at long last...
So here's the blog I started to write two days ago and got interrupted again by a power failure and then had no time and grrr frustrating. More follows afterwards.
**i should take my own advice...**
... and save often when i'm writing these things. i'd just been writing for 40 minutes, filling in the gap since my last entry with abandon, pouring the information out of my brain through my fingertips, when the computer froze, and now it's gone. i've told nabia a million times. save often. i thought i saved once, but the computer in this internet cafe might wipe the desktop with each restart and now my temporary document doesn't even come up on a search.
it's really sad because i can't really conjure that information again. or don't think i can. once it comes out, it's out. i delete the information on the memory card, if you get my drift.
anyway. i'll try to do it again. wah. and i was in a really good mood, too. aargh.
i'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is a book about the universe and science - geology, physics, and chemistry so far - and, well, nearly everything, but written in such a casual and amusing way as to be readable and, in fact, enjoyable to your average amy. it details the lives of the scientists, their feuds and alliances, as well as their personal quirks. they're strange people, those scientists, and they have straaaaaange habits. one chemist liked to taste just a nip of every concotion he whipped up. it killed him in the end, though he was quite brilliant, and they don't know which of the toxic substances by which he was surrounded was the one that did him in. innnnnnnteresting. anyway, it's interesting to note how each book i read contributes to my perspective on what i'm seeing every day. this particular one causes me to take quite an enormous step backwards so that i can fit the universe and the fabric of spacetime into my field of vision. as well as molecules, atoms, quarks, etc... and it reminds me that there are truly brilliant minds out there that can change the entire world with one inspired paper. i hope that this is still possible in our paranoid sceptical world, but i think it is. one day soon, someone's going to have an idea on the level of "atoms are made of mostly nothing" "the world is not flat" "elements fit into a periodic table" "the universe began as a singular point and exploded" and it's going to change everything. i look forward to it. we're about due, i think.
anyway, i recommend the book.
hello there. i've been pining for a computer, keyboard, and time to write for more than a week now, and it's the last one that's been eluding me. The rest of our time in Phnom Penh was fine and... just... fine. each time we meet someone heading in that direction and they ask about it, i find myself having difficulty conjuring an image of the place. it just didn't make that big an impression. with Estelle, we found some decent food... we visited S-21 prison, a.k.a. Tuol Sleng museum, a.k.a. former secondary school, a.k.a. major prison/torture chambers for the Khmer Rouge. it was horrible. but well done. there were pictures, mugshot style, of many of the people executed there. there were stories from some prisoners. from some guards. i spent a lot of time reading the comment books, with all their "never forget"s and "this cannot happen again" but nothing actually happening and no promise of anyone actually being able to stop something like this from happening again. but it's nice that so many people mean well...
another thing we did in PP, one that was much more optimistic, was visit a school that two kiwis told us about in Ho Chi Minh City. It's the Global Child School and what they do is actually pay the students to come to school, for otherwise they and their families could not afford for them not to work. by "work," i mean collecting garbage or begging, but that modest income might be a large part of the family's whole. there are many many people with lost limbs due to mines left over from the war and i don't think job prospects are great... anyway, these kids range in age from 5-16 and they get $1 a day to come to school, where they can shower, eat, and learn. we visited 2 classrooms and saw 24 students, covering the entire age range, sitting there learning. they knew enough english to ask the usual questions (how old are you, where are you from) as well as some more probing ones to nabia (how many students in your classroom, how are your students). it was really inspiring. upstairs were three tiny tiny little girls, one of them nicknamed angel, learning how to type on one of the 6 computers in there. really excellent. made me want to sponsor. i'm going to continue to think about it.
some may be asking: what about the killing fields? didn't she go? i saw that movie... and no we didn't go. we decided not to go to the ones near phnom penh, as we heard they were a bit commercialized and i don't think i could handle that. the cu chi tunnels were as commercial as i could do. nothing involving skulls and photo ops. can't do it. anyway, we'd heard about some caves that served the same purpose further west - in Battambang, and we planned to stop there after Siem Reap. so we did not go. by the way, if you want to read up on some Cambodia history, get thee to Wikipedia. i didn't realize, before i went, that all this was so recent. there's my current events education for ya... i guess the school assembly just didn't sink in all the way. i didn't comprehend the scale. millions killed. millions. thanks to Brother Number One, Pol Pot. it's unbelievable. and by all accounts, he was unremarkable and unassuming in manner. i guess you never can tell.
