Wednesday 7 March 2012

The Kingdom of Cambodia!

Cambodia has given us mixed feelings at this stage...(day 4). The people are a lot friendlier than in Thailand, but there is almost always a hidden agenda. Every tourist is seen as an oppurtunity to make a buck (literally..they don't beg for less than one dollar here, leading Wim and I to make our theme song for Cambodia "I need a dollar, dollar, dollar is what I need, ay ay") They also speak very good english here. This is illustrated by the fact that I had an argument with a 6 year old who I refused to buy a bracelet from because I had just bought one from his friend for the above mentioned "one dollar". He followed us for about 10 minutes telling us "that life is not fair" and when I told him it is indeed not fair so he should go on home he called me "stinky madam".

The only way of getting rid of him was to escape off the street into a bar, which turned out to be a neon dungeon with locals singing cambodian karaoke at full volume....
This kid drove us to consider having a glass of wine that night despite us having given up alcohol for lent....luckily we overcame the temptation.

Yesterday we took a bus filled with locals and covered about 250km. Six and a half hours and about 10 dvds of Cambodian music videos later, we arrived in Siem Reap, home to the famous Temples of Anghkor Wat. Today we visited the Tonle Sap lake each sporting our fresh cambodian haircuts..Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Asia when it is the rainy season and thousands of Cambodians live on the water in floating villages because they cannot afford to live elsewhere. (some in boats, those who can afford it build bamboo houses which can float and thus are easily transportable since they have to move as the water moves with the season) This was another tourist trap as we were taken to a floating school by our guide only to be told that we have to buy something for the kids. A five dollar donation was not good enough, they became quite annoyed when we would not buy an 80 US dollar bag of rice. So after a confrontation with our guide, we made the donation to the school and left with a bitter taste in our mouths (and I of course left in tears...)Where is that damn glass of wine when it is needed????

So tonight we ended our day with cambodian barbecue at a streetside cafe (at the risk of restarting the gastroenteritis I had just recovered from..) and tomorrow we join our tour group for a trip around the rest of Cambodia....love u all

S and W

Our new Cambodian haircuts

Kids at the floating school


Wim with our guide, Roun


3 comments:

  1. I wish there was a like or love button on these posts.

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  2. Then people ask how human trafficking started?!

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  3. Opnieuw proberen ! We vinden Wim zijn haar heeeeel kort ! Dat van Sheron heeeeeel mooi !! Kusjes xxxxx

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