Asian Walkabout

“I don’t want to buy your book.”
“But you told me you would! You made me take out all my books and show you, and now you say you can’t buy it.”
“I told you, I don’t have enough cash on me. My debit card is in my hotel room, and I have to go to an ATM from there to get cash. If you’ll wait for me…”

He didn’t get it. “You ruin my business for the night by not buying! This is very bad for me, you know?”
“I’m sorry, it was my mistake.”
“Buy the book! You say you want to buy the book, so buy it!”
“Please go away.”
“No.”

Thus ended my second serious argument with a 10-year-old street hawker in two days. The first one offered a contest of tic-tac-toe on a tiny piece of scrap paper. If I won, I got a free postcard. If I lost, I had to buy a postcard.

I lost. And he failed to mention that it wasn’t a single postcard at stake, but an entire $4 pack of them.

I refused the pack. He accused me of cheating him. I tried to push him away, all 90 pounds of him. He planted his feet and proclaimed “It’s my country!” His angry glares only stopped when a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled taxi) driver pulled him aside and said something to calm him down.

Four days later, a boy of similar age, built like a string bean, would try to push me in the bushes and molest me. He failed miserably, but it didn’t exactly sooth my nerves.

Hello, Cambodia.

Flat as a Texas highway, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh offer little in the way of natural scenery, but lots of heart. A bright red, gushing kind of heart. Between 1975-1979, the ultracommunist Khmer Rouge made the brilliant calculation that murdering huge numbers of bourgeoisie would be the fastest road to liberating peasants. So leader Pol Pot and his henchmen rounded up every intellectual, doctor, lawyer, writer, artist, and other “New Person” they could find, arrested them and sent them to work camps. They were worked to the point of exhaustion, then carted off to specially designed killing fields to be “liquidated.”

The Khmer Rouge killed more an estimated 1.7 people between 1975-79. That’s 1,550 people a day.

Cambodia was practically catapulted back into the Stone Age. Fortunately, neighboring Vietnam stopped the regime before it continued to cannibalize its own citizens. These days, all that’s left of the killing fields are several memorials and a haunting pagoda containing a 20-foot high tower of human skulls.

The genocide, new enough to be raw, old enough to be overgrown by crabgrass and banana trees, still lingers on the faces of the Cambodian, or Khmer, people. Many carry visible psychic scars in their expressions, a sad cast about the eyes despite their delightfully wicked humor and unquenchable optimism.

So you have this country full of vulnerable, sad, laughing, haunted, living, smiling people who openly carry their moods on their faces. Cambodia is so human, and that makes it endearing despite its many tragedies.

otos/126264/Angkor122.jpg thumb=http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/126264/thumb_Angkor122.jpg]Then, there are the monuments. The most famous, Angkor Wat, looms majestically inside a 15-foot wide moat, its five crumbling towers marking the edges of the biggest religious building on the planet.

But the great monument’s physical beauty pales in comparison to the collection of temples around it. From the 267 meditating faces carved into the Bayon, the Angkor God-King’s temple, to Ta Prohm, a Tomb Raider-like ruin where massive tree roots hug piles of ancient stone, it is the surrounding temples that make the magic.

Little is known about the site, which houses more than twenty mysterious temples. The stunning bas-reliefs of elephants, devas, and, of course, peacefully meditating faces make the imagination run wild.

We spent around 5 days exploring the beauty, mystery, and tragedy that is Cambodia. It was a roller-coaster experience that intermittently stunned, awed, sickened, and soothed the senses. We also provided the fun-poking Khmers with a few good laughs along the way. I have no idea why—the only spoke Khmer—but come to think of it, two grimy backpackers with Buddha necklaces and fake designer sunglasses are pretty entertaining.

Even to our tired, worse-for-the-wear selves.

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