bottles of yellow liquid

didn’t really get a chance to use the computer at our siem reap guesthouse lobby, which, according to the rest, had an awfully slow connection speed anyway, after getting over the fact that the user would have to put up with the heat, humidity, bugs and other troubling gripes of tropical weather.

Siem Reap seems especially hot and dusty. For a major town 8 km away from one of the most notable historical sites on the planet, its infrastructure isn’t as developed as one would expect. many of the roads, or ‘roads’ are still dirt tracks, and the waves of motorbikes and tuktuks, with the occasional car, speeding by kick up serious dust clouds. as chunwee aptly put it, ‘the dust gets everywhere’, (tan, 2008), though i feel that it gives my fringe a nice slightly spiky look.

travelling within and around siem reap and angkor compound has made me think much of the local oil situation. our tuktuk drivers had to stop to refuel abt 2 times each day; each time refueling 1.5 litres. they were sold in old alcohol bottles or plastic ones, and there are plenty of wooden stands along the road with several bottles of urine-coloured liquid neatly lined up. petrol at the gas stations in siem reap is abt 5600 riel (at Phnom Penh, it was around 5500 riel; though maybe over the past few days, prices, as usual, went up?) petrol sold at the roadsides could be cheaper, but probably not by much, perhaps explaining why our drivers were terribly reluctant to bring us to any temple/garden/market that wasn’t within their planned route, despite saying at the beginning that they would bring us ‘anywhere’ around siem reap and angkor. today when we wanted to go to bantaey samray, which was slightly off their ‘planned route’ for today, discussion nearly reached an impass until the drivers suggested that we pay for their one litre of petrol, which was 1.50 USD according to them. we obliged and the site was well worth the two litres, though it is troubling when u see personally the effects of the escalating oil prices on pple in real life, rather than reading statistics in newspapers and theories in textbooks.