Lavaboarding

Siem Reap is about 7 hours by bus from Phnom Penh and for mere $14 for the both of us for the “VIP Express” bus it was a no brainer. We were glad to get out of Phnom Penh and I was excited to see a larger stretch of Cambodia.

Alexander worked on an essay for school and I was staring out the window expecting the landscape to change, any minute now. It did not. Hundreds of miles and miles of flooded rice fields. It often looked like we were driving through an ocean of shimmering green. There is nothing much to see other than the occasional Cambodian wood houses dotting the side of the road, school kids riding home in their blue and white uniforms, cows and water buffalos grazing in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes motorcycles were parked at the side of the road and you had to really look hard to make out the men in the middle of the fields casting their small fishing nets into shallow mini lakes, canals and rivers.

All the houses basically look the same, built on stilts over water, often with more small muddy water holes around the houses. You can often see the hamocks used for sleeping and some bamboo platforms used as living space. The animals are kept under the houses were kids play when the cows are out for grazing.

Rice paddies as far as you can see. I read somewhere that 70% of Cambodia used to be covered by jungle. Today, less than 2% is left of that and the newspaper reports regularly of Cambodians being arrested and even killed when they trespass into Thailand for illegal logging since nothing worth cutting down is left in their own country.

But, not everybody lives like that in rural Cambodia. The monks seem to be doing ok, on the pic is a typical Wat (Buddhist monastery compound often with school etc. paid for by the village people). Banks also always have splendidly large buildings in often just tiny villages and on rare occasion you find these large private houses in the middle of nowhere.

Once in a while we came through something resembling a city and those looked usually like this:

Otherwise, this is it.

Siem Reap on the other hand is surreal in contrast. Huge expensive looking hotel complexes line the streets, lush golf courses can be seen from some streets, expensive cars and double decker tourist buses roll along wide streets regardless of the dust and potholes. It feels like you just landed on a different planet full of fat, red faced, camera clad tourists on a shopping binge. Our hotel was down this road and I was as usual very nervous what our budget of $25 for a twin bedroom would get us in this town of seemingly extravagant and expensive hotels.

I was very pleasantly surprised. This was an oasis, it was clean, it was colorful, it was great. So what if a mouse ended up hijacking one and nibbling on all our energy bars, minor detail.

And the best part was the WELCOME DRINK !!!! A fabulous extremely sweet ice tea with lime juice. Alexander asked the waiter for the recipe and now we too can make “welcome drink”. We had a bit of an issue finding the tea. At the market you can get all kinds of exotic teas, but nobody had the cheapo “yellow label” Lipton tea. Yes, we don’t know what kind of tea it is, the tag says indeed “yellow label tea”, on a yellow tag, helpful, isn’t it? We then tipped the waiter so he would buy us a box of this tea, the magic ingredient.

But on to the reason why we came to Siem Reap, Ankor Wat. The largest temple complex in the world and spread out over a huge area. Since it is so ginormeous you can buy 1, 2, 3 or 6 day passes. Since various parts of the complex were built over several hundreds of years and each king tried to outdo the previous one to demonstrate the power of this once huge Khmer empire that covered most parts of SouthEast Asia, it is a bit daunting to explore. I knew I wouldn’t last very long in the 95 degree heat and high jungle humidity and decided that 1 day of walking and exploring was plenty for us. The empire spanned 500 years, and is considered an architectural masterpiece, there is tons of information on the net available if you are interested. I was just happy to be there and tried to imagine what this looked like when tens of thousands of people actually lived here.

It’s pretty cool to wander through the labyrinth of hallways, I had no idea where we were going most of the time. There is always the smell of incense in the air and some of the Buddha status have shrines for worship providing the only color against the drag looking stone buildings. Of course you get also constantly asked to buy incense and light them for good luck.

Everything has meaning, heaven, earth, the universe, society, wars, rulers, history, legends, myths, everything is documented on these walls. The stone carvings and bas reliefs are famous, intricate and endless.

My favorite carvings were the Apsara dancers. They are extremely beautiful female spirits based on Hindu and Buddhist mythology and their purpose was to entertain with dance and song the gods and fallen heroes. During the Khmer empire, one of the king had at his court up to 3000 dancers. Most of the images of Buddha, Hindu gods, warriors and the multitude of mythological creatures tend to all look alike but these Apsara dancers were carved as individuals. Each one has a different facial expression and features, also implying that different races were at court. When the Thai sacked Angkor Wat effectively ending the Khmer Empire, they not only took all the treasures but also all the Apsara dancers, go figure.

These smiling faces are also famous Angkor Wat images. It is speculated that they are a composite of one of the kings and the Buddha image. One of the temples has hundreds of these images carved on every surface, huge to small, you feel like you are being watched from all sides, yup, the eyes follow you…..

Alexander went everywhere up and down, I stayed mostly down, I learned my limits

However, as soon as you were not in motion, scores of children, “guides” and beggars started to circle like sharks on a feeding frenzy. A friendly “no” doesn’t do it, 10 friendly “no thank you” don’t do it, you have to move. Even then you still walk with 3-5 kids who are pressing their post cards, books, magnets, beads into your face repeating over and over “just one dollaaaaa, help meeee, buy from meeee, just one dollaaaaa”. It is hard to say no to a kid, very hard.