we moved on from phnom penh, following Estelle and her very helpful French guidebook, le routard, to Kampong Thom, a province and city by the same name, where there were supposed to be some nice pre-Angkor temples. Besides, it would break up the trip between PP and Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is) on our way around the huge freshwater lake of Tonle Sap. Confused? follow yet another link to a map. i guess i'm just feeling linky today. work it out.
so we arrived and found ourselves a $3 room with the help of Estelle and her trusty le routard. we then each boarded our respective motorbike taxis for the requisite 90 minute bumpy ride out to the temple sites. my driver was named sithy, like "city" with a stress on the "tee," and he's a public secondary school English teacher. he taught me some Khmer words, he told me about his classroom of over 50 students, he told me about how he and his family moved in the '70s to a refugee camp just over the border in thailand and only came back in '92. it was a good and interesting ride past rice paddies and fields and water buffalo.
the temples were in a forest, and we were accompanied for much of the way by the shuffling of about 10 pairs of feet and the chattering of about 10 khmer children, all hoping we'd buy their identical silk scarves. we asked them to wait by the entrace and we'd look later, but it took a few requests until that sunk in. even so, after a moment of peaceful wandering, a rival gang found us and we surrendered and let them guide us about, which was actually kind of helpful. the temples were mostly lone towers in the midst of jungle, which was pretty cool, but they were quite run down and perhaps not as impressive when you can't take them in all together. and the original gang was less than happy to see us approach the exit with some of their rivals. one girl had a very sharp, very practiced, and very deadly "how could you?" face that cut right through. we gave them some money and ran away, cowering in the shadow of our guilt. motorbike ride back. more khmer words. khmer is hard, but lacks the tones of the other recent languages, so at least that was refreshing. unfortunately, the language contains 672 different vowels. maybe not quite that many, but something ridiculous.
we spent the night snug in our bugnets and woke the next morning to take yet another bus - this time all the way to siem reap. getting off the bus was an unparalleled experience. imagine, perhaps, piranhas that have been starved for 15 days, now toss in just enough food for one of them. watch them fight. that's how it was for us getting off the bus at siem reap. i am sure the tuk tuk drivers drew eachother's blood in their ferocity. they practically climbed over eachother to get to us. we yelled and pleaded and asked nicely and whispered and tried to walk away. eventually we got a little room to ourselves, with only one driver constantly poking his head in and asking where we were going and saying "i know that place i can take you good price cheap price no problem" every 2.7 seconds. eventually Estelle cursed at him in french, we tried to explain to him why we did not want to go with him (precisely because of the aggressiveness of his tactic), and we took a different driver, one who was quietly staring off into space, causing driver number 1 to curse back at us quite impressively, driving around near our ride in his tuk tuk, wasting both his petrol and his energy. shaken, we proceeded into town, which has its alleys of trendy looking restaurants and shops next to unpaved alleys filled with garbage and rag-clad children who have well-honed whining faces, but when you try to offer them food, they only take it sometimes. other times they just want the money.
side note: cambodia is expensive. that may sound ridiculous to you, but compared to the surrounding countries and given the fact that it's one of the poorest in the world, food and lodging are wowsa pricey. a meal was at least $2 and usually $3. elsewhere, we were splurging when we spent $2 on one dish. i don't know why prices are so very high (it wasn't just siem reap - it was also phnom penh and even kompong thom to a degree), but that might be why the people are so starved. even if they do make a little money by begging or some other means, it's not enough to pay for much. so dollars flew out of the wallet, along with riel, and that was that.
