Retracing: Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

A couple of weeks ago, we sped through Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City -- two nights in the former, one night in the latter -- on our way from Siem Reap to Hanoi.

We liked both cities, but were traveling too fast to post about them at the time. As we hide from the drizzly weather here in Hue, Vietnam, it's a good time to remedy that.

When we arrived in Phnom Penh after dark, it seemed to me at first like Bangkok, arrayed along a riverfront with bustling shops and restaurants. In the daylight, it was clearly very different, much less prosperous, more like a city in India, though with fewer people and a mellower feel. There, we visited Tuol Sleng. Once a high school, it was a detention center where thousands and thousands of people were tortured and killed during the four years of the Khmer Rouge's rule. It is still a place of palpable horror. The man in charge of it, "Comrade Duch," is now, finally, on trial. Very few Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to justice.

Today, Phnom Penh is still an impoverished-seeming city but is also lively and friendly. It has a very nice open-air museum with Angkor Wat-era sculpture, a rather surreal silver-floored temple with a Buddha so encrusted with jewels that even its pupils are diamonds, and a very pleasant waterfront.


Phnom Penh's riverfront, looking a little busier than it really was, thanks to a slow shutter speed


The Foreign Correspondents' Club


Some of the colonial buildings in Phnom Penhave been restored, some not so much

The ciclo -- ubiquitous in Phnom Penh and most Vietnamese cities

The several-hour bus trip to Vietnam was fairly uneventful, though our visa had been made too short and we were unable to get that fixed. 0ddly, we noticed several huge casinos as we approached the border; an unexpected taste of Vegas in Asia.

Border commerce -- the masks are very common here, for bad air and for keeping the skin pale, and maybe staving off H1N1 too

An impressive game of hacky-badminton that we watched from our dodgy dinner stop

We only spent a night and a few morning hours in Ho Chi Minh City, which many people, except the government, still call Saigon. Its lively urban energy was immediately noticeable. We wandered around and survived our first fraught attempts at crossing Vietnamese streets, wading our way through an unpausing sea of motorbikes.

Our first Vietnamese coffee -- you watch, you pour a little more hot water in, you wait


A Saigon restaurant kitchen -- we ate at a table across the alley


Relatively mild traffic for big booming Saigon


At the Ho Chi Minh Museum, a badly stuffed Chinese water deer looking coy (note the fangs)


Revolutionary jargon is alive and well

Travel hazards

On the minivan from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, they gave us each a bottle of water and, surprisingly, a donut. They also laid out a few ground rules.



Got that? No golden retrievers, guns, or durians.

It was still a hair-raising trip -- we spent about a third of our five-hour trip in the left lane playing chicken with oncoming traffic -- but at least we were safe from firearms and fruit. And slobbery tennis balls.

The splendors of Angkor

Angkor Wat is massive.


The moat, the causeway, and the powerful sun

It represents the five peaks of Mount Meru and the oceans of existence. It's home to the impressive "Churning of the Sea of Milk" carvings and seems to glow at sunset. As we approached, the heat wilted us all, but we soldiered on and are happy to report that it does indeed live up to its billing as one of the wonders of the world.


The turtle acting as pivot for churning the Sea of Milk


Apsara and windows with lathed stone posts

We seem not to have taken the classic Angkor Wat photo but here's a nice one (coincidentally from someone at U of Hawai'i).


Mighty Vishnu

Angkor Wat hails from pre-Buddhist times and was built to honor Vishnu, but when later leaders converted to Buddhism, the structure did as well. Many of its Buddhas have been vandalized, though, and it's not uncommon to come across figures in poses of peaceful contemplation minus their heads and hands.

Among other things, Angkor Wat is famous for its bas reliefs illustrating episodes from the Ramayana and the many trials and tribulations of 37 hells and 32 heavens. (The 37 hells get quite specific and intriguing. Heaven, on the other hand, seems a little dull.)

It's also home to many charming apsaras, or dancing girls, many of whom have quite remarkable hairstyles.


Engineering feats: forget not having cranes or bulldozers, they didn't even have hair gel


Hands on the (dharma) wheel


Monks in repose

We got a seven-day pass and visited several temples in the week we spent in Siem Reap. Sometimes we went by tuk-tuk, sometimes by bike, and sometimes (when Elizabeth's chain broke) both.


Tuk-tuk to the rescue

One of the most striking temples was probably the Bayon. Its walls are covered with detailed bas-reliefs, beneath the towering repeated countenances of King Jayavarman VII.


Smiling down... comforting or ominous?

The bas-reliefs depict some of the usual Ramayana stories, but apparently the umpteenth repetition of the tale got old, so they also include a big battle with the Cham people and -- the most interesting part -- Khmer domestic scenes. As the men did big important things like shoot each other, the women took care of everyone.


Riding into battle


Cooking up some fish amok


Birthin' babies

Ta Prohm is the temple they left to the jungle, at least partly. There are plenty of tourists wandering around, but with parrots squawking from the trees and the biggest spiders we've ever seen weaving webs just overhead, it still feels wild.


Ta Prohm: trees 1, temples 0


Probably shouldn't sit there too long, with those trees nearby


Lichen paint job

We also enjoyed Prasat Kravan, a small, early temple that is unusual for its brick bas-reliefs. These were the subject of our friend Megan's thesis. (Megan, feel free to comment learnedly.)


Prasat Kravan


Not all the brick bas-reliefs were apparently finished...

