Cambodia

This past weekend was the Buddhist holiday Khao Pansa. We had Friday and Monday off from school so 6 other volunteers and I took the opportunity to make a trip to Siam Reap, Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat. We rented an overnight van to bring us from NKP to the boarder of Thailand and Cambodia. We arrived an hour before the border opened. Once it opened at 7:00 we were greeted by many Cambodian people to help guide us through the border crossing and help us arrange a ride to Siam Reap. We had about a 3 hour car ride through the Cambodian countryside where we all commented on the noticeable difference between Thailand and Cambodia. The road we were traveling on was unpaved (like Brush Creek Road before it was paved, the rice fields went on for miles with no trees and looked like an ocean of green, the schools had their own unique look, many people traveled by bike along the road and the towns we traveled through were noticeably poorer than Thailand. Yet many common phrases like hello and thank you in Thai and Cambodian are shockingly similar and we drove on the right hand side of the road and U.S. dollars are the most common currency used.

We arrived at the outskirts of Siam Reap around 10:30 where we switched from our cars to tuk tuks which brought us to a guesthouse closer to the center of town. Once settled at the comfortable 100 Baht/night/person Green Banana Guesthouse we ventured out to the town to get lunch. We ate at a yummy Cambodian restaurant where we got to try some of the traditional dishes that had been suggested to us. After, 5 of us splurged and rented bikes for $1 and toured the city. We made our way out of the downtown tourist trap up along a river to the impoverished local end of town. Passing the rickety homes stretching out over the river we could peak in through the open doors as we peddled by to get a glimpse of everyday life. We passed many sewing shops where there was typically a man sewing a pair of jeans, next to any given sewing shop was a barber shop. There were also many “movie theaters” one room homes filled with chairs and one T.V. where the public could come view the news or a show. The ride was most enjoyable although we had many close encounters with other cars, bikes and motorcycles as we crossed through intersections. We even parked our bikes and toured around a park for part of our tour where we encountered our first dose of small orphan children begging for money, water or food. This fist afternoon in the new country immediately had me hooked on the life, culture and people of Cambodia. We ended our day with a taste of Indian food before turning in for the night.

We made arrangements with the tuk tuk drivers who brought us to our guesthouse to pick us up Saturday morning at 5:00 to begin our tour of Angkor Wat with the sunrise. We groggily got out of bed and stumbled onto the tuk tuks and set out for a full day of adventures. We enjoyed the crisp morning air as we rode to the gate of the park to first buy our 2 day pass for $40. Once checked in, our drivers dropped us off at the grand entrance and told us to take our time. As we crossed the bridge over the moat we got a glimpse of some of the pink and orange hues the sun was giving off as it was cresting the horizon yet we didn’t stick around in the mob of people to watch it greet the day. Instead we chose to begin our tour of the massive temple. We were all blown away by the size of the grounds and the detail carved on almost of every boulder and column. We explored for nearly 2 hours took a tea/coffee/coconut water break before going back in to climb to the highest point of the lotus tiers for about another hour. The views of the grounds were spectacular and left us even more in awe of how difficult it must have been to build such a massive place way back in the 12^th century. 

Our second stop was Bayon, the temple of towers with faces. Many parts of the Wat have crumbled and are left in mounds around the outskirts of the complex yet it doesn’t take away from the stunning faces that peacefully smile at you from many directions no matter where you are standing. We wished we had more time at this location to play sardines, the game where one person is “it” and all the other people have to search the area for that person and once they find them they become a group and continue to move from hiding place to hiding place until the entire group has joined back together. After this stop we were hot and famished so our tuk tuk guides brought us to a Cambodian restaurant for $3 meals.

After lunch we visited our favorite Wat of the day if not overall, Ta Prohm. The Wat’s original name translated to the “Royal Monastery” and that it is. What makes this Wat so spectacular are the many trees growing out of the structure from the most bizarre angles. Many of the other Wats in the area have been cleared of the overgrown vegetation when discovered in the 18^th and 19 centuries and are being restored. It was decided that Ta Prohm should be restored in ways that would not take away from the spectacular addition of the Cieba Pentandra and Ficus Gibbosa trees. For me Ta Prohm put into perspective how ancient all the Temples of Angkor are from seeing the massive size of the hundreds of year old trees. What was most impressive was that one tree could be a distance from any standing wall of the Wat yet you could trace its roots to a location under over or next to a wall and see the strength it had by the size of its destruction. I wish I had a time machine to jump back to the 12 century to get a glimpse of what the lives of the people were like living in this area and how the buildings were used for worship and everyday life.

The final Temple of the day was Banteay Kder. The highlight of this final stop of the day was the amount of Cambodian people inside eager to show you the special carvings in the walls, to share stories of the ancient world and educate the visitor on the history of the Wat. I found it very informative and enjoyed the friendliness of the hosts and their excitement to show me to little rooms and tunnels I would not have found on my own.