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we're in Bangkok now and it seems like forever ago we were in cambodia (though i guess 'twas mere days), but I can't very well skip angkor wat, so... it's awesome. i was worried, after all the hype, that it would just be really cool and not mindblowingly cool. but it was. first off, it's huge. i think i never really understood that it's not one building. well there is one building called angkor wat, and it's the biggest one and the entrance to the complex, but there is an enormous network of these monuments, including a walled city and temples dozens of kilometers away. those elephants must've worked HARD.
as soon as we arrived and waded though the mess at the bus station, we got into town and had some food so we'd have somewhere to stash our packs while one of us (na) scouted the nearby accomodation. she found a very nice place nearby and we booked in. Estelle was just about finished with us, and we were ready to part as well, so she went elsewhere, taking her guidebook with her. we planned to get a 3day pass to Angkor on the following day and take advantage of the "free sunset the day before" deal we'd heard about. we met two other americans at our hotel, both relative newbies on the southeast asia travel circuit: darlene, from canada, who'd been working in bangkok for 2 months and was on a weekend trip, and kim, from new joisey, taking a trip cuz there was a good airline ticket deal when she looked. nice. anyhow, they'd met on the plane from bangkok and joined up and were interested in going for sunset as well. so the four of us made a plan and after securing a tuk tuk driver (not in scant supply), we all took much needed afternoon rests. ahhh. airconditioning and the best. shower. ever. time came for departure and na and i waited downstairs. our trusty tuk tuk driver was nowhere to be found and the other drivers were ready to pounce. we waited until we could wait no more and then struck up an even better deal with the quiet driver who was waiting patiently on the side. very smiley, shy-seeming, cute dimples, name of sophalla. if ever anyone's going to angkor, i have his email address and can recommend him to you. we ended up using him for all three days to take us about between temples etc. he was great. even brought us little baked cakes his father makes in the mornings. awww.
anyhow, that first sunset from a temple on the top of a steep climb: phnom bakheng, it was, and you could see angkor a few kilometers away and it was just.... brilliant. a clear sunset with pinks and oranges and the glowing orb with just a few clouds to make that perfect shot. the golden sunlight warming the grey stone to that beautiful color i can't describe. the contrast of the light and shadow on the carvings. on the sanskrit in the doorway. woweewowowow. if it hadn't been for the BILLIONS of other tourists there, many on tours with their korean or japanese mongobuses, it might have been perfect.
after that, there was dinner etc. we met kim and another american from the plane: john an economics teacher currently teaching in bangkok for a bit. good times, good conversations. a word about the food in that country: cambodian food is similar to but not quite the same as it's neighbors. we had a bunch of fish there - specifically fish curry (the amok i mentioned) and sour fish soup. yum yum. they know how to use their lemongrass, let me tell you.
so next day we declined to get up for sunrise and instead made our way (with sophalla's help) to angkor wat around 9. we wandered the halls, chatted with a monk or two (each of whom was not quite begging, cuz i don't think that's allowed, but making us feel guilty enough that we knew they wanted some help but we felt cheated cuz monks aren't supposed to do that), climbed the extraordinarily narrow, steep stairs in the center... took billions of pictures... and walked the couple of kilometers around the outside, looking at the beautiful relief carvings of soldiers and gods and demons and animals and markets. really cool.
then we went back for lunch and resting. i like lunch and resting. then the afternoon was spent at ta prom, aka "the jungle temple." why'd they call it that? well, it's because it's in ruins and overgrown with huge old trees growing on the tops of walls. nabia made the observation that it helps to put the age of these places in perspective. that tree didn't start to grow until the wall was already ruined. and the wall wasn't ruined until after all the people were gone. and the trees are OLD. so that was a fun wander too. and the site of more pictures. heh.
that evening saw another dinner with john and kim and darlene too this time. more good conversation about buddhism and communism and their ideals vs practicalities (buddhism's supposed to be sustenance without overabundance but the temples are huge and extravagant, communism's supposed to be from each according to his means, to each according to his needs, but there are beggars and wealthy areas in laos and vietnam) and other such things. interesting.
next day was sunrise at angkor wat (drool) then off to the walled city of Angkor Thom and the many-faced temple of the Bayon. there are all these towers and each one has the same (well, almost the same - with unique cracks etc) face in the 4 cardinal directions. it's realy cool. just wait for the pictures. trust me.
