While our friends back in the States were dealing with ice and snow (and having a White Christmas), we were in Cambodia sweating. Actually, the weather was great - not as warm or humid as Singapore. Overall we had a great trip. We accomplished our main goals of seeing the Angkor area Temples, having fun, showing the kids how good they have it, and helping the people of Cambodia (in small ways for now).
Seeing Angkor Wat has been on my 'bucket list' from the first time I saw it on tv. Then when I saw Ta Prohm, I was just itching to go check it out myself. But since Cambodia is one of the poorest countries on the globe, we were hoping to combine the trip with some volunteering. However, since we got to Singapore on Nov. 18 and were wanting to go to Cambodia in late Dec. or early Jan., there just wasn't time for the agency to set something up. Hopefully we'll still be able to do that.
Getting the tour package arranged and paid for has a story all it's own. The brief story goes:
Erin wasn't going to get paid in Singapore 'till the end of Dec. Our American credit card got "compromised" (someone tried to buy $250 worth of shoes in the States in Dec.), and I had toe surgery which took our Singapore bank account down to $300 (reimbursable, just not quickly). Now, we DO have the money to pay for this Cambodian vacation, we just can't figure out how to get it in the agency's hands. We couldn't write a check from either the Singapore account, or the Texas one (it would be in dollars), and we didn't have a credit card that would work. Fortunately, the credit card company was able to FedEx us the new card and we got it working. On the same day, Erin was (mysteriously) paid for the month, so our Singapore bank account was up over the minimum - whew! But I ended up making 2 cross-town trips to the travel agency to get everything taken care of and paid for.
We bought an all inclusive package - plane tickets, hotels, meals, tickets to touristy things, tour guide, driver, and bottled water during the tours! I would highly recommend this to anyone who isn't interested in the "adventurous backpacking" type tour. But now that we've done it once, I'd have the courage to go a little more on my own I think. For first-timers with kids it was perfect.
So in typical Homeschool Mom fashion, I read up on Cambodia, bought a travel guide and prepared a unit for the kids. We studied Cambodian history and geography for a week or two. Some of the temples have carvings or paintings from the Ramayana (an ancient Indian story/epic poem), so we studied that too. As luck would have it, one of the museums here in Singapore was having an exhibit on the Ramayana and a week before we left for Cambodia there was a children's day with hands-on arts and crafts and FREE ADMISSION! WOOT! So of course we were there. The exhibit had some photos of Angkor Wat, and some masks from the Ramayana made by hand by a man in Cambodia. The man recently passed away, but his masks are awesome. (They didn't allow photos in there, or I'd show you a pic.) When you homeschool, everything counts as educational, so we downloaded Samantha Brown's travel show on Cambodia as well as Tomb Raider (hey, it's not as bad as the critics would make you believe. - But watch it with the tv guardian!) There ARE actually several seconds worth of footage from Ta Prohm in the movie. :-P
In spite of my best efforts, we got to the airport and O. looked at me and said, "I'm really excited, but I forgot where we're going." "What?!? After all that stuff we talked about? <sigh> Cambodia." "Oh yeah. Where IS Cambodia?" Don't make me hurt you, kid.
The night before we left Singapore, I downloaded the visa application forms and filled out 10 of them (2 ea.) by hand and attached a passport photo to each one with glue as per instructions from the Cambodian govt. website. When we landed the man said, "Not that form, this form" and we had to start over. grrrrr. Plus the English was so-so. He was trying to think of the right number and finally said we owed him $10. We knew we had to pay $20 ea. for the visas eventually, so I felt like we were paying $2 ea. for something else (scam?) But it turns out that the 2 kids under 12 years old got in for $5 ea. and we only paid the $20 for the other 3 of us. But by the time we did all that, we were the last ones out of the airport. I was praying that our guide would still be there. She was. Yea!
We had heard and read all kinds of bad things about Cambodia: police corruption, rampant purse snatchers, child snatching, scamming, don't drink the water (or eat washed vegetables or brush your teeth with it.) etc. So the grown-ups were a little nervous about going, or maybe I should say, 'on our guard'. Erin heard that transportation could be very iffy, and breakdowns were frequent. We got about a mile from the airport when our van started to smell like burnt rubber. The driver and guide got out (in the middle of the road) and looked for flat tires - nope. They called for another van to come pick us up. The answer they got was that it was too far and our van wasn't dangerous, so go on. So we did, and it turned out not to be anything after all. But we started to wander if some of what we'd heard was true.....
