Cambodia

Tuesday, November 6 – Travel and Siem Reap

    

        We had a seven o’clock  morning flight to Ho Chi Min City (HCM) followed by 11:30 flight to Siem Reap.  The first logistic problem of the trip was that there was no one there to meet us.  Of course my Vietnamese cellphone does not work in Cambodia.  What to do?  No problem, buy a $1 sim card including minutes at the airport.  Now I have a Cambodian cellphone.  I called the Cambodian tour representative and within an hour we are picked up.

Mr. Vudthy, aka Mr. 'T', our guide in Siem Reap.  During the bloody Khmer Rouge era he was interrogated and tortured . He is missing a finger, foot and eye.  A very, very good guide.

Mr. T is into photography.  Here he gives Marsha a lesson.
   





In Siem Reap we are staying at the Golden Temple Hotel, 3 ½ stars, rated superb on Agoda and fabulous reviews on Trip Advisors.  Guess what. It is better than its' reviews.   Large rooms, majestic pool, fine restaurant and most of all, a staff that will do anything for you.  Glad we will have three nights here.

         

            There was heavy rain on the way to the hotel.  By 1500 it has stopped.  Off to a boat ride on Tonle Sap Lake.   On the slow drive down to the lake we pass many houseboats and bamboo houses on stilts.  Most look like a slum, however the average income for families dependent on fishing is much higher than the average income for farmers.  Better housing would probably be a waste in an area that gets flooded frequently and where the lowest temperatures are 16 degrees Celsius.   The road was built by the French to move timber from Siem Reap area to Saigon and Phemn Penh.

The Tonlé Sap (Khmer: ទន្លេសាប IPA: [tunleː saːp], "Large Fresh Water River", but more commonly translated as "Great Lake") is a combined lake and river system of major importance to Cambodia. The  Tonlé Sap is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia and is an ecological hot spot that was designated as an UNESCO biosphere in 1997. The Tonlé Sap is unusual for two reasons: its flow changes direction twice a year, and the portion that forms the lake expands and shrinks dramatically with the seasons. From November to May, Cambodia's dry season, the Tonlé Sap drains into the Mekong River at Phnom Penh. However, when the year's heavy rains begin in June, the Tonlé Sap backs up to form an enormous lake. (Wiki)

            It is 1/6 the size of Lake Michigan.  2/3 of Cambodia’s protein comes from the Lake. The wooden boats vary from 10 passengers to a bus load.  We have to climb over a couple of boats to get to our small boat.  All the boats are powered by two cylinder engines, jerry rigged to the boat. 

Pushing away from other boats

We are near the end of monsoon season.  The lake is near its highest level.

Tour boat above and boat on right is selling goods to passengers on tourist boats.

House on stilts.

Houses and stores on pontoons.  

  The trees are more than half buried in the Lake.  Everything has to be water tolerant.  When flooded the lake is only 9 meters deep.  We ride to a floating fish and crocodile farm.  The fish, basically 1 meter sharks, are used for food and bait.  They feed some of the sharks to crocodiles.  The crocodiles come for the free food, alas they then become the food.  Maximum size for Asian crocodiles is 3 meters, smaller than the ones in Africa. 

At the floating farm we saw a poor boy trying to charm us for tips.

Had crocodile in Kenya, don't know why anyone would want to eat it.  Too bony.

 We arrive back to the dock as the sun is setting.  For dinner our tour company treats us to dinner and a show of traditional dancers to make up for the mix-up at the airport.  Best part of dinner is local beer.  







The dancing is interesting.

Wednesday, November 7 - Angkor Wat

     

       We wake-up at first light, as the polls on the East Coast are closing for the Presidential election.  We switch between BBC, CNN, CNBC to hear the results.

     

       Then off to Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat is the largest  Hindu temple complex in the world. The temple was built by King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in  Yasodharapura  (Khmer:យសោធរបុរៈ present-day Angkor), the capital of  the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Breaking from the Shaivism tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious center since its foundation – first Hindu, dedicated to the god Vishnu, then Buddhist. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia,[1 ]  appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.

Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devasin Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometers (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the center of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls. (Wiki)

 When the The French discovered this area in the 1860’s, everything was covered by vegetation. 

Until you walk around it and up it, you cannot appreciate how big a job it was to make it.  It is  2.2 miles on each side. The towers still stand straight, 7 centuries after it was built.  The stones fit each other perfectly, even though no mortar was used.  Angkor Wat looks the same from all four sides.  Everything is square.

           

 The bas reliefs still have depth.  

Other walls are covered by marble frescoes.  The dark portion is from people touching the good god over the centuries.

The inner sanctum, only royalty allowed.

            Tens of thousands of workers built Angkor Wat.  From skilled tradesman to slaves.  Most of the slaves were Vietnamese.  The Vietnamese were slaves for generations after their failed attack on Cambodia in 1150.  It took 37 years to build Angkor Wat. The bas reliefs were made the way old cartoons were made.  Skilled tradesmen made the patterns, less skilled transferred the stencils to the stone and slaves did the chiseling.

           Unlike Greece and Turkey the work has not been destroyed by earthquakes.  You do not have to use your imagination to see how magnificent the work was.  However, the magnificence of this and other temples that were built before the 14^th century led to the bankruptcy of the Cambodian monarchy.  Furthermore, this led to the downfall of the once most powerful kings in SE Asia.

