The middle-aged gap year diarys: November 2012

Friday, November 30, 2012

Ankhor Wat

Before we leave Cambodia I thought I'd better put the Ankhor Wat stuff up....

Ankhor Wat, the biggest religious site in the world and a place every tourist to Cambodia comes.... You sort of have to. It's in the visa application somewhere I assume..

Here's a pic of Liza to prove it.

And one of me

And the standard picture of a tree climbing over stuff.

If you want to know and see more then I suggest you hunt the web where I'm sure there are millions of expertly taken pictures of the place together with detailed descriptions of a place worthy of putting into the 'world heritage' bracket.

I hired a bike and cycled all day and probably got to see about 30% of the place.... After a while it is the sheer size that leaves you awestruck. The crowds around the main temples are a bit oppressive but you can also easily spend a day or two in deserted temples on your own.

On a much sillier note we took to smiling at names on water bottles:-

or even:-

Onwards into Thailand.......

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Cambodian comments

We leave for Thailand tomorrow so now seems to be a good time to write some general thoughts and feelings about Cambodia.

No one in the country is older than me, it is rare to see people my age or older, this once you have noticed it is rather obvious. It gives the whole country a bit of an immature feel, there is a lot of joking around going on, at times in a rather juvenile way. The scars in this country are obvious and will take some healing, what makes it different from other genocides is that it was like on like, there are no obvious ethnic differences between the perpetrators and the victims. Every day in the news and in the papers are reports on the ongoing trials which are still only partially completed, everyone we talk to had a deep knowledge of what was happening and I got quickly lost in the ins and outs and realised it would have taken me weeks to get up to speed, a little like trying to explain the whole saga from both sides of the Northern Ireland situation in three sentences.

This era may go down as the second age of Wat building. I think as a way of falling back to what they know, connecting with their past and creating stability the Cambodians are building new temples everywhere. We noticed it as soon as we crossed the boarder from Vietnam with every little town and large village either sporting a brand new Wat or in the process of building one. It's like driving across rural England and discovering that every village has got a brand new church.

The king had died about three weeks before we had arrived, he is currently lying in state and apparently his funeral is not until the new year. Every Cambodian comes and pays their respects, either at the palace in Phnom Penh or at one of the other royal residences, and there seems to be one in every major town. This involves the Cambodians dressing up in their best clothes, and arriving with a lotus flower specifically folded to give to the families representatives at the palace (there were two immaculately dressed men at the palace who formally received these flowers). A book of condolence was signed, and joss sticks were lit and placed in urns put at the palace gate. I have never come across such a concentration of incense even in an enclosed space, outside it was rather intense. If you were wealthy enough you bought a bird which you released. This again was part of the Cambodians wanting to connect with their own history and making a really big thing of it.

Their attitude to public space is interesting, i.e., if anyone can go there then it's public. This makes restaurants rather strange in that if you sit down and order food in what we could say was a nice upper bracket restaurant then as you sit there waiting for your order to arrive there is nothing to stop the woman from MacDonald's walking in with a pile of Burgers and trying to sell them to you, nor you from buying one and still seated at your nice restaurant table, eating it. People walk into pubs and happily get out their own beer.
Their music is Awful!.... either atonal classical drone or modern sentimental pop songs, the accompanying videos played on loops on long bus trips being twee sexist trash of the first order. We wished we could avoid it but just couldn't!

Monday, November 26, 2012

Video of Battambang to Siem Reap boat trip

Boat ride to Siem Reap

Pictures of the boat journey - Battambang to Siem Reap

A seven hour journey down the river from Battambang, through the delta and mangroves where the delta met the lake - across the lake and then into Seam Reap. As we left Battambang the houses were built over the river like this.

The river was a hive of industry - here's a boat builders yard.

These orange boxes are everywhere in Cambodia, always filled with ice, cans of beer, bottles of water and red bull. This one is odd because there is no Cambodian next to it to take your money.

In the delta the river was often as wide as we could see.

Cows standing in the shade of their food supply.

Plastic bottles used for net floats while fishing.

Our boat was also the bus service along the river with multiple pick up and drop off, our horn would go as we went along and then passengers like this bloke here would be in the middle of the river by the time we arrived and would be aboard with us hardly stopping.

I love these large fishing nets that are dropped and then picked up about 15 mins later

A Wat for the service of the local delta dwellers

A floating shop

Into the mangrove swamp - everyone standing in the centre of the boat as the branches from the plants bashed against both sides of the boat in the narrow channel. This brought in a great collection of leaves, spiders ants twigs and branches.

The nets were strung 3/4 of the way across the river about every 50m in places, our helm had to spend most of his time weaving through the nets.

A speedboat carrying half a dozen people would come through every half an hour or so.... the local taxi service.

The tree roots would create these great sculptures where the river had eroded the earth from under them.

Wat - a water one

And finishing off with a collection of Wats.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Battambang, Wat we saw there.

We spent a couple of days in Cambodia's second city, i's a very small place which we did enjoy exploring. I've imported the pictures in the alphabetical order of the name I gave them so in a totally random order here they are.... This is a 1000y old Wat (Temple) - of which there are a few littering the landscape, mostly on the top of hills.

Note that the temple needs it's own spirit house for the accompanying ghosts to live.... these are everywhere and look like very elaborate bird tables.

This is a newer Wat in Battembang...... After the Kymere Rouge Cambodia seems to be embarking on a Wat building programme that seems to be akin to the cathedral building of the English middle ages.... everywhere you go is a brand new Wat or ones in the process of being built.

We hired a Tuk-tuk & driver to show us round - here's me enjoying the scenery and smiling when instructed by Liza.... hence the semi fixed grin.

Bamboo railway..... see video!

Our personal train

Another Budha in another Wat on top of a hill which we had to climb!

Budhas at Wat

Village below the old Wat from above

Typical Battembang house - on stilts as everywhere not on the hill is very prone to flooding.

Pepper harvest time.... hot hot hot!

More red hot chillis

A local with her palm leaf grasshopper - made to score sweet points so we would give them money.... this one worked.

Liza looks cool in our Tuk-tuk.... this was before we climbed hills to see wats.

Our lunchtime fruit of unknown name.... open with hammer..... stir contents and eat.... looks like mince pie, tastes like mince pie..... it's a mince pie fruit - we loved it but have no idea what it is called!