how rude some of our fellow tourists could be to them, especially the French ones on the boat. One would think that with the history of how our two governments (French and American) royally fucked this country for several generations, we should be the last ones to be rude to the Cambodians. They are poor and this is their country, goddammit. And its not like they were begging. They were offering decent goods at a fair price, all of it stuff you might need for a five hour boat ride.

And this is their country, goddammit. Guests should act like guests.

I'll speak to this a little more, and a couple of other things, later. After I get through my Phnom Penh posts I plan on adding an afterword on Cambodia before moving on to Vietnam.

Anyway,Lisa and I bought some of those wonderful tiny bananas while we waited for the boat to leave.

Now the boat itself was a pretty decent size, about 100 seats inside the cabin. What they don't tell you is that they will sell many more tickets than that. So for many of the people that came later, like the ones that took the ride in the back of the pickup truck that was included in the ticket price, there were no seats left inside. That meant they had to sit on the roof of the boat.

Now I spent a lot of the trip on the deck of the boat myself, but it was nice to be able to take a break from the wind and sun every once and a while. Even with that, one of the guys I met on the deck said it was still worth the extra cost ($25 vs $4) to avoid the bus he had taken the other direction a few days earlier.

We finally pulled out, later than our scheduled 7:00am departure time, and made our way past the floating and stilted villages on the Tonlé Sap.










Once we hit the open lake the driver gave it the full throttle and we really started to move. This is where the wind factor became an even bigger problem than the sun beating down, though it was pretty bright and hot already.

Looking at the lake on the map doesn't really prepare you for how huge the Tonlé Sap is in reality. It wasn't too long before we couldn't see any land whatsoever. It was just massive. And even when we way out in the middle of it we saw fisherman hard at work.



Then we slowed up and we aimed toward a small fishing boat that made its way toward us. They pulled up alongside and one of our crew member went out and tied on to them. He gave them a plastic bag, they filled it up with some sort of fish and handed it back. They untied and away we went.

They actually stopped and bought fresh fish in the middle of the lake!

While all of us dorky tourists snapped away with our cameras, of course.



After about a good hour or so of not seeing much in the middle of the lake, we finally came to the southern end where the Tonlé Sap transitions from a lake into a river. We started to see the mountains of southern Cambodia.




As well as more signs of life and community.




Watching the people who live off the water go about their daily routine was really interesting. And hard to imagine, as someone who lives on land, what it must be like. A lot of the villages and houses we saw were not built on any kind of shore. They really did float on the water or stick out of the river on stilts. There was not always any real piece of land nearby. People got up in the morning and jumped in their boat to go to work, which I imagine for just about all of them would be fishing, spent their day on the water, and then went home to their house on the water. I imagined that it was possible for many of them to go days, or even weeks, at a time without ever touching land.

I don't know this for sure, as we didn't actually spend any time in these villages.

But we saw many boats full of children on their way to or from school (hard to know which since it was about noon), that was more than likely also one of these buildings on the river. So you could see why I would imagine that.

The kids cheered and waved every time we went past one of their boats.


Our boat actually did stop at a couple of these villages to let off the few Cambodian passengers that were on board. We didn't dock, a small boat would buzz out to meet us, the family would jump on and they would zoom back to the village.

We wouldn't have seen any of this stuff on the bus.

We finally arrived in Phnom Penh, and on to yet another mode of transportation.



Next - The Killing Fields and the coolest Aussie I've ever met

Day 5 - Land Mines, Street Urchins And Massages

Remember how in my last post I mentioned buying $200 worth of Cambodia Riel? Well, here we were in our second day in Cambodia and we hadn't really used any of it. We were only planning on being in the country for about four-and-a-half days and I had over 750,000r to get rid of in that time. I'd been in countries before where you could use the U.S. Dollar pretty easily, but I've never seen such a huge preference for our money over their money. Usually the government agencies at least make you pay in their currency to try to keep it strong, and will even have that rule for hotel payment. Not in Cambodia, at least up to this point. Our visa fee was charged in dollars, as was our hotel and our tickets for Angkor Wat.

We stopped at a food stall one of the sights to get a bottle of water and a can of Diet Coke, I think he asked for a dollar. I asked if we could pay in Riel.

"Do you have any Thai Baht?" the kid asked.

Damn, their money wasn't even their second choice. He reluctantly agreed to take his country's money, though I'm pretty sure we had to pay a little more.

We ended up doing that the rest of the time we were in Cambodia, asking if we could pay in Riel just about every time we bought something. It was the only way we were going to get through all of it. I some cases though, the answer was no.

Our driver, Mr. Ya, picked us up in morning at our hotel for another trip out to Angkor. For our second day we were going to go a little farther out, to Banteay Srei, which means Citadel of the Women. A small temple when compared to Angkor Wat, but so much more well preserved. Carvings are more distinct and colorful than any of the other temples we saw.





We did have to deal with even harder selling tactics than the day before when we arrived at the temple. Almost a dozen kids, average age probably around eight or nine with several younger than that, surrounded us when we got out of the car. A girl about 12 or 13 wanted to sell me water, but I told her I didn't need any until I got out of the temple so maybe I would buy some then. I knew for sure she would remember that, so I knew I had just committed to buying water from her when I got out.

