September 22: Siem Riep to Phnom Penh

I feel like I’m getting behind, so this post will be a choppy two-parter to try to get up to date.

Part 1: The “Road” to Phnom Penh

I’m not sure if the flooding in Cambodia and the surrounding countries has risen to world-news status, but it certainly is major news here. Today, Siem Riep flooded for the second time in two weeks. We awoke to sandbags holding back the water at the entrance to our guesthouse. Yesterday, a group of Japanese tourists were stranded at Bantreay Srei by fast-rising waters and had to be airlifted out in military helicopters. Our bus company was unable to send a collector bus to get us, so we had to take a tuk-tuk to their station. Tuk-tuks sit two largish steps above the road, so about 18 or 20 inches. At one point, the water came up through the floorboards of the tuk-tuk. Here are some photos of the flooded city.

Once we got away from the city, the bus ride was uneventful until about 20 miles out of Phnom Penh. The rutted dirt road that so concerned me on the way to Siem Riep was now a muddy levee separating two massive flooded rice paddies. We came upon an accident blocking the paved lane, and we lost about 45 minutes while drivers traveling in both directions jockeyed for access to the narrow passage through the wrecked vehicles. We watched, horrified, while a bus as large as ours slid through the mud toward the 4-foot drop into the paddie. We were sure we were about to witness the kind of tragedy you hear about on the nightly news and tsp-tsk over. Fortunately, the driver was able to regain control and get back onto the paved lane before losing the bus.

We settled into the Blue Tongue Café and Hotel, then went out for a quick bite. We ended the evening shortly after the old–not older, old–gentleman at the table beside ours welcomed his escorts–not escort, escorts–for the night.

Part 2: Culinary Delights

Several people have asked about the food we’re eating. Not being a foodie, I haven’t really been paying attention beyond wondering if this restaurant will have anything I can eat. Frankly, it’s been tough, but not impossible. (I’ve only eaten four of my sixteen protein bar.) Mostly, I’m eating bread, eggs, and rice. I’ve been disappointed every time I get chicken, because no one seems to understand the word “plain.”

We saw pigs being roasted on the street, though I haven’t eaten pork so far.

Tony and Jan both had A dish called fish amok.

And this is mama’s noodle soup with vegetables.

Somewhere I have a photo of a typical Cambodian breakfast, but I’ll have to upload that later when I’ve located it. KFC is a favorite here, too, though we avoided it.

September 23: Angkor Area

A mixed bag, today, with some real local flavor. Once again, we awoke to rain, and we thought seriously about canceling our plans. We had engaged Khom once more, this time to take us to see a floating village and a floating forest along with a temple or two in the Roulos Group of ruins. We’re all glad we didn’t cancel. All of today’s sites are some way from the city, and by the time we arrived, the rain had stopped. Our first visit, though, was to a Cambodian mechanic.

Khom was having some car trouble yesterday, but being a consummate guide, he never let on. Today, however, there was no denying that there was an issue. His battery was dying because his alternator had failed. Rather than take a chance of stranding us in the countryside an hour from the city, he pulled into his cousin’s car repair shop.

After a about an hour, and $73 dollars, we were back on the road. Fortunately for Khom, he and his cousin are on good terms, so his cousin only charged $23 for the alternator ($22 for the part and $1 for the labor). The other $50 was for the new battery.

We continued on to a floating village, Kompong Phluk, and the floating forest adjacent to it on Tonle Sap lake. For much of the year, the lake is fairly small. The rainy season, though, is also when the snows in the Himalayas melt, and the double inundation swells the Mekong River. The Mekong crosses the Tonle Sap River, which normally flows out of Tonle Sap lake, and the force of the Mekong is so great that it reverses the course of the Tonle Sap, forcing water back into the lake. The lake can rise during the rainy season from a depth of nine feet up to 100 feet. The villages around the perimeter of the lake, which consist of buildings built on stilts, find themselves entirely surrounded by water. Similarly the floating forest floods deeply during the rainy season, and as you boat through it, you realize that you are seeing only the top fifteen to twenty feet of trees that could be more than 100 feet tall. Some of the buildings in Kompong Phluk are truly floating and relocate as the floods recede in order to stay afloat.

