Cambodia Dreaming

Angkor Wat at sunrise on my birthday. Priceless and almost indescribable.

It's been five days since my birthday already! Where have they gone? And we've done so much since then, I don't know how I'll squeeze it all into one post without boring you all to death, but I'll try. There's going to be a lot of photos in this one.....!

Angkor Wat - there are so many spaces like this, including many long galleries. This is a part of the temple called the Cruciform Cloister.

We did a day of temples on the day before my birthday, and managed to see seven - of very different shapes and sizes - all of them fascinating and intricately, elegantly beautiful. When the Europeans stumbled across the Angkor temples, they at first assumed them to be Roman or Greek in origin, concluding - very wrongly and with our typical arrogance - that the Khmer civilisation could not be responsible for such incredible architecture.

The North West gorupa or entrance hall at Angkor Wat, with a guardian lion. This was taken at about 7am, yes, 7am!!!

There is frequent reference, even now, in the guides you read, of the Europeans 'discovering' the temples, but of course they didn't. The Khmer people never forgot they were there, though many were overgrown on their rediscovery in the nineteenth century and many have always been used for worship by local people as Hindu and Buddhist temples.

The Red Buddha, one of many beheaded by the Khmer Rouge, who killed not only Buddhists, but people who wore glasses, and those who spoke more than one language in their doomed quest to return the whole country to a nation of farming peasants.

Buddhism replaced Hinduism as the Khmer religion, and the temples reflect both forms of spirituality, with scenes from the Mahabarata, the Ramayana and many statues of Buddha throughout each site. Vishnu and Shiva are most frequently seen, but we have also become familiar with many other Hindu gods and their 'mounts' (the creatures that carried the god like a personal tuk tuk, and who often fought alongside them).

Garuda on the Elephant Terrace at Angkor Thom.

My favourites are Garuda, Vishnu's mount (Vishnu had many incarnations or avatars, and it took us a while to figure this out!), who is half man, half bird, Hanuman, the monkey god, who was a loyal friend to Vishnu in his incarnation as Rama (whose adventures are laid out in the Ramayana) and Ganesha, the elephant god and son of Shiva and Parvati.

The South East Tower at Angkor Wat - showing the amazing architecture. There are five towers like this in a quincunx - sounds obscene doesn't it, but apparently it means five towers, one in the centre and four evenly spaced around it in a square or rectangle - brilliant!

My birthday wish was to see the sun rise at Angkor Wat, and thanks to my two very own birthday pixies, this wish duly came true. Angkor Wat is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and it seems that around every corner there is something new to inspire, delight or amaze. The ancient Khmer architecture has an entirely unique style, and Angkor Wat is typical in this. We got up at 4am (yes, I really mean 4am) to leave at about 5am with our now regular tuk tuk driver, Richard.

Vishnu with 8 arms at the entrance gallery, Angkor Wat. There was a really strange photo shoot going on just around the corner from this statue, with women in wedding dresses and loads of photographers. After the mythological spirituality of the temple, this was really surreal!

I love tuk tuks and I wish that we could adopt them in the UK, although I know they would never pass Health and Safety regulations. I would like to drive a tuk tuk in the UK, I would like this to be my primary means of making a living and in the evenings or in quiet periods of the day I could write the great English novel (I haven't worked on it once here yet - I'm assuming it's not time).

Our tuk tuk!! This has been our main method of transport around Siem Reap so far, driven by our friend and guide, Richard, who takes great care of us and who takes our lengthy visits to each temple in his stride and spent his day off with us and took us to meet his family.
"Free of charge," he insisted, "Because you are the best customers!"

When we visit temples, Richard waits outside with the tuk tuk. We lost six hours in Angkor Wat, wandering the different enclosures and levels, admiring the reliefs on the walls and the intricate architecture. Richard thought perhaps we had got lost or died and came to look for us. Twice.

