Working Notes on Siem Reap

Siem Reap is a town in Cambodia that has been described hundreds of times in travel journals, blogs, books, and magazines over the last century. The simple reason for this is that the town is a base camp from which one can see the temple compounds of Anchor Wat, Anchor Thom, and a variety of other sites. The airport allows tourists to quickly fly from Thailand, stay at one of the many luxurious and exotic looking hotels, and visit the famous sites. The French colonial architecture and the hundreds of signs in English of the town alone give it a certain artificial atmosphere.

The town offers many western services and amenities because the place is such a tourist hub, and such organization and availability of western products is not without its cost. Siem Reap is a town that is ready to suck the very lint out of your wallet. When I go there on bi-monthly trips, the thing that almost always empties my wallet is food. Were I given an unlimited amount of money to spend in one day there, I would buy peanut butter, Nutella, Pepperidge Farm cookies, granola, and cheese from Lucky Mart, omelets and yogurt breakfasts with coffee at Common Grounds Café, hamburgers at Burgers Without Borders, pizza dinners at le Papier Tigre or the Pizza Company, and maybe after dinner drinks at a bar down the street named Anchor What?. I assure you that this would cost an obscene amount of money, particularly for a person who is used to paying about thirty cents for coffee in rural towns.

I have come to view western food as being an evil temptress. She can be found in the places that provide such things, and the alluring atmosphere in there is her accomplice. I can provide an excellent example of why this is so. There exists near pub street, which is aptly named, a coffee bar/restaurant named the Blue Pumpkin. It has a balcony upstairs where I can relax and eat a very nice breakfast, and the expansive room behind it is lined with white linen couches. Several large windows look out onto the street below, and the patrons are usually quiet enough so that one can work undisturbed. It is also air-conditioned, which is a rare enough luxury that can make you never want to leave the place at all. If you dine there you can use their complementary wifi, and you can stay there for as long as you like. The danger of this, however, is that one breakfast turns into ordering another cup of orange juice, to another cup of orange juice, to maybe a lime-watermelon smoothie, and pretty soon you have spent twelve dollars. It may not seem like much to those reading this in America, but it really is if you have a tight budget.

Surprisingly, however, western food is alone in her efforts to rob me blind. None of the other goods and crafts appeal to me as much as they do to the tourists. For example, I once debated whether or not to buy a very nice looking bedspread from one of the tourists markets. Upon thinking about what it would look like in my room, the thought did occur to me that this expensive piece of weaving would simply be eaten alive by the little black bugs that have become my chief annoyance of late.

I hate Siem Reap, and I love it at the same time. I love having access to the Internet, sending mail, and eating ice cream all at same time. I hate having to pay for it all, and knowing that I will not see it for several weeks on end. Oddly enough, what is more difficult for me is coming back to Anchor having enjoyed everything western for a few days. It takes me at least a week to get back into the swing of things because this town is so dramatically different from where I live.

Culture shock, it seems, has become a permanent fixture in my life.