Cambodia: Incredible Ruins and a Tragic Past

I'm already in my second city in Vietnam, so it's probably time to post about Cambodia...

September 23rd

On Tuesday, September 23rd, Emily and I left Bangkok headed for Cambodia.  Here was how we got to the border:  taxi to the train station (5 minutes), train to Thai border town Aranyaprathet (7 hours), tuk-tuk to the border (10 minutes), crossing the border (check out of Thailand, walk across the border, get Cambodian visa, check in to Cambodia), shuttle to the bus station (20 minutes), bus to Siem Reap (3.5 hours) tuk-tuk to the Old Market (10 minutes, shared a ride with two Korean guys), then walked to our guesthouse (maybe another 10 minutes).  Whew!  Plus all the waiting in between.  We left before sunrise and arrived after sunset.  Needless to say, we were happy to have arrived in Siem Reap.

We had just checked out of Thailand... Cambodia, here we come!

September 24th

In Siem Reap, the main attraction was to visit Angkor Wat Archaeological Park. The park, deemed a Unesco World Heritage Site, contains the remains of several capitals of the Khmer Empire of the 9th to the 15th centuries, including the largest pre-industrial city in the world!  The main temples were built in the 12th century.  We woke up Wednesday morning excited and ready to see the famed ruins.  We rented a couple of bicycles, bought our 3-day passes, and biked (all the way) to the park.  We decided to do the big loop for the first day. Here are some photos from what we saw that day:

The gates to Preah Khan temple

Hello, massive-ancient-ruins-built-by-taking-incredible-measures-to-float-the-stone-down-the-river-and-carving-it-into-beautiful-forms!

The night of day one, we were exhausted.  We knew we biked quite a ways, but weren't sure just how far it was.  We made a guess at 12 miles, then we mapped it out online to know for certain.  We ended up biking 24 miles that day. Wow!

September 25th

On day two, we decided to sleep in and take it easy after our strenuous biking the day before.  We split a tuk-tuk three ways, sharing with a girl from Hungary named Anna.  We did the small circuit, which included more beautiful temples and carvings.

See the faces?  There are four - one on each side.

What do you guys think?  Do I look like an apsara dancer?

Emily and I in front of Banteay Kdei

The trees at Ta Prohm were INCREDIBLE.  This was one of several massive trees that has grown atop the temple buildings.  I was in love.

Do you see the third figure up?  Looks like a stegosaurus, right?  But dinosaurs weren't discovered until the late 1800s.  Hmmmm. 

I finally broke down and bought a coconut, then remembered that I don't like the taste of green coconut water.  Here's a picture of the young girl I bought it from hacking out an opening for a straw.

September 26th

On day three, we started off with sunrise over the mother of them all, Angkor Wat.  We spent the whole day visiting two of the main attractions:  Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.  We split the day up into two outings: A quick outing for sunrise and out again on bicycles for the rest of the day. After sunrise, we went back to the hostel for a nap and a meal.  We headed back out on bicycles at about 11 AM and visited the complex of Angkor Thom, and then hit a few bumps in the road on the way to finishing our tour at Angkor Wat.  More on that later on.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat

This monkey stole a lady's food and ate it happily while she stewed about it.  

Angkor Wat

Bas reliefs on the outermost walls at Angkor Wat

Apsara dancers, Angkor Wat

The faces of Bayon, Angkor Thom

Bayon face, Angkor Thom

The Terrace of the Elephants, Angkor Thom

We climbed a lot of steep stairs to the top of temples.  Here's an example.

We planned to be at Angkor Wat by about 4:00 PM so we would have at least an hour and a half to see it before closing time.  As we pedaled our bikes away from Angkor Thom, I pulled over to the side of the road for a picture and POP! my bike tire exploded.  It was flat as can be.  I cursed under my breath as instantly, and a tuk-tuk driver came over to harass me and offer me ridiculous prices for a ride back, knowing I was in a bad spot.  Emily came over to help, and at first, we tried to just walk as fast as possible towards Angkor Wat.  Time was running out and it was the final day of our park pass, and there was no way we would miss out on Angkor Wat!  But we quickly realized we wouldn't get there in time - it was about 3 km away!  Then Emily suggested that I ride on the back of her bicycle.  So I chained my bike to a tree on the side of the road, sat sidesaddle on the small metal rack just behind her bike seat, and we took off.  Emily was a champ, pedaling like a madman so we could make it to the park on time, all the while avoiding traffic and potholes on the narrow road.  I sat on the back and rigid as possible to eliminate wobbling for Emily to balance and smiled as the locals looked at us and did a double-take.  Two foreigners on a bicycle?  It's only the locals that do that! 