As we walked down the path to the temple the younger kids were all over us, probably four on Lisa and four on me, trying to sell us these little paper figures on strings. They were colorful and in shapes of stars, fish, birds and the like.


The kids were dirty and shoeless and hard to say no to, and not just for those reasons. They kept holding them up in your face and telling you how much they were, which kept changing depending on your level of resistance. They would even say that if you bought them they could buy some shoes. They really knew how to work it.

I kept trying to defer to Lisa, since it looked like she was already buying some, by telling the kids around me that my wife was already buying some so I didn't need any. The answer would be "but she didn't buy them from me."

And if you said you would buy some when you came out they kept saying that they had to go to school soon so they wouldn't be there.

We finally got to the temple entrance, after buying several of these things already, walked up the steps and the little boy (most of the rest were girls), about 7 or 8 years old I guess, started to outright cry. Man, this was too much.

Of course none of them went to school while we were in the temple, what a shock they weren't being completely honest with us. Before we got back to the car Lisa bought a couple of scarves, and I think a shirt, as well as a hell of a lot more of those paper ornaments.

The sky then broke open and it started raining like mad, so we ran back towards the car, all of the kids keeping up to try to sell us more stuff. On the way, getting doused with rain, I then had to deal with the older girl who I told I would buy some water when I came out, which she promptly reminded me. She also tried to rip me off by telling me it was 10,000r for a bottle, about $2.60.

"It doesn't cost that much to buy water in New York," I told her. I don't think she was expecting me to do the math in my head while I was trying to rush to the car. One of my hints for international travel is to always have in your head what one of the more common bills of that country's money is worth. She lowered her price, I got the water and jumped in the car.

It stopped raining on the way and we stopped at a place called The Cambodia Landmine Museum. A small, unimpressive looking building but a really amazing experience. It was started by a guy named Aki Ra who had been a child soldier under the Khmer Rouge, as well as for Vietnam after he was captured and forced to fight for them. As an adult he has made it his life's work to rid his country of land mines, and is personally responsible for clearing over 50,000 of them on his own. The museum exhibit is basically a huge amount of empty shells he dug up and deactivated, along with information about him, the history of land mines and the wars in Cambodia

He and his wife also take in children who are injured or orphaned by land mines. Needless to say it is one of those places where you are happy to spend money in the gift shop, which includes crafts made by the children. I bought a t-shirt and we dropped some money in the donation box. You can read more about Aki Ra, his wife and the museum here and here, as I can't completely do it justice. I was moved and somewhat embarrassed about being from one of the only thirteen countries left that haven't renounced and stopped producing these evil things.


Ta Prohm was next. Probably my favorite sight in Angkor. Unlike all the other temples, when Ta Prohm was rediscovered they didn't rip out all the large trees that had started to take over the temple, so you have this incredible look of stones and walls being taken over by large roots.





I also loved it because the rain had made it flooded and muddy that you had all these Western and Japanese tourists jumping around from rock to rock trying to stay above it.


After that we went back to Siem Reap, walked down to Pub Street and the alley for dinner at the Khmer Kitchen again. Then we went back to the hotel for our scheduled massages.

We got them at the same time in adjoining rooms in the little massage hut next to the pool. I'll say one thing about getting a full body massage in Cambodia, they seem to have less hang-ups about the body than in America. Whenever I get a massage at home, you get under the sheet while he/she is out of the room and they make sure not to expose anything and are real careful about not accidentally touching or grazing anything. This guy just had me strip, jump up on the table and lay face up. and when we was giving my thighs a good rubdown he had no concern about brushing up against my junk. In fact, at one point I guess I was leaning in the way of a spot he was trying to massage, so he just grabbed it and moved it to the other side. He didn't even flinch.

I was completely comfortable with the guy, but I couldn't help but think about what kind of lawsuit this would cause in the States.

We ended the night sipping tea by the pool, wonderfully relaxed and worn out.


Next - Boat to Phnom Penh and floating villages

Day 4 - The Wonders Of Angkor Wat And Pub Street

On the morning of November 12th we had to get up super early to be able to get to the Bangkok airport by 7:00am for an 8:30 flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Since we were leaving so early in the morning it ended up taking about a half hour to get to the airport instead of the hour-and-a-half it took when we arrived in Bangkok.

We had investigated the idea of going to Cambodia over a land route, always my preferable way to travel, especially when in a place I've never been and want to see as much of it as possible. The bus ride from Bangkok to Siem Reap is supposed to take anywhere from 17 to 20 hours on some pretty rundown, rickety buses on roads that are supposedly unpaved in some areas. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it put the image of a scene from Romancing The Stone in my head. While that sounds like an exciting adventure, we didn't like the idea of losing a whole day on a bus that, unlike a train, has neither a sleeping compartment nor a bar car. Killing a whole day is fine if you are backpacking around for an entire summer, not so much if you only have three weeks to squeeze in as much of three countries as you can. And I don't even want to know what my back would have felt like at the end of that.