The perfect departure from Angkor Wat on your birthday - 4 Japanese women spelling out L-O-V-E!! Best of all, this was their second attempt, in the first one they spelt out E-V-O-L.

"Oh my God." He said, flatly, on our return, "Oh my God. You have been gone six hours. Most people, two or three. You, six. Oh. My. God."

Many of the reliefs on the walls in the temples are of apsaras, the famous celestial dancers who danced for the Gods, and I must have a million photographs of them in my possession now. The thing is, although you see them at every temple they never cease to be as beautiful as the first time you see them, and I promise you that you never tire of them.

An Apsara at Banteay Kdei temple - we had a great guide here who provided us with loads of great information on the temple that we would not have otherwise known. After this though, I picked up a gorgeous guidebook for $5 from one of the sellers outside the temples, a young lad who I refused the book from over and over until I was finally persuaded by his sheer relentlessness and the power of his sales pitch - NLP was invented in Cambodia, I swear!!

Unfortunately, many of the temples suffered from neglect - many were overgrown with trees and one has been preserved in this fashion and featured in Tombraider, we were told on our visit!

Ta Phrom - or the Tomb Raider temple as we were told - with silk cotton trees growing on the inside over the temples, almost like snakes coiling over tree branches.

And from the inside! Ta Phrom is preserved with the trees intact deliberately whereas in other temples they have been removed. Keeping them in situ is a careful balance as they can damage the temples if they are not looked after properly.

A statue seller inside Ta Phrom, smiling here at us because we had just bought three tiny statues. Some of the sellers and children sellers are even canny enough to charge you for taking their photo! Not this guy, though, who seemed happy to be asked.

During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, who outlawed Buddhism (amongst so many other things), the KR troops cut the heads from many of the Buddhas in the temples. I have been taking a crash course in my spare time on Cambodian history, reading various internet sources, and the rule of the Khmer Rouge and the resulting genocide of the Cambodian people is one of the most horrific in history. I won't give give you a potted version here, but if you're interested, a great first stop resource can be found at From Slideshow to Genocide

One of the temples at Prasat Kravan, dedicated to Lakshmi. This is the only temple built with red bricks in this way and this relief has been restored to its original strange beauty.

Cambodia's history is - like many South East Asian countries - intricately tied up with the history of the surrounding nations, particularly Thailand and Vietnam, and with the past battles of superpowers such as China, USA and USSR for and against Communism. This legacy has left behind a long and broad trail of corruption throughout social and political life, that makes it very hard for the majority of the population here. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, although you can choose to avoid it in Siem Reap if you wish, or rather to close your eyes to it.

Chao Say Tevoda main temple with the keeper of the shrine to Buddha approaching to guide us to the shrine.

The keeper of the shrine at Chao Say Tevoda temple - who taught us the right way to devote incense at the shrines to Buddha. You donate a dollar or so, the keeper hands you three incense sticks which you clasp in your palms like a prayer and move forwards and backwards three times before placing the incense in a pot of sand before the Buddha.

Tourism has had a massive impact on Siem Reap, which has rapidly expanded as a base for touring the temples, and it is possible for Westerners to stay in posh hotels with full amenities (not that we can talk, Happy Guest House is the highest luxury we've had so far - they even give you towels!!), take tuk tuks everywhere, shop only in the malls and go to the restaurants and bars on Pub Street - I kid you not, it's real name, Pub Street, and filled with Western bars and restaurants where the only Khmers you'll see are serving you.

A great example of the intricate detail of the carvings on many of the temples and their surrounding buildings. This one is a detail from a pediment (carving over the top of an entrance) at Banteay Sray, one of the smallest temples and made to a miniature scale. Some of the doorways are only just over a metre tall, which was hilarious for me to watch as loads of tall tourists rendered themselves almost unconscious - repeatedly. Glenn, should we come to Cambodia at any point, I'm sooooooooooooooooooooo bringing you here.