We left Tonle Sap behind and proceeded to Bakong, the most impressive temple in the Roulos Group. Bakong is another early structure–this one from the ninth century–build largely from lava rock faced in brick. A working monastery is on the grounds, and this being early in a fifteen-day holiday, it was fairly active.

Khom got us back into Siem Riep around one o’clock, so we stopped for lunch before hitting the Central Market. During lunch, we were treated to the vocal stylings of what we assume was the town’s most brazen “fallen woman”; she was certainly the most indecently dressed person we saw in town. Later that evening, she stripped to the waist in order to adjust the scarf she had donned as a top.

As we ate, she wandered around in the street near the fish foot massage booth (oddly, the only one in this street), finally deciding to serenade the patrons of the restaurant across from ours. Jan caught a few of the words from her song that sounded like, “I want you to do things to me.” Shopkeepers up and down the street were hanging out of windows trying to see what this crazy woman would do next. Fortunately, I didn’t think to take a picture of her. If I’d looked her in the eye, I’m sure she would have sung her song to me, too. I did, however, take some pictures in the Central Market after lunch. The Meijer’s of Cambodia! Food was for sale beside silver and tennis shoes and bookmarks and genie pants and medicine and souvenirs of all kinds. It was just what you would think a market would look like in a Third-World country.

We ended the day having a drink in a bar called The Red Piano, apparently made famous by Angelina Jolie, who visited it in 2000 and for whom one of their popular drinks is named. Here’s to Angelina. Tomorrow, we take a bus back to Phnom Penh.

September 21: Angkor Ruins, Continued

Wi-Fi at our hotel has been down all day today, so my apologies for the tardiness of this post.

Like yesterday, today was a wet day, but for a different reason that I’ll explain below. Khom and Yon picked us up at 9:30 in Khom’s Toyota; no tuk-tuk today. We started a little later thinking that we would also finish a little later and then watch the sunset from the top of Angkor Wat. After a massive downpour the night before, the ground was still wet, but the sky was blue and the sun was shining.

Our first stop was Banteay Srey, the “citadel of women,” which is a couple hundred years older than the buildings we toured yesterday. Banteay Srey was constructed mostly of brick over lava stone, unlike Angkor Wat and the Angkor Thom complex, which were built mostly of lava stone covered with stucco (now worn away). It’s scale is also more human than Angkor Wat or the structures that comprise the Angkor Thom complex. It’s quite striking but not nearly as intimidating (awe-inspiring?) as the sites we visited earlier.

We made a brief detour forward in time to visit the Cambodia Landmine Museum and Relief Facility, which was founded by a former Khmer Rouge child soldier who is now working to clear Cambodia of the millions of land mines and ordinance that still litter his country. This NGO provides assistance to victims of land mines and displays at the museum disarmed mines and munitions that have been recovered by its founder. It was a little disconcerting to walk past five-foot tall bombs and to see piles of mines that appeared to be as harmless as lids from cans of hairspray. After a brief education, it was back to the tenth century.

I have to be honest now and admit that the names of the sites we visited after the CLMRF are so foreign to my ear that I can’t remember any of them. When I get back to Columbus, I may compare my photos with online sources and try to figure out where, exactly, we were, but for now, here are some photos from an area east northeast of Angkor Thom.

Our next stop inspired the title of today’s post. We arrived at Neak Pean–a unique site among our stops–after lunch. Neak Pean is a site for healing, or perhaps blessing would be more accurate; Yon frequently described it as a kind of hospital. It has a central tower rising from a central pool that flows into four smaller surrounding pools. Their water was thought by ancient Khmers to offer healing and protection. Each of the pools had its own properties: one cured fever, another conveyed wisdom, a third gave protection in battle. The ancients approached the site by crossing a moat in boats. Today, the approach to the moat was flooded, and we debated whether or not to try to cross. Because this would be our only chance to see Neak Pean, we decided to wade 100 yards through the three-feet-deep water until we reached the bridge that would carry us across the sacred moat. Even the bridge was under two to six inches of water. Fortunately, I was wearing my awful red thrift-store pants. (You know which ones I’m talking about, Jennifer.) They have velcro straps on the waistband and hooks at the hems of the pant legs that allow me to hike them all the way up and secure them. I’m just glad I didn’t find a fish in my pocket. As we were wading back to the car, what we would call “park rangers” pulled up to the water’s edge and posted signs closing the crossing.