So we chose the hour-long flight instead.

We landed in Siem Reap at what had to be the smallest international airport I've ever seen. I think my high school was bigger than this place. I kind of assumed that with the size, and that we were the only flight that had just come in, we would be through passport control/customs in no time. I was sorely mistaken.

First we had to wait in the line to get our visas from the sour-faced military guys. Luckily we knew we needed to bring passport-size photos with us for our visas in Cambodia. There were several people there that didn't have them, but they were all running off somewhere pointed out to them by one of the security guys and coming back with a strip of pictures. They must have had one of those automatic photo booths.

After getting our visas, which cost us $20 each quoted and paid for in American money, we had to get at the end of the passport control lines, behind all the people that had been smart enough to get their visas in advance.

We finally got through passport control and it had been over an hour since we got off the plane, about twice as long as time we were actually in the air from Bangkok.

I was waiting with the bags for Lisa,who was in the restroom, and I realized I was standing next to the currency exchange. So I changed $200 to Cambodian Riel. I should have taken a clue from the fact that they asked us to pay for the visas in American cash and figured out that this was probably unnecessary. Maybe even inadvisable if I had remembered what I read on some blogs before we left and would find out myself eventually.

The hotel we were going to stay at in Siem Reap had arranged to have us picked up at the airport so there was someone waiting with a sign with Lisa's name on it when we emerged from the doors of the airport. We climbed into the car and off we went. Luckily we were only fifteen minutes from the hotel, Siem Reap not being a big place.

On the way our driver told us his name was Mr. Ya and that he was available for hire if we needed a driver while we were in town. He quoted us $25/day, $40 if going to one of the farther away temples. It was a nice car and it was air-conditioned, so we hired him. We told him we were going to leave by boat from Siem Reap for Phnom Penh in two days, so he took us by the place to buy the tickets on the way to the hotel. He also told us he could take us to the boat dock that day for another $10.

Well that was easy. On the way from the airport to the hotel we got our next two-and-a-half days of travel arrangements done.

Mr. Ya dropped us off we told him we would be ready to go in about 45 minutes. We checked into our room at a place called the Auberge Mont Royal.





What a fantastic place. And they had massage rooms next to the pool area as well!

Mr. Ya picked us up and off we went again, to see the temples of Angkor, the capital of Cambodia's ancient Khmer Empire. We spent our first day at Angkor Thom (Great Angkor, or Great City) and Angkor Wat, the mother of all temples.

We knew from what we read to be prepared for the onslaught of people trying to sell us stuff when we arrived at the sights. I don't think anything can really prepare you for it though. Dozens of people (mostly kids of ages ranging from single digits to teenagers) surround the car as soon as you pull up and are all over you with books, postcards, trinkets, cold drinks, t-shirts, scarves, etc.

And they don't let up. Say no to one book/postcard and they show you another. And they are so poor, but you can't buy everything you are offered (though we seemed to come close a couple of times). The standby line of "maybe when I come out" of the temple won't get you off either because they will be waiting for you when you do come out. Even if it's an hour later, they remember who you are and what you said.

We ended up with a book about Pol Pot and an Angkor Wat picture book. Because, you know, when you are traveling you really want to pick up as big and heavy of things as you can find.

The whole experience can be somewhat trying after a while (and would be even more so the next day) and very disheartening to see such poverty. But hopefully our buying a bunch of stuff we didn't need, or sometimes even want, helped out a little. And the payoff for us was to get to see some majestic sights.

My words won't even begin to do justice to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. Pictures don't really do it either, but it at least gives you an idea.







And there were the cutest damn monkeys running around.




And some moments of kitsch (it is a tourist sight after all).



We were pretty worn out by the early evening, so we had Mr. Ya take us back to our hotel. We then walked to downtown Siem Reap to have dinner.

Getting used to the traffic in Siem Reap was a little difficult. There didn't seem to be any rules, or any real sidewalks. Tons of motorbikes, cars and remorque-motos (a moto with a trailer pulled behind, which most people referred to as a "tuk-tuk though they are different than the ones in Bangkok) kind of zooming around in big masses with no real semblance of order. That made the whole no sidewalk thing that much more unsettling. And I thought Bangkok's traffic was hard to deal with.

So at the end of a long day of seeing ancient temples and cities in the jungle we find ourselves in the middle of a lively downtown Siem Reap full of restaurants and bars and a ton of white people. If you didn't pay close attention to the architecture you might mistake it for the West Village.

There's actually a street that is commonly referred to as "Pub Street" and you can guess the reason why. There is an Irish pub called Molly Malone's and a bar called Angkor What?, among others. I am not kidding.

We had dinner in a great little restaurant called Khmer Kitchen in a funky little alley running alongside Pub Street.


We had a couple of entrees of Khmer curry, I had a couple of Angkor beers and Lisa had a Diet Coke. It cost something like eight bucks. So there was one way to tell we weren't in the West Village.

Well, that and the Geckos on the walls.



Next - Children tug at heartstrings to sell their trinkets, Land Mine Museum and a massage