Temple Tots

The kids that sell souvenirs gravitate to the tourists at the refreshment areas near the temples and are remarkably good at getting the potential buyers attention. As I had a cold drink and waited with my tuk tuk driver a cute young girl approached my table. She must have been about 6-7 years old and had a box of bracelets and postcards. Sizing me up as one that may prefer postcards she began her routine. “Hello, what’s your name?”, “Buy some postcards? Only one dollar”, “Look, there’s 10…”(as she flips through reach one stating which temple site it was of), “Where are you from?”
“Canada”, I said.
Then, in unison with another young girl now standing beside her, they quickly replied, “Canada, the capital is Ottawa, there is a population of over 32 million, you have a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a loony, a toonie (and so on)…These postcards will only cost you one looney or 4000 reil (Cambodian currency)!”.

As I sat there with a flabbergasted look on my face I could hear other kids at other tables:
“Where you from?”… “Chile”, “Chile, the capital of Chile is Santiago…”
“You are from Japan? Kon'nichiwa!”
Again, the little girl attempted to pull on the heartstrings… “Please buy post cards for my school.”

Huh?-Did?-What?-School? Kid, I thought to myself, you've pretty much beat most children I've met twice your age with your knowledge of geography, math, currency exchange, second (at least) language skills, demographics… and you did it as a hard sell, establishing a relationship, getting my name and where I am from so you could optimize the relationship between buyer and seller! The look on my face shifted from flabbergasted to WTF!

Now, this story aside, I don’t want anybody reading this to feel that these kids are at a level that is even close to what it should be. Their routines are to make money and they memorize this data with the same ability that kids back home know endless cartoon characters and their story-lines. The education system in Cambodia, from what I gathered from a group of Italians I met that were volunteering in the schools, does needs a ton of work.

Boat to Siem Reap and Temples of Angkor

I took a 6 hour boat journey up the Tonle Sap River (a tributary to the Mekong River) and across Tonle Sap Lake to get to Siem Reap. The river ride was great and allowed for a glimpse of river life of the local people. Siem Reap is a city that borders an area full of massive temples (some dating back over 1500 years) and stretching over tens of square kilometers.

As the boat docked near Siem Reap I was offered a shared tuk tuk ride by some American (Alaskan) flight attendants I had met on the boat. They were a bit envious when they discovered that through my friend of Alex, I had arranged a deal at a five star accommodation.

The temples were very impressive. My first day visiting temples included Banteay Srey, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Ta Promh, Angkor Thom. Day two had an early pre-dawn wakeup to witness the sunrise over Angkor Wat before exploring Preah Khan.

Some temples have been cleared of the surrounding forest to reveal their weathered ruins, others have been left with the trees and plant life slowly reclaiming the site. In many cases stones have fallen and a mess of bricks and stone remain leaving a labyrinth of pieces to navigate as you make your way through the site. A few decades ago a daunting task of cataloging fallen pieces of stone from various temples that were to be secured and placed back into their rightful location was halted when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took over and stopped the restoration and destroyed the catalogued documentation. So, after surviving invasions and the attempt of mother nature to reclaim the land and after looters, museums, and collectors attempted to acquire artifacts in the first third of the 20^th century and after a lunatic madman set on destroying the intellectual capital of the individuals restoring them in the late 1970s these temples have more of less survived… until that is the new danger takes hold. Masses of tourists trampling over the sites, bus loading areas and tourist shops, and all the garbage that they bring. Hopefully, as in other times the past, another balance will occur to preserve these places. As a person touring the area and in fact climbing all over the site, I was aware of the potential negative impact that I was contributing to and that the privilege could not sustained in the long run.

I decided on a mini-bus ride to return to Phnom Penh. The bus is very bumpy and unfortunately, after 5 hours sitting under the air-con I found that for the next couple days, that chill turned into a cold and worst of all, after over a month in a tropical climate, by body could not regulate it’s own temperature… cold and sweating in the heat of the night is a recipe for a few sleepless nights.