Siem Reap: Or How I Puked At a UN World Heritage Site

Alright, well, I am clearly failing as a travel blogger these days. A lot has happened since my first (and only) post almost 2 weeks ago. In an attempt to keep this post from becoming a novel, I’ll split it up into a couple different posts.

So, the day after allowing “Dr. Fish” to eat all the dead skin off my feet, I did some more weird stuff, though primarily in a culinary manner. I ate a Cambodian delicacy called Duck Fetus, which is….. a duck fetus. Still in the egg. I could only manage one bite before the visual was just too much for me, but it didn’t actually taste too bad. Then, because that wasn’t enough, I decided to eat a cricket. It was dead and roasted, so the actual eating wasn’t challenging, but I forgot to bite the legs off, so I had to pull them out one by one, which was pretty gross. The cricket itself, though I hate to say it, did kind of taste like chicken.

The day after the duck fetus and cricket feast, I went with three other students from my program to visit a school out in the forest outside of Siem Reap. We ended up riding on the back of motos (small motorcycles, like the Nigerian achabas) for about an hour there, and got caught in a rainstorm about halfway. Since it’s the rainy season here, that’s not uncommon, though due to global climate change, the rains are coming when they are supposed to, which means bad and scary things for a country where 70-80% of the population are subsistence rice farmers. Anyway, the school was an open air cement building, and about 70 people come to the school for various 2 hour sessions throughout the day. The kids are learning English, and they are really cute. Like Nigeria, though, it was heartbreaking to see 13-year-olds who look like 8-year-olds because of lifelong malnutrition. But the school is going to do good things for the villages its serves, and the man who runs it is dedicated to expanding it to provide housing for orphans and services for more people who want to learn. Plus, the moto ride was really fun.

We also started our classes during our 10 days in Siem Reap. I’m taking Cambodian History and Culture, and Nation Building After the Khmer Rouge, which should both be interesting, though the latter hasn’t started yet. I also took a three-day crash course in Khmer language, which was both helpful and really hard. I’ve learned the basic survival language, but that’s about it. The history course is being taught by an archaeologist who is in charge of the Angkor Preservation Project (I think that’s the title?), and he does a lot of mapping and analyzing of the Angkor region and temples.

As a part of that class, we did a three day field visit to Angkor. It was, in a word, incredible. The temples were beautiful, and we got to see a lot of different ones from different periods in Angkor civilization, and it was really cool to see how they evolved from smaller, brick temples, into the massive sandstone ones (like the famous Angkor Wat or Bayon). It was hot, humid, sweaty, and dirty, but it was also a lot of fun, and kind of mind-boggling to think about how these temples were erected a thousand years ago with none of the modern technology we think of necessary for building. They think that maybe a million people lived in Angkor during the height of its power, which was, of course, during the same time that Europe was stuck in the dark ages.

Anyway, on Saturday (which was our last day in Siem Reap), my friend Angela and I decided to get up at 4am and go watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat. I was feeling a little queasy when I got up, but I just assumed I was tired. However, after about 30 minutes in a Tuk-Tuk (the best description I can give would be a rickshaw, which with a motorcycle instead of a bike), I was feeling real uncomfortable. But, I wanted to see the sunrise, so we walked down the long stone walkway that leads to Angkor Wat, and then went down a set of stairs that leads to one of the moat-like ponds in front of the Temple itself, which was where we planned to watch the sunrise. And then I threw up. All over the grass at Angkor Wat. A UN World Heritage Site. Which I actually think makes a pretty good story. I felt a lot better after I threw up, so I stayed and watched the sun rise, but then I promptly got sick again, and spent the rest of the day sleeping and hydrating. Whatever it was, food poisoning, virus, bacteria, or something else, it was more or less over within 24 hours, so I said farewell to Siem Reap and hopped on the bus to Phnom Pehn the next day.

Pictures to follow when I get good internet.