Crossing the Street

How to Cross the Street,

Reporting from Siem Reap, Cambodia. After a week here I am getting used to the difference between Cambodia and Thailand. Getting here was the start. To get from Bangkok to Siem Reap I took train, taxi, bus, tuk tuk, bus, taxi, and finally another tuk tuk. I joined forces with two other Americans at the border and ended up spending several days with them. We shared a room and visited the temples of Angkor together and then they moved, while I stayed to volunteer for a bit with the Trailblazer Foundation, which I will get to shortly.

Cambodia is noticeably poorer than Thailand, with many more people desperately vying for your dollars. Offerings for tuk tuk rides, useless trinkets, books, food, tours and massages engulf you in downtown Siem Reap and at the entrance to any temple. Traffic is even a little crazier than Thailand and it is common to see bikes and scooters going on the wrong side of the road. The most effective way to make a left turn onto a busy street while riding a bicycle is to cross to the left side before you get to the main road and then sneak onto the far left side of the road, going against traffic until the oncoming traffic clears and one can cross back to the right side of the road. It seems to be the common procedure and people look at you funny if you wait for traffic to clear as one would in first world countries. Following local traffic customs, we (one of the Portland, OR guys and myself, his friend’s stomach lost that battle against the previous night’s streetfood) biked out to Angkor for a beautiful sunrise over Angkor Wat. We then walked around there a bit and then headed to a quieter temple with trees growing on the crumbling walls. The next day we were full force again, and although we didn’t rise with the sun there was still plenty of time to take in the ancient sights. Our collective favorite was Bayon, a strange temple palace with over 30 towers all carved with a face on each of 4 sides. It was a maze of passageways, stairs, small rooms and courtyards. In the afternoon we sought out the shadier site of Ta Prom, which was intentionally not restored by the original French restoration team (now there is extensive restoration and conservation work to maintain the site in its “unrestored” state. The forest has filled in, creating the famous images of tree roots strangling carved walls and framing doorways. After drinking a coconut at one of the many food stalls outside Ta Prom, we were invited to see the home of our vendor; we had been joking around with her for a while. I took her younger cousin with us on the back of my bike and we headed for her village, just behind the temple grounds. It was so sweet to bike through a village and smiling faces, no one offered to sell us anything, they were now in full hospitality mode and were very sweet. The family chatted with us and showed off their fruit trees and well. The home was modest, but appeared to be quite sufficient and I suspect that many villages are in much worse condition. The tourism is definitely huge for the local economy and I suspect many of the villages around Angkor have developed due to the draw of western money.

Speaking of western money, here is the one of the local schemes. A young boy comes up to your dinner table, tries to sell you a book you don’t want. You decline and after a while of begging he tells you that he needs the money for his baby sister who he is trying to support. His mother died and he needs to buy her formula, powdered milk he calls it. If he goes a day without food it’s okay, but his sister needs powdered milk today. So you feel sorry and you also feel better about buying him something that he really needs instead of buying his stupid book that you’re just going to throw away. So he takes you to the store and points at a jug of formula. You ask the storeowner how much it costs and he says $12.-, so you keep asking until you find the cheapest formula they have for $5.-. He takes it and thanks you kindly and then returns it to the store as soon as you leave to get the money back. This happened to someone I met and then yesterday I saw it happen again to someone else.

After visiting the Temples I turned to the volunteering opportunity that another traveler I met in Chiang Mai told me about. The Trailblazer Foundation works with rural villages improve public health and education. They install wells and supply water filters and have built a few schools, and donated many mosquito nets and flip flops. They also have an agriculture department to test seeds, EM, and mushroom growing and promote organic farming and gardening methods. I have been helping to fill plastic bags with a sawdust mixture, steaming them and then adding spores. The bags are placed in the mushroom hut and eventually start producing impressive amounts of mushrooms. I am working primarily with a Khmer woman named Voleak, but the heads of the foundation are American. I have been really enjoying It so far, just based on the relaxed yet productive approach. I hope to stay here for at least another week, we’ll see what actually happens.