Cambodia – Feb. 16-21

Random impressions from our 5 days in and around Siem Reap, the modern city just outside of Angkor Wat…

It’s amazing the way a smell can bring back a flood of memories.  On our way to visit a floating village on Lake Tonle Sap we stopped at a country school.  I took some pictures of the kids and then switched the camera to “view” so they could see themselves.  Of course they giggled and screamed and immediately lost their shyness and crowded around me for a better view as I squatted down to their height.  That’s when I got the smell – the smell of the kids.  They smelled like smoke from a cooking fire.  It’s exactly the same smell that I encountered with the little kids in Lesotho as a Peace Corps Volunteer 35+ years ago.  The smell touched off a wave of nostalgia that lasted for several minutes as we continued our drive.  I’ll find out in a few weeks if the kids in Lesotho still smell like smoke.  My guess is that they do.

This is Park, our wonderful guide for two days.  He was a terrific source of information, not only about Angkor Wat but about Cambodian life in general.  Over the course of two days we got an abbreviated version of the sad history of Cambodia.  We heard about the numerous invasions by the Chinese and the Vietnamese, going back 1000 years.  He knew that the Khmer Rouge genocide lasted exactly 3 years, 8 months and 23 days.  He remembers none of it (he was too young) but told us about his father risking a death sentence to sneak out at night to steal sweet potatoes to feed his family.  One thing he did not mention and which we did not bring up was the 1972 American invasion of Cambodia.  The ouster of Pol Pot by the Vietnamese set off a 20-year civil war, which supposedly ended with a peace accord in 1991 but only really ended in 1999 when Pol Pot, still in hiding in the north, died.  An entire generation of educated Cambodians – teachers, government workers, doctors, lawyers, everyone but the rice farmers – was wiped out.  1.5 million people, officially, were slaughtered and Park said the unofficial estimate is closer to 3 million.  All the factions in the civil war used land mines to protect their areas.  There is still an active de-mining project sponsored by various charitable institutions and today “only” 200  people per year are killed by land mines.  How does a people, I asked myself, survive all that?

“Survive” is basically all most people do.  When we arrived in Siem Reap we were just blown away by extreme poverty and extreme luxury side by side.  We stayed at a very nice hotel, every bit as nice as any hotel I’ve stayed in in the States. And there are dozens of swanky-looking very, very large hotels all over town.  Walking just a few steps from our hotel, however, we were on dirt roads.

 

If you get out of the tourist areas at all, the difference is even more stark.  Our guide asked us if we would like to take a break from temple-viewing to visit a floating village and of course we said “yes”.  We drove for about 45 minutes through the Cambodian countryside to the shore of Lake Tonle Sap, where there is an entire town on stilts. The reason all the buildings are on stilts is that the lake rises and falls a LOT with the seasons.  We’re here during the dry season.  In the wet season, the lake will rise just to the bottom of these people’s houses.   The dirt road in front of the houses will be a stream and they will use a boat to go everywhere.  Some of them have vehicles (motorbikes, mainly) which have to be taken to high ground for the season.

 

 

 

We got on a boat that Park had hired and went out into the lake.  There is an entire village of about 3000 people who live on the lake in floating buildings.   As well as houses, there is a floating school, a floating church (Catholic), and a floating hardware store (left), where we stopped to buy batteries when the ones in the camera decided to give up the ghost right in the middle of our lake excursion.  The reason for living on the lake, obviously, is to fish.   And fish they did.  Park told us there were 125 kinds of fish in the lake.  They catch them from the shore, they catch them with poles, they catch them from boats, they catch them with nets.  And then they have to deal with all those fish.  They are put on ice for transport to Siem Reap (about an hour drive).  Park took us by the ice boat.  Once every few days a truck comes to the boat ramp and delivers ice.  It is stored in the ice boat under a pile of rice husks.

 

 

 

 

They clean the fish and then dry them in the sun to make the stinky-smelling fish paste that is so common in Cambodian food.  They smoke fish.  And, of course, they eat fish, a lot of fish. 

(These 2 little girls asked Ralph if he wanted to join them for lunch – smoked fish.  He declined.)

