"Little Pieces of Shit"

When I was in Guilin, I met this Kiwi girl that worked as a tour guide for Southeast Asia. She was based in Hanoi (She suppose to tell me this place for a great fruit shake but she never bothered to remember. She couldn't describe the location). When I was asking her about Vietnam and Cambodia, I distinctly remember that she called the children around Angkor Wat little pieces of shit. I was taken slightly a back since it's very hard to see children being so totally aggravating that they would receive such a moniker. After all, Cambodia was hit very hard in recent history and they are still trying to recover.

Enter the present day. After four days in Siem Reap and exploring the Angkor temples, I can honestly agree that the children here are little pieces of shit. They put on a show and know exactly to put on the poor, innocent, helpless face when they are trying to sell you useless junk for a dollar a piece. After, they go on smiling and arguing with their relatives. I remember on the second day when I was at Banteay Kdei, this boy kept saying his family was very poor. I wouldn't give him anything and the next thing he was doing was playing with sister and eating snacks. Snacks are a luxury my friend that even I don't indulge in too often.

On a more positive note, Angkor temples are awesome. I loved Angkor Wat and it's bas reliefs. Seeing the churning of the milk sea and understanding the story behind was very incredible. There are some great views all around. The sunrise at Srah Srang was beautiful and sunset at Phnom Bakheng is breathtaking. Most interesting experience thus far was finding Ta Nei temple. It's a temple that's hidden in the forest and you have to follow a small forest path. It's not on any of the main routes. So following this temple path I fell into a big puddle of mud. Most of my calves and feet were caked in mud. It was actually very cool if one got over the fact that it was dirty mud. Ta Nei was definitely hidden. There were no ticket collectors, no children selling crap, and no other tourists. I had the temple all to myself.

Today I've holed myself up in Siem Reap town until mid-afternoon. It was raining in the morning and it's really hot to go out now. Maybe two o'clock would be a good time to start. Going to explore the whole of Angkor Thom today. This includes the famous faces of Bayon. I've also saved sunset at Angkor for today. Hope it doesn't rain at sunset like the last two days. Should be exciting