Welcome everyone to my fabulous recap of what I have been up to for the past two weeks, namely travelling to Cambodia. What follows will be mostly pictures, but as I have none from the beginning of the trip, you will have to settle for me simply telling you about it.
On Christmas morning I drove to No Bai airport with my host-dad and got on a plane to Phnom Penh. We had a quick stop-over in Laos before arriving around noon in Cambodia. I was met by a group of SALTers who I had met way back in orientation and had become friends with. There was Lynanne, Liz, Michael and Nicole. We spent the day checking out the sights in Phnom Penh such as Diamond Island, the Russian Market, Sambo the elephant, and the best burger I've had in South East Asia. The next day we met up with several other MCC staff from the region and headed for Sihanoukville, a town on the coast where we anticipated 3 days of fun in the sun. Amazingly enough, Sihanoukville delivered exactly that. We spent a day on the beach, a day snorkelling, and a day just enjoying the town. It was quite nice even though we had been informed the day before we left that Sihanoukville is the fourth worst beach in the world. The reason: sewage being pumped into the ocean there. I didn't notice sewage at all, so I thought Sihanoukville was great.
From Sihanoukville we went to Siem Reap, the town just outside the Angkor Wat ruins. There we spent a couple days (including New Years) enjoying the town and relaxing. On the 2nd my friends left me alone in Phnom Penh and it was then that I finally had my opening to go to the ruins. The head of MCC is South East Asia, Andy, is a huge fan of the ruins at Ankor Wat and so he gave me all sorts of hints and tips for how to go about visiting the various ruins and also hooked me up with a driver, Chon (John). The way people in Cambodia get around is by Tuk-Tuk (pictured below). Its essentially a carriage pulled around by a motorcycle.
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| John enjoying some downtime while I visit a temple |
The most important thing to know about Angkor, is that Angkor Wat itself is only a small, albiet important, part of the overall picture. There are dozens of temples (wats), city ruins, statues, and monasteries in a 40 km area, and Angkor Wat is merely one of them. My trip started with visiting Angkor Thom, a city that dwarfed Angkor Wat and was build some time after.
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| I can't take credit for this map, but it gives you some sense of scale |
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| The gate to Angkor Thom |
My first Angkor Thom stop was Bayon, a temple.
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| Bayon in the morning |
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| Faces of the King adorn everything |
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| A small sample of the carvings on the walls of Bayon |
Immediately adjacent to Bayon is a terrace decorated with elephants, one of the most sacred animals in Cambodia.
One of the really cool things about Angkor is that even though the place is in ruins, it still functions as a place of worship for Buddhists. Every place I went I ran into monks, and every temple has a functioning altar to the Buddha where people pray, light incense, and donate money.
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| Visiting temples is tiring even for the most pious of people |
One of my favourite places to visit was Ta Keo. It was easily the most difficult climbs, but was still really cool.
I'll mention it here that another thing that makes Angkor really cool is that they really haven't built it up. You don't walk on board walks or anything and you can largely go wherever you want. This also means that you climb up some insane stairs.
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| All that said, some parts are supported through reconstruction efforts |
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| The ladies at the bottom said that I was the most skilled climber of these stairs that they had seen. |
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| Even German Anarchists enjoy visiting Angkor |
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| Piles of rubble everywhere |
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| The towers of Angkor Wat in the distance |
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| Elephant decorations |
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| Buddha with a parasol. I don't have anything else to say |
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| Neak Pean, one of my favourite places at Angkor |
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| Sometimes information about the site was just out of reach |
While I'm not terribly artistically inclined, I did find many of the carvings at Angkor to be spectacular.
By the second day, I was so efficient in visiting Wats that I had completed all the Wats I was supposed to see in half a day in only a few hours, so I decided to go visit Bataney Srei. While it was nice, it was easily the busiest site I visited.
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| The gate to Bataney Srei, and a throng of tourists |
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| Bataney Srei was like the other temples, but in miniature. |
The final place I visited was Angkor Wat itself. I had been told to arrive at noon to beat the hordes of tourists, ignore everything as you come in and head straight for the central tower structure and climb it before the tourists return from lunch. With that in mind, I followed the instructions to the letter, I ran through the nearly empty city and got to the central towers and was greeted with this sign:
and this one
Thoroughly disillusioned with Angkor Wat I kept walking until I got to the causeway opposite the one I entered at. Once I calmed my fury to a low boil, I toured the place in reverse.
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| Angkor Wat from behind |
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| It was infested with monkeys. Luckily I didn't have any glasses for them to steal this time. |
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| There were more carvings than I cared to look at. They were all magnificent though |
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| The towers that I was unable to climb |
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| Much of the original city was made of wood, leaving vast areas of open space |
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| Half the causeway was restored, half still waiting for it |
All in all my trip was amazing. I had a lot of fun and I'm re-energised for working at The Gioi.