a couple of smaller tempels on the way back for... lunch and resting.
then the afternoon we went to preah kahn, which is also ruins and with the trees and all, but set up differently, with small doorways and corridors in the shape of an x. from any of the main hallways you can see the central chamber. cooool. all so cool. and all covered with carvings and apsara (dancers) and.. just unbelievable amounts of work. sunset with kim at angkor wat, accompanied by some roasted corn and sticky rice in bamboo tubes. gave the extra couple of ears of corn we bought to some kids who looked like they needed firsts more than we needed seconds. the amount of people that streamed down the causeway of angkor wat as we sat there and watched the sun decend was astounding. hardly anyone went in, but hundreds and hundreds came out. that place is h-u-g-e huge.
the evening was something i'll touch on at the end. i'm not ready to write that part yet. be patient. it has to do with a cello and a hospital.
our final day we didn't watch sunrise but sophalla picked us up earlyish and we went to one of the temples that was very far out. sophalla's tuktuk came out unscathed on the other end of the bumpy roads, but we were a bit jarred and giving thanks for squishy seats. banteay srei, aka the citadel of women, is made from pink sandstone as opposed to the grey of the other sites. it's the women's temple because the carving is so fine, they say women must have done it. it was beautiful. beautiful. and the morning sun on our backs wasn't so bad either.
banteay samre on the way back and then to the hotel for... well you know.
we shopped a bit too.
our last afternoon and we chose to revisit a couple of favorites: jungle temple for some tree shots in the fading glow of dusk, and the bayon. cuz it's just awwwwwwesome. everywhere you turn, there are these calm strong faces. if you're paranoid, it could be scary, but i found it reassuring and gorgeous to get lost among them.
to the angkor wat parking lot just for postcards from the kids who'd been pestering us the last couple of days with "don't forget" "you buy from me" "where you from? capital washington dc" and then back to town. dinner of outstanding fresh veg spring rolls with tofu and fresh mint and yumminess, i think, and then sleep, though we did have an offer to go to the dance club with sophalla. :)
next morning we were off (oh, we decided, finally, to skip battambang and thus the other killing fields, due to a lack of time and the onset of a cold for nabia. just wanted to get the commute overwith), so we bade siem reap a farewell and went to bed. unfortunately there were some ants in the room (specifically sniffly nabia's), so it wasn't the best sleep ever...
to go back to the part i skipped: every saturday night on the road between angkor wat and siem reap there is a free cello concert called beatocello. it's a doctor, beat richsomething, who works at the new hospital there, giving a performance featuring some of his own work as well as classics, to raise awareness and money for their programs. it was excellently done, informative, and difficult. 65% of all cambodians have tuberculosis. the kids are rife with it and 80% of those who come to the (totally free) hospital would die if not immediately admitted. the mothers stay by the bedsides of their children, acting as calming influences as well as nurses for their kids in these unfamiliar sterile surroundings. the international organizations you'd come to think of as associated with this type of thing like unicef have sent representatives and made statements to the effect that the level of sophistication in the technology is too advanced for the economic reality of the country. so they want to introduce substandard care. not acceptable. not not not. so this guy is giving a weekly performance asking for money and for blood donations. we gave some money and took the dvd that many of you no doubt will be seeing in the future. a sad but important evening.
afterwards, we continued our conversation with kim about her engagement and recent marriage to her long-time friend over excellent lemongrass sour fish soup once again. he proposed to her on top of a mountain. hee.
ok. the next installment will feature our epic journey from siem reap across the border and finally to bangkok. characters include a cute brooklynite and a crabby khmer.
finally finally. i post the post.
talk SOONer than later.
love,
a
email me
**i should take my own advice...**
... and save often when i'm writing these things. i'd just been writing for 40 minutes, filling in the gap since my last entry with abandon, pouring the information out of my brain through my fingertips, when the computer froze, and now it's gone. i've told nabia a million times. save often. i thought i saved once, but the computer in this internet cafe might wipe the desktop with each restart and now my temporary document doesn't even come up on a search.
