Angkor What?

It is Sunday night here and our group recently got back from a weekend trip to the town of Siem Reap, in northern Cambodia, and more importantly to visit the Angkor temples.

We had 16 interns going on this trip, so we ended up chartering a "bus", which turned out to be a large van. The trip was pretty cramped but we at least had A/C and a good driver who took us around everywhere we needed to go. We made the approximately 5 1/2 hour drive on Friday to Siem Reap, which is basically a tourist town feeding into the Angkor temples. We found a really nice guesthouse for only $7/night (we are getting spoiled really quickly by these cheap prices) and then explored Siem Reap. One highlight: we ate at a great Khmer restaurant called the Dead Fish Tower which featured live entertainment by a Cambodian duo who knew a ton of Western songs. After some prodding from my fellow interns, I was invited up to the mic to sing "Summer of '69." It was a pretty fun night, and I will try to post some pictures soon.

Saturday morning we woke up really early to head to the Angkor temples for the full day. Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire from about 800 A.D. to 1432. Many of the temples were created by the founder of the Khmer empire, Jayavarman II. They include likely the most famous one, Angkor Wat, which is the world's largest religious building, and Ta Prohm, a temple famous for having appeared in the Tomb Raider movie with Angelina Jolie, a fact we were unfortunately reminded of quite often by postcard sellers and tour group leaders.

It is really hard to describe the Angkor temples. There are quite a few of them, spanning a vast area in the forest. It would take 4 or 5 days to see all the temples, so we were only able to make it to 4 temples, but they were the more famous ones. It was fascinating to see all of the temples, however, and realize that you are walking on ruins that were built well over a thousand years ago. All of the temples have incredibly detailed and intricate carvings and etchings in the stone. One of them, the Bayon temple, has amazing carvings of faces on almost every pillar. It will be easier to see what I mean when I put up the pictures.

Seeing all of this stuff was great, but unfortunately we picked an extremely hot day to visit Angkor. We were all sweating from the moment we left our guesthouse, and there was no respite from the heat until finally a rainstorm hit at about 3 PM. As well, a couple of the temples, especially the Tomb Raider temple, were absolutely flooded with tour groups. This was really annoying because the groups would be taking pictures of everything in sight and generally clog up the temple. However, there were a couple temples we got to where there were virtually no other tourists around. When we had a chance to sit and take in the temple in peace and quiet, we could begin to appreciate how amazing these places were and are.

I'm not sure anything else I could say would do this trip justice, so I will post some pictures soon of our trip. We went out again last night in Siem Reap, although we were also overrun by other tourists in the bars and restaurants there. We had a very long drive back today to Phnom Penh, all of us exhausted but finding it difficult to sleep in the cramped van. All in all, however, we had a great trip and some of us are already starting to plan our next excursion!

Explorations

So I had a excellent blog post, pictures and all, ready to go this morning, but when I went to post it, the entry disappeared, and of course I hadn't saved it. I got mad and left the computer room, which was also about 150 degrees, adding to my discomfort. Anyway, the wireless isn't working this afternoon so I will write up some experiences from yesterday and then post some pictures this evening. Of course, all of this is irrelevant for you, since it's about 5 in the morning, and I assume no one will be checking this for several hours, except of course for Stringer, who checks my blog every 5 minutes for updates, or Professor Sugunasiri, who has been known to answer e-mails at about quarter of 5 in the morning.

Anyway, I woke up yesterday morning feeling pretty refreshed and so decided to explore the city with 2 interns, Jenny, from Vancouver, and Francisco, from Mexico City. We decided to walk to the Riverfront area, which is the main tourist part of town.

The first two most striking things about Phnom Penh are the humidity and the traffic. We are just starting the monsoon season here, so temperatures are actually not as bad as they were in April, when it was generally 40 degrees celsius each day. But, it is still incredibly humid, so you basically start sweating as soon as you wake up in the morning. Once you start walking outside you immediately notice the traffic, mainly because if you didn't, you get hit by a motorbike.

The roads are essentially filled with motor scooters, called "motos" here and you can't walk two feet without someone asking if you need to hire one. I have no idea how the city supports so many moto taxis. The slightly more expensive form of transportation is called a "tuk-tuk" which is basically like a rickshaw being towed by a moto. These vehicles seemingly obey no discernible traffic laws. Motos cruise on both the right and wrong side of the street and there are really no stop signs or traffic lights, everyone just sort of glides into the intersection and avoids everyone else. Remarkably, this seems to work OK, and I haven't witnessed any accidents just yet.

Anyway, we eschewed these options to take a quite sweaty 45 minute walk through the city. Along the way we stopped at a couple of "wats"or Buddhist temples. The most famous one, of course, is Angkor Wat, a few hours away, but there are many in Phnom Penh. They have pretty incredible architecture and a lot of Buddha statues. At one wat we were taken inside a little pagoda by an older Khmer man, who proceeded to bless us with some kind of holy water and gave us incense sticks to place in sand in front of the Buddha. Of course, he could have been saying "Stupid white people, you are so gullible" over and over, but it sounded good to us.

Closer to the Riverfront we visited the National Museum, which I will post a picture of tonight. The museum is mainly filled with statues of the Buddha, some of which date back to the 6th century. The statues are beautiful but you can get a little bit Buddhaed-out at times, kind of like being in Italy and seeing 8 million Madonna and Child paintings.

Jenny and I also checked out the Royal Palace, which is also pretty impressive. The palace is actually made up of a number of wats, pagods, and other statues and buildings spread out over a big big property in the middle of the city. Again, it is easier to see this than for me to describe it, so I will post pics tonight.

We also took in the Riverfront street, AKA Sisowith Quay. This is a pretty Western area, filled with a lot of Western-style bars and restaurants. Interestingly, there are no western chains here, no McDonald's or Burger King, which is kind of a relief actually. You will be happy to know that Coca-Cola has made its way to Cambodia. It is nice to see a small, scrappy company like that break into a foreign market for once....

Last night we met a few of the other interns who had arrived yesterday, had dinner at a Khmer/Thai restaurant and then drinks at an Australian-run bar called "Talkin To A Stranger", a name I loved. There we met Holly, a very cool woman from Boston who runs a harm reduction clinic in town. In her words, she works with Khmer ex-cons deported from the United States after 9/11 to try and prevent HIV among heroin addicts in Phnom Penh. We are going to visit the clinic next week, so that should be pretty interesting.

So that was my day!! I apologize for the extremely long post. I will try to post more frequent, shorter entries in the future. Tonight I will get some pictures up from yesterday and also maybe write about our visit to the Tuol Seng genocide museum after I've had a chance to digest what I saw there a little bit.

I hope all is well in North America. Let's go Senators and Suns!!! (by the way, for those of you who think I'm roughing it, there is a tv in my room here with about 60 channels, including ESPN International and CNN. I watched part of the Golden State-Utah basketball game this morning LIVE!!!! Hockey coverage is unlikely though)