Liz and Richard's 2007 Adventures

Arrived in Siem Reap/Angkor Wat

It's Wednesday the 17th here - woke up very early this morning in Hong Kong to pouring rain - time to get outta town!

Thai Air to Bangkok (even BETTER seats than Singapore Airlines!) and then a turbo prop to Siem Reap (pronounced re-app as I've just discovered).

Our guide Dara met us at the airport and we've here for 5 days exploring the temples .... we're starting to back up on postings (LOTS still to come on the Hong Kong board) - we might catch up a bit this week as we have high speed in the room here too (amazing!)

Keep checking back!

Best regards

Liz and Richard

A couple of early Angkor Wat Pix

Spent our first full day here - morning at Angkor Wat and the afternoon at Angkor Thom (with a very sensible 3.5 hour break in the middle due to heat)

I'll try to upload a couple of pix - Richard took some lovely photos - not sure about the speed here though - although as I type I realize how remarkable this all is.....sitting in my hotel room, at my laptop, with internet connection......we live in amazing times!

Hot, hot, hot today - our lovely guide Dara did a great job of avoiding the crowds (and there are crowds) - somehow it seemed we were always alone - while there were great groups of people swirling around in other places.

And Hong the driver is charming and a welcome sight (the car is air conditioned!).  We're going to set out at 7am tomorrow for the Jungle Temple and I'm trying to convince Richard to do the sunrise at Angkor Wat - it means being there at 5:30AM - he grumbled about doing that at Easter Island but loved in the end.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

One of the things we love about traveling is signs; some well intentioned but semantically mangled, others just symptoms of cultural differences.  Here are a few to date.

Hong Kong is very clean - not much litter, no cigarette butts on the streets, etc.  Below are two reasons why ...... and they aren't kidding.  Perhaps we should consider such draconian measures in an increasingly littered Toronto:

The following sign on a beach in the Hong Kong harbour may be our all time favourite sign.....depending on how you define "Inconvenience":

One of those charming verbal juxtapositions:

This sign brings new meaning to the threat of PMS:

Just in case you didn't know, carrying a gun when you come to visit the Thai King is discouraged.  The NRA must be appalled.

The following is self explanatory ......... sort of:

One is expected to remove one's shoes on entering a Thai temple.  They provide racks at the larger sites.  The Thais are incredibly polite, so we were perplexed to find separate Thai and Foreigner shoe racks.   Our guide explained that the intent was to make clear that any thefts of Foreigner shoes was due to other foreigners, and not the Thais:

We're always on the look out for more - will add them as we collect them!

Angkor, Siem Reap and Where is Michael Caine in his dusty white suit?

Siem Reap (pronounced "re-ap" we learned) is the destination town for travelers visiting the ancient cities of Angkor.  It's a town in rapid transition (reportedly 1.5 million visitors last year versus 750K only a few years ago).  Large hotels are springing up on the outskirts and there's a wonderful hum of money, opportunity and corruption.

But in the core of the town the open air markets still flourish amidst the mouldering old french colonial buildings (rapidly converting to guest houses), the stacato coughing of tuk tuk cabs and a cast of characters out of a Peter Lorre spy movie of a time between wars.  We know Michael Caine was somewhere, lounging in a sleazy bar in his dusty white suit.  It was a great place to wander amidst the many ghosts of Cambodia's bloody past. 

Unfortunately with all the new hotels and tour groups, many visitors never even see the town - they just return to their hotel each evening after touring the ruins.....and they miss some great restaurants.

Beeby's Travel Rule #86 is "Anywhere the French have been for more than 10 minutes is a good place to eat".  The Gauls colonized Indochina for over a 100 years and there are quite a few expats still there.  It is a very good place to eat (we'll do temples and archeology and the intellectual stuff later).

We started at the "Red Piano" - claimed to be Angelina Jolie's favourite bar when she was filming Tomb Raider.....and a good bar it is.  Food and liquor are incredibly cheap in Cambodia, so only quality matters.  Below some highlights from a number of visits, including very good frites

Then, a meal at the highly recommended (and extraordinarily cheap) Khmer Kitchen.  A table load of spicy dishes and conversation with "Jerry" - a 56 year old social worker from Wales who was biking alone from Hanoi to Phnom Penh.  A brave man, but he assured us the villagers were incredibly friendly and helpful.  He was having a great time but his wife back in Wales was worried.  Following photos - first Jerry and then one of our favourite dishes ever "Pork with basil" - it was to die for (and $2.50) and other selections

Then off to the recommended Abacus with an ultra charming French owner who had just received some fresh sea fish (as opposed to the local freshwater) - we had much fun and dined well -

- Grilled Sea Bream on beans
- Fish Amok - a regional specialty using coconut milk
- and a tasty warm shrimp and scallop salad

Not bad for the middle of Cambodia - note the prices are in US dollars - the Cambodian currency is the Real but the economy runs on dollars

Sticking with the French expats we savoured a delicious meal at Carnets d'Asie in a particularly lovely courtyard setting with water lily ponds and tasteful appointments.  The services, as it seems to be everywhere in SE Asia, was welcoming - we had

- a selection of fried and fresh rolls
- a green pork curry
- a very good red duck curry

We rounded off our Cambodian culinary experience with lunch at a fisherman's home (more later) and a "we're tired" lie in bed and eat room service evening.

