Um... Like, wow.Week 2, Cambodia
BUT NOW: it´s getting past that sunset-y time of day when the shops start to close and the bars start to open, so no guarantees on whether I´ll get through all this...
Edie and I are, at this very moment, living it up on the narrow sunny beaches of Sihanoukville, on the coast of Cambodia. We´ve rented out a motorbike (for the grand sum of four dollars per day) and spend our days and nights wandering like smiling zombies from beach bar to beach bar, downing beer and curries and wading in water that´s as clear and warm as a bath.
So: Siem Reap. We hit Siem Reap last Friday, bunkered down in the bar district and waited for the heat to pass while we knocked back tequila sunrises and white russians. It didn´t pass. By Sunday we decided we´d better brave the Angkor Wat temples anyway, though in the end it became something of a disaster...
Okay, so the night before we tackled the temples we decided that we´d try one of the marijuana-laced ¨happy pizzas¨ that are available in every seedy district of every town in Cambodia - because, hey, when in Rome... - but when it arrived, we prodded it and sniffed it and nibbled it and eventually convinced ourselves that we must´ve ordered it wrong, that we´d gotten just a normal pizza. So, of course, being a disgusting pig, I stuffed my face with it.
As it turns out, we were right. We didn´t have a ¨happy pizza¨. I must´ve stuttered because instead we got a ¨happy special pizza¨, a pizza stuffed to the gills with magic mushrooms that left us both trapped and crazy in our airy little room at the guesthouse, convinced the walls were going to eat us. We giggled and screamed and talked shit all night, but when Edie dropped out of the race at dawn I was still thundering on, and spent the day at the temples as vague as a lobotomy patient, meandering brainlessly around the jungle and forgetting everything that was said to me within seconds of it being said. Being out of my head in a wilderness full of ancient temples and monkeys and elephants and wild boars, it felt like the entire country was being eaten by the jungle. I wasn´t entirely wrong about that.
Anyway as to the Angkor temples themselves: spectacular. There´s not a whole lot more to say, except that if you have even the slightest interest in archaeology or the slightest illusion that you may, in fact, be the reincarnation of Indiana Jones himself (does anyone else think this whole new Indiana Jones movie thing bears a striking resemblance to the plot of Weekend at Bernie's?)then they´re pretty much unmissable. Actually, scratch that: everyone should see this. We spent three days wandering up and down these temple staircases, staring at impossibly complex engravings and statues, suffering through the heat that by 11am just makes you dizzy and leaves your legs weak and useless. We would catch motorbikes in, watching these giant mounds of rubble in the distance gradually forming themselves into real shapes, watching the sun set from the central tower of Pre Rup temple.
And Siem Reap - the town closest to the temples - buzzes with life and movement, with sound and colour and taste... Oh the food! Yeah, apologies to those who don´t hold any great interest in food but I´m just going to rave for a paragraph or so: the food here is brilliant. Bangkok was pretty much fuelled by flavour; you could not walk anywhere, anywhere at all, without smelling some food at every turn: some delicious, some rotten and totally vomit-inducing, but always there lurking in the background. In Cambodia it´s different; the food isn´t always present, but it´s always cheap and yum. Yes, it´s true, they sell crickets and spiders on street corners, and fried frogs and snake barbeques are available at most restaurants, but that´s just the initial shock. The real shock is how good everything tastes. Khmer food is a bit different to Thailand or Vietnam; if it´s closer to either it´s probably Thai, but with less spices and a helluva lot less chili. They do a type of cooking called amok, where they cook fish or beef or pork or tofu - usually fish - with lemongrass and chillies and curry paste inside a banana leaf. I tells ya, it´s a magnificent thing to behold.
And hey, while I´m recommending stuff in Cambodia, check out the capital. We caught the bus back to Phnom Penh on... um... Tuesday? Maybe? Can´t really remember but in any case we stayed on the banks of the mighty Mekong river, watched elephants go by with their touts from the street corners, and just soaked it in. Away from the ghetto around Boeng Kak lake - where we stayed last time - Phnom Penh just drips with crumbling french villas and dark little bars with not enough fans. It feels like a forgotten city - nearly all the other westerners there seemed to be crusty French colonial types who just couldn´t let go - but it´s here and it´s alive and it´s exciting and shabby and friendly and hot. Catching an old cargo boat up the Mekong under a setting sun was just dreamy (which put me in mind to propose a boat trip down the Mekong from China to Vietnam for maybe 2009 or 2010? Anyone interested? It´ll be just like Apocalypse Now. I can even organize a big fat white man for us to kill with an axe at the end of it).
In the end, the heat beat us, and now we´re here. I say to you people: come to Cambodia, but probably don´t come in April. I mean, it´s not like you can´t do it (obviously), but that the heat just saps at your energy and motivation, and unless you´re one of those self-motivated, type-A personality types (and if so: what are you doing here? Go punch yourself in the face. You´re ruining it for the rest of us.) or you´ve got someone awesome like Edie to patiently prod you along, you´re really not going to make it past the first town, particularly if you find a place to swim there. Between the hours of eleven and two it´s just too hot to do ANYTHING. So on Thursday we came to the only real beachside town in Cambodia, Sihanoukville, and we´ve been swimming in the warm lusciousness ever since. And right now I´ve got an appointment with a kid named Sahm, who we´ve been playing pool with for the last couple of nights. He´s only eleven but I´m telling you: the kid´s a killer. I cannot get a shot past him. Anyway, I hope you´re all really well. I´m thinking about all of you, whenever I´m cool slash sober slash awake enough to think about anything much at all. Let me know how you´re doing.
