Life in Cambodia

Angkor Wat, Silk Worms, and the Slow Boat to Siem Reap

Angkor Wat, Silk Worms, and the Slow Boat to Siem Reap

Last week was the Water Festival here in Cambodia when apparently millions of people descend on Phnom Penh to watch dragon boat races in the river. Maggie and I did the wise thing and avoided the town like the plague. There is nothing like a city, overcrowded with
the million inhabitants it already has, that swells to some three million in a matter of days.
So we headed northwest in the (foolishly naïve) hope that everyone would be headed to
Phnom Penh so the temples at Angkor would be ours for the taking. The road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, the town closest to Angkor Wat, is supposed to be really nice, but we figured why pay $5 to take the bus when we can pay $25 to take a boat. I took the boat
when I last traveled between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh in 2002 and I remember it
being far cooler and more exciting. Memory does that I guess. It’s a long thin fast (fast in relative Cambodian terms) boat with seats so narrow it’s laughable; so many people take refuge on the roof, where Maggie and I spent the entire ride. We shared our corner of
the roof with a bunch of Germans who were more interested in wallowing and slowly encroaching on our turf to where, by the end of the trip, I was trapped between to hefty
Helga types and would have been smothered had the ride lasted only a few more minutes.
The boat ride was a bit over 5 hours long, and it was cool for about 30 minutes (ok, this is Maggie, it was cool for about 3 hours I thought!). Passing little villages, kids waving, the
wind in my hair (ok, the wind in Maggie’s hair), for a time it was even cool. And then the
sun came up….I felt like an ant being burned by some pimply faced high school science nerd with a magnifying glass. Squirming in the sun, hiding amongst the Helgas, and eventually
just getting really burned and complaining the latter half of the trip. Luckily we eventually made it and got to our hotel, which was really nice. Little bungalows set amongst a little forested courtyard, swimming pool and pretty good food. The weather was amazingly cool,
and we didn’t even have to sleep with fans or AC. As soon as we got there, we inquired
about flights back to Phnom Penh, since they are relatively cheap, but it soon became
apparent that that was not an option, since I forgot to bring my passport or any other
kind of identification for that matter. A man of the world, unencumbered by mere
papers or identification, but also not allowed on any plane (I had to roll my eyes at
that one…-Maggie).

Despite having a fair amount of time in Siem Reap, we headed right to the temples. A lot
of folks head out there in the evenings to watch the sunset, so we figured we’d tag along,
which turned out to be a fairly big waste of our time. The sun slowly descended into a
colorless blur, or at least I think it did, since I was too busy being swallowed up by the
crowd of foreigners fighting to take pictures of a small ball of red haze.

While I am mentioning our first day, let me also mention this. If you think that America has sold its soul to Big Oil & Big Government, stop by Angkor Wat some day. These numbers I mention may not be exact, but they are the most up to date I have: a three day pass to Angkor is $40, which is no problem and well worth it (Cambodians are free). If you think
most of that $40 goes to restoration of the temples – you’re more the fool. The Apsara Authority, which is the agency in charge of restoration and repairs, upkeep, maintenance, etc receives all of $4 out of my $40. Sokimex, an oil company that somehow finagled a cut gets
$6, and the Ministry of Finance (see also: Prime Minster’s front right pocket) gets the rest. It’s apparent by the state of repairs and downtroddenness of many of the temples that very little works its way back out of the Ministry. The province of Siem Reap, which by all means should be the richest province, is instead one of the poorest. Squalor and poverty run
rampant while rich tourists stay in big hotels, some of which have rooms for $2,000/night, none of which trickles down. At least our government doesn’t steal from the poor and give to the rich.…uh…oh, well…..I digress.

