Discovering What's Real

Don't be afraid to get lost in Cambodia. You can find things that are "same same," but look out for the moments that feel "different." Down the street from the Old Market, Hotel de la Paix (Siem Reap's most centrally located five star boutique hotel! #2 In Conde Nast Gold List!) is across the street from one of a million Nokia authorized phone dealers next to a shoddy dumpling shop next to a hardware store next to some strange fast food restaurant next to a construction site, all covered in orange dust kicked up from motorcyclists and children selling postcards and everyone living on top of everyone.
If you pass the Hotel de la Paix on your way out of town and you wind your way along the river until all you can see on your left and right is rice paddies and houses on stilts and all you smell is clean air and the occasional scent of burning palm trees, you will find something much different than the city behind it, although they are “same same, but different,” all very “Cambodia.” By the Tonle Sap River are restaurants on stilts overlooking the rice paddies and the smell of fiery palms. You can pretend you live a life that requires only enough effort to open a beer. Guiltlessly grill some fresh river fish that you can’t pronounce the name of over a coal pit. Falling asleep in a hammock made of braided trash bags will be okay, because this is Cambodia. You have nothing else to do.
Unless, that is, you want to go to the temples. Angkor Wat is probably the most famous, but in “same same, but different” Cambodia, the ‘experience’ of Angkor Wat is talking to German men who tell you not to eat the ice in the drink you bought because it’s “very, very dirty” while his Nikon is coddled by beautiful, very, very dirty children who have never held a digital camera before.
When you want to see the temples, really see them, take a motorbike ride twenty minutes in the opposite direction of the river along equally winding asphalt. Keep going until you stop seeing roadside eateries, roadside gas stations. Keep going until you don’t hear anything but the sound of whatever’s in the jungle and the trees are so thick they lock you away from the sun for a little while. And if someone—anyone—tries to tell you that something is “same,” “same same” or any combination of the two followed by “but different,” don’t listen. No two experiences are the same. I can give you directions to the city by smell, taste, or sound, but I can’t keep you from getting lost in Cambodia.