It’s brutally hot. March in Cambodia, mid-afternoon at Angkor Wat. Dry season, so the sun sits directly on your skull. We keep drinking. We sweat all the time, but the water keeps disappearing from our skin. The air is damp, the humidity choking.
We came in on a TukTuk early that morning. The three of us. Mid-twenties, travelling on almost nothing. Cheap hostels, street food. That’s how you do it. I met Sophie and Ruben a few weeks back in Malaysia, travelled with them there, went diving on the Perhentian Islands on my own, then we teamed back up in Cambodia. They’re Dutch. A couple. Doing the whole world thing. Two people with their hearts wide open. Honest and kind. The real deal.
Most tourists get driven around all day because of the heat. We walk. Sometimes on stone, most of the time on dirt roads. The brown earth gets stirred up with each step, getting into our eyes and noses. The water in the bottles has been warm for a while. We hurry from shade to shade. From tree to tree to temple to tree. Avoiding the sun as best as we can, our shirts stiff with salt.
Angkor Wat is massive. The biggest religious monument on earth. Built for a king nine hundred years ago. Hindu first, then Buddhist. It stayed holy. Pilgrims came for centuries after the court moved on. Now you pay to walk around inside it. It takes days to see it all. We take two. This is day one, and it’s endless.
But the trees are the real attraction. They are taking the temples back. Ta Prohm. The Tomb Raider temple. Angelina Jolie ran through it in the film. The trees there grow around the stone. They grow into it. Through it. Roots as thick as bodies, holding the walls up. Crunching the stone. It’s all ruins. It’s a whole civilization getting lost to a forest.
Up close the stone crumbles. Dirt and moss. A dancer carved in a doorway, worn down, one arm gone. I touch it. Sand drops. Nine hundred years.
Nature really does always find its way.
We’re awed. Mesmerized. Probably a little bit overheated and dehydrated. Physically and mentally exhausted. I am also genuinely happy. We’re alone a lot, because we got off the main tracks fast. The big temples, Angkor Wat itself, the Bayon with all the stone faces, are always crammed. Get away from those to the small ones and you start relaxing. There are still voices carrying over to us and insects humming like crazy, filling the gaps. The temples keep going in nearly every direction. Every now and then there’s some tourist appearing from a doorway, messing up our pictures.
There are a lot of Cambodian kids though. It’s at least the third big group we meet. Their voices are high and thin, always calling to us. One dollar, Mister. They come running on the dirt tracks, their little hands grabbing onto us. They surround us, they block our way, we keep pushing for a way out. Little ones, six to ten, black hair, dirty clothes. Shoes with holes or no shoes at all. But their English is good, way better than I’d expect, they know a lot of words. Not just ‘One dollar, Mister’. One dollar, Mister, they keep repeating. Postcards, scarves, bracelets, anything. Everything.
And they’re so charming. So innocent.
Sophie and I have already said no pretty firmly a few times, and they gave up on us fast. But Ruben, they caught Ruben. He’s kind. He keeps answering, interacting with them. He’s too kind. They don’t let him go. He relents, buys a few postcards. It doesn’t stop them. They keep talking and clinging to him, laughing, running along.
We keep walking. One or two more sites before we head back to the hostel. Sophie and I are talking about this surreal place we’re standing in.
Then we suddenly stop dead. We look at each other.
“Did she really say that?”
“Yes. She did.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
We don’t say any of it out loud. It happens between us in a second. We turn around. It’s a girl, older than the rest. Maybe eleven. Max fourteen. Slim, very long, straight, dark hair. A colorful dress drenched in brown dust. A shy grin on her face.
Her voice is low. We still hear every single word, very clearly.
She said to Ruben, exactly this: “You can also have me for one night, Mister.”
Sophie and I look at Ruben. His face is pure horror. He looks at her. No one says anything.
She smiles.
Season Two · Backpacks · Story 1/12