Smog and chaos to clarity and holiness: Cambodia

A prop plane containing 5 passengers descended through beautiful cloud cover to drop us off in our next tropical destination.  The air sang in our lungs for it was the first fresh air we had tasted in 22 days.  We hadn’t noticed how claustrophobic we had felt from the poor visibility or how the presence of more trees then buildings would thrill us.   Homosapiens really are connected to nature.

  It only took 14 people to look over our passports, get us our visas, and send us on our way (there were actually 14 people who did something to our passport in an assembly line fashion).  We then met the cab driver who had been waiting 4 days to get a fare.  Fortunately, in a country that is so desperate for jobs, the cab driver was excellent with better English then we had heard in 22 days from a non-tour guide.  We drove the couple of miles to Siem Reap, the second largest city in Cambodia of 1 million people.  Siem Reap was unlike any “city” I had been to.  If I hadn’t have been told it was so many people, I would have that it was just a town because of its lack of large buildings. 

  Service was extraordinary everywhere we went in Siem Reap.  Everything was served with a smile and the food, cleanliness, and genuinely smiling doorman were enchanting.  Tips were appreciated and valued to such an extent that tipping became a highlight of some activities.  For example, our hour-long massages (which, by the way were kind of unpleasant because they were Thai-like massages and required lots of stretching a pulling) that cost $8 were accompanied with a small $5 tip to the sheer delight of the masseuses.  We were the only customers for at least one hour in the massage parlor that had no less than 40 employees (this was standard for massage parlors). Note: there is a local currency but for as long as anyone could remember, all prices and money exchanges were in USD and the local currency was used as change for anything less than $1.

  We weren’t in Siem Reap to give tips.  We were here to see the world’s largest religious complex, the temples around Angkor Wat, which we got the chance to do right away.