Cambodia: Siem Reap

CAMBODIA: Siem Reap:

I arrived at 9:30, and a driver (Mr. Mao) from my guesthouse was waiting with his tuk-tuk for the 15-minute ride, more or less a straight line, back to town. He said that he was also available to take me to sites in and around the park during my stay. I told him that I was excited to bicycle around the Park, which bummed him out, because he was hoping for a fare. Of course—a reminder that I’m back in the 3rd world and these people are dying to work for tourists. Note to self on etiquette…at least I already knew I’d want to hire a moto and driver for one day in Siem Reap…

It was hot and humid and tropical-feeling, but not raining and the breeze felt great. I was shown to my room by the young owner (Mr. Hak—17, I think), who also explained the basics and gave me advice about my agenda, which proved to be very useful. I arranged for Mr. Mao (I’ve redeemed myself!) to take me to three relatively distant sites the next day, and was to be ready at 6am (fortunately it was 2 hours earlier there than in Korea!).

I settled into my single room with bathroom ($4/night) and packed my daypack for the next day’s excursion before going to sleep. The guesthouse was on the main drag into town, a friendly place with a restaurant and pool table. The only drawback was that the walls didn’t reach the ceilings (maybe 6 inches shy), so you could hear your neighbors. Fortunately, it wasn’t really an issue, as most people in Siem Reap are there to see Angkor Park, and since the daylight hours are from about 5:30-5:30, most alarms go off between 5 and 6-- not too many people are partying late. So I was awakened maybe 20 minutes earlier than my alarm was going to go off…I considered it my Cambodian snooze alarm feature.

I met Mr. Mao at our appointed hour, and we first went to the Angkor Park office, where I bought a 3-day pass ($40—hugely expensive by Cambodian, even for tourists, standards, but well worth it), requiring a photo ID, even. We set out for our first destination, and he proved to be a great driver, which set me at ease, as the roads were plenty potholey or puddly or populated with people and very large critters.

Our first destination was Banteay Srei, a pinkish-brown Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva, famous for its amazingly elaborate and detailed carvings of divinities and scenes from the Ramayana. Every possible inch was covered with intricate, 3-D work, and I kept marveling at how many hours must have gone into the place. Breathtaking. And Mr. Mao provided me with all kinds of additional info on the site in general and on specific carvings.

We toured this site relatively quickly, as it was not very big, and passed by a zillion souvenir stalls going back to his moto. Next, we drove to Kbal Spean, usually called “River of a Thousand Lingas” in English. It’s a riverbed with carvings under and around the water, and is absolutely beautiful. Normally, Mao would have hung out at the parking area while I went on the hike, but it was a) not peak tourist season, and b) still pretty darned early, and no other tourists were around. He didn’t want to send me on my own, so he came with me. It turned out that I was their second tourist of the day.

It was great to have him there, though, as he pointed out things I would have missed (some of the underwater carvings and descriptions of the many pictures of ‘leg massages,’ and we got to chat about our backgrounds and start to joke around—which we continued to do all day.

After this hike, he suggested that it would be a good time to have a meal, since the next place was a ways off. I was hungry and agreed. I sat at the restaurant closest to where we’d parked, and he settled in a hammock; I would have been happy to eat with him, but I think they are used to giving their charges space. After I’d ordered, a young girl, who’d tried to sell us stuff when we’d arrived, came over to try again with her wares. I got her talking about herself (her English was pretty good), and I tried to ask her some basic questions in Khmer with the help of my guidebook. She came over and sat next to me and coached me through pronunciations for at least 15 minutes before my food came. I raved about her as my wonderful teacher and got a photo; I think she was quite proud to be helpful, as well she should have been.

During these travels, where there are so often children, so clearly underprivileged, relentlessly selling stuff, well-informed as to how to guilt-trip tourists and unafraid to be persistent (an understatement), I found that the best way to deal with them was to first say that I couldn’t buy anything and then to just start talking to them. A few wouldn’t stray from the sales pitch, but 99% of them immediately just started chatting, asking and answering questions. I suspect that more often than not, they’re avoided as expeditiously as possible, as they truly are everywhere and it is exhausting to fend them off all day, every day. And yet…and yet. The disparity of wealth and opportunity is heartbreaking. I would guess that the kids we do encounter in these jobs have it good, comparatively speaking. If only I had the funds and room in my bag to buy from them all…

After a delicious lunch of something noodly-chicken soupy, we hopped back on the moto for our final, more remote, destination. It was a long and bumpy but beautiful and perfectly comfortable ride, on a gorgeous day, over both paved and unpaved (just as you’d expect in Cambodia) roads, through amazing countryside. He kept asking me if I were sleepy, which I thought was strange—how on earth, on a moto, in this scenery, could I be sleepy?!?!?

