Cambodia: Feb 19: More Siem Reap

Because our arranged tour lasted only three days, we had this day to ourselves. We used it to explore more of Siem Reap. Although we'd already seen the Old Market and the touristy area nearby, we hadn't yet walked everyday streets, seen any of the notable buildings or temples, or strolled along the river.

These pictures capture highlights from the day. Di Yin took many more. The latter link goes to the first picture from this day (picture #452) in her album from our trip to Singapore and Cambodia. When you see a picture of us landing in Singapore at night (picture #530), you're done with her pictures for the day / from our trip to Cambodia. I'll link to her Singapore pictures in other posts.

We began the day at 7:30am (before the heat) by walking to downtown from our hotel (a mile or two), observing morning life along the way (students in uniforms on bicycles heading to class, etc.). Once downtown, we walked through the Central Market but found we were there too early and most shops weren't open.

I grabbed breakfast from a street stand, and we made our way to see one of the town's temples, Wat Damnak. It's a large complex with many towers and many kids at play, hanging out, etc. We also went to another temple complex, Wat Preah Prom Rath, with monks and a large Buddha statue. I think I read that this was the oldest complex in Siem Reap, but I can't make out my notes clearly.

For lunch, we returned to the The Blue Pumpkin, where we ate the day before. It was decent.

We headed through the Central Market, which was open by this time. It's like the Old Market but less cramped.

We had planned to returned to a place for ice cream--we had even discussed and selected our flavors (banana and galangal)--but nixed the idea because it required too much of a walk in the heat.

We walked back to our hotel from downtown, seeing a variety of sights along the way (mostly documented by the pictures). We stopped by the McDermott Gallery, a gallery created by a photographer famous for his pictures of Angkor. And, yes, he had some pictures that I wish I took. Anyway, we ambled slowly back to our hotel, partially due to the heat and partially because I was feeling a little odd (and hence I had less energy than usual).

Our tour guide picked us up at our hotel and delivered us to the airport, and we returned to Singapore. Di Yin flew economy; I flew back to Singapore on business class because, when I bought the ticket, it was the only ticket available. Sitting in business class, I got lots of attention, which was a little overwhelming at first.

Cambodia: Feb 18: Floating Village, War Museum, Artisan School, and more

For a change, we spent time on Thursday seeing things besides temples (though we did spend half the day seeing temples too). I took a ton of pictures. Di Yin also took many. The latter link goes to the first picture from this day (picture #325) in her album from our trip to Singapore and Cambodia. When you see a dark, blurry picture of jackfruit (our dinner's dessert) (picture #450), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the later pictures in the following posts.

After our long previous day, we slept 9.5 hours before being woken by my alarm. We had breakfast in our hotel again, which was much less crowded today at 8am than yesterday at 7am. We then ventured out to see a few more temples and other sites. The largest place we visited was Preah Khan (Sacred Sword Temple), which was like Ta Prohm in that both are partially collapsed and somewhat invaded by trees.

For lunch, our tour guide brought us to downtown Siem Reap where we had a good, interesting meal at The Blue Pumpkin, a place so welcoming and with a tempting, eclectic menu that I'd probably visit it regularly if it were in California.

Our tour guide picked us up and brought us to the War Museum, a haunting place with many tanks, assorted artillery, some rocket launchers, guns, and more, supplied by Russia, China, and the United States. We also saw a variety of land mines and their different effects, trigger methods, etc. Our general tour guide handed us off to a specialist guide for the museum. The museum's guide, younger than us, grew up during the war. He can recount many personal, brutal stories: encounters with mines, grenades, etc. We kept needing to stop him from telling us some of the disturbing details and from showing us his eye injury. While I think seeing this museum and hearing these tales is important, I'm glad this will be my only encounter with the brutal recent history of this country. Even this was a little too much.