The guide told us rush hour traffic was bad - and it was, but not in the US since of the word. First of all, everything kept moving. Slowly, but moving. Everyone in Phnom Penh drives about 30 mph all the time, everywhere. Everyone also ignores stop signs. MOSTLY people obey traffic lights. When you come to an intersection, the main road is going 30 mph. the apparent rule is, "Stick the nose of your vehicle in. Once the nose is in, people will either swerve or stop." One of the scariest things I've done in a long time was to cross the street in Phnom Penh! I felt like the frog in frogger!! This you tube video is pretty much what we experienced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LHHq31xNTU
Erin says the theme of Cambodia driving is, "It's a pretty limited country that only drives on ONE side of the road." I'm amazed at the patience of the drivers! This would NEVER work in the US. The honking you hear is generally the "Hey, I'm passing you now" kind. I don't think I ever heard any of the "HEY watch out you moron!" type.
While searching for that video I found this one which is also very true:
http://khmerbird.com/entertainment/videos/amazing-video-of-busy-traffic-in-phnom-penh.html
On the way to Siem Reap we passed a guy with aprox. 8-10 piglets in a cage on the back of his motorcycle. Couldn't get the camera up fast enough....
Anyway, we took our stuff to the hotel and then went to our first dinner. The choice between table and floor was easy - floor of course. We eat in chairs all the time. There were cushions on the bamboo floor, around a low table so it was comfy. The food was "set menu" or some places called it "fixed menu" which basically means, "this is what your tour company ordered for you because it's either a) a typical dish for this region, or b) we know tourists will eat this. Drinks extra. " As much as I've worried and whined about the kids not eating Asian food, they did REALLY well on this trip! We started off with peanuts, satay chicken with peanut sauce, and spring rolls. Then they brought all the courses except dessert together. The dishes are placed in the middle of the table and you serve yourself. We had cashew chicken, beef tips with fries (I guess they knew we had kids or that we were Westerners), shrimp, "sour" soup (it's not sour, but it has a lot of lemon in it, and it's very good), steamed veggies, rice, and fish "Amok". (No, no, the fish had not run a muck - fish don't run.) All very good. I even had seconds and thirds on the fish!! (no kidding!) Found out later that it's spicy catfish - no wonder I like it - no fishy taste. This was pretty much the menu for lunch and dinner the whole week, although it was the only restaurant with a 'floor' option - boring ol' table and chairs the rest of the way. There was some variety in what kind of chicken, and sometimes it was pork instead of beef. We had fries one other time I think.
We were told not to drink the water, so we had soda, juice, or bottled water. Either my juice was 'laced' with some bad water, or the fish Amok on the plane back to Singapore had really run a muck, because overnight I developed some Montezuma's revenge (I didn't know he'd been to Cambodia!). Hopefully it won't last long and no one else will come down with it.
Anyway, the kids didn't whine about eating Asian food!! Yea!!! They all found something they could eat, and did not even mention being hungry in between meals. No one asked for Western food. I think this is a HUGE accomplishment (see the earlier post about food)!!!!!
After a good night's sleep in segregated rooms (the hotel rooms only had twin beds, so we went boys in one, girls in the other), we went for our first sight-seeing day. We saw the Royal Palace (Cambodia has a constitutional monarchy), including the "silver pagoda", and the National Museum. All very nice. The throne room is fancy and gold covered like you'd expect a throne room to be.
