Siem Reap Day 1: The Definitive Angkor Wat Experience
So after a 6-hour stopover at Ho Chi Minh City International Airport (which you can tell is a crap airport cos' it doesn't have an Exclusive Books), I finally touched down in Siem Reap, home of the mighty Cambodian temples.
And Vishnu-almighty, are they mighty. And in abundance. I decided to go with the whole touristy vibe and be a complete tourist on Day 1. My friendly neighbourhood taxi driver, whose name was completely unpronouncable, charged $20 American to ferry me around for the day. In his airconditioned cab. This is very important as Cambodia's average temp. for summer is 35 Celcius. In April, it has been known to go as high as 40! This is far hotter than Taipei and, being an arse without suncream, I am now a beautiful shade of Tourist Red, a delightful colour which I'm sure will be all the rage in Plett soon.
The usual touristy thing to do is Angkor Wat for sunrise, mosey on over to Angkor Thom and surrounding temples and then head off to the temple mountain of Phnom Bakeng to watch the sunset over Angkor Wat with the rest of Siem Reap's tourist populus, perched like doe-eyed dassies (a South African 'rock rabbit' for my North American friends) waiting for whatever it is dassies eat to crawl out of its hole and make a break for it. All the guidebooks say that the temples of Angkor can be done in a day, with the implication being that you'd have to abandon awestruck poses, tingly feelings of wownification and a sense that if the Universe can be likened to a giant vacuum cleaner, and I think it can, then we are all but tiny specks of dust curdled up inside its bag, waiting for things to get so full of crud that the maid has to empty the bag. Well, utter poppycock, as they say in the Classics (ie Dickens)! I spent a full day temple-whoring my way through Angkor, doing all the touristy trap things that trap tourists trappily and I had narry a worry that I was rushing things. Having started the temple-whoring at 5:00am, by 2pm I was starting to get a little sick of sandstone effigies carved with the likeness of Vishnu/Shiva/4000-year-old lichen. Don't get me wrong: the temples do give all that stuff I said above about wowness, but...I am officially all templed out (which is a minor newsflash, as I am usually HRH The Royal Minister Of Temple-Whoring). Plus, I have never sweated so much in my life! Raging torrents of stickiness were dribbling their way slowly down my back, front and sides. If it wasn't hotter than Tourist Red is going to be come New York Fashion Week, I'd have been soaked through. Needless to say I stank worse than a hippy on laundry day.
Some highlights from today include:
1) The unpronunceabley-named cabby trying to speak English! Bless him for trying (actually his was waaaaaay better than this afternoon's driver but that's another less interesting story). My point is that the Cambodians' English accents are nigh impossible to decipher. Kinda like the Osbournes. Whereas the Taiwanese will usually just drop the final sound (eg 'want' becomes 'wan' or 'one' ifitsuitsya) the Cambods will drop as many phonetic sounds (is that redundant? where's a linguist when you need one?) as they possible can. Possibly, they're allergic to dipthongs, I'm unclear on the detailment. Anway, to the Cambods 'want' is 'wa'. So you have to listen very carefully or you might end up 'walking' or with 'water'.
2) The Cambods tend, I've gathered, to speak in Tourist English, a dialect specific to poor countries whose main means of economic salvation is tourists eg Egypt, India etc. Common phrases include, 'Sir yoo wa dina?' (ie 'Hello my handsome white foreign friend, would you be interested in partaking of supper at my fine establishment?') or 'Yoo wa by poscaaaa?' ('Would sir like to purchase a special collectors item, available only at every SECOND stall in Siem Reap or being hawked by every SECOND person on the side of the road, of 10 stunning postcards of all the places you will visit during your stay for a small fee?').
3) Very cheap books and DVDs. I know I know, who goes to a World Heritage Site and blows wads of casholah on books and obscure British comedies. If you don't know the answer, then a) you don't know me very well and b) it was a rhetorical question anyways...so pah! The entire first season of Little Britain, for example, cost me less than R70. Where in the world can you possibly purchase such instant gratification, I ask ya?
4) If number 4 were subtitled, it would read 'Wearing the purple pantaloons'. I decided to treat myself to an hour-long session of Cambodian massageee, aka 'let's make Jared either wince in pain or laugh out loud cos' he's a ticklish bugger' (Kids, don't try this one at home okay? Especially not on Jared). It's a fun game, not for the feint-of-heart. But on the bright side, you do get to wear The World's Silliest Trousers: purple pantaloons that require a degree, or at least a degree of fashion sense, to figure out how to lace them up. I've never been contorted in that way before. The best way to describe it was that it was like having yoga done TO you by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
5) Giving Hello Kitty badges to the poor street kids. Explaining why would take too long, just go with the flow on this one...