it's really sad because i can't really conjure that information again. or don't think i can. once it comes out, it's out. i delete the information on the memory card, if you get my drift.
anyway. i'll try to do it again. wah. and i was in a really good mood, too. aargh.
i'm reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is a book about the universe and science - geology, physics, and chemistry so far - and, well, nearly everything, but written in such a casual and amusing way as to be readable and, in fact, enjoyable to your average amy. it details the lives of the scientists, their feuds and alliances, as well as their personal quirks. they're strange people, those scientists, and they have straaaaaange habits. one chemist liked to taste just a nip of every concotion he whipped up. it killed him in the end, though he was quite brilliant, and they don't know which of the toxic substances by which he was surrounded was the one that did him in. innnnnnnteresting. anyway, it's interesting to note how each book i read contributes to my perspective on what i'm seeing every day. this particular one causes me to take quite an enormous step backwards so that i can fit the universe and the fabric of spacetime into my field of vision. as well as molecules, atoms, quarks, etc... and it reminds me that there are truly brilliant minds out there that can change the entire world with one inspired paper. i hope that this is still possible in our paranoid sceptical world, but i think it is. one day soon, someone's going to have an idea on the level of "atoms are made of mostly nothing" "the world is not flat" "elements fit into a periodic table" "the universe began as a singular point and exploded" and it's going to change everything. i look forward to it. we're about due, i think.
anyway, i recommend the book.
hello there. i've been pining for a computer, keyboard, and time to write for more than a week now, and it's the last one that's been eluding me. The rest of our time in Phnom Penh was fine and... just... fine. each time we meet someone heading in that direction and they ask about it, i find myself having difficulty conjuring an image of the place. it just didn't make that big an impression. with Estelle, we found some decent food... we visited S-21 prison, a.k.a. Tuol Sleng museum, a.k.a. former secondary school, a.k.a. major prison/torture chambers for the Khmer Rouge. it was horrible. but well done. there were pictures, mugshot style, of many of the people executed there. there were stories from some prisoners. from some guards. i spent a lot of time reading the comment books, with all their "never forget"s and "this cannot happen again" but nothing actually happening and no promise of anyone actually being able to stop something like this from happening again. but it's nice that so many people mean well...
another thing we did in PP, one that was much more optimistic, was visit a school that two kiwis told us about in Ho Chi Minh City. It's the Global Child School and what they do is actually pay the students to come to school, for otherwise they and their families could not afford for them not to work. by "work," i mean collecting garbage or begging, but that modest income might be a large part of the family's whole. there are many many people with lost limbs due to mines left over from the war and i don't think job prospects are great... anyway, these kids range in age from 5-16 and they get $1 a day to come to school, where they can shower, eat, and learn. we visited 2 classrooms and saw 24 students, covering the entire age range, sitting there learning. they knew enough english to ask the usual questions (how old are you, where are you from) as well as some more probing ones to nabia (how many students in your classroom, how are your students). it was really inspiring. upstairs were three tiny tiny little girls, one of them nicknamed angel, learning how to type on one of the 6 computers in there. really excellent. made me want to sponsor. i'm going to continue to think about it.
some may be asking: what about the killing fields? didn't she go? i saw that movie... and no we didn't go. we decided not to go to the ones near phnom penh, as we heard they were a bit commercialized and i don't think i could handle that. the cu chi tunnels were as commercial as i could do. nothing involving skulls and photo ops. can't do it. anyway, we'd heard about some caves that served the same purpose further west - in Battambang, and we planned to stop there after Siem Reap. so we did not go. by the way, if you want to read up on some Cambodia history, get thee to Wikipedia. i didn't realize, before i went, that all this was so recent. there's my current events education for ya... i guess the school assembly just didn't sink in all the way. i didn't comprehend the scale. millions killed. millions. thanks to Brother Number One, Pol Pot. it's unbelievable. and by all accounts, he was unremarkable and unassuming in manner. i guess you never can tell.
we moved on from phnom penh, following Estelle and her very helpful French guidebook, le routard, to Kampong Thom, a province and city by the same name, where there were supposed to be some nice pre-Angkor temples. Besides, it would break up the trip between PP and Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is) on our way around the huge freshwater lake of Tonle Sap. Confused? follow yet another link to a map. i guess i'm just feeling linky today. work it out.
