Sunday, August 24, 2008 1:34 AM ICT Room 29, Golden Sun Guest House Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh Province, Cambodia
I just re-read my post on the boat trip, and realized that I kind of forgot to mention the natural beauty. Seems to be a pattern on this blog: I focus on people, on poverty, social issues, and nearly dying, while generally failing to mention anything about the plant and animal life. So, to briefly correct that, tropical plants are awesome... can't say much more, because I can't identify species, but lots of interesting vines, bizarre trees with winding trunks, and coconut trees that grow everywhere and actually produce edible coconuts (the hotel I stayed in Siem Reap picked coconuts from the decorative trees in the parking lot to use in their cooking). There are geckos everywhere, often indoors - they're similarly common to, I dunno, dragonflies in Canada. Also there's lots of chickens around, apparently wild, just hanging around. There were monkeys at the temples. I've seen elephants, but they're Asian elephants and are really disappointingly small.... I still want to go for an elephant ride, tho.
Anyway, some pictures:
Rooster, chillaxing outside a clothing store in downtown Phnom Penh.
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A gecko, blending into the scenery at Bayon temple. They do the same thing on the walls of hotels and restaurants.
Somewhere I have some pictures of monkeys. But I can’t find them. So here’s a picture of some dogs at Bayon temple. (Aww, puppy!!) This country has a lot of random dogs, not apparently belonging to anyone, but looking pretty healthy, and surprisingly quiet and well-behaved.
A whole bunch of tropical plants on the water, all with roots on the sea floor.
Very cool selection of tropical plants by the riverside.
Tree near Angkor Wat. It’s hard to see from this tree, but this particular species seems to die in sections, so you’ll see a tree where the bottom half of the leaves are dead and drooped over, but the top is green and perky.
A tree at Bayon temple.
And, of course, the incredible trees with spider-web-like trunks that are invading Ta Promh.
It was such a simple plan, really. Me and Natalie both wanted to get from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, and Dave (Natalie’s boyfriend, who recently joined us, and who has his own organization doing work in Cambodia) had a work-related meeting in Battambang. So we decided to take a boat to Battambang, then a bus to Phnom Penh later the same day. Get the scenic and the speedy, and see a bit of a new city.
Now the case of the Siem Reap – Battambang boat trip is an interesting one. Both myself and Natalie had heard good things, but Lonely Planet remained… cryptic. Despite seeming to recommend the trip, the guide spends a lot of time complaining about how expensive it is, and how you’ll simultaneously freeze and get sunburned. But whatever, we figured it would be an experience, at the very least. So Thursday morning, the shuttle bus that takes people to the boat to Battambang left our hotel at 6:15am, and we figured we’d be in Phnom Penh by 6pm the same day. But it’s now Friday, and we only got to the guest house (somewhere between a hostel and hotel, very popular for travelers in Cambodia) around 12:30pm. How did we go so wrong?
Now besides the other things it says about the trip, Lonely Planet also places the length of the trip, somewhat cryptically, at “three to eight hours long.” They explain that during the dry season, water levels are low and the boat has to waste a lot of time looking for deep enough water and slogging through mud. But the rainy season lasts May to October, so we figured it would be in the 3 hour range.
Since the boat left at 7:15am and only arrived at Battambang at 2:45pm, I believe that places the trip in the 7.5 hour range, and for those keeping track, 7.5 is closer to 8 than it is to 3.
And of course, after getting in, Dave had 2 hours of meetings, and the last bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh had already left at 2pm anyway, and we were sick and tired of sitting and travelling, so we spent the night in Battambang. Then this morning we took a taxi (a Toyota Camry with driver… every car here is a Toyota Camry) to Phnom Penh, and then Dave had another meeting that we tagged along to, and hence only got to the guest house arrived 12:30pm.
I suppose there were warning flags (which, I’m slowly realizing, are among the most popular types of flags in Cambodia) that the boat trip might be problematic. The first was the boat itself, which was probably 30 years old, if not more, and almost certainly had its original motor. It was long and thin, featuring two rows of hard wooden benches facing each other, and (thank merciful god) a roof. It was designed to hold maybe 15 people and some bags. We had 5 or 6 crew, a rotating roster of locals hitching rides, and 18 passengers, each with luggage enough to support a multi-week trip to Cambodia. The banister, which, from inside the boat, hit around your upper back, was maybe a foot out of the water, max. The boat also seemed dangerously close to tipping over anytime anyone moved. It is my growing contention that you cannot (or at the very least should not) travel within Cambodia without coming face-to-face with your own mortality at least once every… three days.