The only place you really can't avoid the poverty is at the temples, where the desperation of the vendors, who flock to you as soon as you leave each one, is palpable and heartbreaking. Children offer bracelets, trinkets and small, traditional Khmer scarves for sale, lowering the price to ridiculous levels when you refuse. We've been offered up to 20 scarves and bracelets for just 1$US. The other day I was offered a traditional Khmer violin for a dollar, which is ridiculous. Although haggling is par for the course here, and can seem like a game to us in which we vie for the cheapest price, the poverty that lies beneath each transaction is very real, and I usually steer by a price that I would find ridiculous back home and stop bargaining before I feel like a complete fascist capitalist pig dog.

A child selling flutes at Banteay Kdei - not only was he selling but this little lad could play, too. Children his age gather in groups around and outside the temples (they are not usually allowed inside) and point to some very serious poverty in Cambodia. It is not unusual to be swooped on by large groups of children and teenagers all selling identical products, most commonly bootleg books, bracelets, trinkets made from palm leaves, scarves and flutes. The problem is if you buy from one in the group, they all want you to buy, so we learnt to pick our moments! These experiences are pretty heart breaking, but exceptionally commonplace.

The US$ is the main currency of Cambodia, with the national currency only really used for change or in daily use in the markets for Khmers. It's a weird system at first, but oddly you do get used to running with two currencies after a while!!

We've tried to do the tourist thing ethically here, and Cambodia has more opportunities for this than any other country we've visited so far: offering NGO hotels and cafe's (like the Singing Tree) where money goes to local projects. You have to do your research though, as corruption is rife even here, with fake NGO's being set up as a way of making money. All NGO's should be registered, but the registration process is very expensive, so it can be hard even for genuine NGO's to register. This sort of bureaucracy can be typical of Cambodia, it seems.

My favourite - probably not including Angkor Wat, which stands alone really - the Bayon temple, with its many faces of Buddha. Inside it is like a maze and when we went, it was late afternoon and it had just finished raining. Inside it was dark and eerie in the humid half light of the falling sun, haunting and unforgettable.

In addition to the sunrise and our visit to Angkor Wat, Kate and Ang had booked us into the most lovely hotel for my birthday night and the following day. They also bought me a lovely set of miniature statues of the Buddha and two Thai monks, as well as a lovely pendant of the Buddha from Thailand, the latter of which I lost today, but am desperately trying not to dwell on and instead to see the lesson held within.....mostly that it is possible to get very attached to possessions very quickly and that such attachments can bring as much unhappiness as they do joy. The trick it seems is to hold all things I love in a light, not a tight, grasp and by so doing, perhaps I will always be ready to let them go, as nothing really belongs to me forever anyway....

The beauty of Srah Srang Lake, near the temple sites.

The day after my birthday was a long day of rest, relaxation and lovely food, including to the fabulous Singing Tree, a cafe and community centre that we have taken to our hearts, and which is like a Peace Cafe away from home (except these guys do veggie burgers, and iced coffees that I would do almost anything for), which runs meditation classes, Buddhist films and a shop selling local goods produced by charities, orphanages and NGO's - yes I did some shopping here! We also visited a restaurant called The Butterflies Garden that has lots of butterflies in the garden outside and where you can eat your food on sofas that resemble beds - pure luxury! The money from this place goes to a local NGO and local children collect the butterflies that come to live here.

A Monkey at the Singing Tree Cafe on her birthday - we've been back there many times since and tonight Kate went to a meditation introduction there, while Ang and I sat outside reading and writing, and drinking beer and iced coffee shakes respectively!

It was at the Singing Tree cafe that we had the opportunity to attend a "Monk Chat" session, that does exactly what it says on the tin. We sat and spoke to a monk from one of the local pagodas (where the monks and their students live) for an hour or so about his life as a monk in Cambodia.

This was a real eye-opening experience for me, as I think I was holding some really romantic (in 20/20 hindsight) ideas about Buddhist spirituality and my own sense of and need for a spiritual quest in life.

I've got a face, you've got a face......It's all gonna be alright.....
A face of the Buddha, from the Bayon temple.

