Day on the boat

Today I travelled by boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh on the Tonle Sap lake and river. I was supposed to be on that boat together with 15 other people (a tour group from France), but in the end - yet again - I was all alone on that yacht type boat with 2 crew members and a guide... The group had to cancel in the last moment as one of them had some serious illness and they all flew back to France..

When we left the harbour, people were staring at me as they probably believed that I hired this boat all for myself.. Next to us was the fast boat, which does the same trip but without stopping along the way, which was completely overcrowded, and all my tourist colleagues looked at me. I felt a bit strange. The guide is a BELGIAN living here in Cambodia since 1992, when he started working here for a World Bank project in order to restore the electricity network in Cambodia. He finally got married there and stayed. He was nice but extremely talkative, whereas I would have preferred sometimes to just sit there and watch the riverside passing by.

We visited a floating village on the Tonle Sap lake. The lake changes water levels between 1 meter at the end of the dry season and 9 meters at the end of the rainy season. Right now we had about 4 meters left. It was therefore not always easy to navigate. The 180 km river which connects the lake withe the Mekong changes directions twice a year. When the snow is melting in the Himalaya and all the water comes down the Mekong, some of it is pushed upwards and makes the lake grow. In the dry season, when the Mekong has a low level, the water goes back from the lake into the river. This means that the floating villages are constantly moving location.

There is everything in these village: shops, churches (yes, 80 percent of the population of the village are catholic vietnamese...!!), a filling station, a floating school on two levels with a football field on top (with nets all arounds so that the ball does not get wet..), lots of TV / satellite antennas. Electricity is mainly provided through car batteries, some have however solar panels.

On the way we visited 3 other villages: one where we saw the production of local pottery and palm wine / palm sugar (this was actually very interesting.. and the fresh palm sugar tastes great, like a caramel...). In another village we saw silver / cupper smithing. It is mainly young girls were working on the decoration with a little hammer with an incredible precision. They put the whole temoples of Angkor Wat on it without any image as a model. In another village, I rode on the back of a farmer's wife's carriage pulled by two oxes... quite fun actually. pictures of all this to follow... sorry, but still have not yet worked it out...

In the late afternoon I arrived in Phnom Penh, where I will just stay for 2 nights as it seams that there is not much to see.

UPDATE:

When adding the pictures, I actually realised that I forgot to mention 2 other important events of that day. The carriage ride was to a beautiful pagoda with very nice frescoes from 1852 (something really rare around here because of the humidity). The details and the colours were just amazing (see the picture of a king riding on an elephant... he seems however a bit more comfortable up there than me when I did this elephant ride...)

We also visited a local school, with 6 classrooms and just 2 teachers. All the classrooms were packed with pupils of different age and this was only half since there are two shifts given the limited space available, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We went into one of the classrooms where there was no teacher and did a little bit of maths with them.. it was a laugh for them and for us !! they all shout out loud the figures written on the blackboard and then the result. I couldn't judge whtther what they said was rifhgt, but Sandy (the Belgian guide) said that everything was correct. ;-) They all wanted to be on the picture and even wanted to have a portrait just of themselves... We left however in order not to disturb class too much... ;-)

Temples of Angkor

Today was my third and last day of in-depht-visit of the temples of the Angkor-area. The Angkor period lasted for more than 600 years between 802 and 1432, with the "golden era" under "god-kings" Suryavarman II (1112-52) and Jayavarman VII (1181-1219). who built the most famous temples Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. At that time, the Khmer empire was hinduist and the temples are all symbolisms of mythical Mount Meru (most temples have mountainlike structures). In a fascinatingly rich decoration, the temples tell stories of Hindu gods Shiva and Vishnu. Only between the 13th and 14th century Buddhism arrived to Cambodia and slowly replaced Hinduism. Today, Cambodian Buddhism still integrates however many elements of hinduism.

I visited the temples partly walking, partly on a motorbike and partly on a tuktuk. This morning I actually started at 5h50 in order to see the sunrise over the lake of one of the temples. Beautiful!! Yesterday I watched the sunset over the main temple of Angkor Wat. The rest of the day, I just strolled from one temple to the next, admiring different styles and shapes in changing lights. I especially liked the late afternoon sun which makes the reddish coulour of some of the stones even more intense.

