Siem Reap, Cambodia

From the gate at Bangkok, the shuttle van took us on a long, serpentine ride to an unprotected spot on the tarmac. Our dinky old 707 waited there amid the taxiing jumbojets, exuding the antsy worry of a double-parked vehicle at rush hour. A flimsy staircase was rolled up to the cabin as if from another era -- the Divorce Era, I now call it, when we used to fly Eastern, Piedmont, and Allegheny to visit our grandparents, when we ate frozen dinners at my mother's dilapidated house and my Dad remarried at the United Nations Chapel.

We buzzed out from under the 747s and whirred eastward over a vast swamp for about forty-five rattling minutes. I'm a jittery air passenger but I was glad I flew. Almost every overland traveler from Bangkok to Siem Reap tells a story of woe: officials demanding bribes; immigration hassles and ripoffs at the border; buses that arrive or depart three hours late, or not at all, or break down in the malarial sticks; stolen bags -- not to mention the Cambodian "highway" that often forces a recalculation of the trip not in hours but days.

After we landed, I waited out the familiar immigration queue in the one-room Siem Reap airport, then shared a cab into town with a vacationing English couple. They insisted upon paying the whole fare -- I think it was two dollars -- and took us to a swanky resort village, leaving me in the taxi to seek cheaper lodgings. I had a few ideas from my guidebook but my driver, in tandem with a guy loitering by the resort, had a 'recommendation', i.e., a place where the owner had arranged to slip him a few riel for bringing me there. He drove me to a place called Sweet Dreams. The room I saw was fine and I bargained it down to $6/night. I'd later discover that only one of the fan's five speeds worked -- High, or "Heliport" as I came to call it -- so I wound up sleeping without it, my little window open to a brick wall and the sodden nights. Not the sweetest dreams.

Before he left, the cabbie also asked if I needed transportation to the temples. I guessed I did, so we struck a deal for the next morning. His name was Sawath and his breath stank. He was perhaps twenty-four. Or he could have been seventeen or thirty-three. I gave my dirty laundry to the proprietress, a rather surly woman named Buhn-lao. Then I showered and changed into my few remaining clean clothes. I was, as usual, very hungry; taking inventory of my food for the day, I could count only the hurried in-flight trifles I'd been served on the way to Cambodia. Feeling emboldened by my recent, repeated patronage of the fõe-lady's stall in Louang Prabang, I set off down Siem Reap's dark streets and found a cart vendor selling a cold noodle dish for 1000 riel (about 25 cents). He spoke no English and the terms of the sale had to be mediated by the vendor's friend. I ate on a little plastic footstool set before me on the curb; and even though the small portion was bland and limp, eating it I felt very superior to all of the other tourists spending three, six, or ten dollars on pizza or spaghetti or nachos. My hauteur would earn its comeuppance, literally, about two weeks later.

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