            Where did the stone come from? There are no natural stones in the area.  They were moved from 60 km away.  Part of the way by barge, but much of the way by elephant.  The elephants were lined up and the elephants passed the massive blocks, down the line from trunk to trunk.  Wow!  How do you train thousands of elephants to do that?

Monkeys are the other primate in the Park.

            
        We went  back to the hotel to avoid the midday heat.  Getting to around 45 degrees C. today.  The pool is as refreshing as it is pretty.  In the late afternoon, Marsha explored Angkor Thom, the great city of the ancient Khmer empire. 

On the way out Marsha saw three modes of transportation.

        I stayed back and took a private cooking lesson.

Thursday, November 8 – More Temples

            Off to Banteay Srei temple–the Citadel of women. It is a 10th century Cambodian  temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. Located in the area of Angkor in Cambodia., it lies near the hill of Phnom Dei, 25 km (16 mi) north-east of the main group of temples

Banteay Srei is built largely of red sandstone, a medium that lends itself to the elaborate decorative wall carvings which are still observable today. The buildings themselves are miniature in scale, unusually so when measured by the standards of Angkorian construction. These factors have made the temple extremely popular with tourists, and have led to its being widely praised as a "precious gem", or the "jewel of Khmer art.

Notice how deep the design is.  Not bad for over a millennium.

Only 2-3 people high.

One of my favorite features.  Below a closer view.  Even some of the original pink coloring remains.

            By the time we leave this temple the temperature is nearly 40 degrees.  Our clothes are as wet as it would be in a monsoon.

 Next we eat lunch at an air conditioned restaurant inside the park. While the food is okay, the prices are not.  Main courses were $7-8, twice the price of our hotel. 

            We eat in the park to allow quicker access to our last temple.  The entire complex of temples was lost to the world  until 1850, when the French discovered it during logging.  If the British found it many of the major pieces would be in the British Museum.  It was lost because the area is a dense forest.

The final temple we saw is best described by Wikipedia.

Ta Prohm  is the modern name of a temple at Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. It was built in the Bayon style largely in the late 12th and early 13th centuries and originally called Rajavihara. Located approximately one kilometer east of Angkor Thom and on the southern edge of the East Baray, it was founded by the Khmer King  Jayavarman VII as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university.  Unlike most Angkorian temples, Ta Prohm has been left in much the same condition in which it was found: the photogenic and atmospheric combination of trees growing out of the ruins and the jungle surroundings have made it one of Angkor's most popular temples with visitors. UNESCO inscribed Ta Prohm on the World Heritage

List in 1992. Today, it is one of the most visited complexes in Cambodia’s Angkor region. The conservation and restoration of Ta Prohm is a partnership project of the Archaeological Survey of India and the APSARA (Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap). [Wiki]

      

Massive trees.  It is amazing that the French found the temple buried under these trees.

      The restoration work will probably take another generation.

            Throughout the park there are small bands playing traditional music.  The quality is equal to street musicians in the States.  Sometimes very good, more often adequate.  

On closer view, there is something special about the musicians.  They were all handicapped.  Victims of the Khmer Rouge.

  A NGO, I believe from Sweden, found victims and created the bands.  Now these gentlemen can be productive, self-supporting members of their community.
          

We are not the only exhausted tourists.

            







Back to the Golden Temple Hotel.  After our bodies dry off enough to get into bathing suits, we go  down to the beautiful pool.  The hotel gives us complimentary nuts, dried banana, fruit plate and tea at pool side.  Ah, what a life.

Friday, November 9 – All terrain quad bikes

            As a reward for Temple hopping, this morning we spend two hours exploring the countryside on Polaris Quad Bikes. 

Needless to say, Marsha was a little nervous about this. 

 Even though the tour operator is only a five minute walk from our hotel, in less than 3 minutes of riding we are into a rural area.  

We then continue to go on small and smaller roads and paths.  We travel on roads sometimes lined by homes, more often we are going around and thru cattle.  

 We get to see rice being planted, 

farmers working

and a magnificent pagoda in the middle of a tiny village.

  The new pagoda was built only last year.  It shows the new prosperity in the area.

            To make certain Marsha never forgets this experience, even though she was doing nothing wrong, her bike decides to slide down the edge of the road into a gully that waters a rice paddy.  Unfortunately, getting Marsha off her bike and her bike rescued from the two foot deep muddy water took precedence over taking a picture.  [A more experienced rider would have given gas rather than braking when the bike began to slide, but this was not part of the instructions before the ride].  Despite this experience, the ride was fun and allowed us to see up close rural life.

            90 minutes later we are off to the airport.  Marsha’s boots are still soaked.  I disagreed with Mr. T that we needed to go to  the airport two hours before the flight.  He knows his airlines better than me.  The plane took off 35 minutes early.  The plane was quite empty, a group of Italian tourist were not let on the flight. Their tour operator did not get them the proper paper work for re-entry to Viet Nam.

            Expecting problems with meeting our tour guide in Saigon, I changed from a Cambodian SIM card to my Viet Nam SIM card during the flight.  No problem, our guide was there early.