We ended today’s tour at Preah Khan, which is the sister temple of yesterday’s Ta Prohm. Where Ta Prohm was dedicated by the sponsoring king to his mother, Preah Khan was dedicated to his father.

We started our drive back to Angkor Wat hoping to see the sunset, but by the time we arrived, the scattered clouds had coalesced into a threatening ceiling, and we decided that there would be no sunset to see today. It was a good decision. Just a few minutes after we passed Angkor Wat and the thousand or so people gathered there, the sky opened up.

September 20: Angkor Ruins

Rain, rain, rain. Today was a wet day. It started raining a few minutes before we left for our first day at the Angkor ruins, and it did not stop for the entire tour. You might think the rain made for a miserable day walking around ancient stone temples. The weather certainly presented some challenges: 1,000-year-old stone steps are slippery when they’re wet; mud gets into your shoes; the moisture in the air fogs up camera lenses making them temporarily useless; and it sucks being so soaked that not only is your wallet wet, but the money in your wallet is wet. But actually, the rain may have been a good thing. The throngs of tourists that the guide books warn about never materialized, so we never had to wait to enter any ruin, and rarely did we find that other tourists were in our way (or we in theirs). Unlike so many, we’ll always have memories of standing atop temples and looking out on sweeping lawns devoid of Westerners in cutoffs and floppy hats or Japanese girls in unbelievably bright colored plastic shoes. The other benefit of the rain was that the temperature was actually comfortable. The heat had been consistently oppressive ever since we arrived.

We decided to splurge and hire a driver and a guide, and boy are we glad we did. Khom got us where we needed to be with a minimum of fuss and cost, and he was always ready to retrieve us when we were ready to go. Yon was not only very informative about the ruins and Cambodian history but also about life in Cambodia today. We had long conversations about religion, language, and even farming. We liked them both so much that we hired them again to take us on another tour of more ruins tomorrow.

Our first stop was at Angkor Thom, which I think we all agree was our favorite. The first photo was taken on the bridge approaching the gate. (I have to apologize for today’s photos. My camera really did fog up inside, and I literally had nothing dry to wipe it with, so some photos are fuzzy.) The photo below is of one of the four causeways entering Angkor Thom. Both sides of the causeway are lined with figures, one side a queue of demons, the other a queue of gods. These are the demons.

Below is Bayon, which is inside the Angkor Thom complex.There are several towers with these faces pointing in the four compass directions.

Here are various shots from other sites in the Angkor Thom complex, including the Elephant Terrace and the Terrace of the Leper King.

We spent a fair bit of time at Ta Prohm, but my camera was out of commission for all of that, so I’ll have to get photos from Jan and Tony. Ta Prohm, which is outside the Angkor Thom complex, is the site where enormous tree roots appear to be consuming the structures. You’ve probably seen photos of it.

After Ta Prohm, we visited Angkor Wat and stayed there for the remainder of today’s tour.

September 19: The Road to Siem Riep

The first part of today has consisted largely of the journey from Phnom Penh to Siem Riep. Another early morning for us. We had to be ready for the bus by 8 a.m., but I took a few minutes after breakfast to try to call Mark via FaceTime, which you might think of as Apple’s version of Skype. I was able to get through for about 15 seconds, but the Wi-Fi in our hotel was not very good, and we lost our connection. It was really nice to see him, though, and to be able to say hello. I’ll try him again tomorrow.

We were collected by a feeder bus at around 8:15 and rode it to the collection point where we jumped onto the big bus. It was a tour bus holding around 40 people, so it was fairly comfortable. I can’t say quite the same for the roads between Phnom Penh and Siem Riep; they were pretty varied. Some were just dirt and were badly rutted. Others were more akin to small highways. Unfortunately, both extremes made for poor photo ops. The bus pitched and swayed too much on the dirt roads, and on the good roads, the driver was going too fast for me to focus. I did get a couple shots, but I missed so many: the in-progress statue of Buddha; the stone carver at work; the variety of cattle; the monkey; the heavily ornamented road-side gates at the entrance to every Wat; the naked children in doorways, yards, and streams; the people working in the paddies; the shacks; the flood water that sometimes reached right up to the floor of the elevated shacks; the ubiquitous dogs. Here, at least, is something.