Next up was a school for artisans, designed to teach disadvantaged young people traditional handicrafts. The public is allowed to tour the school and see people at work. It was neat watching these skilled artists at work; we saw silk painting, wood carving, soap carving, lacquering, varnishing, and stone carving. Some of the pieces went through a process to make them look more antique. (I'm not sure how I feel about that.) Most items produced are high quality and are for sale at the school's shop. Like the museum, we also had a specialist guide here, though this one was in too much of a hurry -- I didn't get to watch the artists as much as I wanted.

Our last outing of the day, and the one that took the longest, was a visit to a floating village outside of town. We took a tuk-tuk there rather than our regular car. Though I think the switch was because our guide was saving gas money, I liked the substitution because the tuk-tuk let me take many pictures of town and rural life at a slower speed and without any obstruction from windows. Our guide had discouraged us from going to the village, claiming it was dirty and smelly this time of year. While it was a bit dirty, it wasn't that dirty and it certainly didn't smell. In fact, I thought the trip was really cool, both the boat ride around the floating village and the tuk-tuk ride.

We returned, ate an early dinner, and retired to our hotel.

Cambodia: Feb 17: More Angkor Sites

Wednesday was a long day, beginning at 5:30am and ending at 9pm. We awoke so early to see Angkor Wat at dawn; we ended so late to see a Cambodian dance performance. In between, we saw many temples. Again, I documented this day with nearly a hundred pictures (yet I wish I took more). Di Yin also took many. The latter link goes to the first picture from this day (picture #233) in her album from our trip to Singapore and Cambodia. When you see a picture of women in the back of a pickup truck (picture #325), you've reached the next day's pictures. I'll link to those pictures in the next post.

Watching the sun rise at Angkor Wat wasn't as impressive as I was led to believe it was going to be. Frankly, watching the sun rise behind any structure, which makes it hard to see anything but silhouettes, makes for pictures that hide many of the features that make a place interesting. The only picture I really like from the morning looked westward.

After dawn, we returned to our hotel for breakfast, then departed again at 9am for more adventuring. We explored a few temples, including Ta Prohm, also known as the Jungle Temple because it was taken over by huge trees and forest. While most of the forest has been trimmed back / cleaned up, some huge trees were left because they've grown through the walls and buildings such that removing them would cause a collapse. I'm glad some trees are left; I love the atmosphere they lend the temple. Something about the decrepitude of it appeals to me.

For lunch, we were deposited at the restaurant Borey Sovann, where we had another decent meal. After lunch, rather than let our guide drive us back to our hotel (as he suggested), we decided to explore downtown Siem Reap and have him pick us up there for our mid-afternoon and later activities.

We wandered around the Old Market (Phsar Chas) and the touristy center of Siem Reap. The Old Market, which has both food for locals and retail shops for tourists, is big, and most people in the retail section are foreign. The food market is much like food markets in Shanghai, just with more flies. The retail section is also like tourist markets in China in that there are many identical stalls selling identical goods.

When our guide picked us up again, he took us to see more of Angkor Thom. We first stopped to browse the reliefs on the outer temples surrounding Bayon and to see the temples nearby. The reliefs cover a surprising variety of topics, as I discussed in more detail in my overview post. We then drove a little farther and walked along two famous carved terraces, at the same time glimpsing yet two more temples through the trees.

We also stopped by a small exhibit on how the Angkor temples are being restored. Restoration is made harder because they need to find stone of the same color and properties as stone already there, and the only source for this stone that they discovered is near the former base of the Khmer Rouge, a heavily mined region.

After the terraces, we headed to Phnom Bakheng, a temple at the top of a hill, to view the sunset. We hiked up the hill along with hundreds of other tourists. We actually went down the hill before the sun turned a brilliant red because we had to return for dinner and a show. Although the view from the top wasn't that exciting, I was a bit annoyed we had to leave early. While I appreciated that we got to descend before most of the crowd, I think it was bad planning of our tour guide, who, when re-scheduling our itinerary compared to what the tour company planned, scheduled the sunset viewing and the dinner show on the same night. (Our tour guide rearranged the schedule based on how crowded things were and, in his experience, the best times of day to be certain places.)