So I ended up with a book for twice the price then what I would have paid in town, a magnet, 10 postcards, paid an unofficial guide $5 because he showed me the way that I went anyways, paid a group of musicians that were all handicapped by landmines, gave another kid a dollar because she actually walked away after the first no, bought overpriced lunch, lots of water and coke. We also had an interesting conversation with the girls that you see in the pic. They all giggled when we told them that Alexander is just 14, they were all the same age or older but half his height. We talked about school, what they’ll do when they grow up and why I can’t buy from all of them if I am rich enough to come to Cambodia. Tough questions. In general however, these kids looked happy and very healthy. Tourism pumps enough money into this region that most people seem to be able to provide for themselves and their families. This shows in a more normal body weight what can’t be said for the population we saw in the villages and Phnom Penh where people seemed to be very small and underweight, even for Asia.

Some of the temples were left they way they were found to show what the place looked like when it was discovered.

At the end of the day, after 8 hours of walking in the heat, well dusted, my shirt sweat and salt stained as if I am lactating, I just couldn’t muster the energy to stay for the famous sunset. The thought of running up an enormous hill with hundreds of other eager, sweaty tourists fighting for camera space made me…tired. We were templed out and needed a welcome drink. Farewell Angkor, truly unforgettable.

A picture is indeed worth a thousands words, this here is a good summary of Phnom Penh IMHO:

Do you see the lady on the motorbike, is she really wearing pajamas?  Riding around on the tuk tuk, I had trouble absorbing all the different street scenes and often didn’t know what to focus on.  Everything and everybody seems in constant motion, which is true for any big city.

However, some things just looked to us more out of the ordinary than others.

I can’t decide if these drivers are the worst or the best I have ever seen.  Our tuktuk driver regularly drove against traffic, usually trying to cross 4 lanes.  You can’t really tell how many lanes there are since nobody cares and even the sidewalk is used by the bikes.  It’s quite a sight if you see this flood of motorbikes coming at you.

It’s also amazing how many people you can pack on one of these.and then there are the familiar but strange sites like a gas station without cars, just motorbikes.

And being a responsible tourist is more than just traveling green:

We arrived in Bangkok on Sunday morning at 3 am.  We had left L.A. Friday afternoon and somewhere in the 12 hours time difference and 15+ flight time we apparently lost Saturday.   I didn’t know whether I was tired or not, whether I should feel tired or not.  We followed the crowd of passengers through the vast corridors of the strangely quiet airport.  Immigration took forever, we always get the slow line.  Now, backpacks in hand, the hard part, figuring out how to get the hotel began.  Outside the departure doors was a line of taxis and you have to buy an official taxi ticket that you hand to the taxi driver and he will get you to your destination at a fixed rate.  Unless of course the taxi driver slows down 3 minutes into the drive and wants a higher price.  I kept insisting that we were told it is 400 Baht, not 500.  After a few back and forth he seemed to agree and off we went through the nightly Bangkok.  It was raining, I couldn’t tell what kind of city was awaiting us but as usual, my anxiety crept in and I had a hard time breathing.  It didn’t help that the taxi driver took interesting routes, back alleys full of prostitutes (I first thought that these were people leaving a club, I am an idiot for sure), one way streets, just the wrong way.  It also didn’t help that I couldn’t tell whether the official traffic was supposed to be on the right or on the left side.  His steering wheel was on the left.  Then he couldn’t find the hotel.  Up and down dark narrow alleys and side streets, still raining.  Finally after a call to the hotel he found it.  My throat always closes up when I see the horrid outside conditions, dirty cement walls, laundry hanging from windows, trash on the streets, dimly lit entry ways.  Then it becomes a gamble whether the inside will look nice and clean, or just more like the outside.  I have learned now that internet pictures of hotels lie.  Then again, who wants to leave a place at 4 am and look for something else.  But, the hotel turns out to be very nice and clean.  It’s 4:45 am, I think, when we finally plopp our bags down and fall in our soft white beds, smelly socks and all and go to the sleep.After having managed the first hurdle of arriving at a place, the next hurdle is to leave the hotel.  I don’t know how other travellers do it, I get nauseous thinking that I have more than 3 maps (metro, city, tourist, guidebook etc.) and I am still clueless of where I am in this city and how to get anywhere.  The anxiety of not knowing and the clear possibility of being swallowed is not helping.  I should be drinking.  We venture out and we find the metro and the skytrain.  Both the best ways to get around Bangkok which is famous for its horrendous traffic.The heat is pretty intense, even at 9 am, the humidity is strange and intensifies the the smells you get bombarded with from the tons of food stalls, exhaust pipers, waterways, sewer canals and life happening apparently on the street.

it hasn’t rained in L.A. in 6 months.  I was looking forward to walks on the beach, surfing (for Alexander), hiking in the hills.  It was not meant to be.  It has been raining for the last 3 days and I am sitting at the hostel in Santa Monica.  Great town by the way, reminds me a bit of Summerset Mall in Troy, just outdoors.  Shopping heaven, just the wafts of piss coming from alleys remind you occasionally that a large homeless population lives here as well.  We took a few days to tour some of the museums like the Getty Museum.