Kids run around all over the place and try to sell all kind of things: postcards, guide books, flutes, scarves, etc or they try to "invite" you to the family run foodstand. It is sometimes really annoying, but sometimes the kids forget about selling their stuff and they are just kids rather than merchants. They know an amazing variety of key words in many languages and some of them speak English quite well. So it is easy to communicate with them. From time to time, I took a moment to speak to them, or play with them. On the second day, I was reading my guidebook and two little boys came along, curiously looking at my books. They saw that there were photos in there, so we started looking at them and were all fascinated. This is quite strange as I bought one of the books from on of the kids on the first day, but they are wrapped in plastic foil and it seems that the kids never looked in the book before... I learned that there is a hierarchy among the kids. Those running around within the enclosures of the temples are the kids of the many guards, all other have to remain outside. Sometimes, the main occupatio of the guards seems to be to keep out the children of the other people in order for their children to have a better chance to sell their stuff. The kids outside beg you not to buy anything inside.

Another interesting experience was a policeman wanting to sell me his police-identity-medal (it was not a fake one..!) as a souvenir - for 10 dollars, since he needed money.

Some of he temples are overgrown by the jungle and several of them have huge trees growing on their walls which is quite impressive.

Tomorrow, I will take the boat to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. It will take all day and we will stop at several "floating"villages on the way.

TRAVELLING ALONE

It was really stupid that I had worried before leaving that I might be lonely on my trip: travelling alone is finally really easy and I really like it: no discussions about what to do next or to which retaurant or guesthouse to go. If there is a problem, nobody you can make responsible for except yourself. I experienced - from the distance - quite some "interesting" situations, where people were shouting at each other for really stupid reasons. I met lots of people along the way, with some I had just a nice conversation, with some a drink or a dinner. With others I walked around a whole day. People here are also extremely open, especially if they realise that you travel alone. Actually, I mostly meet couples: a very nice french couple (wondering why somebody so "nice and charming" (I wonder why they did not say "goodlooking though.." ;-) ) was a single travelling alone. I can only wonder myself !!! Two Belgian couples, many (no, LOTS OF) Germans, a Danish, an American girl...

Again I have to apologise that I cannot upload any pictures. This time it is not a problem of the camera, but rather that you cannot upload pictures as this would cost them extra, as they have to pay their provider per MB of data transferred. So the computers generally have no CD-rom drive.. I tried quite a lot of different internet cafes... I hope that it will be possible in Phnom Penh.

It is already 23H00 here and I really need to go back and sleep as my boat will leave tomorrowq morning at 7, which means getting up at 6h00!! Again !!! :-(

Arrival in Cambodia

I have arrived in Cambodia at Siem Reap airport yesterday. The airport is a real change from everything that I have seen so far: a really modern and extremely nice international terminal, with palm trees and flowers everywhere. Immigration and delivery of visa on arrival is most recent high tech. I was tempted to greet immigration officers with "sabaidee" - the word which became the symbol of Lao life-style and friendliness, but realised in time that I have to start learning my few and daily used expressions in khmer, which seems to me - at first sight - much more complicated since there are at least three words in each expression... The new terminal became necessary as millions of tourists fly in from all over the world, especially from Asia and particularly from China, sometimes for less than a dollar from HongKong, Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur with Asia's "Ryan Air" called AirAsia: 20.000 a day it seems, but the temple area is really large and stretches over more than 10 km.

The guesthouse "les mystères d'Angkor" is just great: a little oasis in a popular residential area just next to a Wat, with very nice and comfortable rooms: a living area shared with the room next door and a balcony with view on the garden and swimming pool (!! yes, a bit of luxury is necessary if you visit temples for 10 hours a day for three days in a row). Check it out.. it is "a bit expensive" for local standards, but definetely worth the price http://www.mysteres-angkor.com/ .

And, indeed, that is what my next 3 days will be: the visit of the world's largest temple site, again a UNESCO world heritage site.

In the afternoon, I went into the centre of Siem Reap. Nothing special, but a nice town with a lively atmosphere and quite some nice renovated colonial houses, with plenty of bars and restaurants. Businesses start all over because of the ever growing number of tourists and there are really trendy places here, which would be a huge success if they were in Brussels or in any European city.

I bought a new memory card for my camera (so you will be able to see pictures of the rest of my trip as well..) and went to have my laundry done. And then, I went SHOPPING !! "Les Artisans d'Angkor" is a project, funded for three years by the EU, which teaches young Cambodians from 18 to 25 without school education their traditional handicrafts and provides training and a guranteed living for hundreds of young people. They have a shop there as well and incredibly beautiful things (quite overpriced compared to the local market, but it is for a good cause, "sustainable and fair" ). The school has a huge success and is also expanding rapidly giving more and more people (for the moment they employ over 1000 people) the chance to get out of their misery. Have a look: http://www.artisansdangkor.com/html/artisans_angkor/story.php You can also click around to see some of the products. You can even buy online, pay with credit card and have it shipped to your place!!

More on the temples later. I am hungry now !!

PS: my toe is much better, which means not broken.. lucky me !!

In the street

Another thematic set of pictures: street scenes. More to follow in this section later