After lunch we went to the genocide museum (a former high school turned into a prison/torture center by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge). It was more ghastly than I would've preferred O. to see, but he seemed to handle it o.k., and 7 year olds don't pay a lot of attention to guides/teachers anyway (see above). Over 20,000 prisoners went through there in 4 years. 7 of them survived. One of the survivors was there giving a tour (not ours). The victims were not killed at the prison, but were put in a truck and driven to the killing fields a short drive away. Most were clubbed once in the head and buried alive. Some were sawn or cut with sharp palm leaves. The children were held by the feet and had their heads bashed in on a tree. (bullets were expensive). Now go hug your children and thank Jehovah God that you were not born in Cambodia anytime in the last 100 years. We did not go to the Killing Fields. I had told the tour company the ages of the kids and she thought it would be too much. Clearly, she's never been to the genocide museum. So as we were walking out of the prison, I told the kids, "You are now going to do something that 20,000 people didn't get to do - walk out of here free."
From there we went to a temple called Wat Phnom. It is dedicated to the founder of Phnom Penh, who happens to be a wise woman. Like all the buddhist temples we visited, there were people bowing down to idols and offering incense. I have to say, the incense smells good and the temples are beautiful. One of the buddhas had over 2500 diamonds on it. All I could think was "what a waste!". People are starving in this country and here's an idol with precious gems on it.
Then we went shopping in the Russian Market. (Didn't see any Russians, or Russian-type merchandise, so I don't know where the name comes from.) The prices were the best we saw. If I'd known that then, I'd have bought more.
By the time we were done there we were pretty tired. Thankfully, it was time for our "1 hour river cruise". I don't know if our guide had a boat owner that she uses regularly or what, but we drove up and seemingly approached a boat at random and got on for a one hour 'down and back' ride on the Mekong River. It was very peaceful and the perfect end of our day. We were the only ones on the boat, so it was very private. The owner and his family apparently live on the boat. They had a cute little baby boy who was around 10 months? old. We saw several other families on their fishing boats. It's hard for us to imagine living like that. The little kids all waved to us. They all liked seeing O's blond hair. In fact, O got plenty of attention from everyone we met.
The next day, we took a chartered bus to Siem Reap which is the city nearest the Angkor temples. The trip is 314km (almost 200 miles) but it takes 5.5 hours because the road is 2 lane all the way and there's lots of motorcycle traffic and ox carts and whatever to dodge. The view was very educational though. All along the road there were small villages of basically shacks on stilts. This is how 85% of Cambodians live. They grow their own food to survive. They have no education and no means of getting one. We did see several schools, but not everyone can afford to send their kids. Many kids are needed to help farm. I hoped my kids were watching....
Siem Reap is a much smaller city than Phnom Penh. 85,000 compared to 2 million. It is also newer and neater looking than P.P. I'm sure that has to do with all the tourists coming to see the nearby temples. Nevertheless, we didn't see any construction going on in P.P., but several new hotels and restaurants in S.R. Siem Reap is also much more quiet than P.P. The pace is slower and calmer.
After the 6 hour bus ride we arrived at the bus station (a shack in a gravel parking lot), but our guide wasn't there to meet us. Hmmm. Let's just sit and wait. Hmmmm. Maybe the tour company forgot to tell them we were coming. Hmmmm. Finally we called the tour company (Thankfully we'd bought sim cards for our phones for $3 ea.) and our guide arrived. They'd been waiting at the OTHER bus station down the road. Apparently, they randomly choose which one they're going to drop people off at. Fear averted.
We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went to the Cambodian Cultural Village. We saw the wax museum part and then went around to some life-sized villages representing different ethnic groups in Cambodia. It was pretty neat. The highlight of each 'village' was a traditional dance. We all enjoyed that - even the kids. (Who are known to groan about seeing "shows" at theme parks.)
The next day was TEMPLE DAY! Woo-Hoo! We started with Angkor Thom. 'Angkor' means 'city', so this was Great City. The city walls are 3 km per side (almost 2 miles), so it was pretty big. We didn't walk nearly that much though! One of the highlights is the South gate - which the tour vans still use(!). There are lots of carvings and statues. One of the big themes is the giants vs. demons tug of war (the rope is a snake or 'Naga') This is supposed to churn the sea of milk which creates the nectar of immortality. See wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_manthan
This theme is everywhere. It's on almost every bridge. It was even over the hotel pool in Phnom Penh.
