I ran across so many adorable girls and young women. I wouldn't have had any idea how adorable they really were if Matt hadn't been there to interpret what they were saying.
We came across this young lady selling fruit at a bus stop on a bus ride from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville. We also saw her on the return trip.
First of all, she has the most charming smile. As soon as we walked up to the stand to look at the fruit, she started talking about Matt and I, not knowing that Matt spoke Cambodian. She said I was pretty before she knew we could understand what she was saying, which melted my heart of course. She and Matt began speaking and she was so full of spunk, teasing Matt and giving him a hard time about various things. I told Matt to tell her how adorable I thought she was, and then I took this picture of her.
On a bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, we were greeted by a whole group of girls at a bus stop. In this particular area, these big spiders are gathered from the jungle for food. Fried spiders are a snack food. So, we got off the bus and this whole group of girls were there trying to get money from us. They wanted us to pay them a dollar to hold a spider. I didn't get any pictures of some of the younger ones. These girls were so smart, so precocious, and so charming with the English they had learned just hanging out at the bus stop trying to earn money from tourists. They were very aggressive in their marketing tactics, but I declined their offer to hold a spider for a dollar. There are so many people asking for money for so many different things, that you can't say yes to all the requests. We started talking with the girls, and they were very excited to speak with Matt in Cambodian. They asked him how he got his eyelashes so white and he said that he soaked them in water buffalo milk. They thought that was the funniest thing ever. At that point one of them decided that dollar or not, I was going to hold a spider. A cheeky little girl placed one my hand without even asking how I felt about it.
Having the spider on my hand made me a bit nervous because that thing had fangs and I didn't want to make a wrong move and have it bite me, but I didn't have to worry for long because one of the girls moved it to my shirt.
Things were going well until it started crawling upward. I was happy to have it lounging on my shirt, but I didn't want its fangs anywhere near my face. I wasn't sure how to pick it up in the right way so that it wouldn't bite me, and I wasn't having much success redirecting it. Just as I was starting to get a bit nervous one of the little girls reached up, put her finger on the back of the spider, and said "stop!" (in English) in the cutest authoritative little voice I have ever heard. The spider stopped climbing towards my face.
Here are the spiders they were selling, all fried up and ready for snacking.
The last Cambodian girl I want to mention was probably about my age and is in the picture above. This was in Siem Reap, the major tourist destination in Cambodia since it is near Ankor Wat. As we walked down a street lined with food vendors, we were intercepted by this woman. She owned the very first stand. She was so aggressive yet so charming, and she seemed like the grown-up version of the little spider girls we had met during our bus break that day. She spoke very little English though. We looked at her menu, and she was selling fried rice which is what we wanted, so we sat town at one of her tables.
As dinner progressed, we watched her alternate between serving her customers and recruiting new ones with so much efficiency and confidence. She was doing the job of at least 3 people and I was really impressed. Matt spoke Cambodian with her to order our food. When some English speaking customers arrived that she was having a hard time communicating with, she did not hesitate in assigning Matt to interpret. Once when she accosted a couple of tourists on the street who seemed slightly confused, I motioned enthusiastically from the table for them to come over to eat. They came over, I endorsed the food, and they stayed. Our hostess loved that, and I was having fun too. We had a system going for a couple of minutes where I would try to convince the tourists she had captured that eating there was a great idea. I was feeling pretty happy because I felt like I had recruited a couple of customers for this really great woman.
Then I decided that in the spirit of cultural tourism, I would like to give it a try, so I took one of the menus and had Matt ask her if I could go out on the street and take her place as the recruiter. She agreed, and I had a lot of fun trying to intercept the passers-by with similar tactics. I am clearly not as charming as she is because everybody just seemed irritated with me and I did not get a single customer. My job as recruiter ended after I strayed too far down the road into competitor territory. I heard Matt and a couple of other people yelling at me to come back, so I went to see what the fuss was. Our friend was making fists and little punching motions to indicate that I was going to get myself, or her, beat up. Though she was smiling and the people whose territory I had invaded just seemed amused, I decided to put away my menu and finish dinner. She gave Matt and I free drinks for our services. The picture above is of me with a menu, waiting for someone pass by.