So now I'm knackered, and am ready for bed. 'Goo ni evvybo-ee'...
And Vishnu-almighty, are they mighty. And in abundance. I decided to go with the whole touristy vibe and be a complete tourist on Day 1. My friendly neighbourhood taxi driver, whose name was completely unpronouncable, charged $20 American to ferry me around for the day. In his airconditioned cab. This is very important as Cambodia's average temp. for summer is 35 Celcius. In April, it has been known to go as high as 40! This is far hotter than Taipei and, being an arse without suncream, I am now a beautiful shade of Tourist Red, a delightful colour which I'm sure will be all the rage in Plett soon.
The usual touristy thing to do is Angkor Wat for sunrise, mosey on over to Angkor Thom and surrounding temples and then head off to the temple mountain of Phnom Bakeng to watch the sunset over Angkor Wat with the rest of Siem Reap's tourist populus, perched like doe-eyed dassies (a South African 'rock rabbit' for my North American friends) waiting for whatever it is dassies eat to crawl out of its hole and make a break for it. All the guidebooks say that the temples of Angkor can be done in a day, with the implication being that you'd have to abandon awestruck poses, tingly feelings of wownification and a sense that if the Universe can be likened to a giant vacuum cleaner, and I think it can, then we are all but tiny specks of dust curdled up inside its bag, waiting for things to get so full of crud that the maid has to empty the bag. Well, utter poppycock, as they say in the Classics (ie Dickens)! I spent a full day temple-whoring my way through Angkor, doing all the touristy trap things that trap tourists trappily and I had narry a worry that I was rushing things. Having started the temple-whoring at 5:00am, by 2pm I was starting to get a little sick of sandstone effigies carved with the likeness of Vishnu/Shiva/4000-year-old lichen. Don't get me wrong: the temples do give all that stuff I said above about wowness, but...I am officially all templed out (which is a minor newsflash, as I am usually HRH The Royal Minister Of Temple-Whoring). Plus, I have never sweated so much in my life! Raging torrents of stickiness were dribbling their way slowly down my back, front and sides. If it wasn't hotter than Tourist Red is going to be come New York Fashion Week, I'd have been soaked through. Needless to say I stank worse than a hippy on laundry day.
Some highlights from today include:
1) The unpronunceabley-named cabby trying to speak English! Bless him for trying (actually his was waaaaaay better than this afternoon's driver but that's another less interesting story). My point is that the Cambodians' English accents are nigh impossible to decipher. Kinda like the Osbournes. Whereas the Taiwanese will usually just drop the final sound (eg 'want' becomes 'wan' or 'one' ifitsuitsya) the Cambods will drop as many phonetic sounds (is that redundant? where's a linguist when you need one?) as they possible can. Possibly, they're allergic to dipthongs, I'm unclear on the detailment. Anway, to the Cambods 'want' is 'wa'. So you have to listen very carefully or you might end up 'walking' or with 'water'.
2) The Cambods tend, I've gathered, to speak in Tourist English, a dialect specific to poor countries whose main means of economic salvation is tourists eg Egypt, India etc. Common phrases include, 'Sir yoo wa dina?' (ie 'Hello my handsome white foreign friend, would you be interested in partaking of supper at my fine establishment?') or 'Yoo wa by poscaaaa?' ('Would sir like to purchase a special collectors item, available only at every SECOND stall in Siem Reap or being hawked by every SECOND person on the side of the road, of 10 stunning postcards of all the places you will visit during your stay for a small fee?').
3) Very cheap books and DVDs. I know I know, who goes to a World Heritage Site and blows wads of casholah on books and obscure British comedies. If you don't know the answer, then a) you don't know me very well and b) it was a rhetorical question anyways...so pah! The entire first season of Little Britain, for example, cost me less than R70. Where in the world can you possibly purchase such instant gratification, I ask ya?
4) If number 4 were subtitled, it would read 'Wearing the purple pantaloons'. I decided to treat myself to an hour-long session of Cambodian massageee, aka 'let's make Jared either wince in pain or laugh out loud cos' he's a ticklish bugger' (Kids, don't try this one at home okay? Especially not on Jared). It's a fun game, not for the feint-of-heart. But on the bright side, you do get to wear The World's Silliest Trousers: purple pantaloons that require a degree, or at least a degree of fashion sense, to figure out how to lace them up. I've never been contorted in that way before. The best way to describe it was that it was like having yoga done TO you by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
5) Giving Hello Kitty badges to the poor street kids. Explaining why would take too long, just go with the flow on this one...
So now I'm knackered, and am ready for bed. 'Goo ni evvybo-ee'...