Coconut Milk

Tired after three days of temple-trodding, we took things down a notch, and decided to take a day off to relax. We started by changing hotels, (bugs and overpriced beer just weren't doing it for us anymore) and snagging lunch at a very chillin' restaurant. They played perfect ancient temple beats, real Kingdom of Zeal shit. I got pretty excited about it. The day flowed easily from there: reading The River's Tale, watching Star Trek: Generations, stocking the mini-fridge with cheap beer from the grocery store, updating this blog in an internet cafe during a downpour. The only excitement came when Mia insisted I remove a baby gecko from our ceiling, which I caught in a rameon cup, but not before it ejected its tail, leaving the tiny translucent appendage twitching on our floor.

Next day, we made our way back to the Kantha Bopna Children's hospital to donate blood, and then tried to find a Korean NGO that Mia had sworn she'd seen on one of our trips to the temples. After considerable confusion and a lengthy walk, we found the place, and asked how we could help out. We were told that we could teach some classes tomorrow, but that some students were coming in that very afternoon, so we might as well stick around and join in. The students were understandibly shy, but betrayed a certain keeness in their eyes.

We returned to the Korean NGO the following morning, met the regular teacher, and drove out to a rural elementary school; a simple, single story building at the end of a dirt road. The schoolmaster presented us with a coconut upon our arrival, which I sipped throughout the lesson. Given the chance to guess the students ages, I would have put them between 8 and 10, but soon found that they were actually 10 to 16, with most being 11-13. Very few Cambodian children get a healthy, balanced diet, (let alone 3 meals a day) and as a result, look considerably younger than they actually are. They had no backpacks, pencil cases, or toys. Some didn't even have a book, which cost all of 2500 riel (60 cents), their parents were simply too poor.

What they did have, was heart.

These students rose, as a group, to greet me loud and clear, they did what they were asked, and tried their very best. They sat quietly with eyes facing forward, and stood up to answer questions. They didn't doodle, play, or fight. They were there for one reason, and one reason only, to learn English. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone, an alternate reality where students behaved the way teachers wished they behaved, but rarely do. One boy erased an entire page of writing, because, he explained, “[he could] do better”. I'd never seen that happen before, in two years of teaching in Korea, with any boy, of any age.

After every student had thanked us for the lesson, they headed back home, many of them barefoot, to help with the farmwork. We returned to the NGO, had lunch made for us, and prepared for our afternoon lessons. Mia went off to teach Korean at a local high school, while I remained there. All of the students from the previous day returned, in addition to several newcomers, and they brought questions. “What is ice hockey?” Was perhaps the most fun to answer, while “what is a playboy?” was the trickiest. I guessed they had seen the Playboy bunny symbol on a t-shirt or something, as the logo is quite popular in Asia, but that definition, of course, was out of the question. They were all 16 or older, so I ventured a defintion of “a man, with lots of money, who has many girlfriends.” This, however, only sparked another question from a particularily keen young lady, “Is there such a thing as a playgirl?”

We said our goodbyes, hit up some $4 all-you-can-eat galbi (that's right) and watched a Chuck Norris movie in which he single handedly escapes a Vietnamese prison camp, and then takes out an entire army, only to discover, in the end, that it was a documentary.

Lingas, Landmines and Light Rain

It was a long, bumpy ride to The River of A Thousand Lingas, our speeding tuk-tuk trailing a cloud of martian dust all the way back to Siem Reap. For those of you wondering, a linga is a phallic symbol (a cock), so yeah, the place is called The River Of A Thousand Cocks. More accurately, it is a sacred object or carving that embodies a wide range of meanings and carries a rich history. It's also the magic rocks (Shiva Linga) that get stolen from the town in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. While the river was nowhere near as exciting as IJatToD (alas, no cutting of a rope bridge with a machete and hanging on for dear life), it did have a pretty decent waterfall, which are hard to hate.

More temples materialized out of the forest. Temples of rust-colored stone, intricately carved, where the sound of strange strings and wooden flutes floated on the air. These were places populated not only by tourists and trinket hawkers, but barefoot monks, musicians, and those mutilated by landmines. One temple, which appeared flooded, consisted of four square ponds positioned around a central lake, small shrines rising up from the water. Mia mused that it might've been the king's private sauna, while I thought it looked more like something out of The Legend of Zelda.

But the best was yet to come. Towards twilight on our third day, Bechet smiled and told us, “one more temple.” It started out fairly standard, as Angkorian temples go, the requisite stone cobras and headless sentinels ushering us inside, but soon revealed itself to be the most spectacularly ruined temple in the complex. The sun-bleached carcass of a monster tree trunk had a collapsing doorway in its death-grip, each locked in a mutually dependent embrace. Stones were bigger here, designs bolder. A two-story columned structure still stood, admirably, on the fringes. With dusk closing in, a light rain began to fall, darkening the stone by degrees in sync with the sky. After the rain came we realized something wonderful—we were alone. There was not another person in this place. It was ours. We made our way to the back of the site, where a truly massive tree rose up from a wall like the outstretched neck of a brachiosaurus, feeding on the highest leaves. I couldn't take enough pictures.

That night, we said goodbye to Bechet, the tuk-tuk driver (I slipped him a 10) and went to a buffet and traditional Khmer dance show. The food was uninspired, but the show was mesmerizing. Girls in golden crowns made slow, swirling motions with their wrists, flicking flower petals in little bursts as they flittered about the stage. There was also a dance of courtship, in which a masked man repeatedly tried to win the affections of a pretty girl, who at first rejected him, and then fought with him, before finally taking him as her lover. We left, bellies full of bland, and perhaps a touch tantalized from the performance, in search of a new hotel.