She was so very representative. She must have asked me a hundred times to buy something from her. She could have cared less that I didn’t want anything she had to sell. She just wanted me to take something she had and give her some money for it. I was simply Suhhhrrrr to her, just another tourist with more money than she had. It was a simple matter of economics and survival.
Tag Archives: Cambodia
Cambodian Sales Crew
Okay, they’re a little short and they lack sophisticated training, but they sell, nonetheless. What I wonder, is why they aren’t in school instead of out hustling bracelets and flutes? I saw children like this all over Cambodia. It hurt me to have to tell almost all of them that I couldn’t buy their products, but I couldn’t. These children aren’t unique. There are children like these all over the world.
My Driver
This was my driver, Mr. Sarorn. Mr. Sarorn was 25 years old, married with 3 children and was once a Buddhist monk. He mad about $140 a month driving a tuk-tuk. He liked his job. I paid him $15 for to drive me around Siem Reap for 8 hours. I thought it was a good deal. He thought it was a good deal.
Elephant Parade
How cool is this? An Elephant Parade right in front of me.
My Bunk
It’s my bunk at the hostel. Okay, it’s not much of a bunk, but it was mine. For a few days at least. It wasn’t the best bunk I ever had. It wasn’t the worst.
Big Buddha
What you need to know about this picture is that there are a lot of statues of Buddha in the world. A whole lot. Many of them are quite large.
Coconut Drink
I’m riding down the road on my bike and I stop for a minute to rest and a little girl about five years old walks up to me and starts trying to sell me everything under the sun. I walked over to her parent’s shop where I decided to try my first ever coconut drink. Her dad hacked off the top (or was it the bottom?), stuck a straw into it and, for 50 cents, I had one of the great pleasures of the tropics – drinking fresh coconut milk from a coconut through a straw.
Elephant Crossing
That’s right, Elephant Crossing.
Hieroglyphic Walls
All of the temples in the Angkor Archeological Park have stories on their walls. The stories aren’t really in hieroglyphics, they’re in Sanskrit, as I understand it. Most of the temples date from 900-1400 A.D.
Stray Dogs
They have stray dogs in Cambodia. They don’t have them in Vietnam. The reason is that they eat dog meat in Vietnam. I’ll not say a whole lot about the whole issue because no matter what I say, someone won’t like it. I will say this. I don’t expect to ever eat dog meat. I think stray dogs are a health hazard.