C & C globetrotting around the world…

The history of the Khmer Empire is mainly known from accounts of Chinese traders coming here to trade, as well as from remains of temples. The best description of the day to day life at the court of Angkor comes from the Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan who lived in Angkor Thom in the year 1296 and whose diary fortunately made it to our modern times. The Chinese settled in what is now modern day Cambodia around 2000 years ago. They have many schools scattered around Cambodia to this day and their new year is actually an official holiday here. There was a large Indian influence as well due to trade, which had an impact on beliefs, bringing over Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as art and architecture. The Khmer kings ruled the empire from the late 8^th century to the middle of the 14^th century. It is believed that the downfall of the great empire that included Laos and large parts of Vietnam and Thailand came to an end when the Mongols attacked Siam, pushing them South and oppressing the Khmer.

The main evidence of the Khmer architecture and ultimately of Khmer civilization are the religious temples. They were built for the immortal gods, usually of laterite, brick and sandstone. Most of them had enclosures, protecting them from evil spirits. The temples were not a meeting place for the faithful, but rather a palace for the god, who was enshrined there to allow him to protect the family of the founder. A great temple would be a grouping of multiple shrines with a main divinity in the middle. The image of the Hindu universe, where the gods sit on Mount Meru, the centre of the world, surrounded by the primordial ocean is reflected in the layout of the temples. They usually have 5 centre towers similar to the 5 summits of Mount Meru and a moat which represents the primordial ocean.

Here is a quick explanation of the various Hindu gods and other interesting creatures depicted in the temples:

– Brahma: the Creator, shown as emerging from the lotus that grows out of Vishnu’s navel and recognizable by his four heads, each pointing in a cardinal direction. Less represented in Cambodia.

– Vishnu: the Protector, the god who preserves universal order and fights to restore harmony, depicted as a four-armed man holding a conch shell (victory), a discus (invincible weapon), a mace (power), a ball (Earth). His consort is the goddess of wealth and good fortune.

– Shiva: the Destroyer, bringing each world cycle to an end, starting another one. He is often worshipped in the form of a linga (a phallus), as a 10-armed god dancing or with his consort sitting on the bull Nandi.

– Apsaras: celestial dancers, born from the “Churning on the Milk Ocean”

– Ganesha: elephant-headed son of Shiva

– Garuda: mythical bird-man, vehicle of Vishnu, mortal enemy of nagas

– Naga: multi-headed serpent associated with water, fertility and creation

The temples were really impressive through the architecture, but also because of their intricate bas-reliefs. We took hundreds of pictures, but here are the most remarkable ones (in order of importance, according to us).

Angkor Thom: built in late 12^th century, one of the largest Khmer cities ever built, had around 1million inhabitants in the 12th-14^th century when London had only 30,000), distinguished by its many face-towers.

Bayon: part of Angkor Thom, temple with 54 face-towers, bas-reliefs of daily life & Khmer history

Elephant Terrace: part of Angkor Thom, bas-reliefs of hunting scenes

Angkor Wat: built in early 12^th century, the world’s largest religious monument, state temple dedicated to Vishnu, full expression of the Hindu universe

Banteay Srei: built in late 10^th century, was not a royal temple, very small but beautiful, exquisitely decorated with carvings in pink sandstone, amazing concentration of mythological narratives

Kbal Spean: sculptures carved in a river-bed, also called “River of 1000 Lingas”, the water flowing over the lingas was supposed to become sacred before flowing to the Angkor Temples

Ta Prohm: built in late 12^th century for the king’s mother, a temple-monastery, has concentric galleries with corner towers, most interesting and unique due to large trees interlaced in the ruins to show how most of the Angkor temples looked upon discovery by the French in the 19^th century,

We visited 6 more temples, but the above are the most impressive or the unique ones. There are pictures of all of them below. The temples are very interesting, varying in style. We spent 2 days visiting them, but enthusiasts can easily spend more time. It was a beautiful closure to our wonderful visit in Cambodia.

From Battambang to Siem Reap we took a boat, which had some tourists, but also many locals packed with all kinds of goods. At first we were on the Stung Sangker river, which flows into the Tonle Sap river. On the way, the boat squeezes through narrow waterways, some so narrow that the branches get into the boat and passengers have to duck. The scenery is nice, but one always had to be careful. The Tonle Sap lake witnesses a very interesting phenomenon each year. With the snow melting in the Himalayas and the yearly monsoon season, the Mekong river swells up very quickly. This causes the flow direction of the Tonle Sap river to reverse and flow backwards into inner Cambodia. Tonle Sap river than quadruples its size and becomes the largest fresh-water lake in South-East Asia at 100,000km². Around the end of October (beginning of the dry season) the flow reverses again and the water empties out and leaves behind a rich swampy region that is abundant in fish and perfect for growing rice. So the Tonle Sap is a water highway, a water reservoir, a flooding control system, as well as a food basket.