Boggling culture-clash experiences:  (1) The hotel bar played the latest hits of the 50’s and 60’s – Wake Up Little Suzy, California Dreamin’ , etc.; (2) In the largest wat in Siem Reap, in the holiest of places, the center of the temple, the large statue of Buddha has a rotating neon halo around his head; (3) Man hole covers on the sidewalks are occasionally missing.  It’s dangerous enough in the daytime but at night, with very few street lights, you really have to be careful; (4) Dollars are the preferred currency.  However, bills with the slightest tear in them aren’t accepted.  The Cambodian bank only gives the person $19 worth of rial (Cambodian currency) if the bill is torn;  (5) Gasoline smuggled from Thailand is sold in 1-liter bottles in the market and along the roads (left); (6) Teachers are paid so little that they collect a fee directly from the students’ parents in order to make a living wage; (7) Auto horns are honked incessantly, but not in an aggressive way.  The message of the honker to the honkee is “Look out.  I’m here.  Maybe you don’t see/hear me.”

Outrageous loads seen on the backs of motorcycles, part 2  (Part 1 was in Hanoi):  3 double mattresses, 2 enormous dead pigs, 1 motorcycle.  (Yes, a motorcycle strapped crossways behind the driver of a motorcycle.  I guess he was taking it in for repair.)

The hotel where we stayed is unusual in its commitment to the people of Cambodia.  The owners, out of the profits of the hotel, fund an Institute of Hospitality.  25-28 young Cambodians spend a year learning English, culinary skills, housekeeping, etc.  When they graduate they are well-equipped for jobs in the tourist industry (all 26 graduates of last year’s class have found employment).  Most of the staff of our hotel were graduates, and were terrific.  The kids chosen for this program are “at risk”, i.e. poor, poorly-educated, and looking at a life of bare subsistence as a rice farmer or day laborer.  We were so impressed with the program that we made a donation to the Institute. 

The hotel also (very quietly) solicits donations from the guests to fund basic necessities in the villages around Siem Reap.   They build water wells, for instance, and one-room houses for families who have never known clean water or a permanent home.  The administrators of this program are Soloman, a young American who’s been in Cambodia 6 months, and Theany (pronounced teeny), a young woman from Siem Reap.  They needed to go to the country to visit a family who was asking for assistance so we tagged along.  What we saw was pretty disturbing.  A set of grandparents were raising their 3 grandchildren.  They had already built (or had built for them) a well but their living structure was a partially-covered platform of bamboo about 2 feet off the ground and maybe 12 foot square.  There were 3 “walls” of palm fronds and a “roof” of more palm fronds and a couple of pieces of corrugated steel.  All activity of the household – eating, sleeping, cooking, just sitting – took place on this platform.  The chickens wandered around the ground, but also hopped up on the platform any time they wanted.  There were a couple of mangy, skinny puppies as well.  The woman showed us her vegetable garden but it was pretty pathetic.  A row of young corn had just one or two sprouts.  Apparently grandpa made a little money by gathering and selling firewood and by making charcoal.  It was hard to imagine that we were just 30 minutes by car from the air-conditioned comfort of our hotel. 

They also took us to visit a family who had received support from the hotel – a pump well for fresh water, and a one-room concrete house with a toilet.  This was a very different scene than the place down the road.  They were still poor, but there was a flourishing vegetable garden, young fruit trees, and the children appeared clean and well-nourished.  This family still had their old house – a bamboo structure similar to the first group – which they used for cooking and general hanging-out.  The most striking thing to me was that the improvement in the life of this family resulted from an investment of just $1500 ($1250 for the little house and $250 for the well), a stark reminder of how little money it takes to change the life of a very poor person in a developing country.

Finally, the reason we came to Cambodia in the first place, Angkor Wat.  Words and little pictures cannot begin to describe this huge complex of 1000-year-old buildings.  The entire complex is surrounded by a moat (still filled with water) that is over 200 yards wide, 1/2 mile long on one side and 3/4 mile long on the other.  Inside the walls there are dozens of buildings and even a lake (right).  Everything is made of sandstone or lava rock and is intricately carved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I said, pictures can’t do it justice.  You’ll just have to come see it yourself.

We also toured a couple of other ancient wats, one of which looked like something directly out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.  In fact, we found out that it had been used as a set for a movie.  The most amazing thing about this one was the trees growing on the roofs of the buildings.  Over the centuries the trees have sent down roots from the roofs all the way to the soil.  The roots have gotten huge so that they look like pythons strangling the temple.  (That’s Ralph standing behind the lady sweeping.)

 

We had one more adventure in Cambodia which I'm going to let Ralph tell you about in the next post.  It was his idea that we go to Battambang.