With no sunrise to catch, taxi driver to ask us for more $, or "temple boys" to tug at my pantlegs, we wisely scheduled nothing today and slept in past 7 for the first time in what seems to be a week. It was nice. Even nicer was my first experience of Monday Morning Football (without Hank Williams Jr., Thank God), with live NFL games televised on ESPN and FOX. I never thought I'd get my fix in Siem Reap! It's been a long week, struggling through really bad TV, and even worse, soccer...
Today we decided to walk around the markets and downtown to see what life is like. We were met at the tuk tuk by 3 land mine victims, all with amputated limbs and hats out for $. It's nothing we've ever considered in the US, but in the jungle and basically anywhere outside of town, land mines are very much an issue here and we've been warned not to venture offroad. Scary. I walked into a downtown rehab clinic this AM a little later, asking how things work. It doesn't seem people get much of anything here, and this particular office was actually being funded till next summer by the Finnish Embassy, as Cambodia has little $ to invest in social services. There's definitely a great need here, after viewing many of the mine victims the last few days, their equipment is quite minimal. Out of dozens of victims I've seen so far, I've seen only one prosthetic leg the entire time, with most hobbling around on crutches and some even crawling without them. Not a single wheelchair seen so far.
Also notable today was the Old Market place. They were selling the same stuff we've seen the last several days, with many bargains to be found. To my distaste, we strolled through the meat/fruit market, which resembled Pike Place Market in Seattle in no way whatsoever. The stench of the meat literally made me sick, and we saw some pieces of meat for sale literally COVERED in flies. It made me REALLY hope that our prior day's meals consisted of food bought nowhere within a 10 mile radius of this place.
After stumbling around all day and refusing several hundred people's requests for $ or tuk tuk rides, the sun was setting and Terri spotted a bat in the park. Little did we know, but about 25 ficus trees, all about 100 feet tall, stand through the park. And each tree had hundreds of HUGE fruit bats in them. I mean, 6 foot wing span bats. About the size of Bald Eagles. So we watched them jostle around during sunset, and as dusk set in, the flight of a couple thousand huge flying mammals was quite eerie. Kind of like that Hitchcok movie with all the birds.
Dinner tonight was at a Cambodian Buffet/Dancing show, which was quite nice. All the food I could stuff in, a few apple-bananas in the backpack for brekkie tomorrow, and I'm now off to bed for an early flight tomorrow. Day 9,
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