The natural order of things (?)

Couldn't stay away from sepia today, despite my best recent efforts.

Visiting Angkor Wat in skin-meltingly high temperatures.

One of those days where you can't help but contemplate the world and what happens within it, not in a dreamy transported-back-a-millennium kind of way but more in a sense of questioning why things are the way there are.

Why are non-Buddhists offered joss sticks at Angkor Wat and then asked to offer some money, an act which has no religious significance for them whatsoever? And how do then the joss stick givers justify using those offerings presumably at least partly as their day's earnings - is that acceptable to their faith?

Why do kids no older than 5 get manipulated into selling postcards and tat at Angkor Wat, themselves trained to be as manipulative as possible while doing it? Experienced a real tragedy of lost innocence today - maybe the worst I've ever seen in a kid. And how do Cambodians feel about this taking place at their nation's most famous and prized spiritual landmark?

What is the correct response to begging? For several years I have not given money to beggars as even in a place as poor as Cambodia and with the wide range of charitable initiatives here there must be more sustainable solutions to poverty and I feel it just creates the wrong attitude towards visitors/tourists/foreigners if those visitors hand out money without questioning whether there is a better way to support a country/community/cause.

Why is Ta Prohm, one of the more evocative temples, precisely because of its decaying look (Tomb Raider fans will know it), being 'restored' and crumbled walls re-erected? I imagine this is polarising opinion in the archaeological world, and I would be much more in favour of seeing it in its natural overgrown state instead of incongruous looking cement dominated repairs.

Last question of the day - why do Havaiana flip flops never last me as long as they should before snapping? Had to cycle home with one bare foot.