Usually I eat the mid-sized yellow ones with bright yellow-orange flesh inside. But one day I bought a lovely and large yellow-green mango with deep orange flesh at the market to try a new kind. I took it home, and sloppily devoured it, not caring about the juice and pulp smeared across the lower half of my face.

The inside was thicker and tasted a little different but was just as delicious as regular mangoes. I noticed a slight tickling sensation on my upper lip after washing off, but didn’t think much of it. The next day, however, I awoke to an irresistible itch all over my face, nose, and ears. I looked in the mirror and was horrified. My face was swollen, red, and ruddy! My beloved mango had become a forbidden fruit! After two or three uncomfortable days and hydrocortizone it luckily went away.

I still eat the yellow ones but sadly steer clear of any other kind just in case.

We stayed in the backpacker enclave near the lakeside, filled with your standard cheap guesthouses, restaurants offering a hodgepodge of cuisines, and bars with ridiculously cheap beer. It’s a beautiful, chilled out spot, and it is no wonder that it’s so popular.

Finding a place without handing over a commission took some determination, however. Our tuk-tuk driver asked if we wanted to go to a “lakeside hotel” when we hopped in at the bus stop, and I figured that meant he would drop us off in the area. But of course, he pulled up to the “Lakeside Hotel.” The exchange was typical, with them trying everything to get us to stay, and then donning wounded looks when we refused. Upon exiting their compound we were immediately assailed by touts, drivers, hawkers, etc. The area itself is fairly small, making it very difficult to get away from the touts, and we eventually picked a room that a guy showed us. For $4 a night, it was hard to imagine how much, if any, commission that guy was getting for his efforts.

The bars and guesthouses on the lake have great views, particularly at sunset. It’s a popular place to while away the day (or days). I could see myself staying there and chilling out for weeks, if we still had the time.

Along the Tonle Sap river is where all the hipper, more atmospheric, and therefore pricier bars and cafes are. This is where most of the NGO people hang out, and there are plenty of them. Cambodia has hundreds of NGOs, and whereas lots of places in southeast Asia feel like the foreigners mingling are a mixture of travelers and various ex-pats (such as English teachers and volunteers), Phnom Penh feels like it’s predominately NGO people hanging around.

There is indeed plenty of work to be done. I think the heavy presence of non-English teaching ex-pats is what gives Phnom Penh part of its edge. And you can’t say that there isn’t a lot of drinking going on in Bangkok, or Siem Reap, but Phnom Penh is a drinking town. Day after day, all we could think to do around sunset was find a nice place to sit and have a couple of cold ones.

You Buy Book?

This will sound familiar to anyone who has been to Cambodia or Vietnam. It’s impossible to sit for more than five minutes before a child approaches you at your cafe, bar, or guesthouse restaurant and says, “Hello, you buy book? Very cheap for you.” All of the books are copies, selling for a dollar or two a piece. They’ve got stacks of the titles and subjects everyone is looking for: Lonely Planets from all over (primarily places in southeast Asia on the backpacker trail), accounts from the Killing Fields, S21, Cambodian history, etc. If they’re not selling books, they’re selling flowers. It’s hard seeing such young children put to work, but life in Cambodia can be pretty hard.

Sunset by the river

We did some sightseeing around town, but the best experience by far was checking out the riverside at sunset. It’s a great time to people watch, or watch life go by in general. People are selling fruit, flowers and incense for offerings, or just hanging out. With the gentle Tonle Sap on one side and the main square, backed by the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda on the other, it’s quite a sight. Throw in hundreds of people cruising around, shopping, chatting, enjoying the evening, and the buzz and noise from dozens and dozens of motorbikes going every which way, and you’ve got a really cool place in a city that seems to be on the up and up.

This short video wraps up our coverage from the enigmatic temples of Angkor. If you can’t see the video, make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed.

