This week we sleep badly off and on, partly thanks to a neighbouring dog that wakes us up from time to time with its barking. I want to buy a slingshot and pelt it with crusty buns. By Day 91, the barking has stopped (someone else had the same idea?) and we're a bit more refreshed.
It's the last day of our ticket, so we bike out to visit Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom one last time. Along the way, we take some time to stop in at Preah Kahn (sounds like "PRAY-uh CON"), which is a huge maze-like building, overrun with trees.
We don't linger long, since we've seen (photographed) most of the temples we wanted to see. Just outside the temple gate is a longhouse of open air restaurants. It's not clear where one eatery ends and the other begins, and when we approach two different women run up with identical laminated menus printed on different coloured paper.
"Mister, you come inside."
"Mister, good food here. All 2 dollar."
We're hungry but not sure how to pick - the plastic tables and chairs look the same, the menus are identical, both restaurants are equally empty since it's past lunchtime/not yet dinner, but the women are clearly competing.
"Same?" I ask, and point to both restaurants.
"No, not same."
Pierre looks at me - we're too hungry to walk away but a little weary of the growing feeling of being unfair to every person we don't buy from or donate to. "Rock paper scissors," I say and we play best of three. The ladies watch us play, see me win and the loser (lady on the left) takes it with pretty good grace.
While we wait for our food, I notice a watch a small girl, maybe two years old, wander around near a stack of green coconuts. Piles of these coconuts sit next to the roads and streets all over the country, sold for their juice. The sellers, usually women, hack away pieces of the coconut shell on both ends: two hacks on the bottom to make a flat base, and several hacks on top to clear off a space for the straw. The cuts are made with wedge-shaped machetes that look hand-made - a crude-looking tool, but very accurate and elegant in the hands of these women. In a situation where the whole family can hang around the coconut "shop" all day, there aren't many taboos about kids handling knives. Pierre and I have had pre-teens, at work with their parents, handle these machetes and hack up coconuts for us.
Apparently they start young - the two year old I'm watching picks up the machete. My first thought is 'uh-oh', but there are adults nearby keeping an eye on her. I watch as the girl holds the machete in one hand, rolls the coconut on its side with the other and then makes tiny centimeter-high chops on the coconut in all the proper places. She sets down the machete carefully, and then walks away. It reminds me a bit of watching kids pull imaginary muffins out of an easy-bake oven, or pick up a hammer and carefully work away at a toy nail, but it's really not like that at all.
photo credits: P, P
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