Holiday in Cambodia (2010)

From Laos, we flew down to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Our main goal was to see the Khmer ruins near Siem Reap, further to the west, but as I mentioned earlier, Jessica was doing a tiny bit of research on this trip, so we went to the capital for her to do a quick interview and to generally check the city out.

I can’t honestly recall much about who she interviewed, but as with the interview she did in Hanoi, my main job was to try to keep myself cool while she was in her meeting. I did not choose as wisely this time. Instead of a lovely little shop with fruit juices and lots of fans, I was in a crowded restaurant drinking a room temperature Coke. Well, actually, they provided a glass with ice with it. I looked askance at it, but I was dying in the heat, so I went for it. Mistake. We had been told that generally ice in the form of cubes was likely to be safe, but chipped ice wasn’t. This was clearly chipped off a block. I still drank it. Later that day my stomach protested. As I said, mistake.

OK, that little incident aside, Phnom Penh was actually pretty interesting for the few days we were there, as we mixed some happy “this is so beautiful” tourism with some horrifying “right, there was a murderous regime here in the 70s” sightseeing.

We saw some the fabulous Independence Monument and a lovely fountain as soon as we stepped out of our hotel…

…and had our first tuk-tuk ride in Cambodia.

Probably the coolest sites we visited were the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. The Royal Palace is a sprawling complex of buildings that have been in use by Cambodian royalty since the 1860s. The multi-tiered roofs are gorgeous and the whole place is in immaculate shape. We couldn’t do interior photos, but the outside of the throne hall here gives you a sense of the place.

Across the way was the Silver Pagoda, also known as the Emerald Pagoda. It’s silver because of the silver floor tiles and emerald because of green crystal Buddha among it’s many jeweled treasures. You can see that the style of the pagoda is similar to the Throne Hall, but I have to say I like the color scheme of the pagoda better — the yellow and green of the Throne Hall and surrounding buildings seemed a little dull to me.

The grounds in the royal complex were also quite lovely. There were statues…

And, surrounding the Silver Pagoda were a number of chedi (or stupas), impressive tombs holding the remains of members of the royal family.

I liked some of the architectural details on the buildings…

And there were some beautiful fading murals…

One of the only interior bits we were allowed to photograph displayed the royal elephant carriages of the past. They look more comfortable than the ones we rode on, but no more stable.

One of the more interesting features was an area of the grounds along a small stream where visitors from all over the world wrote on the leaves of the plants with wishes for good luck.

A little further north along the river (Phnom Penh is where several major rivers join the Mekong) is Penh Hill (or “Phnom Penh,” since phnom means mountain or hill). This small hill is topped by a wat named after the legendary Lady Penh who supposedly lived here and discovered several Buddha statues in a tree. There was also, evidently, one of Vishnu, showing that Buddhism and Hinduism aren’t quite as separate as some people might think. You can see that the wat is protected by naga, much like the ones seen in Laos.

The wat was clearly actively used by the community, as evidenced by the number of candles burning inside and the incense at the altar for Lady Penh.

However, the real stars of the show here were the monkeys. They were cute. They were furry. They were fast. And they were a little ferocious, aggressively approaching people who seemed to have food handy. We kept our distance and managed to avoid a confrontation (better than we did when we got to China several years later…but that’s a story for a future post).

Of course, not everything in Phnom Penh was fuzzy monkeys and beautiful royal buildings. We also visited a couple of places associated with the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s. A couple of miles across town we visited the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. This location was once upon a time a high school. When Pol Pot took control of Cambodia, much of the population was forced out of the major cities, and this site was converted into Security Prison 21 (or just S-21), a torture center for those who sought to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. The place was pretty sparse, but disturbing enough without too much detail. Probably the spookiest was a giant room with dozens of displays showing photos of the (mostly) young men and women who had once been held, tortured, and often killed here.