One closing food note - the breakfast buffet at our hotel (Angkor Holiday Hotel - highly recommended and owned by Cambodians - one of the few) is one of the best we've ever seen - range or fruits, cereals, cooked meats, exotic asian dishes (including made to order noodle soup) dim sum, omelet bar, bread, juices etc.....we just don't take pictures that early in the morning!

The Temples - Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is the best known of the many Khmer temples.  There are hundreds in various stages of disrepair, restoration or outright pillaged.

The general structure of a temple (with many exceptions) is a central building in tiers (much like a low, broad wedding cake) designed to simulate the sacred mountain.  Around the temple was often a wall with spectacular gates and then the ancient Khmers would often dig a large moat around the whole complex so it would be sitting on an island in the middle of an artificial lake.  Bridges were appropriately decorative.

The religion was a mix of Hinduism and Buddhism with a leavening of indigenous Animism.  Prominence of Hindu versus Buddhist symbols and figures depended on the predilection of the King at that time, with previous symbols being defaced or modified.  There are some wonderful examples of how the Hindu kings designed a simple, few chisel strokes method for transforming stone images of the Buddha into the Hindu hermit image!

The temples are amazing.  The stairs are incredibly steep so you have to literally crawl up (going down is often terrifying - modern wooden stairs are often overlaid for safety) and door lintels are low so you have to bow.  The stonework is lovely, especially in the soft light of dawn or dusk.  The most haunting pictures are where the jungle is inexorably reclaiming the temples.

Angkor Wat is the largest of the temple complexes.  Estimates are that it was the centre of a population of over a million in 1,000 AD, making it the largest city in the world at that time.  The many wooden palaces and homes have long been reclaimed by the jungle.

Angkor Wat rises out of the jungle like a vision from a Kipling novel.  It is inherently mysterious and haunting....we tried to visit at night but not on the agenda.

Closing in you can see the galleries/cloisters that ring the structure - more later about the wall carvings

Angkor is a repetition of images - one being the multi-headed snake (3, 5 and 7 head versions)  - this one, with 7 heads, is very eroded

The other repeated figures are the "Apsaras" - the temple dancers.  They occur in numerous lovely variants and still appear in modern Indochinese imagery:

Throughout, the temples are intricately carved, but sadly many carvings have been pillaged and are now gracing the penthouse of a wealthy collector:

It is the wall carvings in the cloisters that are most impressive.  Hundreds of feet long, they depict tales from religious legend and the victories of living kings.  The shallow carvings are things of light, changing with the movement of the sun.  They are ephemerally beautiful.

We had an excellent guide - Dara - who greatly enriched our experience.

Something as simple as a window becomes a design achievement for the Khmers

We mentioned the steep stairs...some photos to prove the point.  You crawl up....edge carefully down....unless they are overlain with new flights

You can take a balloon flight to see Angkor from the air.  We took a pass....perhaps a mistake

Angkor Wat is lovely and a must for any life list.  We close with the Guardian Lion, who  - though battered - still mans his post

The Temples - Angkor Thom

While Angkor Wat is the more famous, we liked Angkor Thom more - the striking bridges over the moat, the enigmatic and iconic gate hourses and a more fluid carved mural style.

The Bridge - depicts a charming legend of the demons fighting the good guys by tugging on opposite ends of a snake - you get the picture.....the lines of players make for a great bridge parapet or a long carved wall mural.

Note on this next photo that many of the heads are replicas as the originals were stolen by tomb robbers

The Gatehouse - The Wat Thom gatehouse is the symbol of Angkor for many people.  A quartet of pensive buddhas facing in the four cardinal directions.  Because each face is composed of multiple stone blocks, each of which has weathered differently, the images assume an almost "see if you can find" from a childhood puzzle book.  You catch Buddha in profile, you spy an eye or a lip.  The soft enigmaticness gives it great charm as we'll see in shots of the main temple.

The Main Temple - there were 54 towers with 4 Buddha faces on each, or 216 Buddhas.  Some have lost the battle with time but still, in the heart of the temple, everywhere you turn there is a glimpse of Buddha.  Consider the first shot in the following sequence; there are a clear 5 faces and arguably 7

In our opinion, The Apsaras at Angkor Thom are more fluid:

And the carved murals in the cloisters are more vital, less stylized; although the cloister roofs have collapsed and weather is taking its toll

The Temples - Pre Rup, Banteay Srey and Village Life

On the road in the early AM

The heat in Cambodia at midday is brutal (no wonder George, Dick and Don missed the Draft) so you do most touring early (6am), have a mid day break and restart around 3pm.  The following shots are early AM shots at Pre Rup - a temple made from red bricks and being restored. We loved the light and colour

On the Road - Cambodia runs on motor scooters and Tuk Tuks (motorized rickshaws).  The standard unit for a fill up of gasoline is the Johnnie Walker bottle!  We have been unable to determine if "Red" is regular and "Black" is high test, but who can fault a culture where Scotch is the standard liquid unit!  A rack with 64 potential molotov cocktails is frightening, but very common.  There are many reasons to give up smoking in Cambodia!

