Love

There are so many stories to be read about Cambodia. From the terrorous reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge to Angelina's collection of orphans, you are foced to cerebrally accept the desolation.

But no one tells you that when you are engulfed in this country, it becomes a visceral part of your being and you fall in love.

Pure as the sugarcane cubes being sold streetside by the seventy-year-old woman who has endured 30 years of genocide. Pure as the small school girls on bikes who shly smile for photos, who are too young to know first hand of the massive struggle of their homeland. You fall so hard for Cambodia that the incessant sound of hammering heard around Siem Reap is no longer noise - it's music.

This very young country (with over 40% of it's population under 18) is now riding the back of the tourist industry, gaining a foothold on the backs of a whole lot of Europeans and a smattering of Americans. As a person participating in this role, you cannot help but be conflicted. Am I doing something beneficial here? Sure, simply, my money is being poured back into this country, but at what cost? When you consider that this is probably the only country in the entire world right now where the American dollar actually does well - because the Khmer system integrates the dollar is it's own currency and the rate hasn't changed in 5 years? When you take into account the amount of fossil fuel used to cart us all around - the amount of plastic water bottles at the side of the road?

When you really love something, you hate to see it sold to Disney. And even when it's doing well for you (when you're Michael Eisner) it's probably a little hard to sleep at night considering the loss of your true love's authenticity and soul.

Until the onset of an intestinal bug I picked up a couple of days ago, Gina and have been steeping in Cambodia - our sunburnt brains grateful for some aloe-vera. We've been riding bicycles to the temples at Angkor Wat, making new friends at roadside food stalls (one new friend in particular... my intestinal virus...), scheduling volunteer time at an area primary school (hopefully I'll be better by Tuesday), walking as far as we can out into the countryside, teaching kids that we meet the hand-slap game, squealing as we watch snake-like amphibians slither out of their big container at the Old Market into hiding spots in plastic bags nearby (no doubt an attempt at freedom), and continuing the practiced art of trance dance with our travel buddies for this leg of the journey - 3 tattooed swedes who are very sweet and kind graffiti artists.

The other night, a handsome Cambodian tuk-tuk driver drove us home for the whopping price of US $1. We had a conversation that took 3 times as long as it might have without a language barrier. I asked this man if he sometimes wished (this was a bad word for me to choose, and spent a long time finding a synonym) that there were no tourists around all the time. "Yes,"he said. "I want to do else. But this is what you want to do. And it helps me to make you do what you want. I am tuk-tuk driver and I make dollar."

And my heart aches.