Nywoman

Mature, that's open for discussion?
However I prefer uncensored, I grew up on Bergman and Swedish interminable summernights.

Dogster just tell it like it is/was
please.

dogster

O.K. Your advice is noted. And your really nice words. Thanks.

But - Lol - if you only KNEW how much I actually leave out. Some of Dogster's greatest adventures could NEVER be told in here... but, as we get to know each other, the shutters are prized open a little more each day...

Forgive me if I seem to be dwelling on this particular topic - but, this is what is going down in Dogster World today. You'll see why.

God, it's hot. Here's some more.

dogster

I am 59 years old, a single unattached gentleman and, unusually for Siem Reap it seems, the thought of sharing my bed with an effeminate Cambodian lad sends my poor sleeping willy into a terminal coma. Now just how does one explain THAT to the parade of limp local youths who regularly plonk themselves uninvited at my table?

‘Where you from?’

‘How old are you?’

‘First time in Cambodia?

Blah, blah, limp girly simpering blahhhh…

Perhaps it might be best not to sit outside the only gay bar in town.

dogster

Yesterday I zoomed out in my tuk-tuk, grabbed a seven day pass, stood on the line for my picture to be taken [one of the least flattering pictures in recent history]. The poor lass behind the glass screen was efficient and friendly - but her face belied her nature. She was under attack from acne of such ferocious proportions that the doctor had simply given up. Both cheeks were covered with two huge bandages, taped to the rest of her with strips of Elastoplast. Peeping out on all sides was flesh covered in ghastly, weeping sores.

Ever had a cold-sore? Remember that feeling when you went out, thinking that ALL anybody was looking at was your lip? Multiply that a thousand times. Then stand behind the booth at Angkor and issue tickets. Her two eyes, pretty much all that was left on view, attempted a smile. But I could read her mind. My heart bled.

So why was that same heart completely unmoved this morning when one of Siem Reap’s ‘characters’ – the man with no arms who sells books from a box hanging around his neck – honed in on me with my breakfast coffee? I’d just woken up.

‘Hello!’ he said cheerily. He was very charming. He held out both stumps in front of him.
His arms had been amputated just above the elbow, land-mined, chopped-off, eaten by tigers – I knew not what at that moment.

‘I’m perfectly aware you have no arms. You don’t have to show me,’ I found myself saying. He smiled broadly. Luckily I checked myself in time. I’ve been here many, many times,’ I said gently. ‘I’ve seen you before. You’ve seen me…’

‘Ahhh,’ he said and pretended to remember.

‘So good luck today, my friend,’ I replied. ‘Nothing for me…’

He held out his right arm.

I shook his stump.

That was something I’d never done before.

dogster

So I sit outside the Lingha Bar, looking for all the world like a cadaverous dung-beetle, yet another elderly sex-tourist in Cambodia - of which, as we know, there are many.

But, you know, I’m NOT - so the assumption that I AM kinda rankles.

‘You buy boom-boom?’ said the ten year old boy. His companions laughed.

I didn’t find it amusing. Not at all.

‘I’ll find you a partner – you like big strong man?’ said a lad from the bar.

‘Well, errr… no.’

‘Lady-boy?’

Only in costume, on stage at the Calypso Cabaret in Bangkok. Otherwise no-o-o-o-o-o.



Let us not be naïve – there have been moments in my many travels when my behavior has been less than impressive, times when, once the tawdry deed has been done, I’ve had to pick myself up, give myself a smack and say the words ‘inappropriate behavior.’ Inappropriate these days on any number of levels; chief of which is cultural exploitation. When one man from an affluent culture waves those greenbacks around in a culture where their prey has no greenbacks at all, that’s scarcely a meeting of equals. Aesthetically not too pretty either.

I think we’ve all seen that Bangkok constant – gross, sixty five year old male visitor, great fat belly hanging out over his shorts, a dick he hasn’t seen in twenty years – on his arm a petite, beautiful Thai lady. She’s seen that shriveled willy, I’m sure of that [excuse me while I throw up] … but, then who am I to deny anyone the chance of happiness late in life? Not all of these liaisons are corrupt, exploitive, grubby; some, I’m sure, are partnerships of great affection and equality - so why do I find this such an unsettling scene?

The knife cuts both ways. I’m privy to the personal lives of a number of my gay friends who have found themselves in – errr.. delicate situations with their freshly imported Asian ‘companions’. The Thai boy or the Toy boy, there ain’t much difference. One very famous Australian stage designer solved his problems with a quick call to the Immigration Department. My relationship with that talented pratt has never been the same since.

In Australia we call those gay men with a penchant for the mysteries of the Orient ‘Rice Queens’.

dogster

So why am I sitting alone outside the only gay bar in Siem Reap?

Because THAT'S where my hotel is.

The pictures on the website don’t lie. This place really IS as nice as they look. Next postI'll describe it a bit more. But they don’t quite tell it all. There are times when I feel like I’ve stumbled in on Act Two of ‘La Cage Aux Folles’.

Unique. In every way. Hotel Be Angkor.

dogster

Let me state this very clearly.

This is not a gay hotel.