We’d ease through the smaller ends of huge puddles (“Time for your bath!”), over the lesser of the bumpy evils (“My, how heavy you are!”) past waving children at play or travel, and through the dust, dust, dust. At one point, we saw a very young boy contemplating something or other in the road, who didn’t at all seem to register our approach or passing. We both laughed, and Mr. Mao said he must have been “thinking about a political problem,” which got us both hysterical—that he found the perfect English words for the joke, and that the joke was funny for both of us.

Mr. Mao offered that we might stop along the way to see another temple, which would involve a climb, but was on the way. Of course! Again, he schlepped with me up a mountainside, where indeed we saw another temple that was actually on the back-road route to another tourist site that I hadn’t selected (they charged exorbitant fees for tourists and it was supposedly comparable to Kbal Spean). There were some guys doing some restoration work, and he chatted with them and explained the irrigation systems in use in Cambodia to me, as this site was the source of some of the area’s water.

After the climb back down and some confusion over the parking and beverage costs, we were on our way again towards Beng Melea. And I began to be lulled by the ride and the scenery and was, indeed, sleepy. I was amazed, as I’m not really a sleepy-in-the-middle-of-the-day or sleepy-in-a-car kind of person, and I was excited by all I was seeing. Somehow, though, a moto ride is different than being in a car, and you certainly don’t want to doze off while riding one. When we got gas, he gave me some caffeinated candies, which, combined with the stop, tided me over until we got to Beng Melea.

Beng Melea…wow. Mao hit the hammock and I hit the trail to the jungle-subsumed temple. I had a guide all to myself; I think they’re on hand and take whoever shows up (probably usually tour buses). And, amazingly, we had the place to ourselves. Granted, the place is a bit remote, but it’s in all the guidebooks, so I don’t know where the heck everyone was, but am glad they were somewhere else. He led me up and over and around and through and between and pointed out all kinds of things and took photos of me with cool backgrounds. You’d never find all these nooks and crannies on your own, or trust that the routes we took were safe without someone knowledgeable, so I was glad to have him show me around. After we’d been all over the ruins, he left me to hike around the perimeter a bit, which was very pretty and provided new views of the temple’s demise.

The temple was built in the 12th century to the same (huge) floorplan as Angkor Wat, but has been left to the forces of nature. And havoc has been wreaked, let me tell you. It is collapsed and crumbled and overgrown and under-grown and around-grown and through-grown and twisted by plants and trees and the topplings of gravity. Light peeked through in strange formations, doorways yielded piles of rocks in huge brick-shapes. It was truly wild and beautiful and awesome, and well worth the cost and effort to get there.

Before rousing Mr. Mao, I hit the restroom behind the roadside restaurant, where a little girl waited outside for me, and held up a small bill as I left, as a suggestion for the price of having used the facilities. Not having such a bill on hand, I indicated that yes, I would pay her, but that she should come with me into the restaurant so I could buy water and get change. I got the water, got change, paid her and had a few rounds of peek-a-boo, then packed up and hopped on the moto behind Mr. Mao and vigorously waved goodbye and thank you (aw kohn!).

Beng Melea was the last stop on my itinerary, but Mr. Mao had already asked me, as we were going to pass by his home village on the way back, might we stop so he could visit his family? Hell, yes! Twenty minutes away, he pulled into a maze of dirt roads and houses on stilts and small farms, and greeted 99% of the people we passed by name. And I’m sure it was fun for him to be bringing the blonde western chick along, though he was hardly the show-off type—more as a point of job-pride than machismo.

We got to his family’s land, where his mother, who wasn’t feeling well, was getting a curative massage. His brother’s child slept in a small hammock that his sister-in-law rocked by pulling an attached string. His parents had a house and the rest of the land (very small plots—although this could have just been the land for housing and the farmland could have been next to it or nearby) was divided into three sections for the three sons. Two of them had similar houses on stilts; his two brothers are married and farming. Mao’s plot hadn’t been cleared and he got a bamboo pole and eased down branches from orange trees to pick the fruit. Three neighborhood girls had, meanwhile, gathered nearby to check me out, and he explained that they’d never seen a foreigner here in the village before. He offered me an orange and a knife, and I cut a small piece of the rind off and started to peel it with my fingers, which set them all roaring with laughter. He took them from me and pared the whole thing, then showed me how to peel the white rind off…which didn’t seem any more efficient to me than my attempted method, but whatever. Always glad to be a source of humor…

It looked and tasted like a juice orange. Not much to say there. It was all over me after I’d managed to eat all the pulp, and I showed the girls a wet-wipe and let them smell it. Little marvels… Meanwhile, Mao had pulled down about a dozen oranges and insisted that I fill my bag with as many as would fit, saying that they’d make me a shake at the guesthouse. So I started to pack up my bag, and wanted to get my camera to take a few photos, but couldn’t find it. I emptied my bag twice, and determined that I must not have put it back in my bag after paying for the water and playing with the girl, as I’d taken a photo of the back of the restaurant.

