Imagine..... Cambodia

We flew to Siem Reap , Cambodia rather than take a 12 hour bus - and boy were we glad of our decision! Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat -and about 99 other temples of the Angkor period 10th through 15th century.. The town itself is great - we walked to the old market area and had to wade through a sea of motos like above carrying 1-5 people, with just a suggestion of traffic signals and control.





On our first full day, we hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. Here is a boy filling our gastank on the side of the road - very typical to see stands of liter pop bottles that are filled with gas for the motos. Most people think of Angkor Wat as a single temple to see - we found out that the Khmer Ankgor kings built around 100 temples in the area.... and they are magnificant.

One of our first temples was the vast Angkor Thomm - a walled complex 12 km around - with many temples in the middle. Check out the face (probably of a king building the temple) in the gate.

The pic below is the approach to Bayan... my fave temple - its up several steep flights of stairs - and has 200 faces in it. We were watchng the Discovery channel here in Vietnam last night and they had a special on Bayan - all of the faces are of the king building it - in a close eyed meditative pose.

The women carvings are typically of cuort dancing girls. When the Thai overran the Angkor people in the 15th century, they took many of the dancing aspects back to Thailand with them.

There is a strong Hindu influence on these buddhist temples. And keep in mind that 1,000,000 people built and lived in these temple areas when London was only 30,000 people. Enjoy!

Sorry for the sideways shot - many of the temples have deteriorated - and trees have sprung up within the walls - very atmospheric. One temple was used in the Tomb Raider movie - its as if Angelina was with us there.

We totally scored our second night there. There was a festival going on... Angkor Nights - and we got tickets to see the Fine Arts Dept of Cambodia perform Khmer dances on a stage right in front of a lit-up Ankor Wat. This led to the first use of "Imagine" that I use in my title. When Aileen and I were in the Amazon rainforest, our friend Kirsten sat at breakfast watching a huge blue butterfly float by. She turned to us and said, "Can you imagine, sitting at breakfast watching a big blue butterfly fly by?". Since we had just witnessed it, and didn't need to imagine it, we cracked up. So when Aileen and I have a magic, unimagined moment on this trip, liked watching dance in front of a spotlit 800 year old Wonder of the World, we say, "Imagine?!"

One day we went farther afield... to a river about 35 km out of town that had 1000 year old carvings in the riverbed - which was not only great, but really special since my friend Clifton had been there also - and I didn't realize it was the same place until about halfway through our walk.

Many of the images are of a reclining Vishnu. And there were many symbols of fertility - especially penises - everywhere! Below - a pic of a three headed figure. And later - reclining Vishnu in the water.

Khmer ladies on the side of the road on the way back from the riverbed - it was a remote site on a dirt road.

We stopped on the road to see how a local family boiled down palmtree fruit to a sugary thick liquid. Here are some of the kids in the family I love how the little baby is looking at George.

Oh my god - we saw this several times - a guy on a moto with three LIVE pigs trussed on their back - with their faces pure confusion on their dilemma.

I love this little lady- she is holding a bird in her hand. We learned that all of these carved women were unique - and there were hundreds per temple.

A huge temple complex - was a buddhist university.

Cambodian kids learn English in the following order.

1. One dollar !( strangely enough the US dollar is used in Cambodia, even at the ATMs)

2. Oh madam, I can't discount to that - no profit!

3. You remember me (when we come back down from the temples - they would hang around the temples and pester pester - here is Aileen getting a deal on some Khmer scarves

4. Beautiful ladies.... well, Aileen and I decided that was spontaneous and not with an agenda when directed our way.

On our last day, we headed to Tonle Sap Lake to see the floating villages - they were very interesting - people live on floating rafts with houses, or in boats. They have floating churches and floating pig pens and floating schools. And it was very depressing - very very poor. Here are some houses on the way to the port to catch our boat.

Aileen is a big softie - she is giving our leftover food to the 10 or so kids who hung on the side of our floating restarant and begged. Its very sad how poor it is that kids and their mothers have few options.

These kids also hung around - but not in a boat - in a tin bowl that they paddled in. The boy had one arm.

Caught this girl washing her hair on her back porch.

Rice fields - this area is under water half the year during teh rainy season when the lake expands - and used for rice farming the other half. Some of the temples used to have water access to them for the same reason.

Snake anyone?????


















After three days in Siem Reap, we took a boat to Phnom Penh, the capital. It was a 6 hour boat ride over the lake and up the Tonle Sap river. Our bus pickup was really late and I was stressing out.... and then our van showed up. It was a regular van PACKED with people, including, we were guessing the drivers family in the front seat, and a bunch of dumbfounded tourists in the back- really had to schwoosh in. We didn't know how lucky we were until we passed an open wagon being pulled by a motorcyle - and filled with even more dumbfounded tourists. I believe one woman yelled at our van "this could be you!". The amazing thing is everyone made it on the boat - it took off an hour after the announced time. The ride was mellow - we sat inside on seats for most of the lake section. There were 50 people lying and sitting on the roof - not comfy. I sat outside on the river portion and watched villages and boats drift by. The picture below is of the wooden plank ramp we had to walk up to get on the boat. When our van stopped, it was thronged by guys who carried your bag up that ramp for a dollar - glad to have them since I would have fallen in with my bag.