Our dinner destination was the oddly-named Amazon Angkor, where we partook of an extensive buffet and watched traditional Khmer dances. The meal was okay; I found a couple dishes I liked. Some dishes at the buffet were made as we watched (e.g., pad thai, papaya salad), though that didn't make them any better than the other dishes.

The show, on the other hand, was pretty fun. I recorded some pictures and movies.

Returning to our hotel, we called it a day.

Cambodia: Feb 16: Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

To get to Cambodia from Singapore, we awoke at 4:15am to get to the airport for our god-awful-early 6:00am flight to Siem Reap. We had a night-time stroll through Changi Airport's small cactus garden. (Yes, Changi has a cactus garden along with, according to the airport guide, other gardens and additional diversions such as art exhibits.)

Our flight to Siem Reap was uneventful. Upon landing, though, we couldn't find our tour guide! Di Yin took control, borrowed a cell phone, made some calls, and he soon showed. Apparently he'd been having digestive problems for the last few days after drinking too much at a lunar new year party.

He and the driver brought us to our hotel, the Angkor Home Hotel, where we checked in and had a breather before heading out again. The hotel was nice, and our suite especially snazzy. It's at this point that I began taking pictures.

Incidentally, Di Yin also took many pictures this day. The link goes to the first picture from this day (picture #98) in her album from our trip to Singapore and Cambodia. When you see a picture of me lying in bed (picture #232), you're done with her pictures from the day. I'll link to the rest in later posts.

When we headed out, we went straight to the Angkor Archaeological Park, got photographed and received our three-day passes (which had our pictures on them), and began exploring Angkor Wat. After exploring Angkor Wat, both its outer and inner temples, our guide brought us to an adjacent monastery to look around. Then it was lunchtime, and our guide dropped us off at our arranged lunch spot, a restaurant literally across from the street from Angkor Wat's moat. Our lunch was good. I thought we chose dishes well, but as it turns out my happiness was just the first sign that we generally like Cambodian food.

After lunch, we drove a little farther north to the south gate of Angkor Thom. The driver dropped us off and we walked across the bridge and through the gate and got picked up on the other side. hehe. Though I laugh, I admit that this method of seeing the moat and gate was much better than, say, stopping the car, looking around, taking pictures, and getting right back in.

We continued north to Bayon, the temple in the center of Angkor Thom. I enjoyed Bayon more than Angkor Wat because Bayon is smaller, more compact, and therefore more dense, more intense. Of course, this impression may be simply because we ignored the surrounding temples within Angkor Thom, saving them for another day, whereas we walked through most of the temples in the Angkor Wat complex.

Bayon is noteworthy for its two hundred (or so) Buddha faces carved into the several dozen towers in the temple, often four faces per tower with one facing in each direction. It's remarkable--everywhere you looked, you saw these faces gazing down on you. These faces are the thing I most remember from this trip to Cambodia. Although I took many pictures this day, I nevertheless wish I took more here. I didn't take many, and those I did often didn't come out as well as I hoped.

We left Angkor Park and thus ended our exploration for the day. Yes, irritatingly, our tour guide dropped us off at our hotel at 3:30pm. I wanted to explore more! But, as I lay in bed, relaxing, and then went swimming (our hotel has a pool), I got more comfortable with the idea. Besides, I couldn't ask someone who has to do this job day in day out to mirror my intense exploration days. Also, our tour guide was feeling sick from something he ate.

Our dinner voucher was for the restaurant next door to our hotel. The restaurant was empty when we arrived and only welcomed one other couple during the time we were there. Nevertheless, the food was decent all around.

Cambodia Overview (Siem Reap, Angkor)

I spent Tuesday, February 16, 2010, through Friday, February 19, in Cambodia, exploring the Angkor temple complexes (world heritage sites) and Siem Reap (the adjacent town).