So we went back to Beng Melea, sure that it would still be there, as there were only the locals at the restaurant and the one other tourist who’d come by tuk-tuk as we were leaving. But it wasn’t there, and Mao spoke at great and agitated length with the very concernced and surprised people there while I looked all around several times. Having no choice but to leave without it, we did. After a few minutes on the road, he began to relay part of the conversation he’d had with them: that the only other person who’d been there was the other tuk-tuk driver (during our time at the village, the tourist had seen the temple and they left as we re-arrived), who had been acting a little strangely and who they’d heard comment on my nice camera before we left the first time. My understanding at the time was that it was possible that he’d taken it or knew something, and Mao proposed that we catch up to them (easy, as we were on a moto and they had a tuk-tuk) and ask without accusing. We caught up to them and I spoke with the tourist, who didn’t know anything and said that his driver had said that their brakes weren’t working well. Huh?

It turned out that I’d misunderstood and the folks at the restaurant were actually quite sure that he’d taken it, that he was acting shifty, and he wasn’t wearing the taxi driver’s id vest that I didn’t know they had to wear whenever driving. Had I known any of that, I would have suggested that we pull up to him and I’d cry and offer money along the lines of $20, which might well have done the trick. Having missed that chance, we pulled over so I could buy a phone card (his phone was out of minutes), and we called the tourist police, and Mao said that they should look for this specific driver and meet us at a specific point on the only road back to town.

The tuk-tuk driver passed us again during this brief stop, and we set out to follow him and keep him in view. Somehow, though, either he stopped and pulled out of sight off the road, or took a really out-of-the-way, roundabout route back to town, because we didn’t find them. We think he must have realized we were on to him and going to do what we could and came up with some excuse about the tuk-tuk to get rid of his fare, or we don’t know what.

The cops weren’t at the appointed place but did show up soon after and said that they’d cruised the street looking for the tuk-tuk…we didn’t see a lot of tuk-tuks that day, so he would have been spottable. Mao wasn’t convinced that they’d actually done as they’d said and was angry in general over typical police behavior. They suggested that I file a report, but Mao wanted to wait and see if the guy had just delayed his return to town by this road, so we did. Mao and I and a bunch of Cambodians who emerged from a house sat around the side of the road, while I listened to Mao relay the whole story for the zillionth time with great dismay and angst. We hung out there for a couple more hours, then wove through town, then finally went to the station, where I filed the report and was told to call the next day around 2pm.

Sigh. Of course, the next day, they said that they couldn’t do anything because it was the next day…and we called in the morning because Mao spotted the guy in town—aaaaaaaaargh! At least I knew better than to have much hope after we’d not been able to stop him that night on the road. So Mao took me to two camera stores that the guesthouse recommended, and I bought a new camera and gigstick (of course they don’t really bother selling low-end stuff—anyone who can afford a digital camera and a vacation to Cambodia can afford the expensive models, right? How to put a dent in your low-budget vacation… And they only take cash, so the owner drove me to the only ATM in town. But it was definitely a legit place and I got what I needed). Unfortunately, I lost the photos from possibly the most amazing day of my trip, and lost almost a full day in dealing with it. Fortunately, I lost only that day’s worth of photos, as I’d transferred them all to my computer before I left EV, and my travel insurance company, when I filed a claim after I got home, said that they will reimburse me, AND a friend from EV visited Siem Reap later in September, took my recommendation and went on the same daytrip, and will be sending me her photos. So, I was actually relatively lucky, and at least had a unique experience with Cambodian authorities and chase scenes and local detective work…

Once I had the camera and collected my thoughts and stuff for the day, I rented a bike from the guesthouse (the expensive, $2 ‘charity’ bike, not so-called because of any kindness for my butt) and set out for Angkor Park. On the way, I stopped by a strip with lots of street-stalls and got some little dishes for about 25 cents a pop: beef with pineapple, beef with cucumbers and other veggies, curry.

