Last Day in Cambodia / Hanoi

Today was my last day in Cambodia. In the morning I saw a few more temples. During one of them, a man who helps restore them was hanging around and asked me if I wanted to see what he does.

Quick aside: There are a lot of "unofficial" tour guides in Cambodia. Many people desire to be them for a career. Tourism is springing up left and right so jobs related to that field are lucrative. Most people pay $20 a day for a dedicated tourguide/driver. That is a lot of money for Cambodia.

The man I met was getting $40 a month for restoring the temples but it was steady work and he enjoys it. He works at the base of the temple, but the people who work at the top, on the scaffolding, make $60 a month. He took me up the scaffolding to the very top of the temple so I could see up close what he did. They were rebuilding bricks and using mortar made from Palm Sugar and cowhide (it never occurred to me until now that the Elmer's Glue cow might have some twisted significance).

The restoration they were doing on the statues isvery impressive. They look like they have been replaced with new ones poured from cement. He actually gave avery good tour. He mentioned some of his family members that were killed by the Khmer Rouges in the 80's and that he was one of the few survivors in his family. I don't know whether to believe him or not because the kids often use sob stories to get tourists to give them more cash. The thing is, 1/4th of the country were killed so there's a pretty good chance he's telling the truth.

After the temple, I went to The Cambodia Land Mine Museum. The road to get there curbed any ideas that I had that Cambodia was doing all right in the paved road department. There were huge road-width puddles fullof muddy water from the previous night's rain. The people living along the road were trying to fix it by dumping rocks, rubber tire bits, and broken pottery in the holes to fill them. It was a bumpy ride but were I driving, it would be worse. I have to give my driver a lot of credit for this.

The museum is more like a few wooden open-air shacks with empty, defused landmines in piles all around. That's its charm though. There are diagrams on the inside of the shack next to each pile which give the history and statistics about the mines. There are short biographies of the children (all landmine victims) who live there and how they came to be injured. Finally, there is a yard off down a path which is set up with a bunch of mines planted (defused ones of course) so you can see what a forest filled with mines looks like.

Afterward, I went back to the hotel and took a nap. The taxi ride back to the airport was harrowing. It was windy and started to rain. Plus Bo Vinh (my driver), had my *entire* backpack in front of him on the motorbike. At one point, he took out a poncho to put on so he wouldn't get wet. He put it over both of us, but there was only one hole for a head which he got so he could see the road. I could see nothing and I said so. He said, "OK, no problem" and we took off. After about a minute, I threw off the whole thing. I'd rather be wet and see than dry and blind.

I'm in Hanoi now and the traffic here is amazing. It's like a video game where you fill the road with motorbikes going 50 miles an hour. No one pays attention to the lanes, there are no lights, and no one slows down at intersections, not even cross traffic. They just thread in-between each other as they reach their destinations, kept from colliding only by the frequent sound of their horns.

I had a bowl of chicken noodle soup from a family on the street and now, belly full, I'm headed off to bed.