Tuesday, November 19 Siem Reap

Tuesday, November 19 Siem Reap

We headed about 15 km out of town along the Siem Reap River.  During the wet season (ended last month), the road we traveled regularly floods, so the houses were built on stilts and there were areas where the road had been damaged.  Along the way, we noticed many small stores selling gasoline in repurposed liquor, soda and water bottles.  Before long, most of the land on either side of the road was covered with water and small boats were moored under houses.  This is a rice-growing area, but not at this time of year.  The houses were something to behold: up on stilts, with altars or shrines at their entrances, they were constructed of corrugated tin, bamboo, wood, singly, or in combination.  For the most part, straight walls and right angles weren't in evidence, but several times we'd see a pretty slap-dash affair that was somehow outfitted with a gorgeously varnished and carved set of double doors or shutters. 

Our destination was Tonle Sap ("Fresh-Water Lake"), the largest lake in Southeast Asia.  During the wet season, its surface area is three times its size at the end of the dry season.    We boarded a boat for a ride out to a floating village set amid a mangrove forest currently under water.  This particular village is populated by over 1100 Vietnamese families, who make their living fishing, rowing alongside tourists' boats to ask for money, and running restaurants that cater to tourists.  We visited a floating market that also contained watery pens for catfish farming and crocodile raising.  In addition to the  community school, there was a Catholic school extending over three adjacent boats and with uniformed students and an array of solar panels on its roof.

Back on land, we returned to Siem Reap and visited the workshops of a school dedicated to training young people in the traditional Khmer arts of wood and stone carving, lacquer painting, silk painting and silver plating.  The work was beautiful and it was so special to see the artisans creating it before our eyes.

After lunch, we had the afternoon free to wander around town.  We visited the Old Market to pick up a few more bargains and check out some unusual offerings in the food stalls.  

We stopped at a Buddhist monastery complex begun over 500 years ago near the market.  The gardens, monuments, stupas, and the temple were quite lovely and our visit there was a fine prelude to an early return to the hotel to cool off with cold ones and a swim.

We had dinner tonight in a private bamboo pavilion in a lovely restaurant garden.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the servers delivered a can of Off and placed a mosquito-repelling device under the table, we were not bothered at all.  Dinner was as outstanding as the setting.

Monday, November 18 - Temple Mania or, "Which wat was what?"

Monday, November 18 - Temple Mania or, "Which wat was what?"

We spent the entire day at the Angkor Wat temple complex, and we will freely admit that the many temples we saw began to run together in our minds.  In the interest of retaining at least a few readers, it's best that, rather than go into detail about each temple, we'll include some general observations about the area and let the photos speak for themselves.

The temples dated from the 10th to the 13th centuries, with the earliest ones built of brick and a stone called laterite.  Later construction and ornamentation used large sandstone blocks from 60 km away, carried on bamboo poles and floated downriver on bamboo rafts. The circular holes for poles can still be seen in many stones.  

Depending upon the religious belief of the reigning king at the time of construction, the wats originated as either Hindu or Buddhist temples.  With shifts in the political winds, the wats changed back and forth between the two belief systems.  Typically, if Buddhists took over Hindu temples, they added Buddhas and other appropriate ornamentation, while leaving the Hindu elements intact.  Hindus, however, destroyed Buddhist trappings when control shifted their way.

We did lots of climbing, either on the original temple stone stairs, or on wooden staircases built for today's tourists.  In either case, they were steep and the heights dizzying for some; young children and pregnant women were forbidden to ascend.

The bas reliefs were history books and anthropological studies in stone, depicting in intricate detail the theology, mythology, activities of daily living, amusements, and battlefield exploits of kings, generals, gods, fishermen, housewives, children and demons.  The skill (and stamina!) involved in their creation was almost beyond comprehension.

The wats were surrounded by moats in order to protect them from floods during the rainy season.  We approached several temples on causeways constructed through moats.

Especially during the morning, the most popular temples were clogged with mobs of tourists.  Ta Prohm, where Tomb Raiders was filmed, was almost impassable in spots, as bus loads of Koreans crowded around to have their photos taken in certain iconic spots, like those places where enormous tree roots wrapped around and grew through stone walls and towers. 

Outside the temples were throngs of a different sort: local children, very young children, hawking all manner of trinkets and postcards.  They were beautiful, persistent, annoying and sad.

The temple complex actually encompasses several small villages which pre-date the creation of the archaeological monument and whose residents have a right to remain, so we saw small homes and grazing cows and pigs among the temples.

After lunch, we visited Angkor Wat itself.  The crowds that we'd seen this morning when we drove by had greatly diminished and we were almost alone when we entered the temple through the "back door."  As we approached the Wat, we encountered several monkeys playing and eating fruit for the amusement of visitors and photographers.  We climbed a steep wooden staircase so that we could wander around in the galleries and courtyards on the upper levels of the temple.  The views, both close up and out over the double-walled compound, causeway, outer walls and moat were never ending.  Back closer to ground level, we moved through the long, bas relief-filled galleries that line the perimeter walls of the entire huge temple.

The entire day was almost too much to take in.  One temple after another, king after king, century after century -- the building, on a monumental scale and with rudimentary tools, just continued.  It puts the advances of the modern day in perspective!

By late afternoon, we were templed-out, hot and sticky.  We chilled out in the hotel pool, amid the orchids and other lush tropical plants, and then had dinner in the poolside open area restaurant.

Sunday, November 17 - Siem Reap

Sunday, November 17 - Siem Reap

This morning, we had a 45-minute flight from Phnom Penh north to Siem Reap.  This is the gateway to Angkor Wat and many other ancient temples and is a HUGE tourist center. 