Buddhism was only reinstated as the national religion in the 90's and now plays a major role in education and in the rural areas, environmental protection. In Thailand, we saw that young men entered monasteries as a form of national service, but in Cambodia, entering a monastery is a vital practice for young men who are looking to improve their education and life chances. The young monk we spoke to, who has been a monk for 8 years, entered the pagoda as a way of gaining an education.

“Since 2001, I become a monk. Before this I live in a village, I look after water buffalo. There are many trees everywhere, it is far from town or city, maybe you say jungle. I do not know about anything then. I do not know meaning of life or about Buddhism. And perhaps it stay that way, but I am lucky, I ask my grandfather and he speaks to my father and he tells him I want to go to monastery and my father thinks it is a good idea. So I come, because I want to learn languages and I do not want always to work in the fields.”

Apsaras in the Bayon temple

He tells us that some monks stay for a long time as monks, that they live their lives like this and become teachers. For many, many others though, it is something that the young men do to seek a better education and what he calls ‘general knowledge’ about the world, something that he would not otherwise have received in his village at home. He has not seen his family for two years, though he is allowed to visit them once a year and he is starting to think that maybe next year he will leave life as a monk and seek work as a tour guide perhaps, or in the tourist industry.

I start to wonder if many of my ideas about (dare I say, attachments to) Buddhism back home were based on a very false idea of the reality of the practice of the religion in the countries in which it originated. 'My' Buddhism starts to look a little like another of the many luxuries I can afford, something that I can pick and choose to give some meaning to my existence in a world that from here begins to look more and more insane, unjust and unbalanced. This is not to say that there is nothing for me to learn from Buddhism, and it is still one of my most valuable sources of guidance. However, I feel as though my spiritual quest is indeed a luxury compared to the daily life here, where there is simply no time to spend navel gazing and wondering too intently about the meaning of life.

More apsaras from the Bayon temple - I told you I had a lot of photos of them....

I enjoy the evening greatly, even though or perhaps because it leaves me with far more questions than it answers. I have no sense of what Buddhism means to this young man or how it will change his life once he leaves the protection of his monastery to seek work. He certainly has a clear idea of how hard it will be for him at first, and speaks of his worries if he is unable to make money. Spirituality does not clothe us, nor does it feed us, after all. At the end of the session, the two monks chant for us, a prayer for luck and for all that we desire. It is a beautiful and soulful sound, though of course I have no idea what any of it means. Each one takes it in turns to pause for breath, allowing the other to continue the chant as he inhales.

More than any reflection on my own spirituality, which develops on its own path as the trip progresses, in ways I could not predict and rarely wish for, this conversation with the monk cements a fascination and growing love for Cambodia in me. As with Indonesia, there is a gritty resourceful hope at the heart of this country; a nation that has seen so much tragedy that I cannot help but feel that if you scratch the surface of the earth itself here, it will bleed. Yet there is such warmth here, and something far more enigmatic, more elusive, a sense that this country's emotional self is somewhere behind the scenes always, hard to find and harder still to pin down. I like it immensely, and look forward to each day when I wake up.

Richard driving the tuk tuk - I have no idea how this shot came out at all as I can barely begin to describe how bumpy the average tuk tuk ride in Cambodia is!

Many volunteers from all over the world, but particularly the West, come to Cambodia to volunteer in different programmes, some teaching English, but others doing more administrative, management or even hands on environmental or conservation work. Again, you have to do your research when choosing a programme, but we have met many volunteers here with varying degrees of training and involvement with the local programmes, and the sense of contribution and achievement they feel is clear. Tonight we met Bev, a lovely Australian woman who is teaching at a local orphanage.

"I've taught in Australia, but the kids are horrible there. The behaviour is terrible," she tells us, between recounting her many travel adventures with the natural Australian gift for story telling, "But here, there is so much love from the children, they are so affectionate, it's lovely."