The official flag of Cambodia. Rank popularity among flags in Cambodia: 1st (tied).
Now without a doubt, the trip was incredible, in many ways. The sense of imminent doom was bad, the fact our boat broke down for 20 minutes in the middle of mosquito-infested nowhere was bad, the painful hardwood seats were bad, the fact we were squished together like sardines was bad, the fact the trip lasted 7.5 hours despite our relatively brisk pace was bad, but the rest of the trip was awesome, I swear!
First, the trip took me to areas of Cambodia I would have never seen otherwise. Rural Cambodia. Poverty even worse than in the city, but it’s not the same kind of poverty. It’s not poverty living in a capitalist city, it’s poverty living what is basically a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They’re fishers. Every day, they go out on the river in homemade canoes (some with motors, many without) and fish and gather fruits and vegetables that grow naturally. And to say they go out on the river is a bit silly, because they live on the river. Not in houses at the river, they live on the river. Floating villages. Houseboats, basically. Houses (again, homemade) on bamboo platforms, tied to empty oil barrels, then anchored to the sea floor. They do it because every year, during the rainy season, the river expands to several times its dry season size (and depth), and they would die otherwise. (This is as opposed to the strategy of the city dwellers who live near the river, who, in an effort to stay at road level, design for their houses a series of stilts made of unsupported, uneven, and generally not entirely straight, tree branches.) I hate to seem like I’m romanticizing such poverty, but for them it’s not a lack of wealth, it’s a removal from the wealth system. Does that make sense? (This makes sense in my head, but it might require a blog post of its own to fully explain.Man, even when I'm a tourist in Cambodia I wind up talking about poverty and social ills!)
Fisher, in high-tech fishing vehicle.
It’s kind of hard to see from the picture, but this is actually in the middle of a river, and all of these houses are floating (and all the trees have their roots underwater.)
Similar are the farmers who live further along the river. They have houses on land (though the houses are often made of little more than twigs, bamboo, and mud). And again, they live off the land, growing rice and other crops, generally using an ox to power their carts. I think much of it is sustenance farming, and the rest are family farms. This isn’t to say there aren’t corporate rice farms (there are, and a lot of them) but these are something entirely separate, something that completely doesn’t exist in Canada.
I swear to fucking god this picture was taken yesterday and not eight hundred years ago, and those are *seven* actual people living in that house (perhaps more).
Sustenance farmer kids! The kids seem to love the boat. Much time during the trip is spent waving to children on the shore. Much fun.
Second fun thing about the boat trip, and probably most dramatic, was an incredible section of the ride right in the middle. You see, most of the time, the boat is heading down a wide wide river. Most of the river is covered in floating vegetation and floating villages. But, there has been cleared a section in the middle probably 20 or 30 metres wide; like a highway down the middle of the river. But this particular boat has a route that passes through protected nature areas. And apparently in Cambodia, it’s fine for large motorboats to travel through protected nature areas at high speeds, as long as their route isn’t too wide. And too wide is any wider than the boat. The boat is literally brushing up against weeds on either side. And that’s fine (except when 2 boats need to pass, which happened once during our trip). What’s less fine are the trees. Because trees are essentially the shape of an inverted pyramid. So even ifthe tree won’t interfere with the boat at water level, there will be branches that interfere higher up… say, at the level of your neck. Moving at 30 or 40 km/hr. A sharp tree branch, protruding into the boat.
Seriously, boat width.
The solution, and it’s a rather genius one in how simple and effective it is, is a bright red curtain made of a light tarp that can be pulled down over the openings at the side of the boat. It creates an amazing effect in the boat, as you’re in a bright red cocoon, with branches and leaves and plants whipping and scratching along the outside of the tarp (what’s less fun is the part of the tarp that wasn’t secured at the bottom, and would flap in the wind, occasionally allowing a persistent and sharp branch in to attack the Spanish woman unfortunate enough to sit in front of it.) Still quite exciting, and a damn lot of fun.
View from inside the red cocoon. Also a view of Dave and Natalie, my partners-in-travel.
