Road Number 6

I think it's Monday, March 8th and I have too many days in my itinerary. Did February have 27 days or 28? We're in Phnom Penh having left Siem Reap on National Road #6 yesterday morning. The five hour drive took seven. Our car's dashboard was decorated with gold Buddhas and red lotus flowers, along with a dragon dangling from the rear view mirror, for luck. We needed them all as our driver kept falling asleep at the wheel or passing the slow moving vehicles on a curve with oncoming traffic. Either Dave or I stayed awake, watching his eyes. His swaying across the road wasn't an indicator of sleepiness because not only were there no lines, and driving on the right hand side of the road optional, but driving without weaving would have flattened the cow carts travelling on the road with us.

There were only two stops along the way the driver was willing to stop at, one without tarantulas and one with. Eating the tarantuala has become de rigeur for tourists and so they're carving an 8 foot wide statue in front of the stop. Here you can pick up your mess o'fried crickets to accompany the garlic fried spider. The hawker kids were quite impressed with me handling a live spider. I let it crawl up my hand, then picked it up & held it with the other. One of the little girls kept one at the throat of her shirt like a broach. Slow moving and gentle, they've had their fangs removed. One little boy (with a spectacular frost job of chunky gold highlights) had a fang. It was about the length & curve of a thumbnail.

I've never been surrounded by so many begging & hawking children (hawking = selling). While I find the whine irritating, when they begin to laugh & joke with me it becomes very difficult for me not to reward them with a purchase. School here is free, but apparently you must pay to supplement the teacher's salary. There's only one free hospital in Cambodia & that's in Siem Reap for the children. The road outside its entrance and the park across from it were packed with people waiting to get in. The children will tell you they need the money for school, that they attend school (during school hours, no less), "Buy my bananas", "Buy my mangoes", "buy" "buy" "buy". The litany is relentless and I wish I knew what the "thing to do" was. For the most part, I begin with my jokes and stories. I've amused some, disappointed many and ended up with a free woven fish for luck, & a kiss on the cheek .

Siem Reap is construction mad & needs to be. If the temples were not so massive and if there weren't so many of them, the crowds during this off season would have been confounding. Old town Siem Reap is more provincal than Khao San Road of Bangkok, but still has the world there. It's an amazing corner to people watch. Phnom Penh is a city of security walls and concertina wire. We hired a tuk-tuk driver today to drive us around. There are some older parts which seem to be the same as any other Southeast Asian city we've been in. We went to the Russian market today. Totally enclosed, without any lighting, the ceilings low, the footpaths narrow it was probably the most claustrophobic of the markets we've been in. When we stepped out, the late morning air felt cool and fresh.

I think we leave tomorrow morning for Taipei. I think today is Monday, March 8th. If that is so, I only have one day in PP, not 2 full days. I'm actually grateful for that. Neither Dave nor I have any interest in going to see the "Killing Fields" or the genocide museum or the memorial for the dead. The person who drove us to Phnom Penh was the only survivor from a family of 13. I grew up on these stories, on this tragedy. I've come to Cambodia to watch it live.