It is not remotely targeted at the gay market. The staff are not gay - even the ones serving drinks in the gay bar opposite. But you might well think they are – because they are gentle, well-mannered, stylish and professional.

This is Asia. This is Cambodia. A whole different concept of masculinity applies. To our brutish Western eyes this can seem limp, passive, almost girlish – but let me assure you, these guys [and gals] are tougher than you can imagine. They lead hard lives. They are poor.

If ever there is a place that is renewing itself on a daily basis, it is Siem Reap. This is the miracle of Cambodia. This is a city of young people. They work hard. They study. They have dreams for the future.

Why are there no old people?

Two words.

Pol Pot.

dogster

So I’m trying to look past the massage parlours, the tuk-tuks lining the streets, the beggar kids and prostitutes. I’m trying to look beyond the endemic corruption that I’m told is all around, past the sordid trade in human flesh. I’m trying to see over the high-rise hotels, the construction zone that is Siem Reap. I’m trying to see past the tourists - of which, I, of course, am one.

And I’m trying to look through the magnificence that is Angkor.

Because what I’m thinking, right now, is that the temples are the greatest diversion of all. We come, we troop through; guided, led by the nose, droned at by guides, good, bad, indifferent, excellent – we tip too much, pay too much, reveal a collective stupidity that amazes me, eat well, sleep in fine hotels or back-packer dens, tick off the temples on a never-ending list, hurtle from location to location, prodded and pushed like the facile fools we are.

But what do we SEE?

Gpanda

You've been to SR five times. Tell us what magic keeps bringing you back. What do you feel when you look at the temples?

dogster

That's a very interesting question Gpanda - and one I don't have a ready reply to. As you can see from the above, there are many sides to the experience - not just the temples

For me, the awareness that there was more and more and more was the thing that drew me back. And the more I came back, the more I realised that the temples weren't the only thing about Siem Reap.

Angkor Wat may seem the be-all and end-all of Siem Reap - but Siem Reap ain't the be-all and end-all of Cambodia. In my opinion a more attentive a serious visitor has to attend to the realities of modern day Cambodia [town and country] as well as the recent dreadful history - but I reckon a solid 50% of tourists choose not to.

I've always thought it a shame when visitors choose not to expose themselves to Phnom Penh, S21 and the Killing Fields - but I confess that after copius reading and research, I still don't understand the 'why' of what happened..

But that's MY preoccupation. Siem Reap is like a new little re-created world... the more you see it in the context of before, the more the miracle becomes apparent.

I confess to being more interested in all that than the temple complex this time.

What I see at the temples is just beauty. Not history. Just detail after detail of beauty. I've stopped taking photographs and started making my plans around where the tourists AREN'T.

Because the great Angkor experience is the moment when it's just YOU and IT. That takes luck and planning. So I see it as a challenge.

There are secrets here.

dogster

Waiting for dinner I heard some children singing. My waitress was watching me listening.

‘Do you have baby boy, baby girl? She said simply.

‘No,’ I answered, looking her in the eyes, ‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ she said sweetly, ‘I have a baby girl, two years, two months.’

I looked at her. She seemed very young.

‘A baby! You look so young. How old are you?

‘Twenty two and half.’

‘You look eighteen,’ I said. ‘Not old enough to have baby.’

She was pleased with that.

‘How old is your husband?

‘Twenty-nine.’

‘He seems a very old man,’ I said.

‘I don’t see old or young,’ she said simply. ‘I just see good heart.’

‘Where does he work?’

She mentioned a massage centre near Angkor.

‘He blind.’

‘So he’s never seen how beautiful you are?’

She smiled sweetly

‘No.’

‘How did you meet him?

‘I work with my brother-in-law. One day he took me to his house. And then I saw my husband.’

‘I love.’

My heart was breaking.

‘We very poor,’ she said simply. ‘We have nothing, no food. But I happy.’

She smiled and looked directly into my eyes.

‘I very happy.’

I had to look away.

Jaya

Poignant reading dogster. You can't go home. You have to keep travelling now so your writing doesn't stop!

As a side note: you all may know this already, and I hesitate to ask, but what are tuk-tuks?

FromDC

dogster, from another member of your fan club - - thank you!

Craig

Jaya - tuk-tuk's are 3-wheeled, covered but open-on-the-sides vehicles that make a sound like "tuk tuk". Generally they seat 3 people including the driver. Sometimes called auto rickshaws but not in Thailand or Cambodia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw

Jaya

Thanks Craig. It was one of those "should I be asking this question?" kind of questions - especially since this is Dogster literature we're reading!!! One cannot be too sure.

dogster

Unfortunately doigster is too drunk to post today.

robmac

Not drunk--surely just Dog-tired.

BradinBangkok

P.U.I.

Posting under intoxication can make for great reading.

Jaya

Is that the kind of drunk that if you leave your laptop on the floor ahead of time you can crawl up to it when you're "recovering" to check Fodor's and send us your love?

Speedy recovery.

dogster

Mmmmm... rrrrghhh... argh-h-h-h!

It's one p.m. and bloody hot. I think I'll just crawl downstairs, rehydrate, try and force breakfast into me - then I'll tell you what happened.

Really, it wasn't my fault...