At each of the four temples we were bombarded by little orphan boys and girls eager to sell us bracelets, flutes, post cards, penis slingshots, or little fish and dragonfly Christmas ornaments. Many of the knickknacks were just a dollar or the bracelets “4 for one dollar, you buy, you go to school.” They would follow us to our tuk tuks and even as we drove off they continued to sell their souvenirs to us. Their sweet desperate voices will always ring in my ears and their adorable puppy faces with be forever be engrained in my memory. I put my arm around many of them as we walked sided by side and even asked some of them if they wanted to come home with me. If I could I would have brought in a bus and taken them all home to be my children where I could provided them with a roof over their head, food and a good education. Unfortunately I could do nothing but listen to their pleas and wonder what kind of life they lead and if any of them live a similar life to the children from the movie “Slum Dog Millionaire”.

We ended our long 11 hour day with ice cream from the Blue Pumpkin, which has some of the world’s best ice cream. Followed by a tour of the market place downtown where we bought some fun souvenirs. Then we showered up and rested a little bit before heading out for true Italian thin crust pizza.

Day three in Cambodia will be a day that will be forever a magical day in my memory. It began at 4:30 in the morning when 4 of the 7 members (J, Heather, Ben and Rita) of the group met at the Tuk Tuk to get an early start to our day. Our Tuk Tuk driver brought us to one location where he believed we would get a spectacular view of the sunrise but J suggested we continue a little farther down the road to the first temple we came across and watch the sunrise from there. THANK YOU J!!!! Many of us have see a number of sunsets in our lifetime that leave us in awe at their beauty but we rarely take the time to drag ourselves out of bed to watch it rise. This sunrise topped all the sunsets I have seen, not because it lit the sky up with the most spectacular colors (I would say the sunsets in South Africa were more beautiful if comparing color) but what made this sunrise so majestic is that we were the only 4 people in the entire complex of Pre Rup and had a perfect view of the sun cresting a small mountain that popped up out of the fields. There were just enough clouds to let the sun shine its colors on the day. I can’t be more thankful to J for being the leader of the early morning wake ups just to see the sunrise. Having Pre Rup to our selves was so peaceful and allowed for each of us to find our own favorite spot to sit in peace to watch the sun come up while giving thanks for our many blessings.  

After taking our time to tour Pre Rup we were ready to move on just as people were beginning to show up. We then made our way to Banteay Santre. Again we were the only 4 people at this noticibly Hindu influenced Wat. What also made this Wat unique is that it is made from a variety of lava rock as well as sandstone. It was so nice to be able to take our time at each of the Wats this morning and not feel rushed along by having other people around us. We picked the perfect spot to start the day!

We then went to East Mabon which looked quite similar to Pre Rup but was a little bit smaller in height. The main difference is that East Mabon has elephants on each of the 4 corners and was also once completely surrounded by a reservoir that provided water to the town. Thus the Temple is on a bit of higher ground and the entrance is raised up as well from where the base of the walls actually begin at ground level. The other 3 who slept in met us here before we took an hour long tuk tuk ride out to Banteay Srei. 

The ride was just as enjoyable as visiting the ancient temples because it allowed us to see Cambodian village life. Although the village layouts are quite similar to that of Thailand, a few houses and stores that make up a town with the rice fields in the background, there is a slight difference in architecture as well it is noticeable that Cambodia is more poor from seeing many homes made out of dried leaves and grasses. Many children would wave to us as we passed by and gave the biggest smiles as well. Cambodia also has many more palm trees than Thailand and more people riding from village to village on bikes than on motorcycles.

Banteay Srei although substantially smaller than all the other temple locations it is no less spectacular. It is built out of a pink sandstone giving the temple a reddish hue and because it isn’t so monstrous like many of the other Temples, it has many fine detailed carvings in each of the walk ways and on all of the walls. It is located in the middle of many rice fields and has viewpoints that look out across the fields to the nearby Kulen Mountains. On our way back out our tuk tuk drivers took us on a rural back dirt road through quaint villages. On this ride we noticed that the houses didn’t have electricity running into them and from what we could tell they didn’t have any visible outside lights which led us to believe that if a house had electricity it had to come from a generator. We also noticed most of the homes have a well out front which in another difference between villages in Thailand and Cambodia. 

