On Saturday, 28 June, the group of us debated over what to do. Some, including myself wanted to check out the lake, and others were going to follow some of the Cambodian students’ lead. The Cambodians had a vague plan about going to a mountain and sneaking up after hours to see the temple and watch the sunset. This seemed entirely shady. However, peer pressure gave way and the Cambodians seemed trustworthy enough, so off we went. We set off on a grand caravan of tuk-tuks—five in all, out of Siem Reap, out to where the pavement ended, out to where the hotels gave way to humble shacks with banana leaf roofs and resting on twenty-foot high stilts. The land was shockingly flat, like Kansas but with palm trees and water buffalo. Nevertheless, rising from the fields, sat an imposing mountain (in Pittsburgh it’d merely be a hill, but with nothing surrounding it, it undoubtedly earned the title phnom [pnum]. This was Phnom Kram [kʰɾɑ:m]. Upon lay a temple, which we had to wait until 17:30 to see lest we wished to pay $20 each. (Having native-speaking Khmer with us helped infinitely with the bargaining with officials. However, we reached the temple entrance at 13:30, where we planned to sit and talk for two hours. Yet, officials, having been told by others that we were just camped out there came up. The bargaining began again and at 17:00 we were admitted entrance for the bargain rate of 2000 riel [rill] (or $.50) The temple, dare I say, was a temple. Nothing overwhelming, but ruins laid nearby. We explored and climbed and snapped photographs; just like tourists, yet no one else, save the monks, were around. We had the place to ourselves, and the Cambodians to be our personal guides. We climbed down the rock-face of the opposite side we came and viewed the waters that had been used by the villagers below for over two thousand years. A deep connection to the past underlies much of the Khmers lives, as despite invasion, despite colonialism, despite even auto-genocide, their lives progress in cycle of the rising and falling riverbed and the cultivation of rice very similarly to the way they had twenty centuries ago. We sat awkwardly among the cliff near-meditating on the rising clamor of the village. On the tuk-tuk ride back, the blurred images of the faces in hut doorways soaked into me. The little children on shoulders and clinging to the skirts of their mothers or older sisters, the vibrant colors of the women’s skirts, the old swinging steadily in hammocks...I feel in love. The children especially have a way of grabbing at your every heart palpitation. As you walk down the road or past a hut, a chorus of gleeful “Hello!” follows you. Grant them with a smile and a response and they will convulse with childish laughter. The landscape and children’s laughter tempt me to romanticize the awe of this country and to believe that all is well in this paradise. Other groups of children reveal the reality. Our Khmer friends informed us we must try real, authentic Khmer food-not what the serve in tourist restaurant. So over a dozen of us packed around a table in place a bit more removed from town. They served us family style and we order food we hadn’t the foggiest idea of. Out came fish soup where the entirety of the fish soaked in the lemongrass broth. The chicken dishes contained more entrails and bone than the white meat us Americans are so accustomed to. Pumpkin soup, bamboo shoot soup, prawns and squid and frog all together. And as we feasted upon the exotic cuisine, the children watched. They crawled underneath the table and climbed the barrier wall to watch us eat. Then came the begging. They clung to our chairs and our sleeves as the village children had done to their mothers. They wanted money, they wanted our water, and they wanted our food. Finally, the manager chased them away, but not before we snuck them some leftovers in plastic bags. Then we watched them, crouching by the riverside, hungrily scooping up the food with their fingers.
When I was wandering around he city of Siem Reap, straying out to the peripheries of the tourist sections, the contrast of Cambodia’s struggles becomes shockingly clear. A brand new, sparking hotel, adorned with replicas of temples and an enormous fountain, lay behind a ten-foot tall fence. In either side, a corrugated tin-roofed hut teeters on stork-like thin legs; a family of at least five crammed into the one room hut. Hotels and condos go up literally over night. One morning it’s just a pile of bricks and cement bags, the next a cinder block frame is completely in place and scaffolding, consisting of the same thin wood poles that hold up huts. The following day, it is painted windows are already in and work on the facade has commenced. After merely four or five days, the building is finished. This type of development has consumed Siem Reap for the past ten years. The city survives catering to tourists, who can have a fancy French diner for twenty dollars a plate at the Garden Cafe, while less than a kilometer away children go hungry. The begging children, the moto-bikes filled with families, the lavish accommodations for any who can afford them all create this bizarre dynamic, where on one hand I feel guilty to not finish my meal or waste any food and on the other have already become jaded to the children merchants who bombard you with offers demanding you buy their postcards, scarves, and photo-copied books. Within two days of being in the country, I’ve already mastered “Tey Ahkun” (no, thank you) to ward off the pestering tuk-tuk drivers and children. At the one temple, they swarm like locusts as soon as you get off the bus and follow you as far as the guards will allow them. Out of our entourage of eager vendors emerges one a head shorter than the rest. She looks about two and says she is five. “Buy fan, lady, one for one dollar. Buy fan. Pretty fan for pretty lady. English, lady? François, Madame? Un do tua...” she trails off in the same schpeil, this time in French. She is breaking my heart; I still won’t buy the fan. All of the children can count to ten in French, Khmer and English. They can ask, “How are you?” and tell you that you are very pretty. They bargain well. 3 bracelets for a dollar, 5 bracelets for a dollar, 7, no 8, no 10 bracelets. They pronunciation is impeccable and if you try to speak a little Khmer to them, they respond “I can’t understand” On little boy proceeded to tell me that DC was the capital of the US and New York city is very large but Albany is the capital of New York state. For the most part the phrases are stock. They learned them not in school but from whomever is forcing them to sell these trinkets.
The afternoon of my day from hell (sickness, lost ticket, dead batteries, sitting on a bus) we went to the man-made lake, the West Baray, and as usual the little girls ambushed us chanting something we couldn’t quite understand. One of the students, Sarim, speaks Khmer and so she asks the girls what they are saying. “Chewlu-o-sahl, three for one dollar” The little girl looks scared and confused, she repeats “Chewlu-o-sahl” and holds up the bracelets in her hand. After a few more repetitions, we finally decipher “Jewelry for sale, three for one dollar” Meanwhile a storm swept in across the lake. Had my camera not been dead, I could have taken some amazing pictures. I let the wind and rain wash away my ill feeling from the day. The group huddled beneath a tree and awning as we waited for the storm to pass so we could go out on the lake; the little girls stayed with us, incessantly repeating their singsong sales pitch. We convinced the little girls to set aside the baskets for just a few minutes, while we tempted them to play “the hokey-pokey” and “head, shoulders, knees and toes” Finally, we were able to entice them into a hand-slapping game. There ten foreign students and five little Cambodian girls played this game. They laughed and jumped and were for at least ten minutes just children. When the rain stopped and our boats came, the little ones instantaneously switched back into merchant-mode. It was crushing to a lot of us. Yet, even if only for a minutes, they got to be carefree kids.
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