(As for the dollar vs. the Cambodian riel, the dollar is accepted everywhere, and necessary in most touristy or large-purchase places; the riel is accepted at the local markets and shops. Some places accept both, which is handy when you want to pay in dollars and get change in riel)

I found the spot where bicyclists can lock up their vehicles, which is usually a place to put them and lock the tire to the frame—here, at least, you could also lock it to a rope between trees. The kids selling stuff swarm you and say that they’ll watch your bike, and follow you with their postcards, books, jewelry, scarves and trinkets. They all have the same spiel and sell the same stuff at each site. When you tell them you don’t want to buy anything, they say “ok, when you come back you buy from me, ok?” And when you return, they tell you “you said you buy from me when you come back”; most people probably say “okay, okay,” when they go to the site, just to get rid of them. Some of the little kids offer for you to take their very cute picture, after which I expected they’d be asking for money. I didn’t take them up on it, but later learned that most of them just want to see their photo on the digital screen. Aha…

Occasionally they do the full-out guilt trip on how they need you to buy from them so that they can have money to go to school or eat—which to some extent has to be true, but they really work it—and they must get results. I saw a couple of kids work up fake tears, even. Some of them count to ten in different languages, recite countries and capitals or quote statistics on different countries. Again, the best method seems to be to say “no” and then to chat them up. If they’re primarily concerned with the sale and there are other tourists around, they’ll leave you alone, and if they are happy to just talk then they’ll stay, which works out best for everyone. But it is still exhausting to be consistently pursued in this fashion, and is a true test of patience.

So. Angkor Wat—finally! ‘Tis a most impressive site, to say the least. It is a huge temple surrounded by a huge moat—190m wide, no less. It faces, unusually, the west, and the entrance is via a causeway to the outer wall and its chambers. And then, emerging to the inner courtyard via the elephant gates, is the stunning, magical, beautiful view of the temple. It’s been well maintained, and closer inspection reveals all kinds of carvings, bas-reliefs, altars and passageways. I easily spent almost 3 hours there, including a steeeeep climb to the top.

I finally emerged, fended off the kids, and pedaled through the gates (stone sculpture of churning of the ocean of milk) of the fortified city of Angkor Thom and on to the first temple inside, Bayon (any time you near the entrance of these places where there are groups of restaurants and shops set up, the women will scream out “Lady! Lady! Laaaaady! You buy water! You eat something!” waving water bottles and identical menus. It’s downright circus-like). Bayon is unique in that it has 54 gothic towers with 216 oddly smiling faces of King Jayavaraman VII (who had many, if not most, of these places built). It looks like another ruined temple from afar, but once you’re in it and especially up top, it is really different in look and feel. Here, too, there are elaborate bas-reliefs; these are scenes of 12th-century Cambodian life.

As it was a slow day, some of the kids who work around the site and live in the park with their families were playing at the less-crowded ruins (anything other than Angkor Wat). At Bayon, there was a group playing hide and seek, in the ULTIMATE setting of corridors, stairways, columns and statues. I helped one girl who was ‘it’ to sneak up on some hiders…

I biked to the next bunch of ruins and got a delicious late lunch of fried noodles, veggies and chicken with little bananas for dessert. It seems to be the norm that the kids will come to your table to try to sell you stuff but will leave when your food comes. Young Doam was hawking bracelets I didn’t want, but we had a fun swap of English/Cambodian tutoring and a couple of high-fives.

Happily full, I crossed the street to see Baphuon, which is still being put back together after it was taken apart for restoration--during the Khmer Rouge years all the records and plans were destroyed. Yikes—talk about a puzzle!

Next door, Phimeanakas is a pinkish-brown temple with steep stairs that were sadly off-limits—they would have led to a great view of Angkor Thom. Continuing on to the comparatively secluded Preah Palilay, I found it overgrown with huge tree roots, but still well groomed. Tep Pranam was the nearby Buddha terrace.

Back out on the ‘main drag,’ the Terrace of the Leper King is a 7m-high structure with tiers of carvings of apsaras and royalty figures on the outside, and a recently discovered inner terrace that feels like a secret passage, with more carvings. Next to it is the 350m-long Terrace of Elephants, with, appropriately, elephant carvings.

I hopped back on the bike and rode up to Preah Khan, again with a Churning of the Ocean of Milk gate. Inside, it was a temple of ruined corridors and carvings, overgrown and collapsed in places. It’s one of the largest sites, and I’m going to venture a guess that it may have the most moss.