Preah Khan was our final stop on the tour of Angkor. Walking along the path to the entrance of the city we were greeted by a woman selling pineapple which was a nice afternoon snack and her 2 children who were playing in the dirt. The daughter, about 7 years old, is an amazing artist and was drawing beautiful ancient dancers in fancy gowns in the dirt. We watched her for a moment and in a matter of 2 minutes she had created a masterpiece which her younger brother enjoyed threatening to erase. Preah Khan is not only known to be a Temple but a Buddhist University and city as well. It is an absolutely massive complex. It follows down a pretty long straight path yet there are many side rooms that one can easily get lost in. This happened to Ben and I as we kept venturing off the beaten path to find hidden carvings amongst the collapsed rubble. As you may notice from my pictures there were many door ways that led to a sequence of door frames perfect for us to explore our artistic photography skills, in Preah Khan we found many doorways that were impassible due to the collapse of a wall on the other side either because it fell with age or because a tree chose to inhabit the space instead. Some of the walls are covered in holes which look almost like someone tried to put drill holes in the walls but we learned that these holes were where the temple was decorated with precious gems.  

Our second 11 hour tour was finalized with a scoop of vanilla brownie chunk and raspberry sorbet from the Blue Pumpkin and show and nap time before our final evening to pick from a variety of “western” restaurants. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant that had amazing enchiladas and although it was disappointing that they were out of sour cream I believe my dinner was just as good without it.

In order to make it home on time for class Tuesday we left our hotel at 6:00am Monday. Ben and J are high school teachers and had the entire week off for midterms so we left them behind. The other 5 of us (Zach, Jackie, Sarah, Heather, Rita) squished into a tiny car for a 3 hour drive to the boarder. Along the way we saw the early morning commuters on their way to work or school most of them commuting by bike some students by food and very few by motorcycle or car. We were also up so early that we got to watch the monks walk barefoot from home to home collecting their meals for the day. It brought me great joy seeing communities joined together riding their bikes to where they needed to go and watching little school children sometimes piled three to a bike swerving along the road as they approached their schools. There was something about the rural feel or the bikers, dirt roads and the smiles on all the peoples’ faces that made me sense that Cambodia is one special country with so many wonderful people. I hope to visit again someday. 

Once at the boarder Heather and I left the other 3 behind to gamble. We caught an hour long 15 passenger van stuffed with about 25 people to the bus station in Surin, Thailand. We were shuffled onto a bus going to Korat where they told us to switch buses to Nakhon Phanom. Heather and I didn’t recognize the name Korat but trusted the bus people. About 30 minutes into the ride Heather remembered Korat is the nickname for Nakhon Ratchasima, a town completely out of our way. It would have made more sense to get a bus from Siam Reap, Cambodia to Bangkok and an overnight bus home. It was too late to turn around so we made the 4 hour bus ride out of our way. We arrived in Korat around 1:00 only to find out a bus to NKP wouldn’t be leaving until 5:30 and by the looks of the bus station we were skeptical of a bus even leaving at that time. We ended up catching a bus leaving immediately to Mukdahan, a city 2 hours south of NKP. It was about a 7 to 8 hour ride. We arrived in Mukdahan to discover it was too late at night to get a bus home. We also met up with Zach who was one of our friends who stayed behind to gamble at the boarder but also got sucked into a roundabout way home. The three of us were told that night that there would be a 5am bus leaving to NKP in the morning. We spent the night in a hotel near the bus station (Heather and I stayed there when we visited the national park in Mukdahan over summer break), we got up before the crack of dawn to get the bus home and if all went as planned would be at school in time to teach. BUT the bus never showed up so we ended up having to take a different bus to That Phanom, an hour and a half sawng tao ride from NKP. We got to That Phanom transferred from the bus stop to the sawng tao stop via tuk tuk and were finally enroute home. The sawng tao was ridiculously slow, it was lightly raining and the spray form the vehicle and other vehicles passing by splattered us with dirty spray making it look like we had been on a month long trek through the wilderness once we arrived in NKP. From the NKP sawng tao stop I walked the half a mile to the bus stop, waited 40 minutes for the bus to leave and arrived home at 10:00 Tuesday morning. I changed out of my muddy stained cloths and rushed off to school only to find that my principal lost the key to my classroom and we couldn’t get in so I couldn’t teach. I was so frustrated that I had rushed home only to discover I couldn’t teach anyways. Mr. Wit, the maintenance man, eventually broke the lock off with a hammer and I was able to teach one class in the morning and make up the other two in the afternoon. My trip to Cambodia was well worth the 28 hour scramble home where we felt like we were in the movie “Rat Race” or the T.V. show “Amazing Race”. Really, I could have caught a plane leaving the international airport in Siam Reap, Cambodia and arrived at home in Colorado a lot faster than it took to travel what should have been about a 12 hour trip back home to Chok Amnuay.

I guess arriving in twice the time, safe and sound, with memories of one of my best vacations ever is better than not getting home at all. 

For an overview and history of Angkor Wat go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN46a_PjKFM and watch the movie.