Monday, 07 May 2012

• One Week in Cambodia

  Early March, 2012

       In early March of 2012 I traveled to Cambodia for the first time.  My close friend Lindsey works for the World Food Program there and since she took her post in 2011, I'd promised a visit.  Deep into an absurd schedule of graduate coursework and full time photography for the University of Florida, there were few opportunities to make the journey.  With Spring Break being the first week in March I knew that would likely be my only travel window, so I took a week of vacation, packed a small bag, grabbed my Leica and off I went.  With only ten days total available to me and three of those committed to just air travel, I was determined to make this brief excursion a full one.

       After almost thirty hours of airport hopping, I landed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where Lindsey had her regular tuk tuk cab driver, Long, waiting there for me.  As the rickety tuk tuk puttered from the capitol's outskirts and into the heart of the city toward Lindsey's apartment, I quickly succumbed to Southeast Asia's familiar warm and humid embrace and before long I could virtually ignore the constant spine jarring holes in the roads as well as the frightful interweaving of every conceivable form of overloaded transport, that patterned chaos that is Cambodian traffic.  Numbed by exhaustion, fully relaxed by the tropical heat, and back in one of my favorite regions of the world, I felt at home again with my adventure just beginning.

  

  

       Following a delicious lunch at a cafe near Lindsey's apartment, and then the briefest of naps, we were off for a weekend excursion to the southern coastal province of Kampot.  Joining us down there on the stunningly lush grounds of the riverside Villa Vedici were a number of aid workers and ex-pat friends of Lindsey's.  We were to spend the weekend there before having to come back to Phnom Penh on Sunday so that Lindsey could return to work on Monday.  Had I not gotten horribly ill for the duration of the Saturday that I was there, I'd have had two full days to enjoy the river, the nearby town of Kampot, and the countryside.  However, with a full day of vomiting and a high fever and headache, Saturday was a complete wash.

  

       Sunday I fared much better and felt healthy enough to accompany Lindsey, her roommate Alissa, and their friend Robin up a nearby mountain to explore the French colonial ruins of Bokor Hill Station, once the colonial outpost of France's early 20th Century misadventures in the region.  I was particularly looking forward to exploring the long abandoned French mission and Grand Hotel that make up the bulk of the ruins at Bokor after I'd read numerous accounts of how eerie it was to walk through the palatial hotel, long tattered ballroom drapes still attached and bullet holes in the walls, evidence of the period when it was a base for the Khmer Rouge.  Much to my dismay, however, in an effort to revitalize the region, the Chinese are building a massive casino atop the hill and day laborers are currently living in the Grand Hotel and the mission while they partially restore them as hilltop tourist attractions.  Thus, it appears that I was a year or so too late for the best Bokor Hill Station.  At least the moped ride from town up and down the switchback mountain road was exciting and beautiful, often revealing breathtaking views of the Cambodian lowlands from which we'd come.

  

  

  

       After a single night's rest at Lindsey's in Phnom Penh, I was on the road again, this time in a privately hired cab that would take me five hours to the northwest city of Siem Reap, the largest urban area from which to explore the remnants of the famed Angkor civilization.  Virtually everyone has seen images of Angkor Wat at some point in their lives, even if they don't have a clue what it is or where it is.  Constructed around 1000 AD, Angkor Wat is believed to the burial tomb temple complex for the Angkor ruler who had it built in his name.  From about 600 AD until the civilization's collapse in the late 1200's, Angkor boasted an estimated population of 1.5 million inhabitants, its empire dominating all of what is now Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and according to some accounts, the largest civilization in antiquity.  Surrounded by a wide, crocodile- infested moat, crossed only by an east and a west stone causeway, then a large wall with massive gates, Angkor Wat was the ceremonial center of the empire, a mountain of a monument that rose from the dense jungles of north central Cambodia.  Though Angkor Wat is the poster child for grand Buddhist temples, what a lot of people do not realize is that it is just one of many, many grand and architecturally diverse temples, spread amongst the tropical forests north of Siem Reap.  Angkor Wat has been the best preserved of all the temples and its sprawling scale, the amount of ornate detail carved into the sandstone upon virtually every surface, and the nature by which the central temple complex climbs to a spectacular central summit, make Angkor Wat one of the most impressive man made structures the world over.  I was prepared to be awe-struck but that term is entirely inadequate for the sense of adventure and enjoyable exploration that I felt while scrambling through the endless corridors of Angkor Wat, or any of the lesser known temples.