And finally, and I suppose this originates from the (in many ways) terribleness of the trip: the sense of community. I’ve felt this before, in overcrowded buses (or, once, a crashed bus), in classes with terrible profs, during huge storms. It’s a unique sense of group belonging that seems to only develop out of collectively surviving a horrible experience. You know, lots of joking, knowing looks, extra support for those not handling the situation well, getting excited if you see them out in the ‘real world’… But seriously, the trip wasn’t horrible… for the most part.
PS: Five points to the first person who can identify the source of the title of this post, sans google.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:46 PM ICT Room 228, Salina Hotel Siem Reap, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia
I suppose we all knew this was coming. At some point, in going to a foreign country, everyone winds up eating some weird ass food, then either telling people about it later, or, for those tech-savvy 21st century travelers, they blog about it.
And generally, my trip’s actually been pretty disappointing on the weird foods front. I had heard such exotic tales, of insect eating, a dish called still-beating cobra heart, and, of course, balut. (PS: best balut reaction video ever here.) Balut is everywhere here (though I have not yet summoned up the particular combination of alcohol and testicular fortitude required to eat such a thing), but other than that, the food seems pretty normal. I mean Asian normal – curries, stir-fries, rice, soy sauce, a very strong Cambodian fish sauce called prahoc, lots of lemongrass, lots of amazing tropical fruit shakes.
Tonight was a bit different. It’s our last night in Siem Reap, so we went out for dinner with Kris, who runs the NGO from the administrative side. Kris is awesome… very quiet, but very funny, very sharp, incredibly organized. If it weren’t for her, the NGO would fall apart in a matter of days. Previous experience looking at what she eats for lunch threw up warning bells about her food choices, but it’s our last night and we wanted Khmer food and she knew where to find it.
Now a quick note: we had a fair bit of experience with Khmer food, but it mostly fell into 2 categories: either tourist-catering restaurant Khmer food (which tones down some dishes and ditches others) and street food (which normally keeps it simple: fried rice or noodles with veg and meat, and maybe a fruit shake). The restaurant we went to was a bit different.
Me and Natalie arrived before Kris and notice that not only is the patronage entirely Khmer, but the menu is too – a good sign. Aside from the names of Western beers, there is not one word of English on the menu. After a slightly tense 45-minute wait, Kris does show, and we let her order for us (we have little other option). She ordered 4 dishes. Dish 1 was French fries – I think partially as a joke, partially because of the other food that was coming. Like many Cambodian French fries (I’ve now had 3 or 4 experiences) they were shoestring fries, fried until crispy throughout, and served with a too-sweet homemade ketchup. Good, tho. Next dish was some kind of stir-fried chicken thing that was pretty good.
Dish 3 was where it got a bit odd. She described it as ‘beef’; a more accurate name would be ‘raw fermented beef salad’. Food is always a bit sketchy in Cambodia, but there’s a couple things you never eat unless you’re absolutely sure: first is uncooked vegetables, because they are likely washed in the disease-ridden Cambodian tap water. Second thing you need to be very very careful with is meat, because meat has diseases, obviously – and you NEVER GODDAMN EAT IT RAW, EVER. And the final thing you never eat without knowing for absolute sure – not just in Cambodia, but this is a good everywhere rule – is fermented stuff. Because you know other process bears a striking resemblance to the fermentation process? The rotting process. So that dish was a bit iffy.
Then there’s Dish 4. Continuing her streak of understatement, Kris referred to this dish as ‘chicken soup’. And it was chicken soup, a bit unfamiliarly flavoured, and the whole, oddly-shaped potato in it was a bit off-putting. But what I’m writing about is the rest of the soup, which would be charitably referred to as ‘chicken meat’, though there seemed to be a deliberate attempt to avoid any part of the chicken that westerners would refer to as ‘meat’. There were chicken feet, liver, some bits filled with shatters of bone like tiny shrapnel (damnit, Landmine Museum on the brain again!). Then there was this… thing, that I ate. It was rubbery and black and really weirdly shaped. Kris, who has ordered this dish before, when I asked her what it was, simply shrugged. We decided, in the end, it was an inside-out lung.
And I hate to say something so stereotypical, but you know what? It tasted kind of like chicken.
Sidenote: yes, I know I previously mentioned struggling with diarrhea and now I’m discussing eating fermented meat, but you know… shut up.
