The temples of Angkor

The days cycling around the ancient temples of Angkor didn’t really help the sweaty fungal infection that had started to spread across my inner thigh; being the hero that I am though I applied some cream and persisted to pedal along through the heat. Angkor Wat was undergoing renovations so the iconic structure was blighted and slightly un-photogenic due to scaffolding and too many fat Americans in sun-hats asking me to “please get out of their shot.”

“Are you fucking serious….this is Asia’s premier tourist attraction and you want all your photos not to contain any other tourists….good luck with that one you fuckers,” I think as I casually stand in shot and stare blankly into the lush jungle surrounding Angkor Wat.

“Seriously,” one of the fat Americans shouts from the bottom of the stairs. Her arse is big enough for her camera and the massive lens attached to be comfortably shoved up it but I resist the temptation and stroll down the stairs as a sea of eager fat Americans stand, cameras in hand,waiting for that money shot without little old me in it. As soon as I’m out of said shot some more tourists appear at the top of the stairs and they begin to bitch all over again.”Hey guy, can you, like,

Angkor Wat

get out of my shot?” ……….Cunts!

I jump on my bike and try to find somewhere a bit more remote…….and fail. These ancient temples are so swamped in tourists that today I do not feel like Indiana Jones, Tomb raider or even that slightly adventurous dog out of that shit old TV series. I have to give in and join the hordes of snap happy westerners as I cycle through the jungle from temple to temple, avoiding the strategically situated stalls and the ubiquitous shouts of, “Hey, you buy coconut?” “You wan food friend?” “Hey friend, you like buy book?” As I park my cycle and wander up the well-worn path to my sixth temple I notice the sixth musical band made up from former landmine victims, who learnt to love music, sitting by the path hawking their CD’s at tourists. The music is OK but these guys are no Creedence so I bow my head and ignore them as  I walk on by.

Bitching aside these temples are amazing and it’s understandable that so many people flock here each year. As I only have one day here (I couldn’t afford the $60 three day ticket) I furiously cycle from temple to temple, each one becoming a little more deserted and more to my taste. “I wish I had longer to explore here,” I think as I sip a coconut and get hassled by the venders daughter to buy a bracelet. “C’mon, I bought a coconut.”

One of the giant stone faces at Banyon

“No, you buy bracelet.”

“I don’t want a bracelet.

“Book.”

“Go away.”

“Magnet.” I suppose I’ll have to buy some souvenirs at some point. We settle for three fridge magnets for a dollar and I jump back on my bike to try to nail the remainder of the temples before sunset.

I’m fucking knackered by the time I get back to Siem Riep. A pupil from a local school cycles back with me and we shoot the shit until I arrive at my hotel. I have some good photo’s but think my next epic adventure is going to be way off the touristy/lonely planet radar. I contemplate this as I eat Loc Lak and sip Angkor beer in one of Siem Rieps many restaurants or bars or somewhere.

As I write this back in Phnom Penh, in a bar next to the Mekong river, a local kid comes up and tries to sell me a book. A kindly tourist has drawn some pretty stars on his face in pen followed by the words “Fuck You.” He is oblivious. It makes me laugh and a bit of beer comes out of my nose.

Doorway with some tree-type shit growing forth from it's very bones....AAAAEEEEEIIIII!!!

kampot

Imminent employment loomed like a dark cloud over my quickly dissipating free time. Nine months off work had left me feeling a little lazy.

What to do?

To escape from the horrors of reality for a little longer Rach and I decided to fit in one last mini trip in the form of a

Kampot riverside

weekend away to Kampot.

Five painless hours later we found ourselves stationed in a humble guesthouse with hammocks and a nice wooden restaurant on stilts (a nice spot from which to watch the tropical thunderstorm which hit us a couple of hours after arrival). A quick wander around the riverside town revealed some old colonial French buildings, most of which seem abandoned and were moulding and crumbling away. Dotted around the town, which sort of feels a little bit like a forgotten, once loved, town in the wild west, are spotless coffee shops selling carrot cakes and cheap filter coffee.

In Kampot there seems to be little else to do but laze, sit around, be lazy, talk shit, stare into space, eat cup cakes……..

An energetic bike ride to a quaint waterfall spot the following day yielded little waterfall action (the river being low because it’s dry season), but we did find a rather idyllic little bank to wile away the day by the side of the river. Rural Cambodia displayed itself in all it’s simple glory; basic wooden houses on stilts, bananas growing fresh in people’s back yards, chickens and roosters wandering around by the roadside, shoeless children laughing and joking in the red soil whilst their kind eyed parents relax from the baking sun under halve-collapsed wooden shelters (as well as the odd local playing on his i-phone). From the road lush greenery abounded in all directions, with the odd moss-green hill jutting high up into the skyline.

Time flew past no matter how much I attempted to drag the diminishing hours out. I read slowly and thoughtfully, started annoying philosophical discussions with Rachael and went to bed really late. Nothing worked and before I knew it I was back in Phnom Penh, nervously waiting for the six O’clock start the following morning, where I would be required to put on my teaching hat and blag my way through FIVE forty-five minute to an hour and a half long English classes….

Reality sucks!

local on iphone

Time to come home :(

Cambodia independence monument

I went back to my tiny box-room, disheartened after another day of fruitless job hunting. My one shirt was soaked in sweat after manically tramping around in the 35 degree heat all day, going from school to school. Over one month in the city and not a single offer of work. The recent floods in Thailand (and the recession in Europe) caused a lot of teachers to head over to their less developed neighbour, Cambodia,  looking for work . There was once a time when all you needed was a basic grasp of the English language and whitish skin and, no matter how much of a clown you were, you’d waltz into a high paid teaching job. I was beginning to question if I’d made the right decision coming here.