Here are the folks on the roof.

When we discovered that the Cambodian king was single and 50, we decided that Aileen would make a splendid queen - and that became the joke with our driver in Siem Reap. He had arranged for a driver to meet us at the dock in Phnom Penh - and here he is - can you read the sign?

Here is Aileen infront of her future home, the royal palace of Cambodia. I asked her to work on several things when she became queen,including getting the Cambodians to stop picking their noses blatantly in public.

Also got to watch Super Tuesday returns on CNN in PP - Aileen is gonna think she is American soon from what she is learning about the American political process and parties. GO BARACK!!

Our first day in Phnom Penh, we walked around and decided to check out the central buddhist temple of Camobdia- it was right at the end of our street. We started talking to a monk who offered to give us a tour, including sitting inside a small temple with one of the oldest buddhas in Cambodia. He then asked if we wanted to see his home - so we walked to his dorm . Each major region of Cambodia has a house on campus for the monks studying there and visitors from the region. We ended up sitting in their common room for 30 minutes chatting with several monks, including the head monk of this house,who was sipping a Coke. They were really open and liked talking English - more approachable than monks in Thailand. And when we were leaving, they asked for our email addresses - so we will keep in touch. It was a highlight for me for Phnom Penh. Here are our charming monk friends below.

After chatting with them, we headed over a great restaurant called Friends - its a non-profit raising money to get street kids off the street and trained for restaurant jobs. So , again, being givers, we ate for charity sakes... and it was good.

Phnom Penh was a tough city - not the least of which was our visits to the genocide sites. We first went to S21 - its the prison in PP used by the Khmer Rouge to house and torture prisoners before they were sent to the killing fields outside of town. It was a former high school used as a prison. Its in its original state. Some rooms were bricked up into individual cells - small and crampled. Some rooms were large and housed hundreds of people shackled at the ankle to a common bar. There were rooms that housed only a bare bed, no mattress, with the shackles still attached - and a picture of a prisoner from that room . The exhibits were great and very moving. Stories of people talking about their lost family members. Stories from former guards or fighters in the field, who talked about how they worked in the Khmer Rouge to survive. Some quotes"I was afraid of suffering, I wasn't afraid of dying." "To save our lives, we had to do what we were told to do. I didn't believe what they taught me. There was nothing I could do." What struck me is how the KR went out of their way to keep people in the prison for months torturing them before they confessed to fake things like giving secrets to the enemies like the Vietnamese. I was at Aushwitz last year and this so reminded me of this. I just didn't understand the need to perpetuate their politics on people they considered against the state . An evil group. They were forced out by the Vietnamese in 1979 after 4 years. We then went out to the Killing Fields. Its out on the edge of town and is a fairly small area. There were pits that had been excavated - about 8000 bodies were taken out. There is another area as big that remains unexcavated. They suspect as many bodies. There is a large white stupa as you enter the area - its filled with shelves of skulls like these. Of the 20,000 people at S21, only 7 survived the Killing Fields. We found out in Siem Reap that our driver, Chu, lost his dad to the Khmer Rouge.

This is the second use of "Imagine" for me - I thought of the movie the Killing Fields and that amazing scene when the two men are reunited at the end with John Lennon's Imagine playing in the background... always makes me cry.

Back in town - needed a break. At lunch, our waiting tuk-tuk driver totally crashed in the back of our tuktuk.

We walked back from our massage done by blind people (again, what we won't do for charity). Walked through this market as it was closing up.This wasn't a market full of tourist chochkies - it was a real market for local people. And it was full of trash that people had thrown into the street. Kinda nasty. There was a guy walking in front of us, big guy, and I cracked up when at one point he bacame so overwhelmed by the mass of people and smells and garbage that he just said "Jesus Christ!!!"

We were in Cambodia for Chinese Lunar New Year - and in PP for the day itself. We collected fun facts about what that meant for tourists.

* The Russian Market is closed - Chinese New Year.

* No French Toast - Chinese New Year (no bread)

* Hotel rooms - 50-100% more

* Buses - 20% more

The only people in SEA not affected by Chinese new year are the chinese! Not alot of fun stuff like fireworks - alot of decorations up. Here are some folks burning pots on the sidewalk - I suspect something about new years.

Took a bus to Saigon - about 6 hours - not bad. We had a stop as we waited for a ferry to come - and were attacked by vendors pitching their wares - including this lady selling yummy friend bugs. We loved them!