Arriving in Siem Reap

Arriving in Siem Reap after a short flight from Bangkok, I was not amused when the motorcycle guy driving me to my hotel kept turning around to show me pictures of his disabled father or grandfather and insisting I hire him as a guide for the next three days because he was so hard done by. Actually, his English was quite good and I would have hired him if he had not been so oppressively’ in my face’ about how hard it was to live in Cambodia. I kept having similar exeriences. Outside of Angkor Wat, I offered a little girl some “coloured" currency because I just finished a coke and she wanted me to buy another one. She refused my charity because she said it was too little. As we drove away, she screamed how mad at me she was! Since when are these little urchins too good to take 25 cents? It was not the fact that I offered charity…it was the fact that I offered too little.

At every tourist stop there had to be dozens of sellers of drinks, postcards (who buys postcards today?), silk ware and T shirts outside of every single temple, and believe me there are lots of temples! Every merchant feels we owe them something because we have a white face. They are the ones with a sense of entitlement, not the old white guys as is the case in North America. They absolutely feel that as a right we owe them money because we are from the west and they have had a terrible quarter century

What about the Vietnamese who lives have been irrevocably change because of the Chinese French and American war? Do they stand at every street corner with their hands out and pick out rich Americans who did so much to destroy their lives? I don’t think so. In fact, they are working so hard it will not surprise me if it is the Americans with their hands out in a generation or two.

And what about the victims of the Holocaust? I cannot recall a single Jewish person who felt the world owed them a living because of what happened between 1942 and 1945. Some, if not all Holocaust survivors were a little to a lot crazy, but just got on with their lives and tried to make the best of it. Why should I give every Cambodian money because their lives were destroyed (by their own people). Admittedly,I do feel sorry for them as I see the maimed with lost legs and arms, deafness, and so on, but I should not feel like I owe them anything. The moral imperative is my own, not theirs!

Having said all that, I just walked into my hotel and a man with his little boy were playing just outside the front portico. When he started talking to me, I said to myself, here we go again and almost ignored him. When he asked where I was from I felt compelled to answer the question and then he replied with and “where are you from?” “Here”, he said,” and thank you so much for visiting my country” he said with heartfelt emotion.

Now, for the stones. They are absolutely either a tribute to man’s highest aspirations or a sign of our colossal egotism and waste. As you can see from the pictures, the temples are magnificent in so many ways, but how many people hours did it take to make these and at what cost? If you look at the iconography on the walls, they are warriors fighting each other with swords and bows and arrows. There are bas reliefs of soldiers offering the heads of the defeated to their king. There are the half naked Aspira dancing ladies, the face of Jayavarman V11 on all entrances showing his making of merit to his Gods ( at the expense) perhaps of thousands of lost lives. His workers literally spent their lives in making these monuments to his greatness.

Again, at least they were involved in productive work, something I am not so sure about when I am harassed at every turn by little girls selling me postcards.