so we arrived and found ourselves a $3 room with the help of Estelle and her trusty le routard. we then each boarded our respective motorbike taxis for the requisite 90 minute bumpy ride out to the temple sites. my driver was named sithy, like "city" with a stress on the "tee," and he's a public secondary school English teacher. he taught me some Khmer words, he told me about his classroom of over 50 students, he told me about how he and his family moved in the '70s to a refugee camp just over the border in thailand and only came back in '92. it was a good and interesting ride past rice paddies and fields and water buffalo.
the temples were in a forest, and we were accompanied for much of the way by the shuffling of about 10 pairs of feet and the chattering of about 10 khmer children, all hoping we'd buy their identical silk scarves. we asked them to wait by the entrace and we'd look later, but it took a few requests until that sunk in. even so, after a moment of peaceful wandering, a rival gang found us and we surrendered and let them guide us about, which was actually kind of helpful. the temples were mostly lone towers in the midst of jungle, which was pretty cool, but they were quite run down and perhaps not as impressive when you can't take them in all together. and the original gang was less than happy to see us approach the exit with some of their rivals. one girl had a very sharp, very practiced, and very deadly "how could you?" face that cut right through. we gave them some money and ran away, cowering in the shadow of our guilt. motorbike ride back. more khmer words. khmer is hard, but lacks the tones of the other recent languages, so at least that was refreshing. unfortunately, the language contains 672 different vowels. maybe not quite that many, but something ridiculous.
we spent the night snug in our bugnets and woke the next morning to take yet another bus - this time all the way to siem reap. getting off the bus was an unparalleled experience. imagine, perhaps, piranhas that have been starved for 15 days, now toss in just enough food for one of them. watch them fight. that's how it was for us getting off the bus at siem reap. i am sure the tuk tuk drivers drew eachother's blood in their ferocity. they practically climbed over eachother to get to us. we yelled and pleaded and asked nicely and whispered and tried to walk away. eventually we got a little room to ourselves, with only one driver constantly poking his head in and asking where we were going and saying "i know that place i can take you good price cheap price no problem" every 2.7 seconds. eventually Estelle cursed at him in french, we tried to explain to him why we did not want to go with him (precisely because of the aggressiveness of his tactic), and we took a different driver, one who was quietly staring off into space, causing driver number 1 to curse back at us quite impressively, driving around near our ride in his tuk tuk, wasting both his petrol and his energy. shaken, we proceeded into town, which has its alleys of trendy looking restaurants and shops next to unpaved alleys filled with garbage and rag-clad children who have well-honed whining faces, but when you try to offer them food, they only take it sometimes. other times they just want the money.
side note: cambodia is expensive. that may sound ridiculous to you, but compared to the surrounding countries and given the fact that it's one of the poorest in the world, food and lodging are wowsa pricey. a meal was at least $2 and usually $3. elsewhere, we were splurging when we spent $2 on one dish. i don't know why prices are so very high (it wasn't just siem reap - it was also phnom penh and even kompong thom to a degree), but that might be why the people are so starved. even if they do make a little money by begging or some other means, it's not enough to pay for much. so dollars flew out of the wallet, along with riel, and that was that.
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we're in Bangkok now and it seems like forever ago we were in cambodia (though i guess 'twas mere days), but I can't very well skip angkor wat, so... it's awesome. i was worried, after all the hype, that it would just be really cool and not mindblowingly cool. but it was. first off, it's huge. i think i never really understood that it's not one building. well there is one building called angkor wat, and it's the biggest one and the entrance to the complex, but there is an enormous network of these monuments, including a walled city and temples dozens of kilometers away. those elephants must've worked HARD.