The name Siem Reap means “Siam Defeated”, which is a pretty daring name for a city situated so close to the Thai border. Siem Reap is the base for visiting the Temples of Angkor, so we stayed there a few days. First we went to the Angkor National Museum to learn about the Angkorian era before going to the temples. We learnt about Khmer history, the glory of the Khmer empire from the pre-Angkorian era to its fall. We also learned a bit about Hinduism and the 3 main gods (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), which is important because these 3, along with many more are depicted in the Angkor temples everywhere. In the evening we went to a restaurant and watched a show of Apsara dancers, which we enjoyed very much. The apsaras are heavenly nymphs, often depicted in the temples too, and also the ones believed to have inspired the royal dancers. They were beautifully dressed and their movements very exact, which made for an entertaining evening.

From Phnom Penh we took a long bus ride to Battambang, a sleepy town in western Cambodia with nicely preserved French architecture. It is a great base for exploring the country-side to get a real slice of rural Cambodia. Battambang is the rice bowl of the country, producing enough rice to feed the entire population. We did a homestay with a traditional Khmer family living in a house on stilts. The dad was a former tuk-tuk driver, but is now assistant manager at a hotel. The mother Sitha (35 yrs old) is a sweet-heart and the kids are very nice too. We had dinner with the family, so Sitha cooked a lot of delicious food and we sat around on a mat, chatting. She also showed us her wedding album where she wore 13 different outfits. It was very interesting and insightful talking to them. Their English is good enough to communicate, and even if they lack the vocabulary sometimes, they know how to get the point across (eg. Big big money = rich). They seemed very eager to learn more English, so we also taught them some words that they wrote down.

We started the day with a yummy breakfast before setting out on a tuk-tuk tour of the country-side. Our first stop was the Bamboo Train, a unique and creative form of ad-hoc local transportation. It consists of a small motorcycle engine-powered bamboo cart that rides on the old railroad tracks. Whenever it meets an oncoming train (bamboo train), it gets disassembled and quickly taken off the rails to let the other one pass. It is amazing to see how easily the drivers take it apart, considering its weight. As there is a plan to upgrade the rail system, it is likely that the bamboo train will not survive. It was a very fun experience zooming at about 50km/h and especially when we met another train. Afterwards we went to visit Cambodia’s only winery and tasted some local product. It is not surprising that Cambodian wine is not world-renowned, but we met some French travellers there and had a nice chat with them.

We visited 2 temples from the Angkorian era in the area. Phnom Banan is a mountain-top, mid-11^th century ruin consisting of 5 towers. Some people say it was the inspiration for building Angkor Wat. Close to the bottom of the 358 stone steps there is de-mining activity going on, reminding us that in Cambodia it’s not safe to leave the beaten path as there are still so many mines around. After lunch we also visited Ek Phnom, another Angkorian temple built by the father of the king who built Phnom Banan. This one was built as a Hindu temple and there is a modern Buddhist pagoda (Wat Ek Phnom) next to it, as well as a giant seated Buddha statue. Back at the house, we took a Khmer-style shower. Basically you wear a sarong, go out in the garden and pour rain water over your head. Then you rub the sarong against your skin (instead of a sponge), pour more water to rinse and then you stand in the sun to dry. Luckily it was pretty warm outside, so it was fun, but it’s not the kind of shower you want to take every day. We chatted with Sitha and the kids again and later they watched TV in our room, cuddled up under a blanket. Although it was 20 degrees outside, considered Cambodian winter, they were cold.

We also took a cooking class at Nary’s Kitchen. First the husband took us to the market to buy the ingredients and explained very many different vegetables and fruits. The market was very colourful and nice, a lot more interesting than the one in Yangshuo. At the cooking school, we prepared our ingredients and cooked fried spring rolls, beef lok lak and fish amok (Khmer fish curry). The last dish is a local favourite and the one we made was better than all the ones we’ve had in restaurants so far. We got the recipes, so we really hope we can recreate these delicacies at home. Cecilia is looking forward to cooking back in Montreal, trying the new dishes and adding exotic veggies and fruits to her repertoire. In the evening we had dinner with the family again and gave them the gifts we had bought them: an English-Khmer dictionary and a world map. They were really happy about them, especially the map. We don’t think they had seen one before, so we were showing them where Cambodia is, where our countries are and they were amazed. We hope they will use them. Later we went to the “Friendship Festival”, a festival showcasing Khmer culture. The guest of honour was Cambodia’s top pop star, so the kids were very excited to go with us. It was a nice evening and our stay in Battambang at the family’s place was one of the highlights of our trip to Cambodia so far.

We arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia with a population of over 2 million people  and founded in 1434. Once known as the “Pearl of Asia”, it was considered one of the loveliest French-built cities in Indochina in the 1920s. We visited Paulo from our Amsterdam times who has recently moved here and it was nice to see each other after 6 years. We also met his flat mates doing internships for various NGOs in the city and went out on the town so they showed us what the nightlife is all about. Phnom Penh has many renovated colonial buildings, huge amounts of SUVs and lots of expensive restaurants and bars, but this is worlds away from the struggle faced by most residents.

Our visit in Phnom Penh coincided with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) trial hearings. The ECCC is a special court set up in Cambodia with the help of the UN to judge some leaders of the Khmer Rouge for the crimes they committed between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge was a revolutionary movement which ascended to power while Cambodia was weakened by the bombings and fighting of the second Indochina war. We think the expression Second Indochina War fits better as the Vietnam War next door affected both Cambodia and Laos, as the Viet Cong seeked refuge in the neighbouring countries and the Americans bombed these areas as well. Upon taking Phnom Penh on April 17^th 1975, the Khmer Rouge implemented a radical and brutal restructuring of society. Its goal was to transform Cambodia (renamed Democratic Kampuchea) into a peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. To do so, the city populations were evacuated to the country-side to work as slaves. Intellectuals (or anyone speaking a foreign language or people wearing glasses) were systematically wiped out. The leader of the Khmer Rouge was known as Pol Pot and under his rule around 2 million people died ( 1/4 of the population), either of hunger, overworking, torture or murdered by his men. The Khmer Rouge rule was brought to an end by the Vietnamese who liberated the population on January 7^th 1979. Because the cold war was still going on, Pol Pot’s regime was allowed to retain the seat of Democratic Kampuchea to the UN on the premise that it was a legitimate Cambodian government in contrast to the Vietnamese installed and controlled (and Soviet backed) People’s Republic of Kampuchea regime. After the Vietnamese invasion, the Khmer Rouge retreated to an area near the Thai border where they could rebuild their military with the help from the West and China. After the fall of communism the Russian stopped their financial aid to Vietnam which forced them to end their operations in Cambodia. The haphazard efforts towards conciliation in Cambodia culminated in the Paris Agreements in 1991, in which United Nations-sponsored free and fair elections were scheduled for 1993. As a result the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was established at the end of February 1992 in order to supervise the cease-fire and the ensuing general election. Pol Pot himself has died in 1998 and in December 1999 the remaining leaders surrendered, and the Khmer Rouge effectively ceased to exist.

After all these years, currently 4 important leaders operating under Pol Pot are being tried by the ECCC. The trial is open to the public and we attended one session as well. Although the accused are around 80-90 years old, people hope that they will be punished for their crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, etc). The trial was very interesting and we saw Nung Chea, who was Pol Pot’s right hand, testify.

After lunch with our tuk-tuk driver, we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng, originally a school, was a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime, also known as S21 and the place where 20,000 people had been held and tortured before being killed during the 4 years. On July 26, 2010, Kaing Guek Eav “Duch” was convicted and sentenced to 35 years by the ECCC. As the head of the government’s internal security branch, he oversaw the Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison camp. Only 7 prisoners survived this terrible prison.

We also went to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where the detainees of the S21 prison were executed. At the height of the regime, 100 people were being killed a day. Prisoners were brutally bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting bullets before being thrown into mass graves. It was a very moving experience going through the Killing Fields and listening to explanations and recorded testimonies. The grounds are now peaceful, but pieces of bones and clothes protruding from the ground remind of the cruelty that happened here not so long ago. There is also a memorial stupa displaying over 8,000 skulls of victims unearthed here. The tragedy of the massacre the Khmer Rouge perpetrated is unimaginable, killing a quarter of Cambodia’s population, and destroying their culture and institutions.

