Siam Chronicles 10 - The Long Shot to Angkor Wat

Objective: Get to Angkor Wat before August 14, 2005 – our 1st Wedding Anniversary

2.5 days before 8/14
Bangkok
“You wan go Cambodia, right, Angkor Wat? The easiest way is Koh Chang,” she served up this skullduggery raw as a kaleidoscope of claw clacked through the keyboard, “Koh Chang is easiest, you jus take a boat.”

1.5 days before 8/14
Koh Chang (reputed to have the largest King Cobra population in the world)
“No way to get there from here,” lisped the transvestite behind the palm frond kiosk, with a dribbling of smile. “BUT we could work something out maybe – a moto to the ferry then a bus to a minivan?” with a long green fingernail he furrowed the gut flouncing unfettered beyond a weariness of hot pink half shirt.
Hours later after ten more futile inquiries, the verdict was in - we would in fact have to back-track all the way up to Poi Pet. There was an incendiary storm that night. The waves strafed the stilts of the bungalow and aptly reflected our acidulated mood.

20 hours before 8/14
A punt on the Pacific Ocean
“It’ll be a long haul, but we’ll be in by five a find someplace fancy for our anniversary.” Alex patted my back, the lack of sleep and chuff of the waves was incommoding my intestines. “So, what do you want for breakfast – cricket on a stick or salt-encrusted fish head?”

12 hours before 8/14
Poi Pet, Cambodian Border
The man looked half-starved as he stammered over the pitches of the dirt track that his name was Richard and he would be our “guide to Cambodia.” The crowd was pressed into an ancient minivan, which was missing both doors and windows and tilted alarmingly to the right. I had a soiled foot in my ear, belonging perhaps to one of a pair of hippies clutching bongos to breast somewhere in the compact mass, so the voice was intermittent. “… fifty kilometers … the road is bad, so it’ll take maybe seven hours… arrive at seven … drop you off in the center of town...”
“Did he say SEVEN hours???” I heard my husband say through the din.

8 hours before 8/14
Outside Battambang, Cambodia
A riptide of commination greeted the newest pronouncement. “It take twelve hours from here,” the man who called himself ‘Richard,’ had sallied to the assemblage pitched outside the gas station. Time, it appeared, was surging backwards. Silted red with dust, we seemed to jut directly up from the road like despondent cairns, keeping our helpless invigilation as the cohorts of our 'guide' scuffled through our stuff in the decrepit apparatus as it plied up on petrol.

4 hours before 8/14
Seedy Restaurant, Middle of Nowhere
The girl had not stopped screaming, and there was nothing but respect registering on the faces of the crowd for both her stamina and loquacity. Even though it was a rapid logorrhea of Italian, we all understood EXACTLY what she was saying, and mentally each one of us was hugging her, awarding her with a medal, and wrapping the laurels about her pulchritudinous brow. Our ‘guide’ evinced no emotion, stating again that the bus had mysteriously broken down and another form of transport would be arriving in “ten minutes.”
“Goat or bicycle?” Alex asked.

2 hours before 8/14
Parking Lot of Seedy Restaurant, Middle of Nowhere
“You’ve GOT to be kidding me,” the Brit spat helplessly, “there is just no WAY we will all fit on that thing.”
The 25 of us were surveying the tiny pickup truck, which was dwarfed by the mound of luggage piled beside it.
“You wan go or you wan stay here?” Our ‘guide’ said with a disingenuous smile.
With quick thinking Alex deposited me into the cab and thus secured a precious spot of safety, and with a kiss was gone to fare for himself by clinging onto the bed down the tortuous track. Fragments of argument as the squeeze began whistled through the window.
“Do you at least have any ropes to tie us on to the side?” implored an Aussie, followed by Alex’s riposte, “I think the more pertinent question is do you have any morphine.”

Midnight, 8/14
1.5 Hours West of Siem Reap
There were six of us compressed into the cab, and the driver seemed to be suffering an acute bout of ADD, fumbling with knobs, playing with dials, looking anywhere but ahead as we bucked and crashed into the road, which resembled nothing so much as a washboard used as BB target practice. My limbs fell asleep, my hearing rapidly diminished due to the screeching high-decibel onslaught of an Asian diva, and I was mad with fear for Alex, perched precariously on the back in the rain.
“Happy anniversary,” said the young constable from London who was glued into my forearm as the clock flashed midnight.

4 pm, 8/14
Luxury Bungalow, Siem Reap, Poolside
We clinked vodka tonics in toast while reclining otiosely in the garden enclosure. The day had been a clamber and dive through a stone sprawl, crowned with a bocage of impromptu arbor. Angkor is, of course, a sight of magnitude (twice the size of present New York with over a million inhabitants when London had but 50,000), but more germane, a place of powerful symmetry and symbolism. Or perhaps, even more to the point, a preserve of beauty, and an admirable backdrop for a truly memorable first.