About 20,000 people came through S-21. Most were killed at one point or another, usually after they were tortured into giving extensive confessions. Eventually, they ran out of space to bury the bodies in the yard around the old school, so they began transporting the victims to the nearby Choeung Ek, a marshy field 5 miles out of town where child soldiers killed the prisoners with machetes and other makeshift weapons (due to the rationing of bullets). Now a monument to the victims stands there, a giant stupa filled with racks of skulls, surrounded by the pits dug for the many, many mass burials here.

So, a couple of nice stops, and a couple of really, really heavy ones form the core of my memories from Phnom Penh. Mostly, I don’t remember much else about the city, in and of itself, being terribly interesting. There were motorcycles, like in Vietnam, but not quite as many. It was less dense than Vietnam’s big cities, but not as sparse as Vientiane was in Laos. I mean, at least there were still street vendors selling rambutan, so that was nice…

And we enjoyed watching life on the rivers there…

One thing I do recall really enjoying in Phnom Penh was the friendliness and playfulness of the people there. Two of my favorite photos…

Overall, the city was hot, hot, hot, and so people hiding in the middle of the day may have contributed to the slightly empty feeling. As the evening began, on the other hand, lots of people came out to enjoy the cooling weather. Along the riverfront, there were large stretches of tiled parkland where groups played soccer and badminton.

But, the best was even a little later at night. Around 9:00 or 10:00 pm nearly every park had a sound system set up where families gathered to dance (think something like “zoomba” — mostly dancing for exercise) once the evening got cool enough. We saw these all over the place and it was hilarious watching everyone from the little kids running in circles to the grandmas barely lifting their feet.

After a few days, we left Phnom Penh and took a bus across to the western side of the country where Siem Reap is the center of tourism, home to the amazing thousand year old ruins of the Khmer Empire.

But, before we got there, a truly astonishing thing happened. A whole day went by without me taking a photo. Seriously. I scoured my various folders and it appears that on July 30th, my trigger finger rested. Crazy!

I do recall that our bus route included a stop in a town famous for its fried tarantulas. As an arachnophobe, this disturbed me a bit (the though of putting that in my mouth is a big no-no), but as we left, it dawned on me just how many tarantulas there must be in the area if they are a food source. Shiver-inducing thoughts.

After experiencing some bus-board karaoke and a Khmer-dubbed Liam Neeson movie, we arrived that afternoon in Siem Reap where we went to our hotel (the Golden Banana, which in retrospect we should have known would be a gay-friendly hotel), and met the two men we’d spend the next three days with: our guide, Suparat, and our tuk-tuk driver, Luk. After relaxing for our first evening there, the next three days were an intense delve into Khmer history as well as Buddhist and Hindu beliefs as we visited a dozen different historical sites around the area. It was as beautiful and incredible as you might imagine.

Here’s the basics. The Khmer empire started forming in the 9th century, reached its height in the 12th and 13th centuries as they eventually defeated the Champa Kingdom to the east, and then collapsed in the 14th century (partly due to military defeats, but also maybe from plague, famine, or other catastrophes…the record is unclear). At some times the leadership followed Hindu beliefs, at others, Buddhist. Think of this like European history, where a king will suddenly declare, “we’re all Protestant now.” The people mostly continue on doing what they’re doing and believing what they believe, but a different sector of the religious estate gets elevated for a time. Despite this flip-flopping, a great number of the best-preserved art in the area reflected Hindu beliefs with scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata among others.

As always, my memories are guided by my photos, so rather than trying too hard to construct a logical narrative of Khmer history, I’m simply going to go through what we saw in the order we saw it. Prepare yourselves for a lot of gorgeous jungle ruin photos…

DAY ONE

We met Suparat and Luk in the morning and hopped in our trusty tuk-tuk to head to the largest of the ruin sites, Angkor Thom. We got out on the bridge that forms the south entrance to the complex. There we were greeted by rows of figures on each side of the bridge all seemingly pulling on the tail of a snake. This is a scene from a famous Hindu story about “The Churning of the Sea of Milk,” where the weakened gods trick the demons into helping them churn up the sea of milk to get some magic powers from it. They all grab a big snake wrapped around a mountain and heave it back and forth for a thousand years or so, restoring the gods’ powers and bringing up all sorts of other good things.

