Luckily, I had a contact in Siem Reap who would whisk us out of the exhausting, hassle filled world of the Cambodian tourist, and into the fun filled and excited world of the Cambodian ex-pat. Bryse (my friend) has been living and working in Siem Reap for several months as part of an Engineers Without Borders project repairing a local dam. We arrived dusty and sweaty, and after several attempts to use the questionable Cambodian phone service, were invited to join the members of the dam project for a dinner. We didn't know what we were in for. We arrived at "Happy Night", a large open air restaurant with a large stage and various musical acts going on and off, and apparently you could even get up and sing Karaoke-style. Upon sitting down, we were flocked by dozens of women in very short dresses who were shoving cards in our faces with names of beers and pictures of equally scantily clad women, and demanding that we pick one. Overwhelmed, I looked to Bryse for guidance, but he just shot me a look of equal confusion and terror. Mr. P'law (sp?), the guy who had picked this charming dining location, seemed to placate the women by ordering several types of beer from them (one being called "Love Beer"). Our introduction to Cambodia continued with dishes of raw fish and beef "cooked" in lime juice, similar to cebiche. This was followed by dollar vodka-Red Bulls and foosball at the local roof top ex-pat bar. I couldn't already tell I was going to like it in Siem Reap.
The Siem Reap we encountered had two sides, one being the boozing side just mentioned, and the other being serious NGO and other humanitarian work. They balanced each other nicely. The project that Bryse is working on is pretty large scale, and involves repairing an ancient reservoir that provides irrigation water to local villages dotting the landscape filled with temples of the world famous Angkor complex. The team doing this job consists of my friend Bryse, Tobias (a very impressive 26 year-old guy who started his own NGO which is funding the project), Boone Te (a Canadian raised Cambodian girl who was very valuable to the project due to her bilingualism, and as it turns out, a hell of a party host), Chai (an engineering student from the far north of the country who works hard and parties harder), Sida (another young Cambodian whose role I never quite ascertained), and Steve Forbes (basically the coolest guy in the world, a 66 year-old environmental engineer who spends most of his time running around the developing world monitoring various projects such as this one). There was also Randy, who was trying very aggressively to get a job working for Tobias, but we'll set him aside for the time being.The project was going along in full force when we arrived, despite many of the difficulties, ranging from finding a concrete company to getting the workers from the village to observe basic safety precautions. The drive out to the work site was one of the best experiences of the visit, as the entire village comes out to wave and shout as you drive by. On our way back from the job site the first day, Bryse promptly ran the truck out of gas. Luckily, the dusty dirt road had its share of "gas stations" where you could buy the yellow petrol out of Johnny Walker bottles on display. Bryse got Boone on the line, and then luckily flagged down a man on a passing motorbike. Boone explained the situation, and the man not only took Bryse to the nearest gas vendor, but also brought him back to the truck along with his son. It had taken less than 24 hours for me to forget about all my bitterness over the five dollar border corruption fee and my image of Cambodia as a land of people out to scam you.
Saturday night was the housewarming 80's party out at Boone's house (named "Browntown"), and this was when we really were exposed to the night life of all the Siem Reap do-gooders. The costumes were surprisingly well put together considering the location, and there were at least 13 mustaches. (Later, Taylor commented to Boone on how well the Cambodian girls had pulled off the 80's style, and
Boone said "Oh, those weren't costumes, that's how they usually dress for parties.") Notable things about the party include: Steve Forbes boozing it with all the young ones while wearing a bright red bandanna, a wall of speakers the size of a hippopotamus provided by Boone's tuk-tuk driver friend, urinals in all three bathrooms, and Taylor taking second place in the costume contest. It made us feel a little like money grubbing assholes for working in Korea while the room was full of volunteers and NGO workers, but all the people we met were very cool, interesting and welcoming. The whole party was a success, aside from a comment from Randy that he doesn't believe in altruism, and that "all these people are either horny or degenerate", and the fact that Bryse made Taylor and I walk home alone on the mean streets of Siem Reap at 3 in the morning.
I could go on and on and on about the wonderful time I had in Siem Reap, I could describe in detail the amazing, inspiring, kind people I met, and I could list the good projects these people are working on and the numerous jokes we guffawed over. However, I've taken up so much space already (and Bryse specifically complained about my blog entries being too long) that I'm going to leave things as they stand, namely that I had a great time nuzzling into the ex-pat community of Siem Reap and I was very sad to leave.
Oh, two more things: 1) Siem Reap is home to the amazing ruins of the Angkor empire, probably the most impressive ancient structures that I have ever seen; 2) a dog at our guest house gave birth to puppies right outside our door on our first night there, they were pretty cute.
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