The next day we hit the temples pretty hard and spent the entire day on foot. The complex
is quite large, but many of the big temples are within walking distance to one another, and it also gives you the opportunity to stop along the way at the smaller random temples that are behind every tree or around every corner. They are often the best ones to check out. They might not be as big or as fancy as Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm or the Bayon, but whereas these temples have thousands of tourists, the smaller temples might have two or three folks, and that’s including Maggie, myself, and some kid trying to help me part with a couple bucks so as to buy his: (insert random Angkor kitsch item here). You gotta start with the big daddy though, so we went right to Angkor Wat. A random unverified fact I once saw claimed that Angkor Wat was the largest religious structure in the world, though I am not sure if that refers to Angkor Wat only or the huge wall and grounds around it. Regardless, it is breathtaking, but unfortunately a combination of obscenely slow internet and my obscene laziness prevents me from attaching a picture. Even in Cambodia, my time is money….ok its not, I am just lazy. Without describing in too much detail, the walls around the temple are filled with intricate bas-reliefs outlining the history of Angkorian Cambodia, reliefs which
must have taken a lifetime to complete. But there is nothing like entering the main courtyard of the temple, and climbing to the top. The stairs are quite steep and treacherous, and no doubt many a bumbling tourists have fallen off. You quite literally have to climb hand over hand to get up, but thankfully it’s not too high, and when you get to the top you are rewarded with quite a view of the surrounding countryside. The top is kinda’ split into four smaller courtyards, which are comparably empty since the stairs tend to weed out the young, weak and infirm. When we were up there, there were a large number of Buddhist nuns in their white robes cruising around and doing whatever it is Buddhist nuns do. A lot of nuns, monks, and Buddhists in general come to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples to pray, as there
is no lack of Buddhist statues and alcoves, so when the nuns showed up, it was the Cambodian equivalent of a media frenzy. The nuns and monks make ideal photographs, being that it is after all Angkor Wat, and the colors they wear, the bright whites and oranges, clash nicely
with the surrounding grey stone. I may have a low moral fiber about myself, but I respect someone when they are praying and at most will try to sneak a photograph as I hide behind a pillar or something. The Cambodians, despite most likely being Buddhist themselves, had no such scruples, and proceeded to all but climb on the Buddha statue the nuns were praying to, knocking over candles and whatnot to try and get a photograph. The equivalent would be me climbing on to the altar during Mass to take a picture of the congregation. I could only shake my head and found myself thinking, “at least it’s not an American.” Anyway, we bummed around there for a bit longer, but eventually made our way to Angkor Thom, via any number of smaller, lesser known temples, which as I’ve mentioned before were devoid of people.

Angkor Thom is basically a “walled city” without too much of a city to it. It’s quite large,
and the gates are impressive, as are the temples inside, there is just a lot of grass to cross as well. The money maker of Angkor Thom is the Bayon, which is a temple topped with large stone columns, and faces on four sides of the columns. To give you an idea, the faces are probably 5ft or so from forehead to chin and they are all over the place. As impressive as
they are, the better part of the Bayon is what I will call the basement, though it’s just like a lower courtyard. Here, Maggie wandered off and got anointed in holy water by some monk without bothering to come find me. My soul needs cleansing too! The basement has any number of passage ways running around, and despite the 200 people one floor up, you can
sit there as if you’ve got the entire temple to yourself. Anyway, add Bayon to your ‘to Google’ list and check it out. On the way out, I threw a couple cents Buddha’s way, figuring if I
wasn’t getting anointed in holy water, perhaps I could buy off the Enlightened. And before
you start thinking monks are all living ascetic lives and have no need for material goods, try telling that to the monks smoking cigarettes as they walk around with their cell phones and video cameras.

From Bayon, we checked out a few other places, but I’ll refrain from anything specific and
near the setting sun, eventually made our way back to the hotel. I only want to quickly mention that that night we went out to “Bar Street,” where I drank probably the only Guinness in Cambodia. No draft mind you, that would be asking too much, but at least it was one of the fancy nitrous cans, the “widget” for those in the know. Only cost a cool $6.50, but I’ll venture to say it was worth it.

