Surviving Cambodia Pt.2: Welcome To The Jungle

Temples of Angkor Wat

I woke up feeling fresh and brand new. I felt as though I could take off flying from the ground had it not been for the roof over my head. Either my previous day was that exhausting or the valium my roommate gave me did its job, either way, it was my first real day in Cambodia and it couldn’t have started out better. My roommate was still sleeping so I quietly took my first hot shower in two months of traveling and then got dressed to go to the bank. I still owed money for the room since the front desk guy was nice enough to let me stay there the night for free. Exchanging my money turned out to be easy enough since the bank was right across the street from the hostel. The night before I was told it would be better to exchange all my Thai baht into American dollars seems how that’s mainly what is used in Cambodia and the borders. Just to be safe I do exactly that then head back to the hostel to pay before I went back out on a walk.

Feeling as great as I did, I stopped by a restaurant and decided I would splurge a little bit after my previous disaster of a day, so I spend four dollars on a nice little meal. I spent the remainder of the day researching tours through Angkor Wat, wandering around checking out the scenery and I also bought a bus ticket to Ho Chi Minh for the day after next. I returned to my hostel, had a couple beers with my roomie and called it a night. This would end up being the easiest and most stress-free day I experienced for the entire month I was stuck in Cambodia.

The next day I woke up early to grab some breakfast and then head over to the temples. I met a tuk-tuk driver who told me he would take me on my own tour and give me freedom to roam five temples without being constrained by a tour guide, and for just twenty dollars. The tours were charging thirty dollars or more, so I agreed and went to eat my breakfast. Afterward he took me to go to Angkor Wat.

We pull up to a building that is not Angkor Wat and I ask him what’s going on? He tells me I must buy a day pass to get into the temples and that wasn’t included in the money I’m paying him for a ride. Thirty-seven dollars it cost me for that day pass. So now I just spent fifty-seven dollars for this day and I’m really upset because I still have to go to Vietnam, and I still haven’t really assessed the damage to my funds after getting through the border. I figure whatever, just enjoy the day, and I do because the temples of Angkor Wat are absolutely amazing, and I will never forget the experience of walking through all that history.

I get dropped off at the largest temple which is Angkor Wat and the driver tells me he will be back in an hour and half so I could just go get lost and enjoy my time. To say I was excited would be a drastic understatement because I almost started running to the temples, and I may have had I not been stopped by a woman checking that damned day pass. So much for sneaking in later. I quickly forgot about how much I spent because entering this massive architectural expression of divinity was so much better than I thought it would be. There’s no substitute for experience and this was an absolute testament to that truth.

I spent the next hour and a half roaming every corridor and climbing every step I could find. I took as many pictures as I possibly could and even though I hate them, I got a few selfies in. That’s how excited I was. I even did a headstand at the top of one of the stairwell cases on one of the smaller temples off to the side. This was a dream come true in so many ways. The artwork carved into, and out of, the stones was beyond mystical; but also, terrifying. It was terrifying in a way that still left you mesmerized by its mysteriousness so you can’t be sure if it was just creepy or indeed nefarious. They were large elliptical eyes that spread out like peacock wings behind these dragon-dog hybrid sculptures and they were everywhere. It wasn’t just the strangeness though, of the eyes, but how the ellipticals were carved that gave you a sense of otherworldliness. They appeared to me to be like dancing flames frozen in time, concretized and made to be a symbol of universal consciousness and the nature of stillness. The roofs of the Angkor Wat temple were designed the same way too, so the entire temple was a visual orgy of psychedelia that hypnotized you everywhere you walked. 

I finished touring Angkor Wat and finished visiting the other four temples but each of those were underwhelming compared to the splendour of Angkor Wat. In fact, by the end of the third temple I was so hot and exhausted from roaming all of them that I wanted to just go home, but I paid for this experience, so I just toughed it out and finished. Afterwards I went back to the hostel and took a nap. I wake up to my roommate asking if I wanted to grab a beer, on him. Of course I do, especially since he’s paying.  

We end up visiting a couple of bars and playing some pool. One bar we went to was on a roof top and I didn’t know it then, but I would become well acquainted with this bar, and very soon. My roommate and I both decided after a few bars and beers that It would be nicer to just return and drink on the roof of the hostel. He buys some more drinks and we head up to the roof, he then hands me what I thought was another Valium and we end up spending the next couple of hours drinking. He then goes to bed saying he needs to catch a tuk-tuk early to go to the temples so he could beat all the tourism traffic. Why didn’t I think of that?

I end up meeting a couple of guys from Pakistan and we shoot the shit for awhile before I realize I’m really drunk, or high, or something. One of the Pakistani gentleman rolls up a joint and hands it to me so I light it thinking it will bring me down a little bit so I can sleep. I get halfway through the joint before I decide I’m going to go for a walk. It was 3am but I love walking and I wanted to see what goes on in Siem Reap at night. I’m only here for two more nights so why not? Little did I know; this would end up being the walk that changed everything.