And we couldn't help taking lots of pictures of the critters, mythological and otherwise:


Garuda -- a half-bird divinity


Monkeys who have been pumping some iron


We told you not to make monkeys angry


No idea what this is -- half lizard, half rabbit?


A fierce (mostly) kala, or guardian


A gelfling


The little-known Cambodian rhinoceros

[NB: contrary to Blogger's claim, Elizabeth took this post over from Marty and so is mostly responsible, for better or worse, for its content]

New meanings of the word

Centuries ago, Hinduism came to Cambodia from India, inspiring temples with lingas made of stone.

In modern-day Siem Reap, you see slightly different interpretations.


In case you can't see, that says "linga chocolate, $1"

And the best name ever for a gay bar

Field Notes in the Spirit of Digger, Part 2

Cambodian weddings are loud. Really loud. Maybe not The Who in 1976 loud, but Khmers seem to have more than a passing interest in amplifier worship as a precursor to matrimonial bliss. Maximum volume yields maximum results.

Kansas, move over or shut up. Z observes that Cambodia is flatter, hotter, and more humid. Plus it boasts endless rice paddies and water buffalo that look like grade school boys with slicked-down hair parted in the middle. Take that Topeka!

There are indeed some things that my Southeast Asia phrasebook left out but from what I can gloss in Thai, Lao, and Khmer there is an exclamation that goes something close to, "White people! Quick. Cue up Bob Marley!" (Okay, maybe it's not an actual phrase, but actions speak louder than words. I like The Wailers as much as the next UCSC grad, but how many times can you hear "Three Little Birds" in a single day?)

Ginger/black sesame ice cream and air conditioning may go down as humanity's greatest contribution to tropical climes.

Above the water, through the trees

Despite the blazing sun on Tonle Sap Lake we found tremendous comfort in the sunken forest that surrounds the stilt village of Kampong Phluk. Here, we left behind the noise of our diesel long-tail boat and joined a woman on her smaller, more agile craft. If you listen carefully you'll note a sample of the bird sounds in the trees. Very special indeed.




Ever-hopeful water cat seeks fresh fish

Taking a dip in the Tonle Sap

We've been in Siem Reap, Cambodia for a few days now and yesterday we did something other than visit ancient temples.



We visited Kompong Phhluk, a village near the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake. In Kompong Phhluk, the homes are built on stilts as the water level varies wildly -- apparently by 20 feet or so -- between the wet and dry seasons. Much of the time, people get around by boat.

To get there, we first tuk-tukked (sure, it's a verb) about an hour out of town. The trip along the highway was itself an experience. Away from the sedate, colonial boulevards around Angkor Wat, Cambodia feels more like India to us than anywhere else we've been so far in Southeast Asia, with its dusty or muddy (or both) roads, slightly anarchic traffic, and Kashmir-like bazaars along the highway.

And then there was the sight that left us both gaping. I wish we had a picture, but it zoomed past much too fast. Behind a smallish man on a motorscooter was an enormous dead pig, sticking out on either side of the bike, several feet across. Its snout and feet pointed straight up, dead-bug style. It was bright pink in a way that suggested a long day on Waikiki beach. Probably six feet from nose to tail, its rigid pink body was taking the whole lane.

After the big road and its cosmopolitan sights, the scenery rapidly became much more rural.







We bounced along through a rutted lane, occasionally hitting our heads on the ceiling. (The tuk-tuks here, otherwise known as remorque-motos, are built in a way that really launches you out of your seat.)

When we reached the river, a barefooted guy led us along the road to his boat. A loud motor and a cool breeze started up as we chugged through the flattest landscape I've ever seen.

Half-submerged vegetation rose up on either side, with the occasional interesting soccer-ball-sized nest made of dirt.



I never found out what makes the nests -- probably a bird? The Tonle Sap is important habitat for many creatures, especially birds. We saw what might have been a crane, several egrets, and a bright blue kingfisher, and at a nearby bird sanctuary, you can apparently see thousands and thousands of birds, including rare cranes.

Eventually we emerged into more open water and then the village of Kompong Phhluk.




Main Street

It's now the tail end of the rainy season, so there's plenty of water, but the stilted houses still are well above its surface. Under them, people store baskets and nets for fishing and catching shrimp, as well as bicycles -- and the occasional pig pen!

Some homes are apparently built to enable people to move up and down, living in the lower stories when they're dry and moving up when the water does.


Meeting the locals

Everything is here, just like in a regular village. Even the town temple is on tall stilts -- in its case, the stilts are concrete.


Water wat

We took a brief and wonderful ride on a small canoe; a friendly woman (see Marty's post) paddled us through the town and out into a flooded forest. I don't know how the trees survive being submerged under several feet of water for months, but it seemed like a very healthy forest.



We wove around thick branches and glided beneath giant spider webs in total silence except for the slight splash of the oar. The trunks of the trees shimmered with reflected light.

It was magical.

When we returned to the larger boat, the driver took us out into the open lake and cut the motor. We crawled to the back of the boat, stuck our feet and our heads over the side of the boat into the water, and splashed around. It was terrific.


Whee!

Then we headed back into the village for a quick lunch fifteen feet over the water and a nice cooling drink.




A rather assertive tag line

Though he was unpatriotic and didn't have a beer, Marty ended the day with a terrible headache. Fortunately, he's recovered now, and in spite of the headache, he agrees that this was one of our best days here.