At the end of this bridge, an entrance gate is guarded by four huge heads each facing out in a different direction. (I’m unclear if they are meant to represent gods or kings.) Once we passed inside the gate, Suparat led us up the hill on the backside for a closer look at the faces. Pretty stunning.

Once we’d entered, we went to the central part of the complex, the Bayon. This means “the labyrinth,” though the temple used to be called Jayagiri which means “victory mountain.” Regardless, it was impressive. The Bayon was built under the rule of Jayavarman VII around the year 1200. It’s a maze (or, some might say, a labyrinth) of chambers, terraces, and a ton of towers decorated with massive heads.

There are relief carvings all over the place in the Bayon (and many of the other ruins). One of the common figures is the Apsara dancer. In legend they are dancing nymphs, often the wives of the musicians of the gods. In reality, these figures have inspired a form of dance that involves some incredible body contortion. More on that later…

In several sections of the Bayon, there were extensive relief carvings displaying scenes from both religious mythology and also from Khmer history. Many of the reliefs focused on Khmer armies marching off to war, but others showed a variety of aspects of the world and society. They were pretty incredible and surprisingly well preserved given that they were mostly outdoors and fairly exposed to the elements.

From the Bayon, we walked over to the Baphoun, a temple built a few hundred years earlier as a Hindu shrine. It was converted to a Buddhist site about 500 years later with the addition of a massive (about 300 foot long) reclining Buddha figure built along one side. And 500 years after that, you can see it’s still being renovated…

Angkor Thom is a pretty huge complex, so wandering from temple to temple in there meant crossing through swaths of forest and fields of grass littered with unreconstructed bits of Khmer ruins.

Eventually, we made our way to Phimeanakas, an even earlier Hindu temple built in the 10th century.

To one side of Phimeanakas was the Terrace of the Elephants. It is decorated with both sculptural representations of elephants as well as relief carvings of them. I like how all of these faces, animals, etc. are built from smaller stone blocks that interlock to make larger images. It’s like ancient legos. Also, check out the ends of the elephant trunks. Not sure what’s happening there, but it’s cool. One section of the terrace also featured garudas, Buddhist mythological creatures.

On the other side of Phimeanakas, we visited the Terrace of the Leper King. This was pretty impressive piece of art as well, evidently named after the fact that a statue of a king located there was discolored in some way.

After finishing up at Angkor Thom, we headed down the road to the smaller, but more famous, Angkor Wat. There we were greeted by hungry monkeys and bullet holes in the wall, another reminder of the Khmer Rouge era.

But, mostly, we were just stunned by the beautiful architecture of the enormous ancient temple.

Like so many other places here, it was originally built as a Hindu temple and then transitioned to Buddhist use later. It was constructed in the 12th century under Suryavarman II and it is one of the largest religious structures in the world. Wandering through the grounds, slipping through the halls, viewing the area from the upper terraces, it was all quite impressive. But, besides the overwhelming scale, there was also close up detail that demanded attention. Many of the walls were covered by etched patterns, almost like wallpaper set in stone…

And other places there were huge galleries of reliefs showing yet more scenes from both history and legend. The technique, preservation, and detail made for an absolutely gorgeous work of art. Here’s just a few examples…

The other major thing adorning the walls were huge numbers of apsara dancers. I kinda love the various crowns/tiaras/headdresses each of them is wearing.

But the best was this little chunk of wall where the carving had just begun when…something happened. One of the figures is complete, but there are others in various stages of detail, with a bit of detail further to the right, but only outlines once you get to the left side of the window. Why was it unfinished? Were these in process when the site was abandoned? Or were they just sitting like this for centuries while people marched by on their way in and out of the temple and no one bothered to point out that maybe that section of wall needed some work? Who knows. Anyhow, still love it, especially the one on the far left that looks like a kids practicing his comic book art techniques with an image labeled “sexy woman.”

