Cambodia.

These pictures are a selection from Siem Reap. The notes I've added aren't about Siem Reap, exactly, since we're now in Phnom Penh. I will post more pictures and notes as I am able. The pictures are of the Apsara dancing (only seen in Siem Reap) and of the three of us in one of a dozen temples we visited in Siem Reap. Amazing temples. Amazing. Well worth a trip around the world to see!



I can't describe Cambodia adequately. Regular power outages occur in the capital city, phnom penh, yet shopping here would lead you to believe that the locals have lots of money to spend (in relative terms to the rural Cambodians). We spent five nights in Siem Reap touring the temples and staying in a lovely guest house there with a pool and a great restaurant. We spread our $1 US bills to plenty of children outside of each temple and in exchange we have cheap bracelets, scarves and dozens of empty water bottles. It's here that we have found ourselves most reflective about what it must really be like to be a citizen of the third world.

I, personally, have discovered stories to tell that will boost my fiction output for years to come. The people here are poor and generous in spirit or poor and greedy in spirit- looking to scam the barangs (foreigners). Fortunately we have met more of the former and few in the latter category and we are able (what a departure from my post in Thailand about being taken!) to let go the ill feelings of being taken advantage of; we've accepted that our skin color and our ability to travel affords us priviledges that will mean we pay more.

Okay...I'm still nervous every time we change locations. Tomorrow we travel by speed boat (3 hours) to Chau Doc. We don't know what we'll do with our luggage, we don't have any vietnamese dong (we tried to get some here and failed) and we are hopeful that the hotel we booked will still have rooms for us when we arrive. The worst part about arriving at a new place is negotiating the transport, you are swarmed by tuk-tuk drivers and you never know who you're going to get or how it will turn out. So far we've had pretty good luck, although yesterday the driver who found us at the bus station attempted to get us to another hotel first by asking if we'd been there before (the implication was that it was bad or out of business) and then asking if they knew we were coming (the implication that if we didn't have a reservation we'd be out of luck) and then, even after we arrived and I said repeatedly that we had a reservation, the driver told Dennis and then me that the hotel was full. "I know," I said. "And we are some of the people who are filling the rooms!" I paid him $3 which I negotiated from the start when he said he wanted $4 and then as we were walking away, he tried to get Dennis to give him another $1. And, he overcharged us anyway! We are still laughing about this, but we wonder how many tourists he's scammed along the way.