Our guide and driver picked us up at the airport for the drive to the two temples we'd visit today.  The temple complex is huge and, once within its confines, we drove for several miles, past the tourist mob, famous towers and vast moat at Angkor Wat and then through Angkor Thom, both of which we will visit during our stay here.  Our first destination was Preah Khan, a large temple, first Buddhist, then Hindu.  It seemed that we walked through innumerable rooms, with towering walls and criss-crossing passage ways.  Everywhere, the carving on the sandstone walls, pillars, and archways was extensive, detailed, and intricate.  Several places within the temple, there were local families hawking things to tourists.  It was amazing to watch their young children just being kids, playing with their friends among the ruins.

A  bit farther down the road, we came to Neak Poan, a small Buddhist temple set in a central pool, surrounded by four pools representing the four elements, all in the center of a large reservoir.  Bathing in the pools was believed to cleanse believers of their impurities and bring them to a higher state of being.  As we walked on a path through the reservoir, we encountered an ensemble of musicians who were victims of land mines, which this area was riddled with during Cambodia's conflict-ridden recent past.  (Guidebooks to this country stress the importance of not straying from well-trodden paths.)

By midafternoon, we were at our hotel and on our own for the rest of the day.  We walked the short distance to and across the Siem Reap river to visit the Old Market and surrounding beehive of activity.  Tuk tuks may come close to outnumbering motorcycles here; they're a convenient and cheap way to get around the city.

Back at the hotel, we enjoyed the pool before our happy hour and again venturing out across the river via tuk tuk  for dinner at a restaurant suggested by our guide.  Before boarding another tuk tuk to head home, we paid a visit to the Night Market.

Saturday, November 16 - Phnom Penh

Saturday, November 16 - Phnom Penh

Our guide, Bunnareth, and driver picked us up this morning to begin our day in Phnom Penh at the Royal Palace. The large walled complex faces the river and consists of many beautiful buildings and gardens.  There was a contingent of police in the garden, preparing for the arrival later today of the president of Japan, and Japanese flags were flying along with Cambodian.  We stopped to learn about the Buddha tree, so named because Buddha was born beneath one, which blooms throughout the year.  We were able to view, but neither enter or photograph, the throne room, which takes up the centerpiece building of the complex. The pattern of the tiles which cover the floors of the porches and massive main floor is matched by an enormous rug from China.  The exterior ornamentation of the buildings, particularly their roofs is spectacular, as are the gardens.

Adjoining the palace complex is the Silver Pagoda, so named because the entire floor of the building is laid with silver tiles!  The pagoda also contains a Buddha made of gold and ornamented with thousands of diamonds, another made of jade, and numerous others of gold, silver and jewels.  Most valuable to us, however, were the fans stationed throughout the pagoda and the intermittent breeze they provided; even early in the day, we were feeling the heat!  Outside the pagoda were the stupas, the monuments containing the cremated remains of kings and their families, as well as many beautiful flowers, including lotus blossoms.

The National Museum, housed in very distinctive red building built by the French, but in Cambodian style,  during the early 20th century, contains many of the sculptures and treasures from Angkor Wat and other ancient or royal sites.  Under the established system, our guide had to turn us over to an official museum guide and translating her English into ours took some doing!  The four galleries surround and are open to a lovely courtyard.  The profusion of statuary and other artifacts was a bit overwhelming, but when we visit Angkor and the other wats (temples), we'll have some idea of what's missing.

The tone of our day changed at Tuol Sleng, or S-21, the Museum of Genocide.  This was a high school that was turned into a prison, interrogation center and torture chamber under the murderous regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, 1975 to1979.  Twenty thousand citizens passed through this prison for interrogation and torture before being moved to the Killing Fields outside the city for execution; only seven survived.  The cells, shackles, instruments of torture, graphic paintings done by one of the survivors, electrified barbed wire fences and, especially, the photographs of the prisoners were haunting.  Currently, two of the seven survivors are still living; one was on the grounds to meet people and bear witness to what happened there.

During less than four years, Pol Pot systematically murdered half of Cambodia's seven million people.  He forced the evacuation of Phnom Penh, began the killing of the educated classes, and pressed the displaced into forced labor and starvation in the countryside.  Eventually, not even Pol Pot's allies were safe, as anyone suspected of betrayal was eliminated.  The brutality of the regime is hard to comprehend, as is the fact that every family in the country was affected.  Bunnareth told us that he was ten years old when he was orphaned.  "In 1975, I had a family. I had siblings. I had parents.  In 1979, I had no one.  I am alone." 

As we had lunch in a lovely riverfront restaurant, it was hard to think of anything other than what we'd just seen and heard.

During the Pol Pot years, there were over 300 Killing Fields in the country.  This afternoon, we visited the most famous of them, Choeung Ek, where the prisoners of Tuol Sleng were transported for execution in mass graves.  The site is now a national memorial, the centerpiece of which is a tower of seventeen glass tiers holding over 8,000 catalogued skulls and other bones.  Surrounding the monument are mounds of mass graves, excavated mass graves, and explanations of several specific excavations.  Bunnareth had us look at the paths we were walking on, where bones could be seen surfacing through the dirt.  Over 150,000 mass graves have been found throughout the country.  This is surely one of the saddest countries on earth.

Given that Choeung Ek is one of the most visited places in the Phnom Penh area, the route there is amazingly poor.  It took us 45 minutes to travel about nine miles on the worst urban road we've ever experienced.  Unpaved in some areas, in others, potholes so deep that cars weave back and forth from one side of the road to the other to avoid bottoming out, dust everywhere -- it was terrible.

Back at home base, hot and played out, we headed for the lovely pool to refresh mind and body in a gorgeous tropical setting.  We also decided to have dinner at the poolside bar, and enjoyed an early evening thunderstorm as we ate.

Great beauty, great sorrow, all in one day.