Back in the city, we stopped at Wat Phnom (meaning Hill Temple) that gave the city its name. It is a quiet, shady and incense-infused temple atop a 27m-high mound. Legend has it that lady Penh first built a temple here in 1373 to house 4 Buddha statues she had found floating in the Mekong river. For lunch we went to “Friend Restaurant”, for its delicious food, but also because it helps former street kids get into the hospitality business. There are many NGOs and other organizations helping orphanages and street children getting a second start. One has to know that about one third of Cambodia’s budget comes from international aid with Japan being the biggest donor. This is also the reason why there are so many NGOs and expats. The financial crisis had also one good side effect. There are less “tree-huggers” and long haired people that want to “give back” spending dollars as if there is no tomorrow. Today a lot of these projects have to get a real business plan to get approved and show that they will be self-sufficient after a certain period. In the end many donors have learned that the goal of an NGO is to become dispensable and not indispensable. Afterwards we went to the National Museum, which is housed in a beautiful red building. It has masterful Khmer artwork, as well as the world’s finest collection of Angkor-era sculpture. The Royal Palace and its surrounding buildings all have classic Khmer roofs and ornate gilding, and are nicely located in lush gardens close to the riverfront where the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers meet. The actual Royal Residence is closed to the public since the King lives there, but we visited the Throne Hall and the Silver Pagoda. The Silver Pagoda is so named because it’s floored with 5,000 silver tiles weighing 1kg each. It is also known as the Pagoda of the Emerald Buddha thanks to a Buddha statue made of Baccarat crystal inside. There is also a life-size gold Buddha decorated with 9,584 diamonds. The garden has many other stupa-shaped memorials dedicated to deceased ancestors of the royal family, as well as a miniature of Angkor Wat.

Overall our stay in Phnom Penh was really nice, meeting Paulo and also learning more about Cambodia’s recent history.

We did our Cambodian Visa at the border and it went really quickly. The drive from the border to Kampot was nice, passing lots of salt fields. We stayed at Olly’s (a Belgian guy with his Thai girlfriend) in the “eco-bungalows” made of wood, bamboo and cane set in the garden, which are very nice. The best part of the place was the deck stretching into the river where we sat, chilled, read and talked to other guests, something we missed in Vietnam where it was more difficult to meet people as everyone was in their hotel room. Kampot’s surroundings are worth a visit, so one day we took a tuk-tuk tour of the country-side with 2 other travelers. Olly’s tuk-tuk driver Mr. Dara, who is very nice, spoke English and was always wanting to explain and show us things. Our first stop was a Muslim fisher village, where they also have a crab farm. Then we stopped at a pepper farm, where we walked through the plantation and sampled the 3 kinds they have there. Kampot pepper is one of the best in the world and apparently before the Indochina war, all good restaurants in France had to have Kampot pepper. We learnt that the different kinds of pepper are actually all one plant and the colour depends on the process. For green pepper, the peppercorns are picked off the plant while they are still green and is only consumed fresh. Black pepper is dried green peppercorns. Red pepper is obtained by letting the peppercorns ripen on the plant and then picking and drying it. White pepper is obtained by picking the ripe (red) peppercorns, soaking them in water, peeling them and then drying them. So from one plant you can obtain all these different kinds.

After the “pepper tasting”, we were driven to Kep, a small sleepy beach town where the French from Phnom Penh used to come for a weekend getaway. We had lunch & walked along the promenade. Our tuk-tuk driver told us that many people had started building guesthouses hoping that Kep would return to its former glory during the Indochina period, but tourism hasn’t taken off that quickly and they were stuck with empty villas, often going bankrupt. From there we headed back towards Kampot through the rice paddies sprinkled with palm trees, a beautiful sight. We stopped at a cave and were immediately surrounded by some Khmer (Cambodians are called Khmer) kids who wanted to practice their English with us. They spoke really well and asked where we came from. When we said Canada, they also started speaking French to us and some knew basic German. Their English was really very good and we were able to have a conversation as they walked with us to the cave. We were expecting them to ask for money at the end, so we told them that we don’t need a guide, that we won’t give them money, but they still came. At the end one little girl told the driver in Khmer that she was disappointed we hadn’t given them any money, but they hadn’t asked for it and weren’t rude about it (a big change from Vietnam). Unfortunately there are still many tourists that buy souvenirs from kids or just give them a dollar because “they are sooo cute”. This only reinforces the parents to send their kids to beg and sell instead of sending them to school. The cave was in a small hill and the view from there was breath-taking, with the sun setting behind Bokor Mountain.

The next day we biked to town, exploring the streets and the old and restored colonial villas in this sleepy riverside French-era town. The currency in Cambodia is the riel ($1=4000 riel), but hardly anyone uses it. Prices are quoted in dollars and riel are only used for things under $1. So for example if you buy something that costs $1.50 you pay $1 and 2000 riel. It’s an interesting system, but one quickly gets used to it. We spent 2 really nice days here and we already like Cambodia. The landscape is nice and the people are friendly, so Kampot was a really good introduction to the country.