We made it there in record time, with just barely enough time to climb to the very top of Angkor Wat.

The climb to the tippy top of Angkor Wat.

Did you know that Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious monument?  Not just that, but it was built in just 35 years by hundreds of thousands of workers!  Insane!

Angkor Wat lit up by the sunset.

No, this isn't a pond, it's a man-made moat.  The moat around Angkor Wat is equally as impressive as Angkor Wat - it too was built in just 35 years by hundreds of thousands of workers, and they dug out the dirt basketful by basketful, to a size of 650 feet wide and 3 miles in perimeter, with a depth of 13 feet!  Building the moat enabled the temple inside to be stabilized.

After finishing our visit at Angkor Wat, we found a tuk-tuk driver who said he would take us and our bikes back into town.   It wasn't quite the way we envisioned going back into town.  Darn bike.

September 27th

Saturday was travel day.  We booked a bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, and the place where you can discover some of the dark realities of Cambodia's past.

There were several kinds of large insects for sale at one of the stops along the way.  A French guy sitting across from us bought a bag of these crickets and offered us one on the bus.  They were cooked in some sort of sweet glaze and kind of dissolved in your mouth.  It wasn't as terrible as I'd imagined.

Water buffalo and cows in a field in rural Cambodia.

The night we got in to Phnom Penh, we went to a traditional Cambodian show, called an apsara show.

The main event of the show were these large shadow puppets.

Historically, Cambodian royals have had an obsession with monkeys, and there are schools to train men to become like monkeys.  I was excited that these two little monkey boys had a small part in the show that night.

We struggled to find dinner that night, but ended up at a little streetside restaurant that proved what we had read about Cambodians eating habits - they eat anything and everything.   The restaurant we went to sold small manta rays, baby ducks (like, fertilized duck eggs), chicken body parts, tiny chicken wings, and frogs.  We got some chicken wing skewers and I got a frog.  There wasn't much meat, but it was tasty!

September 28th

Our first full day in Phnom Penh, we went to learn about some of the dark history of Cambodia. From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge controlled the government of Cambodia, and during this time, they orchestrated a genocide, while trying to establish their social engineering policies.  They wanted to create an agrarian state, moving everyone out of the cities and forcing them to work like slaves in the fields to cultivate rice.  Families were torn apart, and children were sent to re-education camps to be trained as soldiers for their cause.  A widespread famine ensued, and about half as many people died from starvation and illness as they did from the murders.  Before the genocide, the population of Cambodia was over 7 million, and about 3 million people were killed in under four years during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.  Whew!  You still with me?  I know this is heavy stuff.  I am happy to report that Cambodia has bounced back with incredible resilience.  On Sunday, we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum - a prison where people suspected of being "spies" were brought for torture and execution.  It was previously a high school.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

These are the faces of some of the young men they recruited as soldiers for the Khmer Rouge.

On the way back from the museum.  There was a quick heavy rain and the streets flooded.  Some of the evidence that we were indeed traveling in rainy season.

September 29th

On Monday, we visited the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and the Russian Market.  The killing fields, in short, where the place where people were taken from the prison in town to be mass executed.

Four people to a motorcycle?  Typical.  Also, see the street?  That's right, it's hardly a street.  Mostly mud and rocks and full of thick, muddy puddles.

This bamboo gate lines the edge of a mass grave.  Visiting the site at Choeung Ek includes a free audio tour, and it's very well done.  They thank you for coming to pay homage to the victims, include stories of people's experiences, and give you a chance to learn about the past so it is not repeated.

In the Russian market, the stalls are a clutter's dream.  This is what I like to call a 5x10 hardware store.

I had been eying this dish for a few days, and decided to try it at the Russian market.  The pile on the right are noodles.  They were cooked up with kale and a fried egg and a little meat and a bunch of different sauces.  It was a lot like Thailand's pad see ew, and it was delicious.

Dinner that night was amok, which is a curry dish with coconut milk and served up in a banana leaf.  It's one of Cambodia's famous traditional dishes, and it was really tasty.

September 30th

Tuesday, our final day in Phnom Penh, we first visited their central market, then the Royal Palace complex.

The central market

The Mekong River as it runs through Phnom Penh

In the Royal Palace complex

This is the Silver Pagoda, which houses a Buddha made of solid gold and covered in diamonds.  I'm not kidding.  The Buddha is life-size and is 90 kg of gold.  There are 9584 diamonds decorating the Buddha, the largest of which is 25 carats.  Of course, no photos allowed inside the pagoda.

The sun behind a group of clouds.  It looked amazing.

And then it was time to move on to Vietnam.  Cambodia was wonderful to experience.  Their history is both proud and tragic, and it was enriching to learn about.

Just 35 days until I'm home!