as soon as we arrived and waded though the mess at the bus station, we got into town and had some food so we'd have somewhere to stash our packs while one of us (na) scouted the nearby accomodation. she found a very nice place nearby and we booked in. Estelle was just about finished with us, and we were ready to part as well, so she went elsewhere, taking her guidebook with her. we planned to get a 3day pass to Angkor on the following day and take advantage of the "free sunset the day before" deal we'd heard about. we met two other americans at our hotel, both relative newbies on the southeast asia travel circuit: darlene, from canada, who'd been working in bangkok for 2 months and was on a weekend trip, and kim, from new joisey, taking a trip cuz there was a good airline ticket deal when she looked. nice. anyhow, they'd met on the plane from bangkok and joined up and were interested in going for sunset as well. so the four of us made a plan and after securing a tuk tuk driver (not in scant supply), we all took much needed afternoon rests. ahhh. airconditioning and the best. shower. ever. time came for departure and na and i waited downstairs. our trusty tuk tuk driver was nowhere to be found and the other drivers were ready to pounce. we waited until we could wait no more and then struck up an even better deal with the quiet driver who was waiting patiently on the side. very smiley, shy-seeming, cute dimples, name of sophalla. if ever anyone's going to angkor, i have his email address and can recommend him to you. we ended up using him for all three days to take us about between temples etc. he was great. even brought us little baked cakes his father makes in the mornings. awww.
anyhow, that first sunset from a temple on the top of a steep climb: phnom bakheng, it was, and you could see angkor a few kilometers away and it was just.... brilliant. a clear sunset with pinks and oranges and the glowing orb with just a few clouds to make that perfect shot. the golden sunlight warming the grey stone to that beautiful color i can't describe. the contrast of the light and shadow on the carvings. on the sanskrit in the doorway. woweewowowow. if it hadn't been for the BILLIONS of other tourists there, many on tours with their korean or japanese mongobuses, it might have been perfect.
after that, there was dinner etc. we met kim and another american from the plane: john an economics teacher currently teaching in bangkok for a bit. good times, good conversations. a word about the food in that country: cambodian food is similar to but not quite the same as it's neighbors. we had a bunch of fish there - specifically fish curry (the amok i mentioned) and sour fish soup. yum yum. they know how to use their lemongrass, let me tell you.
so next day we declined to get up for sunrise and instead made our way (with sophalla's help) to angkor wat around 9. we wandered the halls, chatted with a monk or two (each of whom was not quite begging, cuz i don't think that's allowed, but making us feel guilty enough that we knew they wanted some help but we felt cheated cuz monks aren't supposed to do that), climbed the extraordinarily narrow, steep stairs in the center... took billions of pictures... and walked the couple of kilometers around the outside, looking at the beautiful relief carvings of soldiers and gods and demons and animals and markets. really cool.
then we went back for lunch and resting. i like lunch and resting. then the afternoon was spent at ta prom, aka "the jungle temple." why'd they call it that? well, it's because it's in ruins and overgrown with huge old trees growing on the tops of walls. nabia made the observation that it helps to put the age of these places in perspective. that tree didn't start to grow until the wall was already ruined. and the wall wasn't ruined until after all the people were gone. and the trees are OLD. so that was a fun wander too. and the site of more pictures. heh.
that evening saw another dinner with john and kim and darlene too this time. more good conversation about buddhism and communism and their ideals vs practicalities (buddhism's supposed to be sustenance without overabundance but the temples are huge and extravagant, communism's supposed to be from each according to his means, to each according to his needs, but there are beggars and wealthy areas in laos and vietnam) and other such things. interesting.
next day was sunrise at angkor wat (drool) then off to the walled city of Angkor Thom and the many-faced temple of the Bayon. there are all these towers and each one has the same (well, almost the same - with unique cracks etc) face in the 4 cardinal directions. it's realy cool. just wait for the pictures. trust me.
a couple of smaller tempels on the way back for... lunch and resting.
then the afternoon we went to preah kahn, which is also ruins and with the trees and all, but set up differently, with small doorways and corridors in the shape of an x. from any of the main hallways you can see the central chamber. cooool. all so cool. and all covered with carvings and apsara (dancers) and.. just unbelievable amounts of work. sunset with kim at angkor wat, accompanied by some roasted corn and sticky rice in bamboo tubes. gave the extra couple of ears of corn we bought to some kids who looked like they needed firsts more than we needed seconds. the amount of people that streamed down the causeway of angkor wat as we sat there and watched the sun decend was astounding. hardly anyone went in, but hundreds and hundreds came out. that place is h-u-g-e huge.