  

       My excursions from Siem Reap to and from the numerous temples was made by both rented bicycle and on the back of a moped.  From Siem Reap one can pay about four US dollars to have a Cambodian whisk you one way from the town center to any of the temples and from there you may hoof it to the next temple, which can be several miles away, or just pay a dollar or so to be taken there via one of the numerous tuk tuk or moped drivers competing for your fare.  Upon arrival in Siem Reap I chose the moped option so that I could go to Angkor Wat at sunset and get my bearings so that I could put a full day in by bike on the following day.  Thus, my first experience of the grandeur that is Angkor Wat was at sundown on the Monday I arrived, the temples bathed in a beautiful early evening red-gold yellow and a large moon rising overhead.  I lucked out as well because at that time of the day most other visitors had vacated the interior of the temple allowing me to explore in relative peace and quiet.

  

  

  

   

  

       In hindsight my desire to visit the temples via a rented bike was possibly a mistake.  There is really only one style of bike used throughout the country by both Cambodians and tourists alike, and that is the so called "Cambodian cruiser."  My particular model was a single speed with a wire basket on the front and a non-adjustable seat that remained so low that my total leg extension while pedaling was likely only eight inches or so.  This was fine for the first six or seven miles, but once out there amongst the sprawl of temple ruins, I was cursing myself for having tried something so ambitious on a bike that was so torturous.  Thankfully the enjoyment of exploring the temples was so great that I was able to block out most of my discomfort and exhaustion caused by all the miles put on the bike.

       Ta Prohm is another temple complex within Angkor that enjoys an internationally recognized image.  Also known as the "Tomb Raider temple," because it served as a partial live action set for a scene in the ... film.  In stark contrast to the preserved state which Angkor Wat has always enjoyed, Ta Prohm fell mostly to natural ruin in the centuries of abandonment, resulting in the destructive growth of gigantic tropical tree roots which snaked their way through the building's corridors, collapsing entire walls in the process.  Now recognized as a lucrative international tourist destination, Ta Prohm is kept in its perpetual state of manicured disorder that attempts to preserve its iconic feel of a lost city in the middle of the jungle, which it sort of was upon its "rediscovery" by the Europeans in the 15th century. 

  

  

  

  

  

  

       Ta Prohm was undeniably an enjoyable temple to explore as it was virtually impossible to keep my inner child's Indiana Jones fantasies suppressed while moving through the corridors and partially collapsed structures, however, my photographs belie the fact that Ta Prohm is an absurdly overcrowded temple.  I was there during mid-morning and other than one instance where I scrambled over some rocks blocking a darkened corridor to discover an uninhabited inner courtyard, at all other times, immediately behind me, were bus loads of mostly Asian tourists.  Far from peaceful and serene, the halls are filled with a cacaphony of echoing Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and a little English.  I found myself repeatedly having to wait in a corner of a boardwalk for a human bottleneck to work its way through a passage.  Though I was always able to creatively position myself in a way to photograph the ruins as though there was no other human presence, that is a very misleading representation of reality.

  

  

  

       Of the four major wats that I devoted my two days of exploration and photography to, Bayon was easily my favorite.  Bayon is also very distinct as far as Angkor temples go as its architectural style is very different from that of Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm because adorning all four sides of each of its towers there is a ten foot high identical stone facial portrait that represented the king that had the temple constructed as well as one of the primary Buddhas.  The result is that when one walks amongst the narrow open air passages, ascending through the various stone layers like a small bug climbing up a stepped wedding cake, a glance upward reveals a number of giant faces, all alike, smiling down upon the visitor.  Part of the reason I loved Bayon so much was the fact that I timed my visit perfectly, though unintentionally.  Having read that Bayon was popular at sunset and only having one more morning of temple exploration before me, part of which I'd already decided would be devoted to another visit to Angkor Wat, I went to Bayon expecting hoards of people, similar to those found at Ta Prohm earlier in the day.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the vast grounds of the temple almost completely deserted upon arrival.  It was silent and serene, easily allowing me to reflect upon the awesome beauty of scenes such as those where the final golden rays of the day's light half lit a few of the surrounding faces, causing them to stand out amongst the shadowed ones, who stared out cold and grey in their monochrome tones.