Bev has never done any volunteering before and she came here after meeting a volunteer organiser at what she calls a "hippy festival in the bush" that she goes to every year. She tells us she is the sort of person who just does things on whim and her decision to come to Cambodia has been no exception.

We also met Marley at our guest house, a young Australian woman who is in Cambodia after several previous visits volunteering for a project called Harmony Farm, about 70km from Siem Reap, which she has become increasingly involved with over past years. She is currently self-funding as a volunteer but has been awarded funding from the Australian government to continue her work. Harmony Farm is an orphanage, school and growing enterprise as a sustainable eco-farm, teaching children and young people farming skills which will, they hope, in the future allow the project to become self-sustaining. Marley has a background in agriculture, and started as a hands on volunteer and teacher but now does a lot of administrative and managerial work, meeting with NGO's and fund raising.

When you get outside of the town, these rice fields are the most common sight by the sides of the roads. They are bright green and very eye catching and are one of the main ways rural Cambodians make a living, barely.

We visited the night market a few nights ago, which has to be experienced to be believed. Not only are there bargains to die for - I bagged a few and I'm now discarding clothes at a rate of knots to fit in all the things I'm buying - but there are masseurs, pools where fish will eat the dead skin from your feet, stalls where you can have ear candles inserted and a cocktail bar. I wanted to have my feet done by the fish, but after a Singapore Sling, Sex on the Beach and a Harvey Wallbanger (all at a staggering £1.80 each), I wasn't fit to climb into the pool. I was going to do a Long Island Iced Tea, but I don't think I would have made it home. As it was I had to insist on getting a tuk tuk home as I was really quite sozzled - maybe the heat, maybe the lack of food, maybe the fact that we really haven't had the opportunity to drink here much! Oh, well, apart from on my birthday when K and A pulled a bottle of champagne out of the hat - or out of the ice bucket to be precise!!

We spent a third day at the temples, and this one really was my favourite, even taking Angkor Wat into consideration, as on our last day we went to Angkor Thom, the remains of a city of temples and the old Royal Palace. Here we visited Bayon temple, which I loved, and which is famous for all the faces of Buddha carved into the many towers. There is no official agreement on how many faces there are, which I love! I think this is because some of the faces are partial and less clear than others, so no two people count them the same, and there is something about this elusiveness that just about sums up my feelings about Cambodia - nothing is for certain!

More views from the Bayon temple in the fading light.

The other thing I've been buying with ridiculous frequency is books - which is utterly absurd as they are the most difficult thing to carry due to their rigidity and their weight. But I am, at heart, a book fiend, and I cannot stop. I know, talk about attachment. In Cambodia, there is an ubiquitous trade in bootleg or 'pirate' books, which as a librarian and protector of copyright, I should abhor, but in practice, I love. Basically, original books are photocopied and rebound - actually stitched together, bound! - and sold very cheaply and not just by street and temple vendors, but in actual bookshops, too! It's brilliant, and means that you can pick up great 'new' books for about £3, which is cheaper than any country we've been to so far!

I bought a copy of the novelisation of 'The Killing Fields', the film about journalist Sydney Schanberg and his Cambodian friend Dith Pran during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. It makes me cry about every ten minutes, but I know that I will never forget reading this book whilst in Cambodia, and the sense it has given me of what it must have been like to be here in those dreadful days is better than any other resource.

One of the Victims of Landmines Bands, who play outside the larger temples. I bought one of their cds as they play lots of traditional Cambodian folk music, which we are developing a real fondness for, and which sounds like nothing else I've heard before.

Another legacy of Cambodia's troubled past are landmines, of which there are estimated to be 3,000,000 left unexploded across the country, following the three decades of war the nation has experienced. Planted by various factions, including the Khmer Rouge, but supplied by the Soviet Union, USA and China, landmines make much of the countryside a very dangerous place. We visited the Landmine Museum about 30km outside Siem Reap, where Aki Ra, a former Cambodian soldier who planted landmines, now works as part of an NGO he created to clear up and defuse them. He set up the museum to raise money both for the continuing clean up work, and to fund an orphanage and children's home that works to help disabled children, some of whom were themselves harmed by landmines. The museum includes a garden in which defused landmines are placed as they would be in the countryside, to give you an idea of how easy to miss and how dangerous they are. Although some will kill you, many will cause very serious damage to limbs and so many landmine victims are amputees.