“Tuk-Tuk?”

Phnom Penhs charm is at first not so noticeable. It is a strange city full of ex-pat rejects and seedy looking old perverts here for the cheap women and readily available, over the counter Valium prescriptions. The roads are chock-a-block full of insane ‘moto’ drivers who will happily run you over, offer a quick apology and proceed to floor it through a red light. It’s a city where people can get shot in the arse for kicking a rich young Khmers souped-up 4×4 (this actually happened to someone the other night who was told if he didn’t leave the city within 48 hours he would be killed); where on every corner five Tuk-Tuk drivers will all ask in unison “where you go?” “you wan’ Tuk-Tuk?” If you head down the local shopping mall you will find limbless beggars sitting outside whilst rich couples eat $5 ice cream sundaes in air-conditioned café’s.

I guess if you spend enough time anywhere it starts to feel like home, and Phnom Penh did after a while. The local market became a sanctuary where I would escape the hassle and baking heat to scran down with the locals on cheap spring rolls and offal soup. As my funds were about done in I got myself into a rather pathetic routine of sitting in my room watching wanky American reality TV whilst tucking into my meagre fare of gherkins and crusty bread. I began to resent the frivolous backpackers who would splash their dollars around, unaware that I could eat for a day on what they were spending on smoothies….bastards.

I would wake and wander the streets of Phnom Penh. I would read poetry on the banks of the Mekong river whilst being

Child beggar collecting rubbish by the river

hassled by child beggars. I would drink unlimited black coffee in the ‘all-you-can eat-breakfast-buffet’ and fill my bag full of Bananas to eat for my tea later on. I would hand out CV after CV to schools in a futile, last-ditch, attempt at continuing my travels.

Just when I’d resigned myself to life on the dole in Boro a glimmer of hope presented itself. The school in town widely regarded as the equal opportunity institution (in the sense that it will equally employ any old paedophile or glue sniffer) gave me a call. I had an interview the following Monday. The ‘director general’ (as he liked to call himself) sat behind his huge desk in military attire and insisted in being called ‘your excellency’ throughout the interview. The prick offered me the job though. One week later my friend Rachael put her Sri Lanka plans on hold and flew over to join me after hearing my overly excitable plans for life together in the city. Little was she to know that I would not even turn up for work the first day after deciding the school was shite and more than a little bit Orwellian (with cameras and microphones in the classrooms monitoring my every move and the required purchase of a different coloured shirt for everyday of the week….not to mention that I would have to pay $7 a piece for my own textbooks).

Now there were two of us.

The stuffy room we stay in has regular power cuts and we are woken up at 6.30 every morning by some drill happy pack of fuckers on a nearby building site. The hotel dog shits outside of our door most days. Veggie Rachael doesn’t quite appreciate the pieces of lung and brain that she keeps finding floating in her vegetable soup.

My $4 a night box room

Over one month later we are both depressed, out of cash and I’m just about to book a flight home. I don’t want to go home but as we have both heard nothing else on the job front I see little other option. I sit looking at cheap Air-Asia flights and Rachael tells me to wait just one more day before I book anything……… Just one more day.

The next morning we are woke up by the phone ringing. On the other end is a lady offering us both an interview for two full-time English teacher positions in the same school. Sounds a bit like fate huh?

Weird!

We get the job.

‘Holiday in Cambodia’

 

And so it is Christmas (or boxing day at least), and I sit on the soft sandy beach of Sihanoukville, on the Cambodian coast, watching the crystal blue waters lap up against my feet, feeling, surprisingly, a little sorry for myself. I can’t blame the Khmers for turning this picturesque coast into a cash cow; milking the idyllic spot for as many dollars as it’s worth. Endless rows of obvious cheap bar after bar (with the same old repetitive drivel blasting out of every speaker), prostitutes smiling coquettishly at every drunken white face and overly priced hotels ( I wasn’t impressed with my Buddhist host hiking the price up for Christmas…..fuckers). The limbless beggars (Cambodia is the landmine capital of the world) are everywhere, warm smiles attempting to melt the stony/skinflint backpackers hearts, and failing miserably it seems.

The Khmers have had a tough time of it. In the seventies the ruling Khmer rouge, led by the infamous Pol Pot, killed in cold blood a third of the population as he put into play his masterplan for a communist utopia of farm workers. Intellectuals were the first to bite the bullet, literally, whilst babies had the pleasure of having their tiny skulls bashed in against trees to save ammunition. So I say again, I don’t blame the impoverished Khmers for making a quick buck when they can, but I resent spending the festive season surrounded by western meat-heads with little in their heads, except maybe Mekong whiskey; or fat, balding men with faded tattoos, beer bellies and dubiously aged wenches in hot pants hanging on their lecherous arms. After all the soul and beauty of India and Nepal this seedy destination does little for my spirit. My prison cell of a room is like an oven due to the fact the powers been off for two days and the air-con is, thus, disabled.

Christmas day I’ve had enough and board a bus to Phnom Penh (the Cambodian capital). If I don’t find a job here, in this hotbed of ex-pat debauchery, my options don’t look good. I must say though that the ‘if you cant beat them join them’ approach is looking grim.

Shit……I’ll think of something

Merry Christmas!