The people living along this road are poor, even by Cambodian standards, but they all seem to own at least one cow or bull, which they must feed. They do so by creating large mounds of hay—some 10 feet tall and wide—that look uncannily like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family. As the cattle nibble away at the mounds, they begin to look like mushrooms with caps that are out of cattle’s reach. The resulting hay sculptures are positively Seussian. (Thanks to Jan for the photo; mine were all much blurrier.)

We just checked in at the Golden Banana in Siem Riep, and it’s lovely (except, perhaps for the very charming traditional tile roof that leaked, something we learned of during the incessant night-time downpours)! We have our own cabana with sleeping on the first floor and living room and bathroom upstairs. The cabanas surround a bar area and a luxurious central pool with a waterfall. The room comes with breakfast, and lunch and dinner are available without leaving the B & B. Already the employees all have been extremely kind and helpful. I think we’re going to enjoy this place.

The refrain for the day—as delivered at the night market—was “Hello, ma-DAHM. Fish massage?” (I think if Jan got “ma-DAHM”ed one more time she was going to take someone’s head off.) Apparently, the current craze is to put your feet into a large tank while a couple hundred ciclids nibble at them. We saw dozens of these setups while walking around Siem Riep. The better ones also posted a small sign reading, “We don’t use piranha”—presumably a suggestion that their competitors do.

September 18: Phnom Penh

We arrived at our hotel last night at around 11:00. After a thorough hounding by our hotel shuttle driver to 1) use his service to travel to Siem Riep on Monday even though we already made travel plans, 2) stay at this hotel’s sister property in Siem Riep even though we already made hotel reservations somewhere else, 3) accompany him on a tour of Phnom Penh even though we already made plans to visit sites within walking distance, and 4) allow him to take us to a shooting range where we would be able to shoot an AK-47, we finally got into real beds and got a good night’s sleep.

By 8 this morning—yes, that’s 8 a.m. for those of you who think you know Tony—we were off on our walking tour. Just steps out the door, we learned what would become the refrain of the entire day: “Hello, sir. You want tuk-tuk?” A tuk-tuk is a four-person carriage pulled by a motorcycle. Along with mopeds, scooters, bicycles, and tuk-tuk-less motorcycles, they fill the city streets, and their drivers are very aggressive about picking up fares. We finally had to stop being polite when we heard that dreaded, butchered English and just ignore them after delivering a curt “No. Thank you.”

We had intended to visit the royal palace first, but it was closed for the morning while the king welcomed dignitaries from Thailand. Instead, we visited the national gallery, which is not terribly large but is filled with Khmer sculpture and relics. (I would find out later that many of the heads we would see had been removed from the ruins at Angkor in order to protect them; some of the heads that we would see at Angkor were very good replicas.) Some photos from the museum are below. We were forbidden from taking photos inside the actual museum rooms, but we were allowed to photograph freely in the central courtyard.

I said earlier that we could photograph “freely” in the courtyard. It turned out that that was not entirely true, though I didn’t know it when I shot the above photo. Those tags you see on the column just beyond the lion head . . .it says, “Do not photograph these items.” Oops. Sorry about that.

After the national gallery, we visited the royal palace and the Silver Pagoda, so named because the entire floor is tiled with sterling silver tiles richly engraved. Only a portion of the pagoda floor is visible because silver is such a soft metal that the constant tourist traffic would destroy it fairly quickly. That roughly 8 x 12 foot section, though, was lovely. I can only imaging how spectacular the floor is when they remove the rugs. The pagoda also includes a beautiful baccarat crystal Buddha that looks like carved jade and another covered with nearly 10,000 diamonds.

On our way there, we avoided the tuk-tuk drivers by walking on a nontourist street.

About half of the palace grounds is open to the public, but even that half is pretty extensive. We spent several hours visiting various stupas, temples, shrines, audience halls, and other buildings whose use we could not divine. We couldn’t take photos in any buildings, but here are some photos taken on the grounds.