Although Cambodia certainly is a developing country, the Angkor area is such a tourist destination that Siem Reap has become a town that is comfortable for foreign visitors. It's developed rapidly and now has many modern hotels. The town itself is pleasant, very walkable, and has a nice river. It's easy to navigate without speaking the local language. People who work in Siem Reap know enough English to do business in it: restaurateurs can converse about their dishes in English; tuk-tuk drivers can talk about where you want to go; salespeople can tell you what a great product they're selling and why you should want it enough to pay their absurdly high opening offer (which you'll end up paying less than a third of).

Money
The vast majority of transactions take place in U.S. dollars! I didn't believe it at first when I read it in a guidebook, but it's true. And it's true not only in places on the regular tourist track such as historic sites or restaurants; it's also everyday places such as a local grocery store I wandered into. I think the choice of a non-Cambodian working currency reflects more the level of trust in the Cambodian economy than in the number of tourists in town. (Even the fee one must pay the government for an overstayed visa must be paid in dollars!)

Traffic
As a developing country, most roads in Siem Reap aren't paved, and there are few traffic lights. Nevertheless, drivers are careful: they signal, proceed slowly, and are reasonably courteous; the the lack of traffic lights doesn't seem to be much of a problem. Obviously, larger, heavier vehicles have priority, but everything seems to work okay. Also, there's little honking (in contrast to India). Also in contrast to India, it felt as if there was relatively little pollution. The only time I noticed pollution was while walking alongside a major road, and that's to be expected. I had imagined that tuk-tuks, which are rickshaws made of a motorcycle pulling a covered seat in the rear, would be polluting, but I guess there aren't enough vehicles (tuk-tuks, cars, buses, or otherwise) to amount to much pollution in the end.

Food
We discovered we like Cambodian food. It's a pleasing blend of Thai and Vietnamese dishes.

Culture
Di Yin noticed that Cambodians seem possessive of their country and government. For instance, people seem to say "my country" and "my hometown" and "my king" rather than, as people say in other places I've been, "the king", "the president", and "I grew up in ..." I'm not sure what this implies, but it's an interesting linguistic observation.

Weather
We visited in the cooler, drier season. Nevertheless, it was hot! I wrote in my notes on the first day that it was like a furnace in the sun. Also, the sky was rarely cloudy, which meant we were often in the sun unless we were under the cover of ruins or in the car. The clear skies also had another negative effect: it sometimes spoiled pictures. In particular, the blazing sun made it difficult to get the contrast right; shaded buildings would be black and bright objects would be overexposed whiteness.

Being Hassled
In Angkor itself, I was repeatedly offered t-shirts, books about Angkor, postcards, fruit, and drinks. Sometimes people asked a few times, not taking the initial "no." In this way, it was like traveling in India. However, in Siem Reap, the shopkeepers and tuk-tuk drivers usually asked once, then left me alone. They seemed to respect my answer more (or cared less about doing business), and fewer tried to engage me in conversation as an indirect way of getting business (or perhaps they were simply less interested in foreigners). Whatever the reasons, I found walking around town fairly comfortable (in terms of how I was treated, not in terms of temperature), less irritating than walking around towns during my trip to India.

Angkor
Historical background: The Khmer empire ruled the region for several hundred years around the turn of the first millennium. The Angkor temples were mostly built around the twelfth century, during the height of the Khmer empire, at which time Angkor served as the empire's capital.

As for the Angkor complex itself, it wasn't like I expected in both state and size. I expected a couple of impressive, moderately-sized ancient temples. What I got was a large number of large old temples that clearly have been neglected for hundreds of years and are now in varying states of disrepair. That said, the way in which these temples have begun crumbling / succumbing to attacks by nature can be rather attractive. Some of the most memorable photos I took are of temples (about a millennium old) that came into conflict with now-huge trees (several hundred years old) and of the way in which both bent, warped, twisted, and sometimes broke as a result. Incidentally, these trees are usually the members of the group referred to as strangler figs, an appropriate name given their destructive power.

