Saigon

We bought tickets to Siem Riep Cambodia from a guesthouse that had a great big sign advertising them for 30 US$ each. Every guesthouse travelagent etc had the same sort of sign, some larger than others so what could be wrong? We found out while we were crossing the river to get to our bus that the trip would take a day and a half. Naturally we didn't believe them, and naturally they were proved completely correct at about noon the next day when we arrived in Siem Reap. The border was a little dodgy--a singletrack dirt road, cratered and potholed leading through forest with little else than the landmines I imagined inhabiting it. We had to drive down a road, take a right to go stamp out of Laos, than drive back the same way and take another right down the dirt road. 15 minutes later when we arrived at the cambodian side we met another group of 4 Africans trying to leave Cambodia. All had overstayed their visa, and the border guards were trying to extract some enormous sum of money from them. They were swearing up and down it was misunderstanding and that there must be some other way of handling the situation. The border guards said 10%, which was still outrageous, and the men went and continued to sit in the shade near the station. Traci and I paid 25$ for an arranged visa because we were skeptical of getting a visa issued at small forest outpost border station. A mistake. The service we received was the man handing our passports and 21 of our dollars over to the border guard doing the paperwork. We jealously watched as our Dutch bus companions handed theirs over themselves. Traci found a blank page in her passport and got through, but my only pages we the one's dedicated to modifications and endorsements in the back. The man wouldn't issue me a visa--despite my vowing it was ok with my government to use those pages in just such a case, that it happens all the time--until he placed a 5$ call to his boss, at my expense. "otherwise, it my mistake." I argued and just gave up after seeing the Africans sitting in the shade and clarifying that the phone would ensure my visa. I got my visa, he got his money and I had to pay another 1$ to get my last remaining unblemished page stamped. You'd think the dolts would realize what they were doing.

Into Cambodia. The potholes and desultory state of the roads you hear is no exageration. Our driver took us through some village on a shortcut dirt road where we needed to dish out immodium to two of our bus mates after two seperate emergency stops, both times me wondering about landmines and the Aussies searching for a modest place to pinch a loaf. We stayed Kampong Cham, a city famous for it's barbecued tarantulas. Sadly, I couldn't find any to sample.

I can't sing the praises of the temples of Angkor loudly enough and description and pictures do nothing for it. I never fully grasped how immense the place was from pictures. After three long, long days of walking around a dozen temples in hot dust, we were ready to leave. The kids hustling the temples are cute and pernicious. Some of my favorite quotes:

kid: buy book for boyfriend
woman: i don't have a boyfriend
kid: becuase you don't buy my book. no money no honey

kid: where you from?
New Zealander: New Zealand
kid: you buy my book?
NZ: no
kid: you give me money?
NZ: no
kid New Zealand bad. hope you fall down temple!

One kid outside a temple near Srah Srang resevoir started his postcard pitch 10 for a dollar, the same ten for a dollar that 573 other kids are passionately trying to get you to buy, and was counting them. I was about to say sarcastically to Traci that wow the kid can count, when he launched into German, then French, the Spanish, then Dutch, and some others I didn't know. Traci asked "how about Korean?" "il, i, sam, sa, o, yuk . . ." was his immediate response. He told us his mother and tourists taught him and asked again to buy his cards. We relented, bought them and some are on they way to Korea and the States now. The random kids speak better English than our most advanced students in Korea do.

Phnom Penh is a city that grew on me despite the way people looked at us as if we were meat on a stick, despite the nastiness of the killing fields and S-21, the dust and noise and begging children trying to get you to buy anything--at the killing fields kids would ask "take a picture of us, 1,2,3 smile?" When you refused they would just start moaning like thirsty zombies in the desert "muhhneeeey . . . muhhneeey" and following you. We heard later that some of these kids will pose with you next to the tree the Khmer Rouge used to smash babies before tossing them into the pit, holding them over it. "They don't care, they just want a dollar," the guy who told us said. I liked it despite the constant attention of cyclo, moto and tuktuk drivers trying reel you in.

Drunk and wandering the streets of the water festival on the Tonple Sap river we sat down to get something to eat and of course some more beer. (This was shortly after my bug eating experience where my courage failed me after eating a cricket the size of my thumb. I did, though, take a deep look into its stirfried eyes for reassurance before biting its head off.) We ordered and three kids walked up to us and just pointed at their mouths. When the rice soup came and we gave it to the children, we immediately drew the ire of the vendors, but the kids ate it all, the little girl even chewing and cooling the food for the infant she carried on her hip.

We got visas, dodgy dodgy visas paperclipped into our passports for Vietnam due to the fact we had no pages left. And they worked! Without even a little bribe. The ride sucked, but who would expect anything less. We had to wait 3 hours to cross the Mekong by ferry where there was no bridge, seems there was an exodus scheduled for that day. But we're back where things are cheap and have two weeks to make it up the coast. Too little time.