"'Buy nothing cost 10,000 dollars"

Cambodian kiddie touts can be somewhat impressive. When one little girl told me "t shirt 2 dollars" and I responded "I buy nothing," her response was "buy nothing cost 10,000 dollars." I was tempted to buy something from her after that, just to reward her for her creativity.

Its also nice to see that some of the touts have a sense of humor about themselves. When I was at Angkor Wat at sunset, where those pictures were taken, I was walking back to my tuk tuk, and one tout, with baby in hand, said among the chorus of "cold drink, t-shirt, necklace" "you want my baby?" At least, I hope she was joking. As I mentioned before, Cambodia has a problem with child exploitation, so she might have been serious.

BTW, if the U.N. ever wants to help out Cambodia in a serious way, I'd consider starting a program to recruit Cambodian translators. Little kids, some as young as five or six, know phrases and sayings in at least 4 different languages, including Chinese and English. Some of them are already borderline fluent, or have at least robotically memorized passages in terms of what to say. An 11 year old camped out at a temple took me to a side passage that I would have never seen to visit a buddha statue and altar--and gave a full explanation for everything--and even remembered to say "mind your head" repeatedly. I don't like to give money to kids, because it encourages begging, but this kid had rendered a service, and impressively so at that, so I gave him a 2 singapore dollar note--I didn't have any one dollar bills with me at the time.

Unfortunately, there's also an uglier, seedier side to Cambodian children, and I'm not talking about them being exploited--sometimes they are the hostile ones. Last night, I witnessed two Cambodian kids, with mother looking on approvingly physically hold onto two tourists' bikes and refused to let go until they gave them money. I tried to step in and help out, and one of the kids actually hit me. These two kids, no more than 10 years old, were holding up a pair of adult tourists. It was disgusting to watch, and unfortunately there were no tourist police around.

Meanwhile, I did something the other day that no single adult male should ever do: I said I was married. In my defense, I said it in response to the offer of some taxi and tuk tuk drivers to show me some ladies, and that was the only way to get them to leave me alone. Unfortunately, I still ended up seeing some of the ladies because I was hanging out with two guys at a well-known and popular bar in the tourist district, and one of the folks mentioned that a taxi driver had recommended going to this club about two blocks away. So, the three of us just decide to check it out. You always know you are in for an experience when you follow a foreign cabbie's advice, and I had a hunch that this "club" was probably just a brothel disguised as a club. To be fair, that wasn't exactly true. The place was a four-in-one: karaoke, a "massage parlor," a brothel, and a club. It had all the ambience of a laser tag arena. We were asked immediately if we wanted some girls, but politely declined. In the cabbie's defense, we weren't promptly kicked out--it was actually a club, and if you didn't want any female company, they didn't have any problem with it. I tried to strike up a conversation with the only other two white people in the room, a pair of russian girls who were not club employees, but them knowing little english and me knowing little russian. I managed to accomplish the rare feat of talking to people while only using three phrases "me no gavaroo pa russki" "da" and "you speak english." The scene was actually pretty funny, made even more so by the fact that the loudspeakers started playing some 80s soft rock in an attempt to set a romantic mood. The club had a pool table, though, and the three of us split a pitcher of beer while we played pool, and left after finishing the pitcher.

I also found out that the "coke" I was offered was indeed that of the powdered variety--this time, when it was offered by the same guy, he said "cocaine." According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, Cambodian cocaine actually isn't cocaine--its pure powdered heroin, and has killed many a tourist over the years.

Again, there's one thing that a tourist should never do in a foreign country, and that is take illegal drugs. If you think any differently, go watch the movie "Brokedown Palace" or watch an episode of National Geographic's "Locked up abroad." Just about every episode in the series involves someone getting busted for drugs in a foreign country, and the U.S. prison experience is country club life compared to life in these foreign prisons.

I feel like a snob for saying this, but you do need at least three days to see Siem Reap/Angkor Wat--there's simply too much to do, and if you try to rush it, you will end up either hating all the temples or dying of heat exhaustion or both. The temples I visited yesterday were spectacular in their own right, even if their size didn't match Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom, and would have been even more spectacular had the moats surrounding them been filled with water, completing the full effect. Besides, the tourist office sells only 1 day/3 day/7 day passes, priced at 20/40/60, so if you are only here for two days, you end up paying the same price as for three days.

As I discovered today, though, you should probably make it four. I went to a temple about a 90 minute tuk tuk ride away from Siem Reap, and entirely separate from the Angkor Wat temple complex (you even have to buy a different ticket, but its only five bucks, and its more than worth it). The place is called Beng Melela (or something like that) and the place is spectacular. Hidden slightly in the jungle, and internally destroyed by trees and collapsed walls, it looks like a hybrid construction site/temple. I was sweating like a pig, but if you ever wanted to feel like Indiana Jones discovering some site, this is the place to fulfill that fantasy (if you can ignore the wooden staircases). Guides will let you clamber around the various rubble sites in order to get to hidden passages and chambers, all safe for exploration.

Anyway, I meant to post a banjarmasin update today, but I was feeling kind of queasy, and slept instead.

I'm probably headed off to Phnom Penh tmw.