Angkor, Dutch Girls, Etc.

Originally, I had allotted three days at the end of my trip to explore the temples at Angkor.  This plan changed the morning Anthony and I were leaving Sihanoukville.  I woke up to the most beautiful, breezy day and went for one last dip in the ocean.  I suggested that we stay another night, and that the temples will be there for a while, so we stayed.  That evening in Sihanoukville turned out to be one of the most international, cultural evenings I have ever had.  We stayed in this one bar all night that is almost exclusively travelers, and met people from all over the world.  We started off shooting pool with this Irish guy and a Croatian.  They had been smoking opium for a week and popping valiums all day, so we beat them in pool, and then the Croatian kept mumbling “fuck America.”  Then we got destroyed by this little Vietnamese girl who was playing with this French girl.  I don’t know what it is but Asians can shoot some pool.  We talked to these Swiss girls for while, and tried to run some game but failed miserably and ended up sitting with these French-Canadian guys.  One of these guys was telling me about the merengue instructor in Hue, Vietnam that he fell in love with when Paul, the doped-up Irish guy turned back up.  We ended up babysitting the guy from Galway for the rest of the night, which was fine.  You can give an Irish guy a beer and just put them in a corner, and they usually don’t stray to far.  Sometimes the Cambodian hookers would pay him a little too much attention, but I just told them that he didn’t have any more money and they took off.  I played some cards with some Israeli guys for a while who had just gotten out of the army.  They taught me a game called Yanev, which was like Uno with regular cards.  I talked to this old German guy for a while about his travels in India, but I thought he was gay so I didn’t sit there too long.  The night went on and on like this, everyboby I met was from some other corner of the world and had been somewhere really interesting.  Oh yeah and they were all drunk or on drugs.  At least they were interesting.  We ended the night in this other bar called Utopia where Anthony was trying his damnedest with these two British girls.  I ran into the French-Canadians again and played pool with them and this Cambodian Hooker.  Don’t play Cambodian hookers for money, I think they spend all they’re free time shooting pool.  It was funny to watch the evening progress, watching all the families go home after dinner, the backpackers coming out around ten and filling the bar, and then at midnight, the working girls show up.  If you didn’t know any better, you’d think “wow, there are a lot of pretty Cambodian girls here.”  But look a little closer and it gets ugly fast.  We left there the next day.  Sihanoukville has some of the nicest, isolated beaches I’ve seen, and some of the dirtiest places. 

We got on the bikes back to Kampot the next day, still absorbing the crazy night before.  The rides to me are the best part, you get covered and dust and you can smell all the crazy smells a lot better than looking out the window of a bus.  We stopped in a couple villages and took some pictures and played with the kids, made it back to Kampot, turned in the bikes, and went for dinner.  We had dinner with these Canadian girls, one of which was living in Phnom Penh.  Dinner was fun, mostly because of my expertise in making fun of Canadians.  It was some sort of Cambodian holiday and we had a good view of all the festivities from our balcony on the traffic circle.  We had a long day on two buses the next day to Siem Reap, so we turned in early.

The first bus was not to exciting, but on the second bus we met all sorts of people.  Here we are sitting on this bus waiting for it to leave when about 15 gorgeous girls get on.  So the two of us, 5 or 6 Cambodians, and a bunch of hot blonds with a few brunets peppered in all on a bus for four hours.  They ended up being with some mission group from Scandinavia headed to Siem Reap to volunteer in an orphanage.  It was better entertainment than the usual karaoke they play on the buses.  We also met these two Dutch girls that had just come from Laos and teamed up with them to find a guesthouse in Siem Reap.  We found a place and made plans to split a tuk-tuk with them to go to the temples the next day.  Anthony and I went out for some food and ended up talking to these girls for a while.  They were both really funny, one from Maine and the other from Ireland.  I could have listened to the Irish girl talk all day, her accent was so sweet I think I fell in love with her.  We parted ways and ambled around town for a while.  Siem Reap is far more touristy than the other places I’ve been.

The next day we headed out with our Dutch dates to see the mighty temples of Angkor.  These temples are amazing, awe-inspiring, huge, ancient wondrous sights.  You know what would make them better?  If there weren’t mobs of Japanese tourists everywhere lining up for photo ops, beggars everywhere, and little kids aggressively selling crap around every corner.  I’d go back to Angkor to see some of the far away temples that are less traveled, or if I got a private tour, but trying to appreciate ancient ruins and architecture is impossible in that circus.  It was a lot of fun with Anthony and the Dutch girls, but one day was enough.  There is no need to spend three days or a week doing nothing but extreme templing.  We ended up having dinner and going out later with the Dutch girls, I even danced.  A very long, successful day in Cambodia.  Tomorrow, I head back to Bangkok.  I’m not looking forward to the trip as I have to go back through Poipet, the dirtiest part of a very dirty country, but it’ll be good to make it back into Thailand.  I’ll get back and meet up with Jon Conrad for another hookah in Little Lebanon, then I’m off to the airport to get Scott.  I imagine I’ll have a hard time keeping up with Scott.  But it’ll be an adventure, and I’ll just let him spin off like the Tasmanian devil on his own when he wears me out.  Another Journey comes to a close and another one begins.  I could see how this cycle could get addictive.  I wonder how much I could get for everything in my storage unit?

~ by deanius on January 8, 2008.