the evening was something i'll touch on at the end. i'm not ready to write that part yet. be patient. it has to do with a cello and a hospital.
our final day we didn't watch sunrise but sophalla picked us up earlyish and we went to one of the temples that was very far out. sophalla's tuktuk came out unscathed on the other end of the bumpy roads, but we were a bit jarred and giving thanks for squishy seats. banteay srei, aka the citadel of women, is made from pink sandstone as opposed to the grey of the other sites. it's the women's temple because the carving is so fine, they say women must have done it. it was beautiful. beautiful. and the morning sun on our backs wasn't so bad either.
banteay samre on the way back and then to the hotel for... well you know.
we shopped a bit too.
our last afternoon and we chose to revisit a couple of favorites: jungle temple for some tree shots in the fading glow of dusk, and the bayon. cuz it's just awwwwwwesome. everywhere you turn, there are these calm strong faces. if you're paranoid, it could be scary, but i found it reassuring and gorgeous to get lost among them.
to the angkor wat parking lot just for postcards from the kids who'd been pestering us the last couple of days with "don't forget" "you buy from me" "where you from? capital washington dc" and then back to town. dinner of outstanding fresh veg spring rolls with tofu and fresh mint and yumminess, i think, and then sleep, though we did have an offer to go to the dance club with sophalla. :)
next morning we were off (oh, we decided, finally, to skip battambang and thus the other killing fields, due to a lack of time and the onset of a cold for nabia. just wanted to get the commute overwith), so we bade siem reap a farewell and went to bed. unfortunately there were some ants in the room (specifically sniffly nabia's), so it wasn't the best sleep ever...
to go back to the part i skipped: every saturday night on the road between angkor wat and siem reap there is a free cello concert called beatocello. it's a doctor, beat richsomething, who works at the new hospital there, giving a performance featuring some of his own work as well as classics, to raise awareness and money for their programs. it was excellently done, informative, and difficult. 65% of all cambodians have tuberculosis. the kids are rife with it and 80% of those who come to the (totally free) hospital would die if not immediately admitted. the mothers stay by the bedsides of their children, acting as calming influences as well as nurses for their kids in these unfamiliar sterile surroundings. the international organizations you'd come to think of as associated with this type of thing like unicef have sent representatives and made statements to the effect that the level of sophistication in the technology is too advanced for the economic reality of the country. so they want to introduce substandard care. not acceptable. not not not. so this guy is giving a weekly performance asking for money and for blood donations. we gave some money and took the dvd that many of you no doubt will be seeing in the future. a sad but important evening.
afterwards, we continued our conversation with kim about her engagement and recent marriage to her long-time friend over excellent lemongrass sour fish soup once again. he proposed to her on top of a mountain. hee.
ok. the next installment will feature our epic journey from siem reap across the border and finally to bangkok. characters include a cute brooklynite and a crabby khmer.
finally finally. i post the post.
talk SOONer than later.
love,
a
email me
posted by theonetheycallamy at 7/21/2005 05:01:00 AM
3 Comments:
these days seems to have been very demanding..great sadness along with the beauty. I hope you will have some time for lightheartedness , aka, fun, in the coming days. love, Barbara
Whew, that was a read and a half! But you had to make up for all that time that passed.....it was great to read you "at long last". Fascinating insights, comments and descriptions. It makes one think and hurt and wonder and all those things. To want to fix all this sadness and misery and really not be able to do very much. These experiences will always be with you and will probably change how you see things.(I do like Na's comment on her blog that you two had decided to not bargain so much in those poverty-stricken areas.) That global child school sounded wonderful. If only more could be set up.....
I can't wait to see the temple pictures. It sounds unbelievable.
Ok, now, it's time for you both to enjoy some fun stuff, not so heavy, there in Bangkok with Pong. And wherever. With whoever.
Great big hugs and kisses,
mom
Phenomenal entry...thanks for sharing. Looking forward to the pictures. Hugs, Elaine
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