Our third excursion today was a visit to the night market, which consists of around a hundred outdoor vendors. At the market, people sell all kinds of items, but mostly they sell women’s clothing. Tony and Jan both bought a couple items, but not a lot really caught my eye until I spotted a collarless shirt for myself and t-shirt that I thought Mark would like. It took forever to find the right sizes. Apparently, “M” in the United States translates to “XXL” in Cambodia (they are a small people).

Time for bed. Siem Riep tomorrow.

September 17: Incheon Airport, Seoul

September 17: Over Siberia

It’s 1:25 a.m Columbus time (2:25 p.m. in Seoul). I’ve been up now for 22 hours, and we still have two hours to go on this flight, a two-and-a-half hour layover in Seoul and another six hour flight to Phnom Penh. I’ve watched four movies, drunk three waters and two hot teas, and eaten two snacks and two meals in this seat. I meant to take pictures of the meals, but I forgot. I’ll try to remember on the way home.

I have to say that this flight has been pretty remarkable. The plane is a Boeing 777-300, and we all have lots of room. We each have our own video screens set into the headrests of the seats in front of us and can select from a couple dozen movies, TV shows, news broadcasts, and music channels. I had access to similar amenities on a trans-Atlantic flight in 2004, so perhaps that part’s not terribly impressive. What has been really outstanding on this flight, though, has been the service.

The flight crew includes at least eight stewardesses, all of whom are very polite and attentive. We’ve been treated to very fresh peanuts for a snack, very tasty meals (yes, that’s ME praising the food) and even a warm wet towel to wipe our hands and faces for a quick pick-me-up. Wine was included with both meals, which I think surprised even Tony, our most seasoned traveler. I get the sense that flying on Korean Airlines today is much like it would have felt flying on Pan Am in the fifties. The stewardesses are all very stylish and always smiling, the plane is clean and shows no wear and tear; it could have rolled out of the Boeing factory just yesterday. I get the sense that being a KAL employee is still a status job. In the US, it seems as if working for a major carrier has lost its luster and is now little more than a grind.

Our lunch choices included either beef in gravy with mashed potatoes and vegetables or a Korean dish called bibimbap, which is a rice, meat, and vegetable mixture that Jan was daring enough to try. Both options included fruit, and a small salad. Dinner was either chicken with rice and broccoli or creamy pasta with vegetables. Both included a dinner roll, potato salad, and chocolate mousse. Well, something akin to mousse, anyway. Mousse might have been too much for even these fine chefs to pull off in an airplane meal. It was tasty enough, but it was served in a cut square and had a consistency in the general realm of spackle.

Our flight path took us due north from Chicago over Canada, way north of Alaska, then down over Siberia and into Korea. Right now, we appear to be over far eastern China, around Chanchun and just west of Vladivostok. One really odd thing is that the sun hasn’t set yet. Because we’re going west, and because we flew so far north, we’ve kept ahead of nightfall. As a matter of fact, it will be dusk or just later than dusk when we reach Seoul.

September 16: Chicago, Illinois

Jan, Tony, and I are in the international terminal at O’Hare. It’s a sad little place, especially compared with the vibrancy and bustle of the main terminal. There’s a McDonald’s here and a frozen yogurt shop. So much for breakfast food options. Still, a sausage McMuffin with egg will be the last food I can can be sure of for the next two weeks, so I’ll just enjoy it. The Korean Air ticket booth doesn’t open until 9:00 a.m., so we’re just killing time. Three hours down on the journey to Phnom Penh, 25 to go.

September 14: Columbus, Ohio

So the weight limit for flights into and out of Bhutan is 44 pounds. While that’s not a lot less than the weight limit on domestic flights, I wanted to keep my luggage as light as possible. (Who knows what I might buy and want to bring home!) I have my technology, which is going to add a fair bit of weight, so I’m cutting back everywhere else I can. I’ll be wearing (ugly) clothes in Cambodia that I bought in a thrift store and that I plan to leave behind, and I’m planning to wear everything at least twice. Maybe not underwear, but everything else.

I also decided that I could do without hair gel if I buzzed my head. Last time I did that, though, Mark protested vehemently. I compromised and got a mohawk.

Mark is a little happier with this. By the time I get home, though, it’ll mostly be grown out.

Two days to go. Today and tomorrow, I’m doing my final checks on my technology—charging batteries, making sure that my blog plan is going to work out, and so on—and packing.