Welcome To The Jungle

I stumbled down the stairs and slipped on my torn and tattered shoes to go roaming the streets but before I leave the front desk guy tells me in broken English, “be careful out there.” I laugh and tell him I can handle myself and proceed to walk through the front door which is giving me a perfect view of an empty street. “Be careful”, I jokingly thought to myself. I figure he doesn’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve been through, so I arrogantly forgive him in my own head.

I head outside and begin walking down the street and not a minute later I’m being bombarded by some woman with huge boobs and a very short skirt and she’s grabbing my arm while holding me tightly next to her. We’re still walking but she keeps saying, “Boom Boom! Twenty dollars.” I kept politely telling her that I don’t have twenty dollars to spend on boom boom and I’m sorry. Every time I said no, she would become furious and then propel herself off me so she could cross her arms and stomp around like a child. I thought it was a silly and off-putting display of emotions, albeit an interesting one. Because of our language barrier it seemed to me that she was resorting to physical exaggerations in order to help convey the messages or statements that she wanted to get across, exactly the way a child would do.

Before I have enough time to turn around and head back, suddenly, I feel myself flying through the air and tripping over mortar bricks that were holding some potted plants in some dark corner at the edge of Pub Street. I fall on my elbow and let out a yell from the pain and quite frankly, from the surprise of being launched so far out of nowhere. Here I am laying flat on the ground, looking up at this woman who just pushed me and now she’s reaching down and trying to unbuckle my pants. We wrestle over my buckle for a minute before I turn my body around so she can’t reach the front of my pants and I proceed to stand up. She pushes me back down and now I’m ready to start throwing punches, but the image of those huge tits kept making me think she was a woman when by now I believe it was clear as day that she was not.

After a few more moments of her trying to keep me down I finally have enough of being nice and I stand up completely straight to give her the fiercest look that I can muster, which wasn’t difficult since I was livid by now. As I stare and grimace, she just laughs mockingly at me with her chipmunk cheeks and then quickly disappeared into the dark alleys. I stood for a moment scanning the area around me to see if anyone just saw me get my ass kicked and almost raped by a what I presumed to be a “lady boy”. Luckily for my pride no one was there but when I looked down on the ground, I saw my wallet sitting there and thought, “Oh shit”. I quickly pick it up and look inside and thirty dollars is missing. I couldn’t believe it. I just lost thirty dollars and I haven’t even been outside for five minutes yet.

I head back to the hostel feeling embarrassed since I was just warned about being careful and now, I’m returning with a bloody elbow and covered in black soil. The front desk guy see’s me and opens the door for me looking frantic. He makes sure I’m okay which I was, until I went to grab my phone, my phone that’s not actually mine because mine is broken, and it’s missing. I run upstairs to check my stuff, it’s not there. I run back down and tell the front desk guy I need to be let out to find my phone. When I leave, I run down to the area where the scuffle happened, and I start looking for it hoping she didn’t get that too. As I’m looking a tuk-tuk driver comes up and asks if I wanted help. I say yeah and he starts using a flashlight then tells me to look in another direction, a direction I wasn’t anywhere near, so I become suspicious and begin looking with more focus and urgency.

It was like a race to see who would find the phone first and then I saw it, his hand swooped down faster than lightning and he put it in his jacket pocket. This was a stocky, average heighted gentleman in his early 50’s and he was wearing a brown outfit, everything from the button up shirt and slacks to the belt and shoes. I tell him thanks for finding my phone but then he snarled, revealing half a row of silver teeth on his upper front row. It seemed to be a display of authority which was scary because his outfit reminded me of 70’s Martial Arts movies where the bad guy gang members wear similar outfits. But this isn’t my phone and I’m supposed to take better care of that thing than I do my own things, so tonight I got mentally ready quick.

I told the nice gentleman again to hand back my phone, he snarled again then he tried to walk by me, but I stop him. I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back. He looks down at my hand and I leave it there so as to tell him “not tonight”. He stops for a moment still snarling like it’s going to do something, well it did. It was quite intimidating, but tonight I was prepared for the worst. I tell this Khmer gangster that I appreciate and respect the fact that he isn’t someone to mess with and I’m sure that he knows people I don’t want to mess with either. He goes to walk by me one more time and I push him back and say,

“that phone isn’t my property and I don’t who care who you are or who you know because tonight, I will get violent if I have to”.

He again stares for a moment then sits down next to some of the mortar bricks I knocked over earlier. I go on some rant for about five minutes about my three-year-old nephew whose phone he’s holding telling him that he’d be stealing from a child, and I was completely ready to fight for principles, not property. He seemed to understand except he didn’t want to come away empty handed, which I can’t blame him for. So, after a couple of minutes of negotiation I agree to pay him five dollars to not come back the next day with his friends and beat me to a pulp. He drops me off at my hostel, I give him the money and then go straight to bed without changing or showering.

