Siem Riep (the city adjoining Angkor Wat) is extremely cool, albeit in a very aggressively Southeast Asian way. Open air shops - check, river through the middle of town-check, fractured/unintentionally hilarious English signs-check, roadside vendors-check, totally alien atonal music drifting up from somewhere-check, tinyBuddhist shrines everywhere-check, odd, alternately mouth-watering and nose-wrinkling cooking smells-check, coconut palms and pineapples growing everywhere-check. An aside: palm sugar is every bit as yummy as maple sugar. I'm surprised not to see palm syrup for pancakes, maybe a chance for a new get-rich scheme? Angkor Wat may be the main draw but there is plenty more to keep you around a good while. First off, that is only one of the dozens of temples in the immediate area. Most are in a terribly picturesque state of disrepair. Actually, they aren't quite as ancient as they look, nearly all of them being built between 10th and 13th century AD. However the 15th century marked the end of Khmer military power and Siam and other rivals invaded, forcing the Khmer king to relocate to Phnom Phen. The temples fell into ruin and were pretty much forgotten until their rediscovery by a French explorer in the 1860's. A few unattended centuries in the jungle will definitely cause some maintenance problems. Makes them photogenic as hell, too. Enough so that one of the temples was a centerpiece in the movie, Lara Croft,Tomb Raider. Now I'll have to see the durn thing! By the way, Angelina Jolie is nearing saint status in Cambodia. Not only is her first adopted child Cambodian but she visits often and contributes to many charities here. At this point I will put up a random gallery of temple photos. If you ask after I get home, I m fully equipped to bore you with all the temple pictures you can stand. Like potato chips, I just couldn't stop at a few.
The short story is: We saw dozens of temples. All different but on a common theme. We in the US consider Hindu and Buddhists to be the ultimate pacifists. Apparently this is a modern development. In the days of these temples, they were no more compatible than Catholics and Protestants in 17th century Germany. Pitched battles and terrritory changing hands. The Buddhists, being the younger religion, used earlier themes in their temples with the major difference being absence of the lotus blossom towers but with the older carving styles. When Hindus retook Buddhist lands, they'd just chisel off the Buddhas and build some Lotus towers. The hodgepodge still shows with tour guides pointing out the changes. One of the temples had a long frieze depicting daily life, some quite amusing. Look for the panel showing the wife passing a turtle to her husband, who it bites.
Going out to dinner was an adventure in itself. The area of course abounds in restaurants featuring mostly asian cooking with several surprises. Many of these places can do a pretty good spaghetti Bolognese. I've seen schnitzel advertised, and an American ham and egg breakfast is easy to find. So is Happy Pizza, with a special ingredient not available (okay, legal) in the US. I hear it's pretty good. Of course if you don't care for pizza, there's always Happy Shakes. Transportation around here is generally by tuk-tuk, spiritual descendants of the Samlor, a bicycle with a double rear seat. Now it's a motorbike with a trailer. Makes a heavyweight foriegner feel a lot less guilty.
Our third day of touring took us to Phuni Champei mountain, home of the Reclining Buddha carved into native rock on the peak of the mountain and the nearby River of 1000 Lingas. Funny thing about the mountains we've seen so far in Southeast Asia. Generally speaking this area is as flat as Kansas but every now and then a really big hill will just rise right up, no foothills or anything, just this big damn hill. Startling. The Buddha and nearby waterfall live up to their billing. Roads in the national park are every bit as unimproved as the ones I've seen in many state parks, though without the standard motorbike traffic. Though the steps down to the main pool of the waterfall are definitely appreciated, there's not a chance that OSHA would have allowed us anywhere near them. Like a lot of Southeast Asian stuff, you're expected to watch out for yourself. The Lingas carved into the riverbed are at best puzzling. Not that the results are not noteworthy, just that the logic behind such a huge project eludes the western mind. Also, though they're meant to be phallic, they're just hemispheres in a square frame. Lots and lots of them!
 |
| Honest, the linga are in there somewhere, underwater details just don't photograph well. |
I should add that Siem Reap appealed to us enough that we took two more days than planned. Of course one is mostly to just kick back and recuperate but this place is made for just that!
Liz on Cambodia
We crossed from Thailand to Cambodia and checked into The Siem Reap Hostel with ease, respectably close to schedule and without undue hurry or discomfort, that includes time for toilet stops, filling out Visa-on-demand form and a good lunch. Going from Thailand to Cambodia occurs without any problem.
We paid $100 for trip including pick up from Pattaya (2 hours east of Bangkok) and drop off at final destination. The van picked us up 20 minutes after our stated 7:00 AM pick up time. Mike had the hotel call the ticket office twice but no one answered. We talked ourselves out of the worry because we are not on deadline and no assembly plants will close if we are late. The schedule said 7:00 to 16:00 which I did not believe. We were in our room by 5 PM and we were the last dropped off out of 10 passengers. We rode in a van with one Russian, father and son from Australia,3 Finns, a Canadian and a Brit. We crossed the border totting our bags in order to change vehicles and drivers.
Wouldn’t you think that we’d be relieved to see cars coming towards us on the same side of the road as in the US? Not really. After spending the past 90 days on the other side of the road it is not such a comfort after all.