Day Two and we opted for bikes. At $3/day I was pretty sure we weren’t getting anything fancy, and as is often not the case, I was right. Mine was circa 1950 and probably ideal for
a 12 yr old in terms of size, with a rock of a seat. The tires had air and the chain wasn’t too rusty, so, despite looking like clowns on miniature tricycles, we were off. We started off at
Ta Prohm, the jungle temple of “Tomb Raider” fame. When Angkor was discovered in the 1860s (“discovered” by Europeans – the Cambodians were already here and had been doing their thing for some time before the Europeans came). Anyway, when the Europeans
showed up in the 1860s, many of the temples had been reclaimed by the jungle, which was eventually cleared and the temples restored. Ta Prohm was left, to some extent, as the
way it was found. Now, as you walk around the temple, there are huge trees, hundreds of years old that have wrapped themselves around the temples, breaking down walls, and probably to some degree, holding the place together. Since it’s on “Matt’s Three Must See List” (and everyone elses) it was packed with folks. By the way 1) Angkor Wat 2) Bayon 3)
Ta Prohm. It is hard to really appreciate something when you can’t have a moment to really enjoy it. Chinese pushing the Japanese, who are blaming the Australians, who are probably drunk and hooting and hollering anyway. In a perfect world, I could have stayed there quite a while, because it is legitimately beautiful and amazing, but it is not a perfect world, and after a quick run-through, we saddled up and headed off into the sun rise. We rode around a fair amount and my butt hurt. If you travel around Europe and see all the monasteries, they all start to look the same right? I mean, how different can St. Paul’s in Nice be then St. Mary’s
in Bremen? You get the idea. Angkor is very impressive, but it’s easy to have one temple
run into the other. We saw many things that second day, but I will proceed to different adventures.

On our third day, we chose yet another mode of transportation and rented a taxi to ferry us further afield. First stop was a smaller temple which is famous for its intricate carvings that have somehow survived the years. Small, but as a “Lonely Planet must see” was packed
with folks. I can only assume that such artwork once adorned all the Angkorian temples,
which would have been a sight to see. The next stop, quite a ways away was a place called
Kbal Spean. Here, they carved sculptures and other designs into the bedrock of a stream – ranging from little circles to nearly life sized figures. This was quite a hike up into the hills, scrambling up rocks, and not for the faint of heart. That doesn’t stop enterprising Cambodians from lugging “cold drink” up the hill, so should you be parched from the walk, a cold Coke awaits. It was nice to be out in the woods, practically alone with the stone carvings, away
from the teeming masses below. The highlight of Day Three came with the next stop, the so called “Silk Farm.” This place was no two-bit operation and had their stuff together. A tour guide popped out as soon as we pulled up and took us around. We saw the mulberry fields, which the worms eat, and we saw the little fellas munching away in the “Cocoon Room.” The cocoons they spin are bright yellow and once they are finished spinning their cocoons, most of the poor buggers are boiled to death. So next time you are running your hands over some
silk, oohing and aaahing, think of all the little people that had to be sacrificed for it, worm
killer. Long story short is that the cocoon is the silk and it starts out no thicker than a barely perceptible hair that is eventually combined with others, and then others, and others until
you get silk thread. Some magic ensues in terms of color, feel, etc, but the real action is the weaving. There were a number of weaving looms set up for our benefit, some folks doing
basic silk work, one or two colors and some folks doing more intricate designs that required quite a bit more work. Our guide said that work on the more complex designs progressed at something like a foot and a half a day. But I guess when you are basically hand weaving strands of silk together, it does take a while. No wonder it’s so damn expensive! There was
a giftshop as well, the bane of any man who is traveling with his wife/girlfriend. I will admit that they had some nice stuff in there, actually really beautiful stuff, but a quick run through was all I needed to decide I couldn’t afford anything. And if you’re not going to buy anything, why even look, right? Right? (Wrong! You touch the material, think about how you can afford it, walk through again, rationalize, think about credit card access, think about how nice that would look on you/your friend/mom/sister etc…you get the picture, then voila, you need to buy something! After all, how could you not after seeing the process, work and beautiful outcome! -Maggie) I found comfort in a grossly overpriced iced coffee at the snack bar while Maggie splurged inside (rather enjoyed myself, thank you ;). And there, at least for the most part, our trip was over. We would still have a long day again the next day, all the way from Siem Reap to Svay Rieng, which was probably 8 hours in the car, and probably 12 hours total.

We’ve been in Svay Rieng since then, and things have been unsurprisingly quiet. The spiders have been beaten, the ants still run the place, we saw a curiously large egg in the market and I have some kind of rash on my arm that won’t go away; and for the upcoming festivities for all of you at home, I made inquires about a turkey I saw gobbling around. Happy Turkey Day!

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 12:31 PM