Floating VIllage at Sunset

(written 16/08/09, posted 03/10/09)


We wake late and leave a message for W to pick us up even later. L and I don't feel quite up to another round of sight-seeing just yet and it's pretty exhausting in the heat. I've been drinking what feels like about 5 litres of water a day and I feel like I'm addicted to salty foods.

We splash out $5 to use the local hotel swimming pool. All I can do is swim, read and try to recuperate. I'm still feeling a bit ropey. We're not even drinking or eating that much each evening and being out in town can be a bit depressing. Everything is cheap and the pubs and restaurants vie for business by undercutting each other. The kids swarm the streets begging and the result is a horrible clash of poverty and tourists treating themselves. I've taken to carrying around little bags of food like nuts and dried fruit to give the kids. L and I have a rule of no cash as it encourages begging. This is especially true of kids in the daytime who we suspect are kept away from school by their parents so they can go and earn money. I feel pretty naive and I'm sure we could do more but I just don't know how.


W announces it's time to go to the floating village and to see the sunset on the lake. It seems like a nice thing to do too after the madness of the earlier. We were at the temple where one of the Tomb Raider films had been shot and all we could here was people running around shouting 'Lara Croft! Lara Croft!'

As W drives us away from the temple complexes, we notice how the shacks and shops on the roadside get poorer. Pulling up at the harbour we get offered $15 each for a boat out to the village. It wasn't in our contract. We cough up anyway and get ushered onto a boat. What comes next is an astounding level of poverty. People live on boats, some with no power. A father pulls alongside and a shivering toddler jumps on to sell us cans of drink. There is a floating church, a school, villager's houses, shops and ...a crocodile farm. We get accosted into buying pens for the school and we are encouraged to visit the school to hand over the pens. The children are clearly used to this but look on bored. It all feels manufactured to try and get tourists in and neither of us want to be here, peering at people's lives where the average annual income is $500. They don't need tourism here, they need aid.

L and I get in the tuk-tuk depressed and W doesn't understand why. He spends the whole journey trying to cheer us up. We decide tomorrow is going to be a productive day and we're going to do positive stuff. That's if I can actually stand up tomorrow.

Temple-tastic

(written on 14/08/09, posted 03/10/09)

Yes, yes, it's touristy but who cares? L and I have come to Siem Reap and we're going to spend the next three days doing the temple circuits at Angkor Wat. The tuk-tuk driver we agreed with the hotel picks up us at 10am. We really didn't want to do a sunrise after travelling all day yesterday.

Wandi introduces himself and says most English speakers call him Windy as they can't say his name. Nice. He's a brilliant laugh and gives us loads of tips. We agree with him that we'll start with the Rolous as they are the oldest temples dating from the late 9th Century.

We then head to the next group which were built after the Rolous group temples. Each temple has it's own characteristics and different features. After we've done about 6, I head into a small Buddhist temple, a modern one built alongside the older temples. L waits outside as she's already been round Thailand and states she is templed out. By the time I've come out, she has agreed with 4 people waiting outside that we'll visit their orphanage on Monday after our 3 days of temple-seeing. It seems like a good thing to do and we spend most of our tuk-tuk journeys for the rest of the day discussing poverty and eco-tourism. We admit we only have a faint idea of what we should do as responsible travellers and it seems more important in Cambodia than anywhere either of us have been so far. We agree we'll decide on things to take up with us on Monday.

As we reach each temple on the circuit, it seems to get hotter and busier. As it got nearer to sunset Wandi whisked us off to near Angkor Wat. We were pretty early but as we had to climb up the hill behind Angkor and scramble up some steep steps to get a spot it seems like a good idea. Arriving at 5.30pm we realised we had some time to go so sat down and relaxed. An hour later just as the sky was started to redden tourists started to clamber up the temple steps from all sides. People were jostling for a space to sit, out came the tripods, umbrellas used for parasols were bashing into each other and there was the unmistakable beep-beep of the mobile phones of humanity. L and I could only watch in horror. The 45 minute display of the changing colours of the end of a day was accompanied by a soundtrack of camera shutter clicks and ringtones.

No finding the silence within possible on this temple, sorry. Tourism had well and truly arrived in Cambodia.