South East Asia – Part 7: Curry in a coconut shell

A hearty Chao to the masses around the world from the tiny honeymooner’s dream town of Hoi An in Vietnam. The temperature here is about 34, there’s fresh crab on the menu and the hotels come complete with fan, television and hot and cold running chicks. Just got myself some hand-tailored suits for the criminally low price of 30 bucks a pop and I’m off to the beach with two Danish cuties for a little chillin’ (with a side of illin’). 

While I have your attention, I have to say that Vietnam is, hands down, my favourite stop of the adventure so far. The eats are cheap, the weather is sun-tastic, the people are uber-friendly, and the beer is 30 cents a litre on the street. I’m living a Sylvester Stallone lifestyle on a Frank Stallone income and I’m loving every minute of it. I hate to be depressing but it’s going to be a chore to keep myself from junping off the Lion’s Gate upon my return to bland-as-mozzarella Canada. I’m so impressed with this place that I’m planning on a return trip in December so if anyone’s interested, start saving your worthless two-nies and loonies now. 

But I gotta get back on the Cambodia track as I’m very behind on the updates. For the sake of brevity (for once) I’ll skip past my day in the former Thai capital of Sukothai which was probably the most helter-skelter 24 hours of my life. It resulted in my spending all of an hour and fifteen minutes in actual Sukothai seeing sights from my hastily-rented motorbike that I had to drive Steve McQueen-style in order to get any sightseeing in at all. 

Anyways, after staying up until 4:30 in Bangkok talking to a friendly Norwegian girl, I awoke an hour later to catch the Cambodia express! There I ran into Damon, the Australian I had met in Chiangmai and we killed the ride to the border playing cards, sleeping and talking movies. While on board, nature called so I hit up the dreaded on-bus toilet to take care of business. Now this one was worse that most (a truly remarkable acheivement) in that there was no light, the whole thing was about the size (and temperature) of a brick pizza oven and there was absolutely no means of hand-cleanage or ass-wipage. 

Fortunately I had come prepared and when matters had been attended to, I reached for the only visible (thanks to my trusty headlamp) handle. It wouldn’t budge at first so I applied more force..still nothing. I resolutely wrenched down a final time and the shiny silver lever finally gave but instead of hearing the usual gentle flushing sound, the entire side of the bus flew open and I found myself staring out onto a crowded Thai highway. Cars, motorbikes and buses screamed by, honking as they went at the white guy with his pants around his ankeles frantically struggling to shut the door on his bus-toilet. I mean, really, what kind of people put a door handle inside a bathroom next to a toilet? Another harrowing flirtation with disaster narrowly escaped unscathed. 

We spent a good hour at the border going through the usual customs routine during which I was dared by Damon and some nice Swedish girls to run across before I had been processed. I actually spent a short period of time illegally entered in Cambodia and, in a surprise turn of events, was not shot.

Now as soon as you cross the border the difference is apparent. The roads change from ashfault to rock, the poverty level from pretty poor to scrounging-for-bugs poor and the houses from, well, houses to dilapidated, one-walled bamboo shacks. The afformentioned roads are worth talking about as riding on them redefined pain and suffering as I had understood them. I did get to learn a little more about my own physical limitations though, as I had previously been unaware that I could breathe in so much dirt without suffocating.

Our “bus” pulled into Siem Reap, hometown of the famous Angkor Wat, about 4 hours behind schedule so I grabbed some curry in a coconut shell and hit the hay. I woke at one the next day and explored the town a bit with Damon. Siem Reap is a city that exists only due to it’s proximity to Angkor Wat so consequently has many hotels, hostels and other businesses geared towards the dollar-heavy tourists. It’s very quiet and laid back relative to anywhere in Thailand and I enjoyed wandering around and chatting with the locals about the new environment in which I found myself.

We hit up the local market for cheap fruit and found it resembled the one I had visited in Chiang Mai except the smell was even more incapacitating and the prices higher. It was all I could do to retain conciousness as I came ever close to succumbing to the insidious reek.

As sunset approached, we hired some Cambodian motorbike dudes to take us to Angkor Wat to view the sunset from Phnom Bakheng, one of the massive temples situated atop a rather steep hill. This was my first glimpse at the magnificent “lost city” and it did not disappoint. I’ve been a few places in my life and seen some of the world’s reknowned landmarks but I’ve never even imagined anything that can come close to the grandeur of Angkor Wat and it’s surrounding temples. Simply put: go there. Go there and bask in it’s glory and mystery while hundreds of impoverished Khmer (Khmer is just another word for Cambodian) children scream at you from their various souvenier shops and drink stands. “Mista, you want cold drink? Mista, you want buy postcard? Mista you like handgun? I sell for you, cheap!!” 

I swear these little buggers made used car salesmen seem mellow and low-pressure by comparison. They actually tell you they’ll kill you if you don’t buy and some of them hit you! Physically hit, not hard mind you but the gesture is still there. If you succeed in getting them off topic and talking about other things they’re quite nice and impossibly cute but it does wear on your nerves after awhile. As much as I’d like to put every little Cambodian kid through school, I can’t possibly afford to and I’m not prepared to feel bad about it. 