Landmines at the Cambodian Landmine Museum run by Aki Ra, a former Cambodian soldier now devoted to clearing landmines and improving the lives of young Cambodians. These landmines are triggered when you step on them and are the reason why so many Cambodians have lost limbs.

Landmines hanging from a tree in the Landmine Museum Garden. These ones are really awful, and will normally be concealed in forests. Trip wires run from them close by, so that when someone walks past and triggers one, they are likely to die instantly.

Death and injury have become so commonplace in Cambodia that many of the local people talk to you about such incidents with chilling casualness. Richard, our tuk tuk driver, invited us to his village on his day off to meet his family, to whom he introduced us with great pride. He mentions two friends of his who died of malaria when he was working as a fisherman in Sihanoukville (a coastal town) in his youth.

"I don't know why I no get," he tells us, mystified, "There were four of us, but two get malaria and die, not me. I come home after, too dangerous there."

Ten people live in the house where Richard grew up, his brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces as well as both his parents. In addition to the main house there is a larger wooden building raised on tall stilts, which stands perhaps on slightly lower ground and can be used in the rainy season, which began in May. It rains heavily for a while almost every day, and you can soon predict from the humidity and sudden change in the wind, as well as the heavy dark clouds, when this will happen. During our visit to the village, however, we are blessed with good weather, which is just as well as Richard sends one of his nephews straight up a palm tree some 50 feet tall to collect coconuts for us. Richard then hacks these open, slips in a straw and hands them straight to us to drink the milk, which is one of the best and unique experiences so far!

Richard's nephews at his village. These children were beautiful, always smiling and full of energy, cycling, running and leaping around or fighting with each other. The only English word they know is 'Hello', which they would repeat to us constantly, and which we, of course, repeated back!

After the village, Richard drops us off at a local restaurant where we get to watch some apsara dancing, yes, as in the apsaras from the temple reliefs! Live and in the flesh, this is just as uniquely, exquisitely beautiful and I am torn between wanting to be one of these elegant dancers and wanting to watch them dance forever. No wonder these dances were thought to be for the gods. As well as the slow, elegant female dances or Apsara dance, which shows an Apsara and her maids collecting flowers (this dance has a heavy Thai influence), we see folk dances. Unlike the Apsara and classical dances, which were performed only by women at the show, all wearing ornate and beautiful clothes decorated in gold - reflecting their importance and the fact that they were originally performed exclusively for royalty - the folk dances are performed in every day dress and feature men and women.

One of these, the Robam Kom Araek, features the dancers leaping over bamboo poles, which are held at either end by other dancers and banged on the floor, while couples or pairs of couples leap over them in time to the beat - the last time I saw this was at Howard's wedding, during a display of Filipino dance and this one is thought to be a Khmer version of the same. My favourite though was the coconut dance or Robam Kous Trolaok, in which the male and female dancers move much faster than in the classical dances, and clap together coconut shells. There is much shouting, chanting and grinning during this one and it looks like a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, we head out to Harmony Farm to see Marley and for a look around and we will be taking schoolbooks and pencils for the school. After that, Richard will take us on to the temples further out from Siem Reap, and we will probably stay in a local village somewhere before heading back on Friday. Then we're off to the country's capital, Phnom Penh!

Finally, a really big thank you for all my emails, phone calls, text messages and facebook messages on my birthday - what an extra special treat to have so many reminders of home on my first birthday ever in another country!! I had a great time here, but to hear from you all really made it the perfect day - so a very big thank you all the way from Cambodia and peace out until next time!!