Acting a Fool at Angkor Wat

I spent a morning exploring Angkor Wat by myself because Summer wasn't feeling well.  Against my better judgment, I strolled past the souvenir stands on my way in.  You can avoid them.  If you want.  But I purposely went shopping.  I needed a fan and a magnet and I wanted to check out T-Shirts for my nephew. 

In Cambodia, the pressure to buy stuff is really bad as I mentioned before.  This is why my decision was a bad one.  I was immediately harranged, harrassed and irritated into browsing or not browsing at a row of twenty to thirty shops, all selling similar items. 

I accidentally told a woman that I would maybe shop in her store if she would stop talking to me.  What I meant was, please, just let me browse.  I'm more likely to buy something.  I felt like such a craphead, but she understood and said, "yes, peace and quiet."  So now I knew that at least I wasn't the first person to make such a request, but now I had a new, more polite way to ask for no talking.  And I bought a fan and a magnet from her.  But as usual that's not the point of my story.  I think I'm just sort of leading up to the embarrassing behavior on my part in this next section:

Four stalls down the line, a short little tiny girl came up to me and showed me some keychains and stuff in her hands, beckoning me to her store.  "Do you like my things?  Do you want to buy my things?", she said, and no, I did not want to buy her things, but she was ADORABLE. 

I proceeded to say, "I like YOU!" (in baby talk) and poked her in the arm.  "You are so CUTE!", (in baby talk) and I poked her again.  She asked me again if I would like to buy something, and I continued pinching and squeezing and squinching her and calling her adorable and cute and saying that I liked her every time she asked me if I liked her stuff.  This went on for a long time.  I was about to ask her why she wasn't in school, but thought better of it, and instead asked her how OLD she was. (In baby talk.)

"Twenty-one".  She replied. 

"HAHAHAAAAAAhahahahaaaHHHAAAA!!  Good one!"  I said.  "No really!  How OLD are you?!" (in baby talk).  *Pinch!

"Twenty-one."  She replied.  "I have a son.  He is 13 months old." She said.

Now her friend agreed and confirmed. "She's twenty-one."

"No WAY!  Not possible.  REALLY??  How old is she?!" (in baby talk).  *Poke!

I would not stop.  Until finally I looked closer at her tiny little face and realized that in fact she did look pretty old.  But now come on, she was like four feet tall.  Then I insisted on a photo and look how irritated she is.

"Shut up lady, I'm old enough to be your Grandmother."

*photo!