Second sidenote: yes, I did have some of the fermented beef salad. Not bad. It did not taste like chicken.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:03 PM ICT The Cambodia Land Mine Museum 32km outside Siem Reap, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia
Today, I visited the Cambodia Land Mine Museum, a small but amazing museum about Cambodia’s dark history of landmines. The wars of the twentieth century that ravaged Cambodia continue to affect Cambodian life in many ways. But among the worst of the reminders of war are landmines. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. The mines come from the Khmer Rouge, who primarily laid them along the Vietnamese border, to help prevent an attack from the Vietnamese (who were raging a separate war with Cambodia throughout the 70s). But the mines also come from the Vietnamese themselves, from the Soviets, and, of course, from the Americans. American planes dropped thousands and thousands of landmines over the countryside. Many of the mines are about the size and shape of a large hockey puck – easily disguised in tall grass, in the water in Cambodia’s many many rice paddies, or even mistaken as toys by Cambodian children.
It is estimated that, even today, there are somewhere between 3 and 6 million active landmines around (of course, there are no official records of how many or where they are). You do see landmine victims around a lot – the NGO where I’ve been working is right near a physical disability rehabilitation centre, and you see quite a few people – adults and children – missing limbs, scarred from old burns.
The Land Mine Museum itself – besides documenting the tragedy of landmines – is perhaps most impressive for its founder, a Khmer man named Aki Ra. Aki Ra was a child solider with the Khmer Rouge. He learned to shoot a gun at age 5, before he could read. He worked for the Khmer Rouge, then for the Vietnamese when they took power, then for the Cambodian army, working as a miner – laying mines. At some point, though, he realized the error of his ways, and since the mid 90s, has been working tirelessly to clear landmines, often using little more than a shovel, a screwdriver, and a long tree branch. He has since worked with UN agencies and NGOs, helping them with his considerable experience both laying and clearing landmines. He estimates that he has likely cleared over 50 000 landmines over the years.
The museum, besides a lot of very interesting information and pictures of Aki Ra at work, is full of diffused landmines - literally thousands of them, in addition to heaps of other military implements – mortars, giant guns, even Khmer Rouge uniforms. And the museum also operates as a school for two dozen disadvantaged Cambodian children. And they do outreach to teach Cambodian people how to recognize mines, and what to do if they see one.
As an added bonus, the museum (slash school slash outreach centre) is funded through a Canadian NGO (woo Canada!) called The Cambodia Land Mine Museum Relief Fund. It seems to be about as worthwhile a cause as you could find.
August 20, 2008 12:11am ICT Angkor near Siem Reap, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia
How many World Heritage Sites have you visited today?
Because for me it’s one. Angkor is the general name given to the hundreds (literally) of Buddhist and Hindu temples scattered around Cambodia, all built between the 10th and 15th centuries by the Khmer empire. This was the height of Cambodian culture, and the temples remain the dominant point of pride for Cambodians – it’s in the souvenir shops, it’s on the money, it’s on the flag for God’s sake! Of course, though great in their time, many of the temples were essentially lost for a good 500 years, until being rediscovered by the French when they colonized Cambodia, and though the temples are made of sandstone, some of them are showing their age.
This is the first and last photo with me in it – because shortly after this photo was taken, I became an unphotographable ball of sweat.
The central, most famous temple is Angkor Wat. This is the big one. It’s over 50m tall, and is surrounded by a 4km long moat. To enter is, you walk along a long stone path over the water, then you come to a huge building. However, you quickly realize the building is only 1 room deep, and is, in fact, merely the gateway to another long stone path, then the actual temple. Then, two floors up, there is a large rooftop area with five giant towers.
This tower starts on the third floor - yeah, it's big.
And everywhere are statues, beautiful complex carvings along almost every single surface, interesting shrines throughout, and lots of strange nooks and crannies to explore. It’s hard to explain Angkor Wat, except with superlatives – it’s the biggest, most detailed, most ostentatious, most badass Hindu temple you’ll ever see.
An example of intricately-detailed wall carving…
…and it continues all along this wall.
Next I went to Bayon, the central temple in the walled city of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom, at one point many moons past, was the capital of Cambodia – a mecca of art and culture and religion. It’s still filled with temples in various stages of disrepair – some just crumbled piles of rock, others, like Bayon, much more put together. Bayon is odd though, because approaching it, it doesn’t looks like much more than a big pile of rocks. It’s only once you get inside that you find the complex network of corridors and tall tall rooms, each with an open roof to allow for a thin shaft of light to enter. The temple works on about 3 levels, though each level meanders up and down, and the design is open-concept enough that you can often jump down from a room into the hallway below. Bayon is also slightly falling apart (more so than Angkor Wat, which is immaculately preserved, but still relatively in one piece).