Siem Reap is all about tourism and therefore it is the safest and most important destination in Cambodia. Even at the height of genocide one or more plane loads of tourists visited Angkor Wat everyday. We toured the best of 3000 temples with dazzling carvings by ancient Hindu and Buddhist carvers for their rulers. Tourists are not real Hindus or Buddhists, so no mobs like we may encounter in India. Thankfully Mike is an intellectual in addition to being a man’s man. Typically men stop after one day or even a half day of temples but he takes 3 days to learn and appreciate the significant variations. He took over 300 photos.
We booked 2 more nights for $20 each night in The Riverside Hotel because double bedrooms in Siem Reap Hostel ($24 per night) are sold out. Our driver suggested it and we met Australians who stayed there. The basic Angkor Wat temple ticket for 1 day is $20 and for 3 days it is $40. So we spent 4 days and then off to Phnom Penh (the capital) for $11 each. I really considered the boat ride on Tonsle. I read about it and even bought walkie-talkies that float in case I dropped one into lake. Then our guide said that a tourist told him that lake trip was uncomfortably hot, long and tedious. And undue exposure to malaria is not needed. Mike spent $50 for Doxymycin (from Malaysia, the US Glaxo Smith Kline cost $100) as our broad spectrum antibiotic and anti-malaria medicine today. How poor people stay away from malaria is doubtful. No wonder the note on the wall asks us to turn off our air conditioning when we leave our room.
Siem Reap’s electricity is imported from Thailand. Black outs occur (but not while we are here. Power is needed by the children’s hospital, not by our empty room.
Our tour guide, Su Jett, age 28 is a nationally certified tour guide. He told us that he speaks Thai and English. He has studied Japanese but finds it difficult to invert language structure for their construct. He also studied Chinese. He said that he changes his narrative so as not to offend his guest. He has the good manners not to say to Thais that Siem Reap translates Thailand Loses.
(What if Ho Chi Minh City was named US Loses? Or The Alamo was named Mexico Loses?)
So I gradually get the idea that since we are Americans that he and Night, our driver are leaving certain parts of historic narrative out so as not to offend us. Su Jett also asked us about religion. How can Su Jett know that Mike is a militant agnostic? Su Jett is so well mannered that he’s attended church. Is that just so he can reassure Born Agains that Jesus is his Savior if they require that of him? Cambodia is 97% Theravada Buddhist. Monks in robes burn fires and ask for alms all over the place. Too bad they have this Buddhist diversion (that China is free of) when they need roads and so much else. Cambodia has some natural gas so they better be real careful since they cannot trust their neighbors. They like the Japanese, their best most faithful long standing tourists but ever since WWII they don’t trust them either.
In order to understand us Su Jett asks us about our belief system. He asks about how or why beliefs evolve within cultures. Mike tells Su Jett about a scientific study with 10 monkeys and a bunch of bananas. I repeat it here because it is so noteworthy.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place
Meanwhile the most traumatic event to occur in Su Jett’s life was the economic crisis. In 2008 during their high season (Nov. to March) no visitors visited. Su Jett actually took a job in a casino as a cashier. No wonder they walk on egg shells to please us.
As we approach various temples disabled victims of landmines, (mostly farmers and construction workers) play traditional Cambodian folk music and Mike drops a $1 in their bowl. The Landmine Museum extracted my righteous indignation over the insatiable US Military Industrial complex. I am glad to pay a museum (and NGO) $3 to see this disclosure, their home grown stab at addressing evil. The US dropped 300 million tons of bombs on Cambodia. Under Clinton’s Administration the US gave out a map of where bombs were dropped but it is admittedly an incomplete map. US planes dropped ordinance on all of Cambodia without any militarily justifiable reason. The bombers were not allowed to land until they dropped their load and they dropped without rhyme, reason or record. Theoretically the military reason was to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail, a supply line that was a static target. Instead bombs were dropped all over the entire nation of Cambodia. I am ashamed that the US was not brought to trial for this atrocity. My own excuse to exempt the US from such a trial is that we were supposed to have learned our lesson; hah! Wikipedia says
We visited a Killing Field. We saw skulls and not much else. The visit was not painful or difficult, not as effective or engaging as a Holocaust Museum because interaction is minimal. They really cannot afford to drive Americans away and we are terribly thin skinned and immature as a culture and people. We believe we are perfect.
Jackie Kennedy visited Cambodia in 1967. She informed and inspired me to visit.
Before she married Aristotle Onassis she was the most admired woman in America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8612ghM9gMk
[F]rom October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons' worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having "unknown" targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. . . . [T]he total payload dropped during these years to be nearly five times greater than the generally accepted figure. To put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history. . . . [T]he bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia, bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents . . . [and] drove ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a group that seemed initially to have slim prospects of revolutionary success.
I am so awed by the ignorance of most americans about what we did in SE Asia. It was so horrendous and shameful. How can we ever be forgiven for it? And I can see why temple photography would be so addictive. They remind me of some of the mosques and palaces in the middle east - the unbelievably intricate artwork and carving. Looking forward to seeing the photos.
ReplyDelete