Well, I could go on and on about the carvings at the temples. You can look them up yourself if you're interested. Suffice to say that every aspect of the city that remains is covered in elaborate carvings of Hindu mythology or of Jayavaraman VII who built the city in the late 12th century. In the middle of the city is the Bayon Temple. We spent a lot of time there looking at the carvings in detail. They have many carvings of daily life - fishing, hunting, boat races, cockfighting, pig (boar) fighting, cooking, Apsara dancing, kings vanquishing enemies, crocodiles eating fish or people..... Very cool.
Also within the city of Angkor Thom (yes, that's redundant) we saw the Elephant terrace. The guide books do a poor job of relating what this will look like. What's left looks like a long, long, low wall of elephant carvings. I didn't count, but I'm guessing there were over a hundred large elephants carved on this wall. The wall in ancient times was the front of the royal viewing platform where the king would watch his parades or troops or whatever it was that kings watched back then.
Near the Elephant Terrace we saw the Leper King Terrace. He didn't have leprosy, but someone who came after him didn't like him because they chopped off his earlobes, fingers and the tip of his nose. Like almost all of the statues out there, this was a copy and the original is in a museum. Everyone from invading armies hundreds of years ago to the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge in the last century have done damage/vandalism to the Angkor Temples. Weather and nature haven't helped either.
From Angkor Thom we drove over to Ta Prohm temple/monastery. This one was also built by Jayavaraman VII in the late 12th century. This is the one with the trees that are destroying it. The trees are the big attraction here, even though the carvings on the building itself are really cool. I'd love to go there alone and just wander around. But I enjoyed it with several hundred other tourists, all jockeying for a photo with the tree roots. Still - very worth it and uber cool!
After lunch, we visited the 'granddaddy of them all' - Angkor Wat. The one on the Cambodian flag. Angkor Wat or City Pagoda is not as big as Angkor Thom, but it's still big. It has a gi-nor-mous moat all around it and only one causeway entrance. There's an aerial view on the wikipedia page if you're interested. The defenses were so good that a few people with guns kept the Khmer Rouge from coming in. - yea them! The whole city was on the island inside the moat. The temple sits in the middle of the city. This one was built in the early 12th century by Suryavaraman II. Really cool. Really big. We saw maybe 10% of it. We were tired and we wanted to catch the sunset from the top of another temple. We did get the overall idea of it though. I 'got my money's worth' on the 10% we did see. :-) Kids under 12 were not allowed to climb to the top, so I waited with them while Erin and H went to the top.
After they came down, we hurried over to Phnom Bakheng to see the sunset. We hiked up the mountain to the base of the pyramid. Then we had to go up these really narrow, dangerous 1000 year-old steps. The sunset was awesome. The top was very crowded. Going down the ancient narrow steps in the twilight with a couple hundred other tourists at your back was scary. 3 steps down and your head was level with their feet. But we made it.
We were scheduled for a Gala Dinner that night, but we didn't get to go by the hotel to change, so we showed up like Ma and Pa Kettle in our Temple tromping clothes, covered with sweat and dust. (I hope we didn't leave tracks!) I know we smelled. This was a very fancy hotel that hosted the candle-light dinner by the pool. We were seriously underdressed. Oh well. The food was good, but we didn't stay for the dancing or the "lucky draw". We gave our raffle tickets to the Singaporean Ladies seated with us, (Maybe that made up for the smell.) and left at 8:30.
In the middle of that night (Christmas Eve), Erin knocked on the door to tell me O. had a fever. It was 103.8. Great. This is the kid that won't keep down anything when he has a fever, so it can be quite a challenge to get some medicine in him. Plus, we'd heard that if you needed medical care - get yourself to Thailand. But we did get one children's tylenol in him and I asked at the front desk if there was a dr. that could come or that we could go to. They recommended an international hospital, but said it was expensive. I asked our guide when he came to pick us up and he took us to a pharmacy around the corner. (He told us he'd taken someone to that hospital to get some simple treatment/medicine and the bill was $500!!) We bought liquid tylenol AND antibiotics over the counter! Yes, I know that anti-biotics are over used, but here we were with a kid that goes from normal to 103.8 in 15 min. Every time he's done that before it's been strep throat. This time he said his throat hurt and that was enough for me to ask for anti-biotics. Turns out I was right and after he took them his fever started coming down. 24 hrs. later it was normal. (Yes, it could've been a 24 hr. thing, but stop making me second guess myself!!)
