Cambodia Part 3 - Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh is a crazy and chaotic city. Many say it is the real Asia. Others cannot cope with the traffic, the smells, the way it confronts your senses. I liked it from the moment I arrived.

Located where the Tonle Sap and Tonle Bassac Rivers meet the mighty Mekong, there is a beauty to be found amongst the hustle and bustle. The riverfront is lined with elegant old old buildings and a cool breeze blows off the water and along tree-lined streets.

It is hard to believe that in 1975 the residents of the city were forced to evacuate by Pol Pot to go work in the country. It is a place desperate to recover and optimistically looking to the future but the horrors of the past are a prominent part of any visit to the capital of Cambodia.

Nothing can quite prepare you for the gruesome story of what Pol Pot and his henchmen did to their own people. First stop on a tour of Phnom Penh is Tuol Sleng Museum, a school that was converted to Security Prison 21, where thousands were tortured before being transported to the Killing Fields to be executed.

The black and white faces of the men, women and children who were killed is haunting.

The Killing Fields themselves are about 15km south of the city, the tranquil rural setting somehow feeling not quite right. The centrepiece of this moving place is the Memorial Stupa, which contains the skulls of over 8000 people stacked high.

It is a history that is disturbing and sickening but that needs to be told. The remains of all those people are still crying out for justice. Hard to believe it was only about 30 years ago and that the rest of the world sat back and let it happen. Mans cruelty to man is astonishing.

There are some peaceful oases amongst the city, being the Royal Palace and the National Museum. The Royal Palace is famous for the Silver Pagoda, with its silver floor tiles and ancient relics. The walls surrounding the couryard are adorned with amazing murals telling the history of the Khmer people.

The National Museum of Cambodia is a beautiful building in itself but its treasures are the ancient Khmer artifacts, including many from the temples of Angkor, although there is even pre-Angkorian pieces as old as the fifth century. The beautiful couryard is a nice place to have a rest or at least get your photo taken!

The streets of Phnom Penh are busy with traffic, road works and business. I hired a moto for the day to get me around. You get an idea of the traffic in the photo below.

There are however plenty of wide boulevards, especially around the palace.

There are also lots of charming smaller streets.

You don't have to go far, though, to see the real Cambodia, a poor but very beautiful rural country with water stretching to the horizon filled with growing rice. It is well worth a visit or two!

Cambodia Part 2 - Siem Reap

The gateway to Angkor Wat is Cambodia's second largest city, Siem Reap. More like a big town, Siem Reap is growing rapidly due to tourism but the old part of town retains its charm, with grand French buildings, tree-lined streets and a peaceful river. An early morning view from the balcony of my colonial hotel is shown below.

Cambodia is a country full of water, especially as the wet season comes to an end. The slow flowing Siem Reap River is a nice place to find some shade, watch the world go by and recover after a day amongst the temples.

Siem Reap has become one of the major tourist destinations of the world and the old town is set up for the backpacking crowd, with the usual cafes, restaurants, bars, travel agents and souvenir stores. Two of the popular streets are shown below including the aptly named 'Pub Street' on the left.

The preferred means of transport in this part of the world is the 'moto'  (motorbike or tuk tuk) and you can grab a quick lift somewhere or hire a driver for the day. The shot below is taken as I am being shown around by my driver, Mr. Sok.

The people of Cambodia are very poor and the tourist is a major source of income. You see more young people than old, with so many of the older generations 'eliminated' under Pol Pot. Children go to school 6 days a week, either for 4 hours in the morning or 4 hours in the afternoon, so you always see lots of them around, either playing or trying to sell you a guide book, postcard, some jewellery or a bottle of water.

The elderly are given great respect and the extended family tend to live together. The monks are a common site in their bright orange robes. Labour is cheap, so you often see large groups of workers doing the cleaning and maintenance around the city.

There is not a huge amount of wild areas in Cambodia, with rice fields, which actually look quite beautiful, covering most of the land as in the photo on the left below. However, there are natural areas and around Siem Reap there is an opportunity to enjoy the forests and get away from the crowds. Plenty of birds can be heard, the water is full of fish and I happened to come across this group of monkeys shown on the right below sitting by the road.

I guess Siem Reap's raison d'etre is that it is the place to stay when visiting the temples of Angkor but a few days in this colonial French town will have you wanting to come back again and enjoy its allure.

Cambodia Part 1 - The Temples of Angkor

There are a few places in the world that really take your breath away. One of those are the temples built by the Angkor Empire from the 10th to the 12th century.

