rising in siem reap

This morning I watched the sun struggle to rise through thick, murky, jungle air.  And as it made its way through this gray, torpid mass of morning - so too did the noises of the city:  the busyness of chickens clucking and scratching a meal out of dirt; the sputtering of tuk-tuks whisking bleary-eyed merchants toward another day's hawking; haggard beauties wielding ancient brooms swatting at the flotsam and jetsam left by last night's storms as their husbands watch, squatting, with their phlegmy coughs, clenching homemade cigarettes between stained fingers.

I rise out of the mist of sleep only when the damp morning air becomes seasoned with woodsmoke and peppered with the smell of coffee and noodles roasting in a thousand nooks and crannies in this once quiet street.