The Optimistic Traveller

We stepped out of the airport in Siem Reap hoping to grab a taxi to the centrally-located hotel we’d booked the day before. I was excited by the affordable find even though it was clearly a three-star type of accommodation. We didn’t need fancy. We had shortened our plans to focus on visiting Angkor Wat rather than heading on to Phnom Penh afterward. 

A man approached us offering a ride downtown, and we followed him with four heavy bags along the front of the rustic airport. We are normally not so laden with luggage but were in the middle of more than a month in Asia, hopping to each location with hardly a notion of what we’d encounter, staying longer if we liked a place, less if we didn’t.

The heat was almost unbearable even in the dark of evening.

We assumed, given our huge load, that the little fellow would be bringing us to a van, but behold, the tuk tuk! Sure enough, we piled ourselves and the various unwieldy, huge bags into a minute bicycle-operated vehicle, a “modern” rickshaw though not as modern as some I’ve seen that are machine-powered three-wheeled vehicles. In retrospect, I’m relieved the bike was semi motorized; he wasn’t going to be pedaling us to our hotel, or God forbid, running with us in tow, like a backwards wheelbarrow.

Our ride to the hotel felt comical, and we recorded it while simultaneously fearing a suitcase or one of us would fall off into the street. 

We spent the next three days, on and off, with the friendly Cambodian driver, learning all about his family and the region. His English wasn’t stellar, but we got by, and he happily obliged my requests to visit a grungy fish market and sample weird fruits from women tending, peeling, bagging them in stalls or on the floor. He was also fairly knowledgeable about local products, which I am always most eager to learn about.

Piles and piles of snails, seasoned and still in their shells, were left in the sun for hours (does this count as cooking?) as people came by and bagged them up for snacks. I would’ve tried them if Mike had been game as well, but the heat was making us cautious eaters, in my case abnormally so. I will usually try anything once and even several times, hoping I was wrong if I didn’t like it originally. I also wanted to try some crunchy insects that were on a small unmanned table near the town – an impromptu-looking setup that could’ve been wildly unsafe for any number of reasons – but Mike declined those, too, and kept walking, so I decided to take a raincheck on the weird bugs that might or might not have caused imminent death upon ingesting.

We did, however, try an odd form of ice cream sold at vendors who poured it, crepelike, onto a frozen surface and then scraped the icy shavings with fruit into a cup. The unusual flavors, if not the texture, were interesting to me, and it was fun to watch the rhythm of the spinning and scraping.

The hotel was in downtown Siem Reap by the river and well-decorated bridge over to a cute shopping and eating area. There were incredible artisans and fashion designers (the fabrics were noteworthy) in affordable shops, an indoor market, and all kinds of great restaurants featuring a variety of cuisines. Cambodian food is delicious – I’d say almost exactly in between Thai and Vietnamese, much like the country’s position itself. In one, we tipped a minimal amount, and they came running after us to return the money as though we’d made a calamitous financial mistake. The service was amazing. Beers – good Cambodian ones — were rampantly available for about $1 apiece, or free if you got your feet cleaned by hungry little fishes in tanks. Heck, yeah I risked infection and amputation for a free beer!

The hotel had a concrete vibe, which kept it pretty cool in temperature and modernity. The puttering air conditioning wasn’t fantastic, but I forgave it for the bathtub on the balcony, which I availed myself of more than once, waving happily and nakedly to various Cambodians and tourists by the river. 

The swimming pool downstairs, surrounded by well-kept plants, which gave it a private villa feel, was a welcome respite after our daily adventures; the included breakfast at a nearby woman-owned restaurant was scrumptious and hearty.

The heat did put a slight damper on our three days there. Normally, when I am in a place that hot, the ocean isn’t too far away to jump into. It was challenging to get comfortable.

Nonetheless, we came for Angkor Wat, and Angkor Wat we saw, in all its splendor. We also saw other nearby temples, mesmerized by the history, the ruin, the doorways, seemingly into the past. Offerings, usually of coins, were left throughout the temples, and silence was generally respected. We climbed and sweated a lot. Not to be too Drew Barrymore about it, but it was quite magical, a truly foreign experience.

Toward the end of a long day of templing, as I now like to call it, we were exploring the surrounding grounds and spied some monkeys playing in a water-filled basin near an old foundation. It looked like a sibling or mother-child relationship, and it was most certainly a version of tag. I recorded them and their innocent play and splashing about for a few minutes until, in a flash, the more diminutive one spied me and ran up my body to “hide” from his cohort. I was wearing a very compelling green print kimono that I just know must have made for a delightful ladder. I froze. Mike yelled “HEY!” and he jumped down, proceeding with immense curiosity TOWARD Mike rather than away from us. I imagine he thought “Why is this big guy yelling?” He was a tiny monkey in the grand scheme of things, but our pre-travel vaccinations hadn’t included rabies, and our doctor’s warnings were likely ringing in Mike’s ears.

The poor little creature had made a red mark on my neck as he scampered up my body and practically atop my head. I sprayed the mark with antiseptic or hand sanitizer and started googling frantically about if scratches could pass rabies, which of course they can, silly!, and we began debating whether or not to go to the hospital. If you get the vaccine immediately after exposure, it works the same as getting it in advance but then must be accompanied by other arduous things, I can’t remember exactly what. The rabies vaccine in the US was something like $1000 apiece, so with all the others we’d opted for, we cheaped out on this, possibly the most important. In the end we decided, after close examination, that my skin had not been broken. I guess if I drop dead in a few years, we will have made a grave error in post-rabies exposure judgment.

I am hereby recommending visiting a travel physician before travelling to this part of the world, or other places where you might come into contact with wild animals, or eat foods you’re not used to, be in large crowds, or be exposed to mosquitoes. Message me, and I’ll be happy to give you the name of the best of such doctors in New York City. I have seen him and his team for nearly 25 years now.

At the end of our brief but perfect amount of time in Siem Reap, we exchanged contact information with the tuk tuk driver, who continued to correspond with Mike until he changed phones recently. We can’t remember his name but think of him often, referring to him (only amongst ourselves, however racist this may be) as Tuk Tuk. He’s doing the Lord’s work out there in Cambodia, exposing ignorant Westerners like us to templing – and an entire world beyond the scope of our limited imaginations.