Wednesday, November 20 - Cambodia to Laos

Wednesday, November 20 - Cambodia to Laos

Tom often gets up to take photos of the sunrise in spectacular places; it's generally a solitary experience, or one shared by a small number of intrepid souls.  Not so at Angkor Wat today.  Our guide and driver picked us up at 5:00 and we soon joined a sizable parade of cars and tuk-tuks, headlights shining in the darkness, to the great temple. We approached by flashlight, via the king's causeway across the wide moat and outer compound, to take our places along the shore of a small lake in front of the great temple.  Before long, people were standing eight to ten deep with enterprising vendors selling coffee, books, and the usual schlock.  A memorable experience, to be sure...

We returned to the hotel for a couple of hours for breakfast and to check out before our guide and driver joined us again.  Today, we drove to Bantay Srei, about 20 km out of town, but still part of the Angkor Wat complex.  Dating from the tenth century and constructed of rose-colored stone, it is much smaller than most of the other wats, but has many detailed carvings.  We also visited the much larger Pre Rup temple, but declined to climb its steep steps to the high towers.

Near these temples is the Land Mine Museum.  As we've mentioned, Cambodia was riddled with land mines, which caused great injury and suffering to children, farmers, and the general population, long after the civil wars had ended.  Several times during our stay in Cambodia, we've encountered ensembles of musicians composed of victims of land mines.  The museum is part of an NGO's ongoing efforts to clear mines, educate the world about the horrors that have resulted from their use, and also to house and educate some of Cambodia's many orphaned children.

After lunch, we visited the War Museum, where we were guided by a veteran of the country's decades-long civil wars.  At age nine, he lost his entire family to Pol Pot, and lived on his own until, at age13, he joined the national army, simply in order to eat.  He was wounded multiple times, lost a leg and his eyesight (since partially restored), offered various pieces of shrapnel still in his body to anyone who wanted to feel them, and yet had a wonderful sense of humor and bantering wit.  The open-air museum was mostly composed of rusting hulks of tanks, artillery, and other armaments that were antiquated when the Cambodians got them from the Russians and the Chinese.

We arrived at the Siem Reap airport early for our one-hour flight to Luang Prabang, Laos, where we had a quick walk around the night market before calling it a day.

Comments about Cambodia:

●     Because of its history of instability and war, Cambodia's tourism industry is relatively young.  Nevertheless, those in its employ seem highly professional.  Guides and hotel personnel consistently welcomed warmly and thanked us for coming to their country. 

●     We were routinely greeted with the sampeah, a bow with hands pressed together.

●     The political system seems to be as corrupt as anywhere else.  Elections last summer are widely regarded as fraudulent and the old boys' network is alive and well.

●     The US dollar is the currency of choice.  Prices are quoted in dollars and ATM withdrawals are delivered in dollars.  Easy for us, but not quite as thrilling as walking around with millions in Vietnam, where a dollar is worth 21,000 Vietnamese dong!