But he and Erin missed that day of touring. The other 2 and I went to "Les Artisans d'Angkor" which is a workshop/training center for traditional Cambodian crafts. They have 2 parts - one for wood and stone carving, and the other for silk production. The workers are all local poor people who are trained for 6 months at a salary of $30/month. Then they start working there for $150/month. That's about 3x what they would make in the tourist industry. The silk making was fascinating. We shopped quite a bit in the gift shop (dread that credit card bill!!) - even though the prices were much much higher, we felt like the money was helping people who were trying to help themselves.
We also went to another local market after lunch, and a crocodile farm. We bought a little at the market, and nothing at the crocodile farm. Then we went for a traditional Khmer massage. Mmmmm. The kids were nervous about being undressed in front of strangers, so I told them they didn't have to do it at all if they wanted. But it turns out that they gave us some pajama-type clothes to wear during the massage and we all stayed in the same room. The ladies were well trained and rubbed, smacked, pushed, and pulled us into total relaxation. One of the tricks they used was to cut off circulation to a limb and then rub it. When they started rubbing, it felt like they were using heating pads. (Don't try this at home!) Poor ol' Dad sitting home with the sick one!!! I felt pretty guilty about it after the massage, so we swapped places and he went to the BBQ buffet and Apsara dancing show that night while I stayed with O.
The next morning we came back to Singapore. It was a little weird to 'come home' to Singapore. We ALL were tired of Asian food and since the kids had done so well with it, we went to Wendy's for supper. :-D
Cambodia leaves you with mixed feelings. The people and country side are wonderful. The ancient history is awe-inspiring. But the abject poverty everywhere you look just gets to you. You can't help but want to do something for these people. We tried to buy from shops with a cause (Aids/hiv patients, handicapped workers or masseurs, land mine victims selling their own music cds, to name a few), but every where you go there are more land mine victims, more hungry children, and more beggars. The beggars were not as numerous as we expected. Most of them now have started selling something for a dollar or two. We started calling it "running the gauntlet" because every temple we came out of, we were accosted by women and children selling guide books (we were warned that these were unreadable, illegal photocopies), cheap bracelets, scarves, bananas, drinks, and whatever else. Literally every single step I took in the gauntlet I said "No thank you" to a different person. It was sad to see the kids NOT in school. To know that in 10 years without help, they'll be the women selling scarves in the same place. In fact, they all lived there in shacks across from the temples. We chose not to buy from these folks because we felt like it would just perpetuate the cycle and encourage others to do the same. Instead we are making donations to charities that really help end the cycle and train folks to help themselves. One charity I recommend is Friendship with Cambodia. Their website is:
http://www.friendshipwithcambodia.org/
I bought their book at a charity book store. They seem to have a good attitude about how to help the Cambodian people help themselves. I would love it if you would donate to them. Please. We have so so much, and they have nothing - not even clean water to drink.
At the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. The building behind us is the Throne Room.
The man in the red shirt is one of 7 survivors from this prison. He survived because he could work for the Khmer Rouge as a mechanic.
genocide museum
Boarding the boat for our cruise. The owner's wife is assisting.
Other boats on the river.
The fabulous setting for our breakfasts in Phnom Penh overlooking the Tonle Sap river where it merges with the Mekong.
Countryside between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap
Traditional Dancing at Cultural Village
South Gate of Angkor Thom
Erin trying to figure out what kind of bird that is in the carving. We never were convinced that it was a parrot.
Elephant Terrace
Leper King
Ta Prohm
Beside one of the four pools at Angkor Wat
Sunset from Phnom Bakheng
The steps on Phnom Bakheng
getting the silk off the cocoons
eating asian food!
back to fighting strength by departure day
Krama (traditional Khmer scarf) = too cool
Phnom Bakheng (where we watched the sunset) from the airplane. It's the only hill in the picture. (Hey. I didn't have the window seat...)
a Buddhist temple. Note the people in front of the shops - they are the ones of 'the gauntlet'. Once they spot you, others come out from the woodworks.