Apres-sunset we naively hit up some of the Lonely Planet’s recommended hot spots for some night life action. I don’t know who the hell is writing this book but most of THE places to be (according to them) are full of either old, fat Germans or prostitutes. Sometimes I think the book should be renamed to The Lonely Planet’s Guide to Southeast Asia’s Corpulent Europeans and Fresh, Young Whores.

The next day we busted our asses to get up at 5 am to watch the glorious Angkor Wat sunrise only to be met with cloudy skies. Dejected, we passed out on the lawn until the 10 am, 40 degree heat rudely awoke us. We rented a motorbike to view the grounds as they’re unwalkable due to the sheer size of the monuments and the distance between them. It can be several kilometers just to walk around the outside of one of these things. Add to this the 40-45 degree midday heat and it’s just not negotiable.

The majority of people actually head back to the hostels to sleep during the hottest parts of the day but being pressed for time (and too cheap to get a two days pass) we sucked it up and endured the pain. I shan’t bore you by trying to describe the rest of the temples but if you want a bit of an idea, rent the abomidable “Tomb Raider” starring chesty, Billy-Bob-fucker Angelina Jolie as parts of it were filmed there. Just keep the volume off and the viewing periods brief as to prevent bad dialogue and cheesy action sequences from lowering your IQ.

One of the most rewarding experiences of Siem Reap and the whole trip was visiting the landmine museum, owned and operated by a man named Aki Ra. This guy was Clint Eastwood-cool and his story had more violence and drama than Godfathers one and two combined (not three, that was just an insult). Drafted into the Khmer Rouge at age 10, he set landmines throughout the jungle and fought the Vietnamese until he was captured by them and forced to fight alongside against his former allies. Later, he fought in the Cambodian army against both his former camps, made to set even more landmines in his homeland.

When the violence finally stopped and the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime came to an end he set about to atone for his past by dedicating himself to clearing the countryside of landmines (there are still an estimated two million mines planted in Cambodia.) He doesn’t use metal detectors or any other tools, he just has an inate 6th sense about where they are.

In his museum (really just his house) rest thousands of defused mines along with grenades, bombs, guns, bullets and various other weapons of war that he has rendered imoperable. Man, my biggest problem at age 10 was not getting to watch He-man if my room wasn’t clean and this kid’s running around with an AK-47 being forced to kill his countrymen. A remarkable man and an unforgettable experience.

Feeling a little tense after the museum, we decided it was a good time for a massage so we went to one of Siem Reap’s many blind , 3 dollar per hour massage parlours. Sadly, all the masseuses were male, nonetheless their magic hands worked away all my cares.

ME: Lower. Lower. Lower. TOO LOW!…lower. Ohhh, baby (Barry 
White-style).

The plan for the next day was a boat ride along the Tonle Sap lake/river to the capital of Pnomh Penh. I set my Cambodian-market-bought alarm (replacing the one I broke in Thailand) for a 5:30 start and passed into an Angkor Beer-induced coma. The next thing I remember is a heavy pounding on the door and a furious Cambodian yelling, “Ten past six!! Get up now!!” 

We opened the door to reveal a frothing-at-the-mouth Khmer thug who looked like he was about to go Gladiator on our asses. “I wait long time!” he exploded, “We go now!” This is a testament to the reliability of Cambodian electronics (what did I expect, really): my alarm clock said 5 o’clock. “Crikey” I Steve Irwined, “let’s move!” In the sum total of two minutes Damon and I packed everything we had inot our bags, grabbed wet laundry from the line and ran barefoot into the waiting minibus, all the while the driver is seething with rage.

“You see this?” I asked him, pointing at the alarm, “I bought it in YOUR country.” Nothing. Not a glimpse of comprehension. Just a glare of hatred and loathing for tourists and his post-high ranking Khmer Rouge military offical life as a minibus driver. Honestly I don’t know what he was so pissed about, we had at least five minutes to spare after we arrived at the boat. Wanker.

The boat ride was surprisingly uneventful and we were free for four hours to hang out on the deck and watch water Buffalo or locals fishing off of thier floating houses. Needing to stay out of the Tatooine-hot sun, I stayed below deck and watching Britney videos and Cambodian Karaoke. That’s right, karaoke.

I don’t know what the appeal is exactly but everywhere I’ve been, south-east asians love warbling along to the insufferable wailings of fruity looking Cambodian boy-singers. They’re invariably singing something along the lines of “I need you so much, I can’t live without you, why did you go, please come back”, etc, etc while a modestly clad white girl walks around some foreign city in slo-mo. I’ll tell you why she left, moron, it’s because you’re a whiny, dependant, needy fuck-wit and your singing makes Justin Timberlake sound like Pavoratti. But hey, to each their own.

Snap, I gotta fly to Vang Vieng but I’ll be back soon with some tales from the Killing Fields, the genocide museum, a deserted Cambodian island (with hotties!!) and the consequences of giving Johnny a loaded AK-47 automatic machine gun. It ain’t pretty, folks. Tam biet, 

-dj-