The Womens Temple - Banteay Srey:

Relatively small, the Women's Temple (so named because women are beautiful) is a gem.  Built from particularly hard red sandstone, the carvings have survived nature's attack particularly well.  You must be getting "templed out", so we'll just highlight some of the visual charm of this lovely temple

 

So what's it like to live there?

Dara, being a clever guide and considering all of our questions about how do Cambodians live, took us to some villages.  Following are shots of the harvesting and preparation of palm sugar:

1)  collect sap in Bamboo pails

2)  boil sap down (it's warm climate maple sugar)

3)form into little molds....let cool

4)  package in palm leaves in a format that Estee Lauder needs to duplicate for visual appeal - the packaging is beautiful!

Wonderful people, earning a living by working hard.  We should have bought the fish traps - but couldn't figure out how to get them home.

The Temples - Ta Prohm

Trees and Temples:

The trees consume the temples - tearing down walls and upheaving floors.  It is Armageddon in slow motion.  But strangely, perhaps perversley, the most touching visuals are the temples of the brink of destruction.  Both the temple and the tree appear noble in their slow motion battle.  Following are some shots......the ants are on the march.  - Note the face (not Liz's!!) in one of the roots

Temple Wrap Up

We visited a lot of temples, so we'll highlight the remainder with some visuals....

Love the mortise and tenon carved from stone:

We loved the elephants -

There is great elegance in decay

Lunch in a Cambodian Fishing Village

Go to unusual places and learn how much you don't know.

Cambodia is the site of Asia's largest lake.....occasionally.  Siem Reap is on the banks of the Sap River, a tributary of the Mekong - one of the world's major rivers, spawned in the Himalayas.

For most of the year the river flows reliably down into the Mekong but during the rainy season, the monsoon rains pour so much water into the Mekong River that it briefly forces the Tonle Sap River to flow backwards, swelling the Tonle Sap Lake in western Cambodia to more than five times its normal size.

From this anomaly was built Khmer culture.  Just as the flooding of the Nile nurtured ancient Egypt, the annual enlargement of Lake Tonle Sap nourished the fertile rice fields of ancient Khmer and continues to do so today.  But when your world goes from dry land to 16 feet under water, it creates an interesting culture....one we were about to explore. 

It is essential that you note we visited two villages on this day - do not confuse them.  The first we call the "Mad Max Town" - raw sewage, aching poverty, very bad odors and the second "the fishing village" was elegant and hardworking, with people living a life that will certainly disappear in your children's lifetimes - but right now it is pages from an anthropology text.

Here we go

Shots of Mad Max Town - note the last photo in this series is the local battery charging service - in a world without electricity you still have a TV and theirs run on 12 volt car batteries

A stop at a Croc Farm

Floating on the lake are a number of croc farms.  They're leather factories.  There's something wonderfully threatening about those yellow eyes - you know they look at you and see dinner

The Fisher Village

It's not necessarily pretty - but they work hard, there's no litter, the kids go to school and they have honor and integrity.  We really respected them.  You have to keep reminding yourself that every 9 months there is water up to the floors of the houses.  They heat and cook with wood as you'll see.  We asked what happened to the large stacks of firewood when the water rose - was it "Hey Fred, that's my log that just floated into your backyard" - never got a clear answer to that one. 

The women dry shrimp in the main street - great colour and a wonderful aroma fills the air

The fish traps come in all size - this is a particularly large one.  They are lovely examples of basket weavers' art

Most families keep a few pigs in pens over the water.  You do the math.  Pigs over water.  Family bathes in water every day - it's not wrong, it's just something we westerners are inherently uncomfortable with.  Keeping the pigs is a full time job for one member of the family - they harvest water hyacinth, chop them on a special device and mix with commercial nutrient supplements.  Probably really, really good pork chops.

The front stairs are tough for us - not bad going up, they're like a ladder, but coming down we've resigned ourselves to being wusses and climb down backwards....while our hosts' children run up and down - no hands - with impunity.

The village, of course, has a racing canoe - every village in Lao, Cambodia and Thailand seems to treasure one - would have loved to see one of the competitions

Off to lunch

We had a wonderful lunch at a local house.  Great food and charming hosts. You can eat in restaurants but there is nothing like eating in someone's home to get a feel for how they live.  It's not our life, but it's not a bad one.  Just as when we were in South America we came away with an impression of pride, honour, integrity, skill and very tightly bonded families.

We close with some shots of the lake, the animal life and the people who live on it.