Bayon: It kind of looks crappy from far away.
The fact it’s in an early stage of decay is actually what makes it my favorite (of the limited parts I’ve seen). You’ll be walking down a corridor, the walls covered in detailed carving depicting hundreds of men and elephants riding off to battle, then you turn a corner and it’s a messy pile of stones – and often the stones still have a face covered in detailed carvings of a different scene, long since fallen apart.
The temple’s slightly dilapidated nature also brings up one of the oddities of Angkor – you can go anywhere. There are a couple areas roped off because they’re doing restoration work, and the highest tower at Angkor Wat has been roped off since some tourists fell down a few months ago, but other than that, tourists have free reign. The most there will be is an occasional sign (and I mean occasional – maybe a half dozen signs total in all of Bayon) saying ‘Climb at own risk’ or ‘Do not touch’. Maybe 2 staff per temple to keep an eye on things. I saw a particularly adventurous tourist walking around Angkor Wat, by use of a 5-inch wide ledge that runs the way around the building. It's a great sense of freedom, and very very fun.
But, the big thing that makes Bayon famous are the giant smiling Buddha faces that adorn the towers on top of Bayon. Each tower has four faces – one in each direction – and right now that totals 36 faces (I believe), though apparently it was over 200 at one point. Several of the faces are over 3m tall, and many are close enough (when standing on the roof) to reach out and touch (and of course, even though they’re eight hundred years old, you can reach out and touch, because as stated previously, no rules.)
The final temple I saw on my woefully short trip to Angkor (you can buy a weeklong pass to Angkor – and people often do) was the temple Ta Prohm. Now I mentioned Angkor Wat was carefully tended, and Bayon looked a little rough around the edges. When efforts were being made to restore the temples, someone – a genius, likely – had the idea to not restore Ta Prohm – to allow the symbiotic relationship between temple and nature to continue unabated. It’s a nice temple, don’t get me wrong, but what’s truly stunning are the trees slowly enveloping the structure.
I want you to stare at this picture for a minute, then think how rare it is to see a tree forced to adapt and change shape to fit the building around it. I want you to consider that many trees in this area are over 200 years old, and how old this building truly is.
I just remembered one of the fun side-effects of my digestive problems: So I've been taking an Immodium-like medicine called, subtly, Gastro-Stop (don't worry, it's not some weird Cambodian brand... it's a weird Australian brand that Natalie, the girl I'm working with, gave me).
Anyway, what's bloggable about it is the cover art. I'm posting a picture, and I'd just like you to consider, based on the fact that it's an anti-diarrhea medication, what is this picutre supposed to represent? It's like a surrealist representation of digestive problems... my digestive problems make me feel like a fried egg that glows blue.
August 17, 2008 1:00 AM ICT Room 228, Salina Hotel Siem Reap, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia
Reading over the posts I wrote, I realised I've made two references to illness that made it sound like I'm very sick. I'm not. I've had some diarrhea last couple days, and last night was feeling a bit feverish, but nothing too bad. 90% of the time I feel absolutely fine. Work is easing up, as I mentioned, and I plan on taking Sunday off for rest and relaxation.
Something like half of tourists to Southeast Asia get some sort of sick. And if I need, Kantha Bopha is just a tuk tuk away.
Rooster, chillaxing outside a clothing store in downtown Phnom Penh. 
A gecko, blending into the scenery at Bayon temple. They do the same thing on the walls of hotels and restaurants. 
Somewhere I have some pictures of monkeys. But I can’t find them. So here’s a picture of some dogs at Bayon temple. (Aww, puppy!!) This country has a lot of random dogs, not apparently belonging to anyone, but looking pretty healthy, and surprisingly quiet and well-behaved.
A whole bunch of tropical plants on the water, all with roots on the sea floor.
Very cool selection of tropical plants by the riverside.
Tree near Angkor Wat. It’s hard to see from this tree, but this particular species seems to die in sections, so you’ll see a tree where the bottom half of the leaves are dead and drooped over, but the top is green and perky.
A tree at Bayon temple.
And, of course, the incredible trees with spider-web-like trunks that are invading Ta Promh.