Lachie
NEXT WEEK: Khmer New Year! Ko Chang! Islands! Monkeys! Malaria!
Edie and I are, at this very moment, living it up on the narrow sunny beaches of Sihanoukville, on the coast of Cambodia. We´ve rented out a motorbike (for the grand sum of four dollars per day) and spend our days and nights wandering like smiling zombies from beach bar to beach bar, downing beer and curries and wading in water that´s as clear and warm as a bath.
So: Siem Reap. We hit Siem Reap last Friday, bunkered down in the bar district and waited for the heat to pass while we knocked back tequila sunrises and white russians. It didn´t pass. By Sunday we decided we´d better brave the Angkor Wat temples anyway, though in the end it became something of a disaster...
Okay, so the night before we tackled the temples we decided that we´d try one of the marijuana-laced ¨happy pizzas¨ that are available in every seedy district of every town in Cambodia - because, hey, when in Rome... - but when it arrived, we prodded it and sniffed it and nibbled it and eventually convinced ourselves that we must´ve ordered it wrong, that we´d gotten just a normal pizza. So, of course, being a disgusting pig, I stuffed my face with it.
As it turns out, we were right. We didn´t have a ¨happy pizza¨. I must´ve stuttered because instead we got a ¨happy special pizza¨, a pizza stuffed to the gills with magic mushrooms that left us both trapped and crazy in our airy little room at the guesthouse, convinced the walls were going to eat us. We giggled and screamed and talked shit all night, but when Edie dropped out of the race at dawn I was still thundering on, and spent the day at the temples as vague as a lobotomy patient, meandering brainlessly around the jungle and forgetting everything that was said to me within seconds of it being said. Being out of my head in a wilderness full of ancient temples and monkeys and elephants and wild boars, it felt like the entire country was being eaten by the jungle. I wasn´t entirely wrong about that.
Anyway as to the Angkor temples themselves: spectacular. There´s not a whole lot more to say, except that if you have even the slightest interest in archaeology or the slightest illusion that you may, in fact, be the reincarnation of Indiana Jones himself (does anyone else think this whole new Indiana Jones movie thing bears a striking resemblance to the plot of Weekend at Bernie's?)then they´re pretty much unmissable. Actually, scratch that: everyone should see this. We spent three days wandering up and down these temple staircases, staring at impossibly complex engravings and statues, suffering through the heat that by 11am just makes you dizzy and leaves your legs weak and useless. We would catch motorbikes in, watching these giant mounds of rubble in the distance gradually forming themselves into real shapes, watching the sun set from the central tower of Pre Rup temple.
And Siem Reap - the town closest to the temples - buzzes with life and movement, with sound and colour and taste... Oh the food! Yeah, apologies to those who don´t hold any great interest in food but I´m just going to rave for a paragraph or so: the food here is brilliant. Bangkok was pretty much fuelled by flavour; you could not walk anywhere, anywhere at all, without smelling some food at every turn: some delicious, some rotten and totally vomit-inducing, but always there lurking in the background. In Cambodia it´s different; the food isn´t always present, but it´s always cheap and yum. Yes, it´s true, they sell crickets and spiders on street corners, and fried frogs and snake barbeques are available at most restaurants, but that´s just the initial shock. The real shock is how good everything tastes. Khmer food is a bit different to Thailand or Vietnam; if it´s closer to either it´s probably Thai, but with less spices and a helluva lot less chili. They do a type of cooking called amok, where they cook fish or beef or pork or tofu - usually fish - with lemongrass and chillies and curry paste inside a banana leaf. I tells ya, it´s a magnificent thing to behold.
And hey, while I´m recommending stuff in Cambodia, check out the capital. We caught the bus back to Phnom Penh on... um... Tuesday? Maybe? Can´t really remember but in any case we stayed on the banks of the mighty Mekong river, watched elephants go by with their touts from the street corners, and just soaked it in. Away from the ghetto around Boeng Kak lake - where we stayed last time - Phnom Penh just drips with crumbling french villas and dark little bars with not enough fans. It feels like a forgotten city - nearly all the other westerners there seemed to be crusty French colonial types who just couldn´t let go - but it´s here and it´s alive and it´s exciting and shabby and friendly and hot. Catching an old cargo boat up the Mekong under a setting sun was just dreamy (which put me in mind to propose a boat trip down the Mekong from China to Vietnam for maybe 2009 or 2010? Anyone interested? It´ll be just like Apocalypse Now. I can even organize a big fat white man for us to kill with an axe at the end of it).
In the end, the heat beat us, and now we´re here. I say to you people: come to Cambodia, but probably don´t come in April. I mean, it´s not like you can´t do it (obviously), but that the heat just saps at your energy and motivation, and unless you´re one of those self-motivated, type-A personality types (and if so: what are you doing here? Go punch yourself in the face. You´re ruining it for the rest of us.) or you´ve got someone awesome like Edie to patiently prod you along, you´re really not going to make it past the first town, particularly if you find a place to swim there. Between the hours of eleven and two it´s just too hot to do ANYTHING. So on Thursday we came to the only real beachside town in Cambodia, Sihanoukville, and we´ve been swimming in the warm lusciousness ever since. And right now I´ve got an appointment with a kid named Sahm, who we´ve been playing pool with for the last couple of nights. He´s only eleven but I´m telling you: the kid´s a killer. I cannot get a shot past him. Anyway, I hope you´re all really well. I´m thinking about all of you, whenever I´m cool slash sober slash awake enough to think about anything much at all. Let me know how you´re doing.
Lachie
NEXT WEEK: Khmer New Year! Ko Chang! Islands! Monkeys! Malaria!
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