First thoughts on Cambodia
I flew in the Siem Reap airport this morning, as per usual the sky was bright blue, and the temperature was somewhere in the low 30's. After buying myself an overpriced bottle of water I decided to head to my hotel in town and was offered the choice between a taxi at $7 (us) or a motorbike at $2. I decided to live a little and take a bike, which I thought would prove interesting given that I had a fair sized bag with me, but as it happened it was fine, and my driver was pretty careful and very nice. He is picking me up tomorrow to do day one of my temple tour :)
Thailand isn't exactly a rich country, but Cambodia is much poorer, its evident everywhere you look. The state of the roads, the living conditions, and the massive oversupply of people in the tourist industry (offering everything from massages to tuktuk's, and probably somewhere only slightly hidden from view their bodies). This year although it is now high season apparently the tourists haven't come, and so there is an edge of desperation to people selling you things.
One thing that I liked about being here was seeing some of the ethical tourism stuff expanding. There were a couple of stalls at the night market which sold goods supporting local charities. I saw very little of that in Thailand at mainstream tourist markets.
I seem to have overcome my desire to buy masses of tourist tat. The fact that so much that was sold at the night market here was identical to that sold in Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Hua Hin is a little sad to me, and made me grateful that I hadn't bought much of it this time. I did buy three hard wood paintings tonight. I haven't seen them sold anywhere else (though I am bound to see them all over the place now) and I thought they were interesting and different and beautiful.
I am drawn to paintings out here, I want to buy more than I could possibly manage to display, which is insane. Nonetheless I keep wanting to buy them. There was a particularly beautiful one of one of the statues here, and I might go back and buy that. Ideally I would like some smaller ones, maybe A4 sized, but its difficult to find ones that size that I love.
I had a lovely meal while looking at the what I would like to see tomorrow. The food here is really very good, and the wine is even better. When I come back to this part of the world I think I will happily spend a few weeks in Cambodia before heading to Vietnam for a couple of months.
Thailand isn't exactly a rich country, but Cambodia is much poorer, its evident everywhere you look. The state of the roads, the living conditions, and the massive oversupply of people in the tourist industry (offering everything from massages to tuktuk's, and probably somewhere only slightly hidden from view their bodies). This year although it is now high season apparently the tourists haven't come, and so there is an edge of desperation to people selling you things.
One thing that I liked about being here was seeing some of the ethical tourism stuff expanding. There were a couple of stalls at the night market which sold goods supporting local charities. I saw very little of that in Thailand at mainstream tourist markets.
I seem to have overcome my desire to buy masses of tourist tat. The fact that so much that was sold at the night market here was identical to that sold in Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Hua Hin is a little sad to me, and made me grateful that I hadn't bought much of it this time. I did buy three hard wood paintings tonight. I haven't seen them sold anywhere else (though I am bound to see them all over the place now) and I thought they were interesting and different and beautiful.
I am drawn to paintings out here, I want to buy more than I could possibly manage to display, which is insane. Nonetheless I keep wanting to buy them. There was a particularly beautiful one of one of the statues here, and I might go back and buy that. Ideally I would like some smaller ones, maybe A4 sized, but its difficult to find ones that size that I love.
I had a lovely meal while looking at the what I would like to see tomorrow. The food here is really very good, and the wine is even better. When I come back to this part of the world I think I will happily spend a few weeks in Cambodia before heading to Vietnam for a couple of months.