  

  

  

  

  

       For my final morning in Siem Reap I was up before dawn and back on my Cambodian cruiser, heading out of town in the dark prior to 6am in order to catch the sunrise climbing up the eastern face of Angkor Wat.  With the sun just over the horizon, I crossed the eastern causeway and went through the much lesser used eastern wall and gate.  Though there were several other small groups already descending upon the wat at that hour, I enjoyed a relatively solitary final stroll through a portion of the inner temple that I didn't visit upon my arrival to Siem Reap a couple of days prior.  On this particular morning I was able to photograph in optimum light the best preserved bas-reliefs that decorate the wat's eastern flanks.  With my transport back to Phnom Penh coming back to fetch me from Siem Reap at 3pm, my time photographing the magnificent Angkor ruins was up.  Some guidebooks suggest that seven to ten days is necessary to adequately take in the twenty or so temples that make up the Siem Reap portion of Angkor.  Maybe it was the exhausting way that I did it but after only two and a half days, I was templed out.  I loved every minute of my time at the temples and I know that my experience only scratched the surface of the heart of the once great civilization.  Perhaps some day I can return to see more, maybe even partake in an arduous multi-day jungle trek that crosses numerous ancient bridges and eventually arrives at a truly remote abandoned city supposedly not even accessibly by four wheel drive during much of the year.

  

  

  

  

  

  

       Arriving back in the capitol late on Wednesday evening, I had two more full days left in Cambodia, just enough time to thoroughly enjoy Phnom Penh's wonderful eateries and nightlife while spending the days visiting memorials to Cambodia's recent and tragic past.  Cambodia is synonymous with Pol Pot, war crimes, and one of the most devastatingly brutal and violent episodes in modern history.  During only four years of reign, through direct execution or as a product of unfortunate domestic and international policy, an estimated thirty percent of Cambodia's population perished in the latter half of the 1970's.  With three million innocent lives taken, there was virtually not a single person that was untouched by the tragic dictatorship.  Of all the places where the Khmer Rouge committed their crimes against humanity, the two most famous sites are both in Phnom Penh, the high school turned political prison called Tuol Sleng, and the Killing Fields, located on the outskirts of town.  The two locations worked together in tandem with the prison being the place where an estimated twenty thousand men, women, and children were imprisoned and tortured for being intellectuals, offspring of intellectuals, or "enemies of the state" in some capacity or another.  If prisoners were not tortured to death at Tuol Sleng, they were trucked off to the Killing Fields where crews worked around the clock to bludgeon the new arrivals to death and to dispose of their bodies in mass graves.  Today both sites serve as sobering reminders of the horrors that mankind is capable of committing.  At Tuol Sleng, the torture rooms, complete with the beds and shackles upon which the decomposed bodies of the final prisoners were found during liberation in 1979, are intact, just as the rooms were discovered.  The photographs taken by the Khmer Rouge guards of all admitted and executed prisoners are all on display. 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

       Grimmer still are the Killing Fields, where despite one's best intentions to remain on the well worn pathways that skirt around the dimpled landscape of mass graves, it's virtually impossible not to notice the articles of tattered clothing, an endless array of skull fragments and teeth, and in some cases, entire arm or leg bones protruding from the very path that visitors are directed to walk upon.  In the center of the fields there is a multi-story tower containing a glass column filled to the top with approximately eight thousand fully intact skulls that were excavated from the site.  Though I'd personally design a way to pay tribute to those executed that did not involve actively treading upon their remains (perhaps an elevated walkway throughout?), there is no denying the effectiveness that such a memorial has in conveying the human cost of Pol Pot's rule.

  

  

  

  

  

       Without wanting to end this travel log on a depressing note, I must speak to the overwhelming good that the city of Phnom Penh and at least the portion of the country I experienced has to offer foreign visitors.  The capitol city feels surprisingly trendy and sophisticated near it's cultural center with boutique eateries of diverse gourmet cuisine scattered throughout.  Years of foreign aid and ex-pat residents have made Phnom Penh very comfortable and by capitol city standards, very affordable.  Lindsey and I ate at a riverfront French diner which could have sat amongst the finest in Paris, enjoyed a flambe prepared in front of us by the head chef and owner, topped it with glasses of wine and wonderful dessert and paid US $50 in total, and that particular place was on the high end.  One could eat themselves to death on fresh high quality food in the city.  In terms of attractions, there is a very nice national museum, plenty of green city parks, and a riverfront district of mostly ex-pat hangouts and bars.  Phnom Penh is also relatively compact and not sprawling like Bangkok where you can't dream of crossing the city without planning a full day excursion.  Also unlike Bangkok, though high by Western standards, air pollution in Phnom Penh is fairly well controlled so you don't feel like you're potentially risking your health just by breathing the air.

  

  

       As I traveled around the country I felt as if visible growth and development was taking place all around.  The country has slowly recovered from the devastating Pol Pot years to hopefully position itself amongst the great capitols in Southeast Asia.  With Angkor Wat offering a true world wonder, beautiful coasts in the south, and a culture so relaxed, friendly, and welcoming, barring any major setbacks, I hope for Cambodia's sake that their growth and prosperity continues until they are just as much of an international destination as their neighboring states have become.

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