After visiting Angkor Wat, we spent the late afternoon cooling down by the pool before going to a show in the evening featuring women performing apsara dances. If you didn’t notice, one of the features of the images of the apsara dancers is their incredible flexibility, including, especially, their ability to bend their fingers backwards. The women we saw dancing had trained from a young age to increase their flexibility and did some fairly impressive things. The show was a little overly touristy, but also fascinating at the same time.

DAY TWO

The next day it was right back into the tuk-tuk to head out for another day of exploring the Khmer ruins. On this day we went out largely on the “grand tour” circuit, rather than the inner “small tour” circuit, and consequently, there were far fewer tourists at each stop. A bit more peaceful that way.

We started the day at Preah Khan, a little bit beyond where Angkor Thom is and largely left unrestored. This is another site built under Jayavarman VII in the 12th century, this time on the location where he defeated a Cham invasion. It had another bridge showing the churning of the sea of milk and just a truly gorgeous series of decayed chambers left only slightly overrun by the jungle.

Just down the road is Neak Pean, a place where healing waters were stored in a large pond and came running out of a series of fountains in the shapes of animal and human heads.

Our next brief stop was at East Mebon, originally a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva. This one was built earlier, in the 10th century, under the same king as Phimeanakas. You can see that the general structure is a bit less refined than some of the newer structures, but the restored doorways on the towers are pretty gorgeous.

Directly south of East Mebon, we visited Pre Rup. This one was quite similar, and in fact was constructed at the same time. You may notice that both of these include a fair amount of pinkish sandstone rather than the lava rocks used elsewhere. More on that later…

After lunch we went Banteay Kdei, another of Jayavarman VII’s Buddhist temples. This one is also in a lovely state of semi-disrepair and was just a joy to wander through.

Jessica and Suparat also gave us each their best apsara dance moves.

One of the other constants at each of these locations were young entrepreneurs. At nearly every site–but especially the ones a little further out from the center–kids would approach us trying to sell postcards and other tourists trinkets. Their first goal was always to suss out what language we spoke. They generally guessed English first, but many of them also knew a bit of French, German, and other European languages. (I learned this when I tried replying “nein” instead of “no” when one tried to sell me something and then they started speaking German to me, of which I knew nothing, other than “nein,” at the time. Oops.) They’d ask where we were from, and if we responded, they would launch into their sales pitch, which often ran something like this: “United States? President: Barack Obama. Capital: Washington, D.C. Declaration of Independence: 1776. Buy a postcard?” They were cute, persistent, and a bit hard to resist, but it helped that back in 2010, Jessica and I were on a pretty limited budget. (I eventually learned that “nyet” worked better, as Russian was not a language most had trained in…)

The next stop was probably the single most beautiful. Ta Prohm is yet another Jayavarman VII Buddhist temple, and the one most famously overtaken by the jungle. There’s some truly awesome melding of tree roots and temple walls here. I won’t belabor the description. Please just enjoy the awesomeness of the photos from here.

The trees even managed to make the relief carvings more mysterious. I like this little mischievous face peeking out from between the roots…

Ta Prohm also featured a room with a great echo effect, called the “chest thumping room.”

Of course, all the “humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs” religious nuts must love the most intriguing image at Ta Prohm: a stegosaurus walking among dolphins…or whatever it’s supposed to be. Regardless of some people’s idiocy, I do kinda love that that it looks like a dog with stegosaurus fins on its back.

Our last stop of the day was Ta Keo, another temple built largely of sandstone in the late 10th century. This one was not properly completed, but was quite tall and featured some large and slightly terrifying stairs.

DAY THREE

Our last day took us well beyond the usual tourist circuits as Suparat had already shown us the most visited temples. We headed further out, which, in a tuk-tuk, meant a fairly long and only slightly comfortable ride.

Our first stop was maybe the best of the day. Banteay Srei is another late 10th century creation, but it is built entirely of a bright pink sandstone which makes the whole place almost glow. The medium also allowed for extremely fine relief carving, and it, consequently, has some of the most detailed and beautiful art of any of the temples we visited. Overall, it was pretty spectacular and well worth the long ride to get there.

