Safari Day 3 or Chinese New Year or Pol Pot's Chicken

Still not able to post as myself, so I'm Lara again. Although, as Lara posted earlier, apparently there's no difference as far as Cambodian immigration is concerned.

On the third day of our safari, which happened to be Chinese New Year, the holiday that had been messing with out plans since we left Burma, Lara and I both woke up, independently, and wandered up to the temple to see the sunrise. Anyone who knows either of us knows how unlikely that is, but it was so amazing having this beautiful place entirely to ourselves. Not only were there no tourists there yet, but even the locals hadn't started setting up their stalls selling cold drinks and bootleg CDs. For breakfast we walked across the border into Thailand.  No, that's not a very good description of what we did. We went on a forced march halfway down the mountain to eat noodles in Thailand (where they had electricity! And running water! And western-style toilets! In addition to a paved road that made our trip up the Cambodian side seem even more reckless than it did at the time, and kind of absurd). On the post-breakfast hike back to our camp we had plenty more opportunities to curse ancient Khmer step builders (seriously - rise and run should be consistent and it's nice if more than 1/4 of your foot fits on any one step).  Our huffing and puffing was put a little into perspective  by the Cambodian boys who couldn't have been more than 11 carrying huge bags of ice on yokes across their shoulders back from the Thai market to their families' drink stalls at the top of the mountain. They work so hard.

Once we cooled off and got our breath back, we heard our moto drivers honking; it was time for the ride back down the mountain - both faster and more terrifying than the trip up. But no matter how scary the ride, it's infinitely better than the alternative - we saw dozens of locals hiking up on our way down.

Coming down from the mountain was really the end of the safari portion of our tour.  That we were supposed to be sleeping in a guesthouse in Anlong Veng - the last Khmer Rouge stronghold and Pol Pot's final resting place. The night before we'd read dismal reviews of Anlong Veng's guesthouses, only one being described as "comfortable" by my guidebook. Luckily that's the one we ended up in. If we'd shared that room earlier in the trip, we no doubt would have complained about the lack of hot water (and toilet paper) and the dismal and spartan furnishings, but instead we were completely giddy - it had an air conditioner and we could flush the toilet!  And while the shower wasn't hot, it was a vast improvement over the camp shower.

But before we made it to the hotel, we stopped for lunch, with our guide, as usual, ordering for us since in these areas not exactly crawling with tourists, not many people speak English. I got my usual - fried noodles with vegetables, but Lara got a special treat - we can't be sure, but we think it was chicken necks and fresh ginger. Lara did her darndest to eat some of it, but mainly we shared my noodles. Afraid we'd already offended our smiling and solicitous waitresses with our failure to make a dent in the pile of chicken necks, we couldn't be so churlish as to refuse the ice they kept adding to our glasses of coca-cola. And so in the Shang Hai restaurant in Anlong Veng the last of our diminished stock of food paranoia got swallowed with the ice in our wonderfully cold drinks.

After lunch our guide, who'd seemed increasingly disappointed in our lackluster touring, left us at the hotel and said he'd pick us up at 4:30 so we could see Pol Pot's "tomb" and watch the sunset.  Um not so much. When we went out to the lobby at the appointed hour we found our driver waiting for us alone. I don't think he'd spoken a word to us since picking us up at the airport, so I was a little surprised when he explained in broken English that we were going to pick up our guide at a friend's house.  We found this friend's house and our guide, drunk off his ass, told us we'd llike to go see Pol Pot's tomb and then come back and have a drink with his friend. Lara and I: "[long pause] Um. OK."

The driver drops us off on the side of the road points at a path, indicating we should follow it while he stays with the car, so being obediant tourists we do - and come to a bamboo fence enclosing a grave shaped pile of ash (Pol Pot was cremated), covered by a bamboo roof. There's a chicken carcass at one end, a small blue sign saying "Pol Pot's grave", a scary looking group of children smoking, drinking, leaning on the fence and laughing at us as we stand in the middle of this grassy field at twilight, firecrackers going off all around since it is Chinese New Year. I really can't convey adequately how bizarre the scene was. Lara took a few pictures and we scuttled back to the car and then back to Mr. Ra's house - our guide's drinking buddy. As Lara and I sat there, our guide slurring his speech as he explained that Mr. Ra was a "VIP", the head man of the village we were in, two men involved in a car crash came to Mr. Ra to settle their dispute over compensation. As our guide said - "there are no lawyers in Cambodia. If you're in a car crash and you know the head guy, you may pay only $200 but if the other guy knows the head guy, you'd pay $2000." Mr. Ra used to be a big wig with the Khmer Rouge our guide tells us, but now he's a "general commander" for the government. We ask him why there was a chicken at Pol Pot's tomb, and our guide looks freaked out, hushes us and says he'll tell us later. He never did. But he did say that this small village, where Lara and I elicit more stares than anywhere else on our trip, harbored the Khmer Rouge longer than anyplace else.

And Lara and I watch our guide and our host get drunker and they start offering to take us to Thailand for the night with a VIP police escort, because they can, and we politely say "no" finish our Cokes and say "We really think it's time for us to go back to the hotel now.". We get in the car with our driver, who's looked grumpy since he picked us up from the hotel (in other words since our drunk guide delegated responsibility for the two french ladies), and our guide persuades Mr. Ra to come back to town with us and have some dinner. Um. Great!

Dinner was actually far less awkward than the interlude in the Khmer Rouge stronghold. The owner of the restaurant joined the table, and the three of them showed us how to eat a local delicacy involving fermented fish paste that tasted like blue cheese and then we walked back to the hotel and left them all celebrating Chinese New Year.

I never would have imagined that one day, after wakinf up in a tent on a mountaintop I'd share fermented fish paste with a former lieutenant of Pol Pot's. It was all so unreal. Hopefully Lara will chime in with some of her thoughts on the day.