In addition to the temples' state, the size of the Angkor temple complex was the other way in which things weren't as I expected. Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom are large, grandiose, royal. They're meant to impress by sheer scope. In addition to these two huge temple complexes, each with outer walls, moats, and a series of large multi-level concentric temples within, there are dozens of other temples, many sizable and interesting in their own right. For instance, to give a sense of the size of the area: it takes half an hour of driving (at admittedly not a high speed) to go from the park's entrance, to and around Angkor Wat, through the gates of Angkor Thom, and around its central temple to the rows of temples and terraces on the far side. (And this is the densest part of the archaeological park--there are temples farther afield then these.)

Given the size and history of the Angkor area, I can certainly understand why the Cambodian government chose to put images of the temples on its flag and on its money: it gives the country an aura of historical depth and of size and formidability that it perhaps lacks in the modern world.

Both Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom have stone reliefs worth highlighting in this post. I'm not referring to the numerous reliefs of aspara dancers--I guess artists everywhere like portraying images of semi-nude women--; rather, I'm referring to the hundreds of meters of continuous reliefs covering a surprising variety of topics. Many reliefs present images of wars, but they also show sports (e.g., cock fighting, dog fighting, boxing) and scenes from normal life (e.g., the market, the zoo, a barbecue). One guidebook says there's a "real sense of humanity to these images."

Other Highlights
I greatly enjoyed my rickshaw ride to the floating village and the floating village itself. It provided an attractive, interesting peek at the daily life of these sub-urban and rural Cambodians. (I wonder how similar their lives are to people living in rural China. Though I'm living in China, I haven't visited rural China so I can't make the comparison.)

Package Tour / Guide
I enjoyed traveling as part of a package tour. (I selected this three-day tour but stayed an extra day.) This tour was private--just Di Yin and I--which meant we could stay as long (or as short) as we wanted at every site. No waiting for or being hurried by people I don't know!

The great benefit of the tour was that they arranged everything, and arranged everything well. We liked the hotel they picked for us; we enjoyed the selection of restaurants; I appreciated not having to do research to decide which sights to visit and when (e.g., which temples to see and what time of day to see them at) and where to eat and what to order; we liked having an air-conditioned car and driver and a trunk-full of bottles of water that were there for us whenever we wanted.

The only feature Di Yin and I didn't like about our package tour was the guide. It was clear he doesn't like his job, which he does rather perfunctorily. By listening sporadically to other guides (when we were within earshot), I can say definitively that he knows less than them.

Di Yin says even if the guide did nothing else, he's worth it for pointing out where good photo opportunities are and for his willingness to take pictures of us.

Also, as a meta-observation, I enjoyed paying in a lump-sum and not having to deal with or think about money on a per-expense basis. We had vouchers for all our meals, shows, and entrance fees. We could decide what to eat without feeling guilty: "maybe I shouldn't order that; it's likely over-priced." Indeed, in most of the restaurants we visited, we weren't even given menus with prices. Also, the hotel we stayed in was nicer than what I would've likely booked myself had I needed to think about its price individually, but I don't regret in the least paying for a package that put us in a nice hotel.

Other Observations

• Many businesses advertised themselves as "run by the Japanese." One could take this as an indication of respect for Japanese management culture or as a lack of respect for Cambodian management. Some may also take it as an indication--I don't--that all the profits from developing Cambodia are going to people in other countries.
• We saw a large number of (tame) stray dogs.
• Cambodia, at least the part around Siem Reap, is remarkably flat.
• It's probably some combination of the temperature and the humidity, but Cambodia does good things to my hair. :)

Facts

• Before being ruled by the Khmer Rouge (which I'm sure everyone has heard of), Cambodia was a French colony (like Vietnam). I can't believe I didn't know that previously!