Before heading to our last Khmer ruins, we made a couple of quick stops at other spots of interest. The first was the Cambodian Landmine Museum. This is a small institution displaying thousands of deactivated landmines, bombs, and other munitions from the American incursions during the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge era, and the Vietnamese invasion. It mostly spurs from the work of one man, Aki Ra, who had been a child soldier, but later went back to the areas he had planted mines to start defusing them. Over time, he trained others, established the museum, and also hosted a home for children wounded by land mines. It was both inspiring and terrifying seeing the sheer number of mines they’ve collected here and knowing that there are still thousands more dotting the landscape.

We also visited a workshop where they produce palm sugar candy. Yum!

And, like the other days we traveled around Siem Reap, we stopped for lunch. This was a good deal for the driver and guide, as most places gave them a free meal if they brought tourists in as well. We enjoyed the amok, a local style of curry. Also yum.

Later in the day, we visited Banteay Samre, another 12th century Hindu temple clearly built in a similar style to Angkor Wat.

One image I like from here is shown below. I just wanted to highlight this to point out that, while these are ancient ruins, crumbling, restored, or in various states in between, they are still also sites of religious worship for some of the surrounding community. I appreciated that sense of continuity, that these weren’t simply things that belonged to the past.

And, finally, our last stop was Phnom Krom, a large hill that we hiked up.

At the top, we found another set of Khmer ruins, these in a state of pretty poor disrepair.

There was also a more modern Buddhist wat at the top.

But the real reason to go up there was for the expansive view over the countryside. You could see a variety of communities and fields, with most of the houses built on tall stilts due to the regular flooding of the area. The most significant part of the landscape, though, was the Tonle Sap, a huge inland lake that drains into one of the rivers that runs down to Phnom Penh.

The funniest bit, though, was when we came back down to the tuk-tuk and found Luk asleep on the back seat. I can’t blame him. It was a hot day.

Our adventures in Cambodia concluded, we spent the next day on a bus to Bangkok. This was the result of a mistake. When we bought our tickets to fly to Southeast Asia, we thought we’d get to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. As it ended up, we skipped Thailand completely and were sad about all the places we wanted to go in the other three countries that we didn’t have time for. But, since we’d bought our tickets home from Bangkok, we took a bus there from Siem Reap, went straight to a hotel by the airport, slept, and then boarded our flight back to the US early the next morning. So, technically, I’ve been to Thailand, but not in any meaningful way.

To quickly finish up, the rest of our summer in 2010 was a bit crazy. We flew back to San Francisco to see our friends there before heading home to North Carolina. We left Thailand on my friend Ira’s birthday, and arrived in SF in time to celebrate with him thanks to the International Date Line. However, I’d been tentatively offered a job in North Carolina, but they wanted me to do a teaching demo before they would officially hire me, so I had to fly to NC for a day, do the teaching demo, and then fly back to California.

Wait, why did I fly back to CA again? Oh, because our friends Brian and Ginny were getting married. In fact, their wedding was in Santa Cruz, where we ended up moving 4 years later! We had a great time at the wedding, playing at the boardwalk, marveling at the redwoods, and helping decorate for the party. Also, included here, a photo of Ginny’s awesome over-the-top shoes.

So, yeah, a whirlwind end to a whirlwind summer. It was incredible. Looking back on all this, I’m just shocked I haven’t been lobbying to go back to Southeast Asia yet. Putting that on my mental list for…sometime. Too much to see in the world!

Finally, a quick today update. I got a (non-teaching) job. Not one that I think is going to be thrilling or anything, but hopefully interesting enough and satisfying. That means less time for writing, so I don’t know when I’ll post more here. I’m also afraid I won’t get to travel much this summer, but who knows? We’ll just have to see what the future brings. However, in the meantime, the actual hiring process is incredibly slow, so I’m taking the rest of this week to get a little adventure in, heading to Southern Utah to explore the desert some. Yay! Anyhow, until next time…