Cambodia (Part I.)

I shot my first gun in Cambodia, a shooting range that is a little outside of the country capital Phnom Penh. It was a little anticlimactic to say the least, only because this American M-17 was such a big, unwieldy gun that propped awkwardly against my shoulder and I couldn't even really see if I was hitting my target or not. What was I expecting anyway? An intense bloodrush of pure power? A sudden pixelated transformation into a gun-toting sex vixen? Va-va-boom! Maybe I should have chosen a smaller handgun instead.





These are the kind of things you can do in Cambodia that aren't available in a tiny, meticulously clean country like Singapore. You can go to the Happy Shooting Range where, along with whatever Russian or American gun tickles your fancy, you can order a can of beer from a laminated menu like you're at some freaking restaurant. You can ride on the back of a moto through very unpaved, bumpy roads interrupted by puddles from the previous night's rain. You can amuse yourself watching monkeys at a local park, eat a very happy pizza (more on this later), climb hilltop temples with precariously steep steps and soak in the everyday rhythm of a country that has, as an understatement, gone through a lot of shit.

According to the United Nations report, Cambodia ranks in the world's fifty poorest countries. Everywhere you go there are street children, beggars and people with disfigured limbs who have learned enough English to beg Western tourists for money. Just barely three decades ago, over 1.7 million people (with some estimates as high as 3 million) perished under Pol Pot's oppressive regime. The unmarked graves in the killing fields outside of Phnom Penh and the haunting photographs in the Tuol Sleng genocide museum testify to this horrible event.

I don't want to paint a completely bleak picture, though, because that would be misleading. Unlike the hustle-bustle touristing blitz of Bangkok, Phnom Penh has just started opening its door to the rest of the world. While many cheap guesthouses have started cropping up near the river and lake districts within the capital, this city still remains a less trodden path compared to its glitizier Southeast Asian counterparts.

I like this place. Adolescent boys fish in the river, families play badminton in the open courtyard near the National Museum and people take naps in the park by Wat Phnom. Everyone rides a motorbike to everywhere, and life continues on.

I would daresay that out of all the countries I've visited so far, Cambodia has been the most eye-opening and most rewarding. It's a beautiful country with a lot of sadness and despair, but tentatively stepping towards a more hopeful future.







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Angkor Wat, which is located in Northern Cambodia, is freaking huge. It was built in the 12th century and represents the classical age of Khmer architecture. According to Guinness World Records, it is the largest religious structure in the world, and I don't have a hard time believing that.

Most people buy the one-day pass to access the majority of the temple sites. You can also buy a three-day pass or a week-long pass. Unless you are an archaeologist, a Southeast Asian art historian or someone who happens to get off on ancient temples, I suggest you just buy the twenty-dollar one-day pass. Because after a while, in spite of the grandeur and the sheer enormity of it, all the temples kind of start looking the same.

As I told my fellow traveling companion, I think I've seen enough temples in Southeast Asia for the next thirty or forty years.







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So a tiny trivia point that is slightly related to Angkor Wats that is only interesting to dorks like me. If you haven't seen "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" or any Hayao Miyazaki movie, look no further.

According to Jun, my Japanese exchange friend who may or may not be a filthy liar, Hayao Miyazaki modeled the look of the island of Laputa from the temples of Angkor Wats for the movie "Laputa: Castle in the Sky," especially one of the temples that is known for having a tree protruding out of its stone walls.





!!!!!!!!!! NOW HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!?!?

By the way, somewhere in Japan, they sell a reproduction of the necklace that Shiita wears in the movie, the magical stone from the floating island that gives you the power of levitation. I know this because my Japanese friend Toubi owns one, who got it as a present from a friend. And now I freaking want one, even more than all the Men's Pocky, softcore Japanese porn books and Hello Kitty vibrators in the world.

Now I am not the type to demand jewelry from my male admirers (an impromptu present of yellow legal pads and Sharpie pens would be more likely to steal my heart), but if anyone ever buys me this necklace.... I will bear you a son. I will bear you a goddamn baseball team!

For our honeymoon, we would go to the Studio Ghibli museum in Japan and look at neat things like this, which is also from Laputa:



Not shown: the part where we ride off to the sunset on a Catbus.