Cybermonk

There is a monk sitting next to me here in the Internet cafe. He is simultaneously talking on a cellphone while writing an email.

Throw in a Christina Aguilera ringtone and a "Buddha is my Bling Bling" tattoo, and I'd say my mind would be officially blown.

Beauty, Multiplied

Imagine you are a renowned sculptor, famous for carving elaborate and beautiful scenes into solid stone. You are so well known, in fact, that the king himself wishes you to carve something for him. So, you do; you carve an intricate scene depicting an ancient Indian epic on a block of stone. You are pleased with it, and so is the king.

"Excellent," he says. "Now I'd like you to do about 5 million more of those. Oh, and make them all different from each other. I'm planning on putting up some buildings. Peace... I'm out."

That's what I imagined might have happened with the temples of Angkor. I've spent the last couple of days exploring some of the ruins here, and the thing that strikes me is that it seems that every stone in these buildings is a work of art. All of them. And they are all so detailed.... in Angkor Wat, there are galleries of these carvings that are probably 75 yards long, and you can see clear differences in the expressions of each person depicted. I was amazed. They are unbelievably well preserved, too, considering that they are between eight and twelve hundred years old.

After seeing many different temples over two days, though, I'm all templed out, and ready to move on. Next stop: Hanoi, Vietnam.

Accommodation Jackals

Arriving via bus in Siem Reap as a Westerner is a bit like, I would say, arriving via bus in Guadalupe, Mexico if you are the Virgin Mary. Your bus is immediately surrounded by dozens of guesthouse touts, yelling and crawling over each other to get you to stay at their guesthouse.

They are so loud, frantic and pushy that there is a police officer there to keep them in line. If they get a little too pushy, he actually beats them back with a stick. This happened a couple of times when I was getting off the bus.

It was like they were a bunch of starved jackals, only these jackals would all give me a special price on a very clean and comfortable room.

Never armwrestle with a spider-eating Cambodian

On the side of the road in the middle of nowhere Cambodia, my bus stopped to allow its passengers a pit stop. There wasn't much there; just some toilets and the ubiquitous roadside tables and huts with stuff for sale. It was only basics... cigarettes, soft drinks, fried spiders....

There were fried spiders for sale. The people that purchased these spiders apparently ate them.

I was a little taken aback, but I recovered quickly. Then I saw a spider that wasn't as much fried and dead as it was alive and in the mouth of a 7 year old girl. It was probably about two inches across, and hairy. I didn't recover as quickly from that one.

This girl was clearly tough. I felt a bit insecure, since this little girl had a live spider in her mouth, and I'm uneasy if I see one on TV. So, I had to compensate. I challenged her to an armwrestling match. She beat me. Then, sighing, she did a shot of whiskey, pounded the empty glass on the table and said something in her native tongue to someone nearby. According to a rough translation, she had suggested that the Western pansy (me) get out of her sight, and that I should go knit her a scarf. I walked away.*

*please note: none of that last paragraph is true, with the exception of me being uneasy and walking away.

From half a world away....

I am stunned by the damage that was done by Katrina, and hoping from half a world away that people get the help they need.

Difference of Opinion

I've looked in the "Helpful Phrases" of my guidebook, and was disturbed to find that there is no Cambodian phrase for "Pardon me, but the water coming out of my showerhead smells like mackerel. Can you help?"

I guess we'll just agree to disagree on the definition of "Helpful".

Transport: Modes of Necessity

Necessity can sometimes make decisions for you. If you are at the airport in Phnom Penh, you pretty much have to take a "moto" to get into town, which is Cambodian for "overabundant death scooter". Basically, there are a lot of moto drivers, so you pick one, and then you get on the back of his scooter as if you were friends. You hope it's not too bumpy a ride, as you just had a nice meal on the plane and want digestion to be pleasant.

There are similarities between traveling by moto and kayak, despite the difference in surroundings. The streets, in a way, are like rivers. Only instead of fish, there are motos. Instead of tree branches passing overhead, there are sideview mirrors. Instead of rapids, there are oncoming semis. Instead of the lazy relaxation of floating effortlessly down a quiet river, there's a gut-bending mix of fear and self-preservation instinct the likes of which you have never known. And instead of the harmonious order of nature, there's a complete breakdown of all rules of the traffic cosmos. Things like turn signals are replaced by the more direct and effective crossing-into-oncoming-traffic.

I've discovered that necessity is the mother of indigestion.

Transport -- Modes of Variety....

One of the decisions I need to make on a regular basis as I travel is how I am going to get from point A to point B. Factors such as speed of delivery, cost of delivery, likelihood of delivery vehicle making it to said points without greasefires or flat tires, etc. are all important as I make these decisions. So are variety and necessity.

I wanted a bit of variety, so I decided to take a kayak from Vang Vieng to Vientiane. I went with about 15 others, along with some guides, down the Nam Lik river. There were rapids along the way... my first true direct experience with rapids. It was exhilarating.... running up against waves on a river, not being sure whether the next one will be the one to capsize you.

The main guide didn't offer too much in the way of discernable guidance (I know that he couldn't have been talking about Jai Alai, but he seemed to repeat the words so much, I was sure it was kindred with kayaking in some way), so my partner and I were left to paddle for ourselves. Which, admittedly, wasn't all that graceful -- I was smacking the waves away, like stray kittens, rather than paddling through them. Ignorance is bliss on the river it seems.... we made it through the rapids without capsizing. The rest of the time I just coasted down the river, getting a bit sunburned, and wondered if you can use those curved, flinging things in Jai Alai to paddle an inflatable kayak. I don't think you can, but then, I am not a JaiAlaiaker.