The next day I wake up and I see my roommate standing closely, eyes right in front of mine. I’m still slightly drunk or feeling whatever pill he gave me, so I chalk the strange sight up to my inebriation and the fact that he’s so tall and I’m on the top bunk. I pop my head up and look down on my bed and see my wallet. Just then my roommate asks me if I want to have some beers tonight and since it’s my last night I agree. I get out of bed and he leaves, all seems normal after last night’s insanity, so I head to the roof balcony and have a cigarette while perusing the social media accounts I was able to get downloaded onto my cousin’s phone. I stay there for about an hour or so before I decide I want something to eat so I go to check my wallet to see how much I can spend. I go back to my bed to check my wallet and I had already forgot about losing that thirty dollars after being beaten up by a lady boy so I was already angry, but not nearly as angry as I was when I went to find the secret stash of money I keep in random pockets of my wallet and my main stash was gone. 

I frantically pull out every dollar I can find in my wallet and I count it up. No need to count, it’s one bill. Ten dollars… What a swell guy, leaving ten dollars of what he thought was all my money. Little did he know that I keep money in many separate hidden compartments, both in my wallet and in my bag, just in case something like this were to happen. I check my other hidden compartments and most of them are empty. I found another forty or so dollars in the last, most well-hidden spot in my wallet and I start to worry. I then run to my bag and check the compartment with the easiest access, and I find another stash of rolled twenties. I had forgot that I switched all my currency into American dollars after my thief of a roommate suggested it to me. I figure since my stash in my bag was safe then my emergency stash that’s inconveniently deep in my bag must be safe too, so I grab my hundred or so dollars and get some food. I had a lot to think about now that half my remaining money was stolen.

It All Comes Full Circle

They say hindsight is 20/20 because it’s easy to see things once they’ve transpired and I now can see how perhaps the decision I was about to make would be considered, well, negligent… or naïve. Regardless, I made my decision and it came down to a list of pros and cons that I wrote on a napkin in the restaurant. The main bullet points for continuing my journey were that namely, my auntie wanted me to visit Vietnam and I took that to be a prerequisite to accepting the money she gave me for the trip. In my own mind this was about principle. Secondly, I had enough money to continue and spend a couple nights in Ho Chi Minh and then return to Thailand and possibly still have a little money left over. Finally, I figured that if anything, I could try to find a job while in Vietnam, which if I did then I could prolong my trip and make some money back that was stolen from me. I could then return to Thailand with extra money, instead of little to no money, and It would be impressive. I began daydreaming about how I would bask in my own glory and my family would see how resourceful and amazingly competent I am. Instead of seeing me as a problem child or a delinquent who never lived up to his potential, they now saw me as someone who still has that special something, someone still capable of accomplishing great things. That was enough to make me continue, plus I already bought my bus ticket the day before, so the wheels of destiny were already turning. Who was I to stand in the way of destiny?

The following day I get a late check out and run down to the bus stop to catch the bus to Vietnam. It’s a sleeper bus which was awesome because I could sleep much easier and make this trip go by faster. Unfortunately, we had to transfer to a regular bus in Phnom Penh and finish the last 4 hours or so uncomfortably seated in a horribly maintained bus. Five minutes after getting on the bus some guy comes by and takes everyone’s passports but mine, mine was in my bag in the compartment down below, so I end up giving it to him at our next stop.

We finally arrive to the border of Cambodia and Vietnam and the guy who took our passports holds mine up and asks me to come outside with him. Everyone looks at me confused which made me nervous because I was using everyone else as my compass as to what is normal procedure and what isn’t. The gentleman holding my passport didn’t say anything to me as we sat down at a bench outside the bus. He then goes to hand me a phone and puts it to my ear. I begin listening to a guy with a heavy Asian accent and he’s telling me I’m not allowed entry into Vietnam. I tell him something like he’s wrong or I don’t believe him, either way he hung up on me. The guy who handed me the phone tells me, “two-hundred dollars”. My eyes are wide open upon hearing this chicanery. His ears are immediately assaulted by an onslaught of remarks that I don’t remember specifically, but I remember the look on the man’s face, and it couldn’t have been good. The bus was currently parked about fifty yards away from the border so I tell the guy to give me my passport so I could go to the border office by myself. He insists on giving me a ride on his motorcycle, so I accept and hop on the back. I see my passport in his hand and he’s not paying attention and like a lightning strike, I snatch the passport out of his hand and put it in my pocket. He gave me a look of complete fury and hatred and then drove to the border.

