I’ll start today with “street” food, just because it’s relevant right now.
When you travel in the developing world, and you have relatively little money that you expect to last an unreasonably long time, nothing beats the world’s mobile food vendors. Each region has its specialties. New York has hot dogs. Mexico City has tortas and tamales. Southeast Asia has ducks, chickens and - in Cambodia, anyway - fried tarantulas.
They’re delicious. And you’re not supposed to eat any of them, not even one, according to almost any Western source of advice.
Bacteria, they say. Unsafe temperatures! Two chicken curries and your arms will turn six shades of green, fall off, come alive and eat your brains right out of your very head!
Unfortunately, street food everywhere is so tasty and so cheap that you’re morally obligated to ignore every one of those warnings. The best course of action, I’ve found, is to acknowledge beforehand that you’ll spend at least three days in various stages of horrible, gut-wrenching agony and just, well, dive in.
Which is where our run-down of the last two weeks begins. It started as a barely-noticeable, queasy sort of uncertainty. Sort of like having butterflies in one’s stomach before a big performance. At the time, I wrote it off as a bored God playing one of his sick little games with me.
Unfortunately, the butterflies turned out to be some sort of food-borne, flesh-eating bacteria who, even more unfortunately, had selected me as their target. All that bears mentioning about the illness itself is that it lasted approximately two days, and that the agony was indescribable.
I still support street food.
Upon my recovery, we set out for Cambodia. From the Thai border, our goal was Siem Reap and the ubiquitous Angkor temple complex - reputedly one of the wonders of the ancient world.
I’ll bypass descriptions of the Angkor wonder itself - pictures are worth a thousand words, so they say. Check out TrekEarth (www.trekearth.com) for some ruins-related entertainment.
Even as we passed through Cambodian passport control, the contrast became clear as to the differences between these very close neighbors. Thailand had been described to me, by one traveler, as a ‘playground’ for young backpackers - an easy country, full of culture and infrastructure, a place that had put itself in fine order for tourists.
Cambodia is … very different.
It hasn’t yet been 30 years since Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge and their Holocaust-esque “Year Zero” social experiment were brought to a halt by invading Vietnamese forces. Cambodia remains one of the most heavily-armed, heavily-mined countries in the world. Instead of highwayside reminders to avoid littering, painted signs urge residents to turn in their weapons to the authorities. Although the scenery is almost identical to that in neighboring Thailand, poverty is clearly more defined as one moves farther into rural Cambodia.
At the same time, tourism around the stunning Angkor temples was booming - even though it’s the wet season, when tourism dollars drop across the region. Tour operators were bringing in busloads of European and Japanese sightseeing groups, and restaurants were populated, if not bustling.
Having left Siem Reap this morning, though, I’m left to wonder if Angkor marks an unusually heavy center of tourism in an otherwise sparsely-visited country. We’ve been only three hours in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital - hardly enough to warrant a description yet.
One first impression, for now: the first cultural symbol that one encounters when entering Phnom Penh is a large, circular park surrounding a pedestal and a monument. What the monument is for, I have no idea - it’s just a six-foot-tall pistol. A six-shooter, to be exact. On a pedestal, in the middle of Phnom Penh.
We’ll see what happens.
Closing thoughts:
- I have to find out about the pistol monument.
- Next up: The “killing fields,” S-21, and other remnants of genocide.
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[…] Cambodia remains one of the most heavily-armed, heavily-mined countries in the world. Instead of highwayside reminders to avoid littering, painted signs urge residents to turn in their weapons to the authorities. … …more […]
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