Tourist to the Macabre

Genocide is the manifestation of the darkest side of humanity, and its horrific legacy has been unearthed and preserved in Cambodia for all to see. Visiting these sites on a tourist schedule creates complex emotions that magnify the impact of the history itself. I never got used to moto and tuk-tuk drivers coming up and saying, “You wanna go to killing fields?” with an expectant smile on their faces, knowing that’s where all the tourists will inevitably go and hoping for business. It’s even more jarring when they include it in a laundry list of popular places: “You wanna go to Russian Market, lakeside, killing fields, national museum, S21…”

More Terrifying Than Fiction – S21

The first stop on the Khmer Rouge history of genocide tour is the prison known as S21. It is here that the alleged enemies of the revolution were sent for imprisonment and torture. The prison has been preserved almost exactly as it was found by Vietnamese liberators when they reached the city. Several of the torture rooms were left just as they were found, a single black and white picture of the grotesque handiwork left behind to complete the chilling picture.

The most startling aspect of S21 is the sense of normalcy you get when walking around the place. It was a converted school, right in the middle of the city. Val and I were struck by how similar the layout was to the Japanese schools we taught English in for two years. The similarity rammed home the twisted conversion of classrooms into torture chambers.

The most emotional part of the trip is walking through the picture galleries of those imprisoned there. Virtually everyone pictured was later executed. The faces present a cross-section of humanity: old and young, male and female. The expressions on the faces of the condemned speak volumes about the turmoil and uncertainty of life during the Khmer Rouge. Some are sad, others visibly terrified. Some are defiant, resigned, broken, proud, shocked. A few of the younger boys are even smiling, possibly an automatic response to having their picture taken. Knowing that for many pictured their crime was simply having an education, or even wearing glasses, or not caring about the revolution enough, reinforces the madness of it all.

Life goes on in Phnom Penh, and the former school turned hell on earth is quiet and still. This is the sound of the courtyard, a place for contemplation after witnessing the legacy of such a horrible place. Notice the everyday sounds of a bustling neighborhood in the city, sounds that surely continued even as the prisoners languished within.

The Killing Fields

After being tortured and condemned to death at S21, prisoners were sent 15 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh to the infamous killing fields. It is here that they were executed, often by being bludgeoned to death, and then thrown unceremoniously into mass graves. Almost 9,000 people were executed and buried here, including men, women and children.

There is a pagoda in the center of the area that houses the skulls of the victims. The platforms holding the skulls lift to the sky in seventeen levels. The fields are peaceful and quiet now, still despite the events that transpired here thirty years ago.

The hordes of tourists make it pretty hard to get a moment to contemplate the remnants of a great civilization being devoured by the insatiable vegetation of Southeast Asia. But if you try hard enough and venture off the beaten track a little, you can almost imagine yourself alone in the jungle with the ruins, the way early explorers must have found them. As always, the binaural sounds are best when heard through headphones.

Angkor Wat is the best-preserved and most famous structure. I read they’re going to build a casino in Las Vegas based on it, and it’s not surprising. It’s absolutely huge! You walk across a moat to an enormous gate, then it’s still dozens of meters to the towering structure itself. Everywhere you turn there are intricate carvings, narrow doorways, and tunnels. You can climb up some very steep stairs to the temple towers and see for miles and miles. The complex represents a Hindu symbol of the four ages of history. When you reach the center, you’re symbolically reaching the creation of the universe. Very fantastic!

Besides Angkor Wat, the walled city of Angkor Thom is also impressive. Among many structures inside, my personal favorite is the Bayon, a 54-towered building with a giant head on each side of each tower. That’s 216 giant heads!

It reminded me of a show I watched on Nickelodeon as a kid, Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Huge trees and roots intertwine with crumbling stone at the temple Ta Prohm. They actually filmed parts of Tomb Raider there.

Despite the oppressive heat and busloads of other tourists, we were able to have enough reflective moments to ourselves with the ruins to appreciate their grandeur and feel the glory of a past great civilization.

Oh yeah, and we’ve been exploring the temples of Angkor for the past few days too.