We arrive in Siem Reap city mid-afternoon at a tiny bus station at which we are clearly given special treatment as foreigners. Men working at the bus station pull two plastic chairs out of a corner and usher us to sit, gently wresting our bags from us and depositing them around our chairs. The Cambodians who have gotten off the bus are leaning against the walls or sitting on their luggage.
A bus station employee soon calls us a tuk tuk to the hotel and hops in with us. “Welcome to my country,” he says politely, placing his hand over his heart. “I am a Cambodian,” he adds, as though expecting that we might be charmed by this information. A little sign pasted on corner of the tuk tuk futilely begs: “Responsible tourists welcome! Stop sex tourism!” The signs appear all over Phnom Penh too, as stickers, billboards, and pamphlets.
Siem Reap, which has the vague feel of a resort town, is the third largest city in Cambodia. It is also by far the country’s most affluent city, largely due to its immediate proximity to the Angkor ruins, which draw roughly 2 million tourists from around the world each year to Siem Reap’s hundreds of luxury hotels, trendy restaurants, and beggar-free streets lined with boutiques and galleries. There are few motorbike drivers in Siem Reap, likely because there is no market for them amongst the tuk tuk drivers that are the norm for tourists. The tuk tuk drivers in Siem Reap, are less aggressive – less desperate – than they are in Phnom Penh. For a Siem Reap tuk tuk driver, when a tourist shakes his head, no, I don’t want a tuk tuk, it’s not a problem. There’s another lost tourist just behind him.
Just before sunset, we take a tuk tuk to the oldest temple in the Angkor complex. With thousands of other tourists, we plod up a forested path circling the mountain, and then, at the top, scramble up the nearly vertical, crumbling steps, grasping for support the thousand-year-old stone lions who gaze out over the sweeping views of glistening rice patties and forests dark green in the purpling light.
Seated on the stonewalls surrounding the temples main terrace, we, and what seem like representatives from all the world’s countries, watch the sun slip into the rice paddies that meet the horizon and smear the streaky clouds pink and purple. “Everyone hates each other for being here right now,” whispers the other intern.
Near the parking lot several boys – some our age, some just children – are trailing after visitors selling tour books from plastic containers. “Lady! You buy from me! Need book?” “Soum doh, aw khun.” “You buy from me! 10 dollars!” “Sorry, no thanks.” “Okay! 5 dollars!” “No, thanks” “Okay! One dollar!” “No, really, thanks.” “Okay! Free!” “What?” “Free for looking!” “Um?” “Why do you want for free?! Why don’t you buy,” says one guy, clearly amused by his game. I ask one of the little boys who sent him here to sell books. He says, “tourism.”
We’re up at 3:30 am the next morning and take a tuk tuk to Angkor Wat, the most famous of the Angkor temples – so famous, that the entire Angkor complex, which consists of dozens of large and small temple build at different times and at significant distances from one another - is often simply called Angkor Wat. It’s still dark as we approach the temple, and the three iconic towers of its outer gates, seen from across the now black lake, look eerily solemn, barely distinguishable from the thick backdrop of tall trees.
The moto driver leaves us at the ticket collector at the bridge arching over the lake to the outer gates, through which is a massive muddy courtyard with two symmetrical libraries and a small pond laid before the inner gates of Angkor Wat. At sunrise, in the pink light, the three towers of Angkor Wat appear perfectly reflected in the still pond.
In Beijing, I was often stopped by Chinese who wanted to take a picture with me, a 5'10" foreign woman, a pale, blue-eyed, and lanky anomaly. The Chinese tourists find me in Angkor Wat. Walking up the stairs in the soft morning light of one of Angkor Wat’s inner chambers, I hear a Chinese couple whispering in Chinese and anticipate the familiar tap on the shoulder - "can we take your photo?" “From China?” I ask. “Yes, how did you know?” says the husband, arranging me next to his beaming wife. Later, in the highest temple in Angkor Wat, ascended from the center terrace by a long, nearly vertical staircase and from which you can look out over the entire complex, three Chinese tourists move me around as they try to find the best light before finally swinging their arms around me for the camera. Yes. For one moment, I’m more fascinating than Angkor Wat.
Though it's very early in the morning, there are perhaps hundreds of tourists already moving through the temple. But in the cavernous spaces and hidden corridors of Angkor Wat, and in a seemingly agreed upon general silence, each tourist seems to disappear to one another. There are times that I find myself alone in the silence of one of the long hallways that wrap around the temple, in which scenes from Hindu mythology – clawed monkey warriors battling fanged dragons; soldiers standing on the backs of elephants, waving spears - are delicately carved out of the walls and seem to move in the strange shadows of the weak, ethereal light.
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