I had a few other things I wanted to see around Siem Reap, but Vuthy suggested that I go and see the floating village of Tonle Sap first. All the tourists wanted to see the floating village of Tonle Sap. This sounded bad, but I let him take me there anyway.
Everyone involved in the business of showing the floating village of Tonle Sap to tourists is a bit jaded. The ticket-seller was the grumpiest Cambodian I met. The driver was almost fatally hung-over. And the boat came with a nuisance named Cha. Cha was a halfhearted tour guide and a dedicated nag. He was involved in a school-supplies scam, in which tourists are convinced to buy things from a particular shop for 'donation' to a (in this case, floating) school, and he was keen to involve me, too. His conversation got more and more repetitive as we got closer to the shop. He sulked on the way back to the harbour, only perking up at the very end to note that the expected tip for the driver and guide on these sorts of trips was in the 40% range.
As we approached the village, a boat drew up alongside, and a little girl hopped across to our boat and walked up to me with a basket of canned sodas. Next, Cha pointed out a small boat carrying a woman and a little boy. The boy had a python draped over his shoulders. I asked Cha why that was. He explained that some tourists would pay a dollar to take a picture of a toddler with a snake around its neck; and then the boat approached to see whether I was one of them.
Cha said that some tourists didn't give money because they felt that the little boy should be in school. The others, I guess, shrug and think 'well, at least he's learning a trade'. Of all of us, only the kid and the python had no reason to feel bad. But the kid seemed unhappy, and the python looked half-dead. But that might be a sign of contentment among pythons (maybe it had eaten recently; I can't read pythons).
There were two floating schools, floating stores, a floating crocodile farm, a floating pig farm (well, a wicker cage on the back of a boat containing two pigs), a floating basketball court, and floating Korean and Australian restaurants (for tourists). Mine wasn't the only tourist boat cruising up and down. But most of the village looked like an authentically poor floating village. The people are fishermen, and live on small boats. Some sat hauling in nets, hitting them with sticks to knock tiny fish out of the mesh. They don't make money out of the people who come to gawk at them, and so there's nothing to lift them out of their picturesque poverty.
On the way back into Siem reap, the poverty was less photogenic than that in the floating village or the archaeological park. The streets were dusty, and people in the huts that lined them were scraping haphazard livings fixing scooters, raising chickens, and selling snacks and gasoline. Some men were working on the road; there was a thing like a Mark I tank full of hot tar, and they were ladling it out and smearing it over filled-in potholes. A woman on a scooter carried a 20' pole, holding it up like a jouster's lance. A man had a cylindrical wicker cage full of piglets on the back of his.
Siem Reap itself, at least its 'old quarter', is a tourist town. There's a bar street, closed off to traffic at night, where tourists gather to drink $0.50 draft (it's cheaper than water, which partly explains the atmosphere) and eat in restaurants where main dishes cost up to $5 or even $7 and the service and menus are all in English. If I'd had any ideas about this part of Cambodia being some kind of exotic destination, bar street would have put an end to them.
The War Museum
At the edge of Siem Reap, there's a very faded sign with pictures of tanks on it pointing down a dirt road. The War Museum is down there.
The War Museum is basically a big lot, overgrown with weeds and shrubs, where a dozen or so blown-up and/or rusted-out tanks and other war machines have been abandoned. It's managed by a somber man with one arm. Descriptions of the exhibits have been hand-written on wooden boards, and the signs to the exit and toilets are artillery and mortar shells that have 'exit' and 'toilets' painted on them.
At the edges of the field are sheds with rusty rifles, piles of decaying gas masks, tables with hand grenades, and belt-loading machine guns. There are a couple of 'minefields', surrounded by wire, where defused mines are lying in the weeds. Out front, there's a helicopter and a fighter jet, both of them in very bad shape. There were only a few other visitors, all of them young men. A couple of Malaysians climbed up onto one of the tanks to pose for pictures; no one seemed to mind.
Everyone involved in the business of showing the floating village of Tonle Sap to tourists is a bit jaded. The ticket-seller was the grumpiest Cambodian I met. The driver was almost fatally hung-over. And the boat came with a nuisance named Cha. Cha was a halfhearted tour guide and a dedicated nag. He was involved in a school-supplies scam, in which tourists are convinced to buy things from a particular shop for 'donation' to a (in this case, floating) school, and he was keen to involve me, too. His conversation got more and more repetitive as we got closer to the shop. He sulked on the way back to the harbour, only perking up at the very end to note that the expected tip for the driver and guide on these sorts of trips was in the 40% range.
As we approached the village, a boat drew up alongside, and a little girl hopped across to our boat and walked up to me with a basket of canned sodas. Next, Cha pointed out a small boat carrying a woman and a little boy. The boy had a python draped over his shoulders. I asked Cha why that was. He explained that some tourists would pay a dollar to take a picture of a toddler with a snake around its neck; and then the boat approached to see whether I was one of them.
Cha said that some tourists didn't give money because they felt that the little boy should be in school. The others, I guess, shrug and think 'well, at least he's learning a trade'. Of all of us, only the kid and the python had no reason to feel bad. But the kid seemed unhappy, and the python looked half-dead. But that might be a sign of contentment among pythons (maybe it had eaten recently; I can't read pythons).
There were two floating schools, floating stores, a floating crocodile farm, a floating pig farm (well, a wicker cage on the back of a boat containing two pigs), a floating basketball court, and floating Korean and Australian restaurants (for tourists). Mine wasn't the only tourist boat cruising up and down. But most of the village looked like an authentically poor floating village. The people are fishermen, and live on small boats. Some sat hauling in nets, hitting them with sticks to knock tiny fish out of the mesh. They don't make money out of the people who come to gawk at them, and so there's nothing to lift them out of their picturesque poverty.
On the way back into Siem reap, the poverty was less photogenic than that in the floating village or the archaeological park. The streets were dusty, and people in the huts that lined them were scraping haphazard livings fixing scooters, raising chickens, and selling snacks and gasoline. Some men were working on the road; there was a thing like a Mark I tank full of hot tar, and they were ladling it out and smearing it over filled-in potholes. A woman on a scooter carried a 20' pole, holding it up like a jouster's lance. A man had a cylindrical wicker cage full of piglets on the back of his.
Siem Reap itself, at least its 'old quarter', is a tourist town. There's a bar street, closed off to traffic at night, where tourists gather to drink $0.50 draft (it's cheaper than water, which partly explains the atmosphere) and eat in restaurants where main dishes cost up to $5 or even $7 and the service and menus are all in English. If I'd had any ideas about this part of Cambodia being some kind of exotic destination, bar street would have put an end to them.
The War Museum
At the edge of Siem Reap, there's a very faded sign with pictures of tanks on it pointing down a dirt road. The War Museum is down there.
The War Museum is basically a big lot, overgrown with weeds and shrubs, where a dozen or so blown-up and/or rusted-out tanks and other war machines have been abandoned. It's managed by a somber man with one arm. Descriptions of the exhibits have been hand-written on wooden boards, and the signs to the exit and toilets are artillery and mortar shells that have 'exit' and 'toilets' painted on them.
At the edges of the field are sheds with rusty rifles, piles of decaying gas masks, tables with hand grenades, and belt-loading machine guns. There are a couple of 'minefields', surrounded by wire, where defused mines are lying in the weeds. Out front, there's a helicopter and a fighter jet, both of them in very bad shape. There were only a few other visitors, all of them young men. A couple of Malaysians climbed up onto one of the tanks to pose for pictures; no one seemed to mind.