When we arrived, I hopped off the motorcycle and rushed inside the building so I could beat the guy to the counter. I walk quickly over to the guy behind the counter and go to ask him a question, but he interrupts me and points over my shoulder then says, “talk to that guy”. I turn around and see my nemesis looking at me with a huge grin on his smug face. His face was beaming with glee which for some reason made me realize my bag was still on the bus. I looked him in the eye and told him I want my bag back. I begin making a break for it back to the bus, now twenty yards closer and has people getting off and heading in my direction. I rush over there and grab my bag while everyone asks me what’s happening. I fill them in while grabbing my things as quickly as possible so I could rush back over the border office. This turned out to be a good move on my part because ten minutes later the bus moved to the other side of the border.

When I get back in, I see a sign for getting your Visa on Arrival and I go there but it’s empty. I frantically look around trying to find someone to talk to, but the only people here are my bus mates and a dozen other people working the office, but none of them would talk to me. My group begins sympathizing with me and try to help me out by keeping me calm. It almost worked until I heard some guy tell someone in my group that it would be fifty-five dollars for him. I asked about me and he said, “two hundred”. I lost my shit; I ran around for the next hour trying to find someone to help me, but no one could, or would. Finally, I speak with a woman about my situation and she said I needed an acceptance letter from the Vietnam Embassy and that took 3 days to get. I saw that other people had emails, which I couldn’t access, and some had print outs which I remember seeing at one of the Visa offices I visited. I remember that being fifty-five dollars and I couldn’t afford that with what I had left so I was screwed no matter what. I just take the whole Vietnam trip as a loss; I tried my hardest to get in and I couldn’t. I really got excited about seeing another country but alas, Cambodia was not finished with me yet.

I find a bus to Phnom Penh as quickly as I can and jump on it. The bus ride is twelve hours meaning I was now about to ride a bus for damn near twenty-four straight hours. During the bus ride back, I decide that I will stay in Phnom Penh for a night and just enjoy the rest of my trip not worrying about how much money I was about to lose getting into Vietnam. I felt a little less stressed and thought why not stay a few more nights in Cambodia. 

When I got to Phnom Penh it was insane. The traffic and the amount of people all crowded walking around while completely disregarding their own safety, let alone the safety of others. My tuk-tuk driver crashed into a motorcycle in one of the intersections and it was barely acknowledged. The buildings… there were many. Many upon many and they were all run down, and dirt was everywhere. I couldn’t tell where I was or where I was going. After a long tuk-tuk ride I finally arrive in an area called Market Street and it was filled with hostels, so I settle on the cheapest one and head out to a bar to grab a drink.

I went out thinking I would enjoy one drink and call It a night, but I ended getting into a good conversation with some people and that turned into them buying me drinks and then a full night of craziness and fun ensued. We stopped by a few bars including one with a guy who just got out of Thai prison after serving five years. I end up spending most my time at this bar until they close then one of the guys takes me over to another bar. I didn’t get to bed until 4am that morning but I had such a great night in Phnom Penh, and I would tell anyone who hasn’t been to visit. 

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed Phnom Penh I still had to make my way back to Thailand. I would have stayed but Siem Reap was much cheaper than the capital and I still wanted to enjoy a few stress-free days just lounging and walking around. I grabbed a bus back to Siem Reap and then went on my merry way. When I arrived back to Pub Street, I just went back to the same hostel I stayed at before because I really like them, they were cheap, and they had amazing service. To top it off, not a lot of people stayed here which meant I might get my own room, which I did. They were happy to see me and honestly, I was happy as hell to see them too. They were familiar faces and from the very beginning they wanted to keep me safe, so I felt like they were kindhearted and not trying to con me. I paid for four days and decided that would be enough then I would return to Thailand.

The next day I wake up and just enjoy my day. I ate well and bought what I would find out to be the best fruit smoothie I have ever tasted, ever. It was the food of the gods and it only cost one dollar. This was soon to one of my main sources of food and nutrition to survive on in Cambodia because when I woke up the next day, I went to check that emergency reserve of money I was so sure I had, and it was gone. I pulled everything out of my bag and went through every nook and cranny I could find. I opened books, unfolded papers and went through all my clothes. It was gone. I started having an anxiety attack and fear had just enveloped me and I became so scared that I was beside myself. Pacing my dorm room back and forth I kept replaying the day I exchanged money wondering if it was possible that I never put emergency reserves away to begin with.

 Had I realized from the beginning that I actually had half the money I thought I did then I would have made very different choices, but here I stand, holding my last ten dollars in my hand and all I could do in that moment was laugh. How poetic and fitting that it would come down to the ten dollars that asshole who stole my money left me. And here I was again, confronted with the same two choices I had the first time around; do I stay, or do I go? Do I concede defeat or try to step up to adversity and fear and overcome them? What would the average person do and do I want to be like the average person? What would you do?

To Be Continued…