01.11.09 – Siem Reap,
The flight here from
They don’t use their national money, the riel, much. US dollars are the medium of exchange. The ATM I went to is from ANZ, a New Zealand bank, and it gives out US dollars! Now that’s globalization.
Oddly, though the US dollar is the main currency and English is the language used to communicate with foreigners, there seem to be few Americans among the tourists. They are mostly Japanese and Koreans, along with some Russians, Indians, and Australians.
I had wondered whether “Siem” was
the same as
We were met at the airport by our tour guide, Keo Rathana, who is 24. George found out that his nickname is “Mao.” He says he was dark as a young child and his parents started calling him Mao, which means “dark,” but he said it’s a girl’s name. Over the next two days we learned that Mao’s grandparents were killed during the Khmer Rouge killing fields. His father was sent to the camps and survived, but was so undernourished during his time there that he had serious stomach problems, which eventually killed him in his mid-forties. Mao chose to leave his mother (he didn’t say why) and entered an orphanage, where he took dance and was beaten with a stick when he made mistakes.
Imagine being guided in
Our hotel is the first hotel I’ve been in with an altar in
front of the front desk. It’s an animist
altar. People in
There is an incredible array of television channels in many languages available in the hotel rooms.
We passed a sign on a storefront reading: “Pizza Hut Coming Soon.” (Groan.) We asked Mao if people here like pizza. He said yes, but they can only afford it for special occasions, such as birthdays.
Little more than a decade ago, Siem
Reap was a quiet little town. Few
visitors made their way there as
Now, though, the town is booming, with two million visitors a year (ironically, approximately the same number of people killed by the Khmer Rouge). Hotels are going up all over town. Many people—especially Korean tourists—travel in tuk-tuks, which are sort of motorized rickshaws.
Mao didn’t take us to Angkor Wat on the first afternoon, I think because he wanted us to see it first at sunrise, which we did this morning. Instead, he took us to his favorite temple, Ta Prohm (“Ancestor of Brahma”), which wasn’t on our itinerary. I’m very glad that he did.
Ta Prohm is an amazing place. Originally a Buddhist monastery started by Jayavarman VII, it now has huge spunge trees growing through the walls in many places in the temple, making eerie scenes. Angelina Jolie filmed Lara Croft, Tomb Raider here.
In the evening we walked into town. While I was waiting for George to buy a new memory card for his camera, a guy on a motorbike came up and asked me if I needed a taxi. I said no and then he said, “Want lady?” We had several more such offers.
There’s a very nice area at the center of town. We ate at Khmer Kitchen. The lab was superb. I had amok, a local fish, in coconut milk,
and we drank
Up at
Angkor Wat is said to be the
single largest religious complex in the world.
(I’m not so sure; I thought the
In addition to the magnificent structure itself, Angkor Wat is noted for its very long galleries of bas-reliefs. (“All Along the
Among the relief sculptures on the walls of Angkor Wat are numerous apsaras—sensuous dancing girls who bend their fingers and toes backward and assume exotic positions. There are also devadas, women in less sensuous poses.
We
couldn’t climb to the top of the main tower in the center of the temple because
the stone steps are closed while they install new wooden steps to make the
climb less difficult. (I probably
couldn’t have done it with my knee on the narrow old stone steps anyway.)
Mao was a superb guide through all of the temples, with great explanations of what is happening in the relief murals and knowledge of all the best places to take photos.
On our way out, along the long causeway leading to the West Gate, we passed a female Cambodian tour guide wearing an Obama hat.
The city of
The central feature of Angkor Thom is The Bayon was built by a king who tried to convert the Khmer from Hinduism to Buddhism. The temple has 54 towers, each with smiling faces Mao calls “Smiling Buddhas,” although I’m not sure they were originally intended to represent the Buddha.
In any case, rulers rarely succeed in quickly changing people‘s religious beliefs and after his death Hindus trashed many Buddha faces – an act that was more-or-less repeated in Bayon by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, when they cut off the heads of most of the Buddha statues in the temple, much as the Taliban were later to do in blowing up massive Buddhas in Afghanistan. Religious and atheist fanatics are similarly capable of acts of terror against symbols and people alike.
The Bayon has very long
bas-reliefs similar to those in Angkor Wat, but they
are generally thought to be of a somewhat lower quality. They depict scenes from wars against the Cham
people, and of everyday life in
On
the way out of Angkor Thom, we saw a group of small monkeys and stopped to
watch and photograph them. They were
hilarious. Several were playing in a
hammock, jumping in and out and on top of one another and hanging from it and
from each other’s tails. Two others were
grooming each other. A family of two
parents and two babies was huddling and playing. And one monkey was trying to open a plastic
water bottle. He or she finally got the
label off the bottle, but could not get the cap off. If they were not more fun than a barrel full
of monkeys, at least they were as much
fun.
We
had lunch at an open air restaurant just outside the moat and west entrance of
Angkor Wat. While we were eating, three little
Cambodian girls came up and started saying, “Obama, Obama, Obama!” George struck up a conversation with
them. Of course they were trying to sell
us things, such as wooden bracelets. One
of them said, “Get bracelet for your wife.”
George said, “I don’t have a wife.”
“Maybe that’s why you don’t have wife.
Get a bracelet and then you get a wife,” one of the little girls
responded, with an impish grin.
Ultimately, George bought some bracelets from her.
While we were sitting at the restaurant, George in sneakers and I in hiking boots, a little boy came up asking if we wanted a shoeshine. Dust was everywhere. A shine would have lasted about five seconds. I think the boy has probably been out there for months and is yet to find his first customer.
In the evening we went to a Cambodian buffet and cultural performance with modern-day apsara dancers.
It has been a very long day since
— RSM