After a relatively quick visit, I took off down the road towards Preah Neak Pean, but was stopped before I got there and told to turn around, as the park/road would be closing before I’d get out (yeah, they hadn’t just seen me racing the local boys and kicking their butts!). At first, I coasted by them, as they looked totally unofficial and I didn’t know why they were stopping me, but then I realized that they were legit and obeyed. I took out my little flashing reflector and affixed it to my backpack, as I’d need to turn it on at some point on the ride home. They LOVED that.

I rode the reverse route, hauling past other bicycles, cars dribbling out, beasts of burden, and yet more bicycles, racing some more locals (they get a huge kick out of that, too, especially the boys who couldn’t drop me—remember, these are junky one-gear bikes) and eventually stopping back in town at a huge souvenir store. Everything was way overpriced, but you could look without a gazillion kids pushing things in your face—although salespeople do follow you and try to talk you into buying things far more aggressively than they’d ever do in the west. I bought some postcards (you can’t find a decent postcard in Cambodia—it seems to be a hugely unexploited market) and donned my rain poncho, as a downpour had begun when I arrived.

I stopped by the local convenience store/gas station for snacks and beer, then returned to the guesthouse for a shower (I found that the easiest and most efficient thing to do was to take a shower in my clothes and wash and rinse them there, as one wearing will render them sweat-and-dust-drenched attire) and planning for the next day.

Wednesday morning, I had a papaya shake and coffee at the guesthouse, then went in search of Wat Preah Inkosei, where a small House of Peace Association sells handcrafted shadow puppets, used in traditional shadow puppet theater. I bought a small $6 Apsara puppet (I would have loved a big elephant or a jointed character, but the limitations of my luggage nixed that idea). They’re leather, cut into shapes, and with hundreds of holes punched in them for the light to shine through. Puppeteers maneuver them with the sticks that are attached.

Satisfied with my sought-out souvenir, I embarked on the long ride (another day on the bike) to the other side of Angkor Park (the traffic is similar to what I’d experienced in Hanoi, but not nearly as crazy or congested or loud. Be one with the flow…). I got lots of waves and ‘hellos’ from locals of all ages, on foot, bike, cart, or working on the road. The first site I hit was Prasat Kravan, with its five brick towers, two with carvings inside. They were built for Hindu worship, and indeed, a busload of Indians was there, getting a detailed tour.

Sra Srang, “pool of ablutions,” was next, and then Pre Rup, a pyramid-shaped temple/mountain with great countryside views. Quite a few of the walls and columns were propped up in unconvincing and precarious manners. It was probably totally sound, but the enormity of the structures and the general atmosphere of ruin didn’t lend themselves to a feeling of sturdiness.

The Eastern Mebon was a lot like Pre Rup, only with nifty stone elephants at the base. I offered to take a photo of a Korean couple and scared them by counting to three in Korean and saying “kimchi!”(instead of “cheese!”) before snapping it. Hah!

Ta Som was the next ruin down the road, featuring a big tree overgrowing its walls. Preah Neak Pean, at which I arrived from the opposite approach I’d tried the night before, was a small central temple, surrounded by 2 serpents in a central pool. Banteay Kdei was a ruined monastery with enormous outer walls.

The next major site was Ta Prohm, a Buddhist temple of overgrown corridors and courtyards. It was similar to Beng Melea, but not nearly as wild or tumbled or secluded. I was so glad to have made the trip out, as the two are often compared but were very different in the extent of the natural chaos.

I had some pineapple while touring the temple, then had a lunch of fried noodle, veggie and beef soup outside at one of the stands. I then pedaled back into town (via another stop at Angkor Wat) to investigate evening theatre options and the main market. I made a reservation for a shadow puppet show at La Noria, and had just enough time to shower and book a bus ticket to Phnom Penh for the next morning before going to the performance.

La Noria is a guesthouse and restaurant that puts on a weekly puppetry and traditional dance show, all performed by kids who are mostly orphans and otherwise underprivileged. The food was pricey, but the performances were wonderful—the range of ability and bravery and pride of the kids was amazing and touching. It certainly wasn’t of a professional standard, but was culturally rich on many levels.

After the show, I had a great talk with the Canadian manager who had lived in Korea for a year in 1998 and who has now been in Cambodia for a year with her husband, who was a NY photographer. We compared notes on Korea, traffic outside of the western world, the personal adjustment of defining ‘clean’ in Southeast Asia, and she gave me more info on the program she was helping to run there. The history of the arts training and school was fascinating and impressive: these former street kids leave with marketable skills that they can use to support themselves while carrying on cultural traditions.