The jewel in the crown is the spectacular domes of Angkor Wat. This massive structure faces west, synonomous with funeral rites, so it is was probably built as a tomb.

No matter which angle you look at the complex it is impressive. The shot below is looking from the opposite, east side.

The temples mean so much to the Khmer people and they are a real source of  identity for a nation that has been through so much hell. The area actually contains hundreds of temples in addition to the famous Angkor Wat and it was the centre of the empire that ruled over most of South-East Asia from around the year 800 until 1400. There would have been thousands of buildings but as only the temples were made of stone they are all that remain, in various states of disrepair, adding to the atmosphere.

One of the most spectacular of the ruins is Ta Prohm, also known as the jungle temple. Here the forest has reclaimed most of the area, with massive tree roots covering the temple walls.

Nearby there are twin temples, more recent in origin, built late in the 12th century. The first photo is Thommanon and below that is Chau Say Tevoda.

One of the very different temples is that of Prasat Kravan as it is built out of brick, instead of the sandstone that most of the temples in the region are made of. Prasat Kravan is also one of the oldest structures, built in about 921, and inside its five towers are spectacular carvings. How they managed to make such art out of brick is a technique lost to modern man.

Another of the older temples, located a fair distance north of all the others and therefore less visited is Banteay Srei. This small temple was built around 967 out of a pinkish-coloured stone and the torrential rain that fell as we visited this site seemed to add to the experience. Many of it's impressive carvings have been moved to the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

The centre of the empire was found at Angkor Thom, the walled city, about 10 square kilometers in size. It would have been a grand sight with 8m high walls, 20m high gates and surrounded by a 100m wide moat, apparently filled with hungry crocs.

The Bayon is one of the most astonishing structures in the city with over 50 towers covered in carved heads, looking at you from all angles.

The Baphuon is unusual in that is built as a pyramid and contains a long elevated walkway that draws you into the temple.

A small temple amongst the trees just outside the royal enclosure is Preah Palilay. Some distance away from most of the ruins, I found myself walking alone imagining what life was like back in the Angkor period. The jungle again is working on taking back what man has claimed.

Just outside the royal enclosure, facing the central square is the 350m long Terrace of the Elephants, where the king could view his subjects. There are a number of small temples called the Kleangs in the large open area.

You wonder when you visit a World Heritage site like Angkor if you will get 'temple fatigue' but the three days I spent walking in the footsteps of the mighty Angkor Kings found me continually amazed at the size of the buildings, the detail in their structure and the incredible carvings. It really is a national treasure for the people of Cambodia.

Living in the Tropics

Hot, hotter, really hot. Humid, very humid, thunderstorm. Welcome to Bangkok!

The mornings are a nice part of the day, with the sun rising and the temperature at it's minimum - at this time of year about 25-27 degrees. In my 'mooban' it is very quiet and the birds are chirpping away outside. It is interesting seeing the dreaded Indian Mynahs as a non-dominant bird - they look identical to the pests back in Australia but seem to be a lower part of the food chain here. The view of the sunrise from my bedroom balcony is shown below.

The day gets steadily hotter but inside air conditoned classrooms it is actually more pleasant than I was used to in back in Australia teaching in February in non air conditoned conditions. However, outside the temperature is rising above 30.

By the afternoon the maximum has been reached - around 35 degrees or so at this time of year.

From May until the end of October it is the wet season in Thailand. You really look forward to the thunderstorm that inevitably arrives sometime between about 4pm and 7pm each day. It certainly cools things down for a while.

It takes sometime for the storm to hit - you can see it coming from far away but it seems to move slowly. The street vendors continue with their business seemingly able to read the conditions and leaving waterproofing their stalls in plastic tarpaulins until the last moment.

The sky is amazing as the storm approaches, with huge clouds growing higher and higher ready to dump their loads on the city below.

The sky gets darker and darker and the wind starts to pick up. You need to make sure you shut all the windows before the rain arrives.

Then it hits. The flashes of lightning, the deafening thunder and the torrential rain. If you get caught in this, an umbrella would be no use at all; the roads become rivers and the rain can come in sideways.

Enormous amounts of water fall, often for as little as 10 minutes or sometimes up to an hour. Bangkok starts to resemble the "Venice of the East" that it used to be called and if you are going somewhere, you give up any plans of arriving at your destination on time.

It certainly keeps the garden green - I have not needed to water anything since I have been here - God has taken care of that! The photo below shows the side of my house slowly turning into a lake.

They tell me it will stop soon and by November the rain will disappear. We then go into the dry season and the temperature steadily climbs until it peaks in April and then the rains come again.

I think I will miss the rain.