Changing Cambodia

By Maxine Bates

As part of a tour of South East Asia, I spent five nights in Cambodia at the end of December 2011. This was my first visit to the country and, having compared notes with  friends who had visited a few years previously and read a previous VISA article, it appears to have changed tremendously. 

Having flown into Siem Reap airport our first task was to queue for a visa on arrival. This cost US$20. (Although not Cambodia’s official currency, everything is priced in dollars.) You handed over your dollar notes along with a passport photograph, shuffled along the counter and picked up your newly stamped passport several minutes later. Having deciphered which names were being called by someone whose native language isn’t English. Amusing at times.

We had booked to stay at the fairly new Shining Angkor boutique hotel which included airport transfers. These turned out to be by tuk tuk. Luckily we weren’t travelling with large luggage as I’ve no idea where it would have been loaded!  

Pub Street is the heart of Siem Reap nightlife with many bars and restaurants covering all nationalities from Irish to Italian to Khmer as well as traditional dance shows. We saw banners advertising a New Year’s Eve street party but unfortunately had to sleep through midnight due to a stupid o’clock flight on 1^st January. We had 2012 stamps in our passport whilst our friends back in the UK were still in 2011!

There were as many fish spas as eating and drinking establishments so plenty of choice, both indoors and outdoors, if you wanted fish to nibble the dead skin off your feet! Most fish spas also offered massage with a typical price being $6 for 60 minutes. I treated myself to a French manicure and pedicure for a total of $5 – bargain!

Obviously the main reason for our stay in Siem Reap was to visit the nearby Angkor complex. We hired a tuk tuk and driver who, after we’d had our photograph taken and paid $40 each for a three day pass, took us around some of the temples. Our first stop was the imposing Angkor Wat. We spent a pleasant couple of hours exploring the stupors, decaying steps, traditional window frames, etc, before reaching the main building and the “clothes police”. A couple of uniformed guards studied the attire of visitors and ejected anyone who didn’t meet their criteria. However, there didn’t appear to be any set criteria as we saw one man leaving with short-length shorts whereas another man wearing knee-length shorts was refused entry. Similarly some cardigans and sarongs to cover arms and legs were acceptable and some were not. Crazy! But also entertaining watching the arguments with the guards! After a photo stop for the famous view of the Angkor Wat temple with the Lake of Reflection in the foreground we settled down in one of the many adjacent open-air bars to enjoy a cool drink. Beware of scams when leaving. We paid a lady who appeared to be the owner when she served our drinks, but upon leaving were approached by a young boy who said we hadn’t paid our bill. He followed us throughout the stalls demanding money which was somewhat annoying knowing we had paid. We opted for a roadside café lunch and although very basic we could see our noodle dishes being prepared and cooked. It was tasty, plentiful and very cheap.

The next day the same tuk tuk driver took us to Angkor Thom where we admired the 216 carved faces of the Bayon and strolled around the Baphuon pool to the Elephant Gate. Then on to Ta Prohm, probably recognisable as part of the Tomb Raider film set. I was looking forward to seeing the ruins with trees and foliage growing through them, but at the time of our visit this temple resembled a building site. Very disappointing.

On our third day we opted to travel further afield, some 30km, to Banteay Srei, a Hindu temple famed for its carvings. The display panels were interesting but exploring the site itself became tiresome with so many Asian tour groups climbing all over the stones. However, our main reason for travelling in this direction was to visit the Landmine Museum. Boards depicted the lives of the children living at the relief centre within the museum. Money from sale of admission tickets and items in their shop pay for dozens of handicapped, orphaned or poor children to be fed, clothed, housed and nurtured. Other boards explained why landmines were laid and how they are now removed. A small but thought-provoking museum and well worth a visit.

Another day we booked an excursion to Tonle Sap Lake to visit the floating village. I’m sure our small boat and driver would not have passed any regulations in the UK, but that’s half the fun of travelling. We were steered slowly by houses, a school and a church and disembarked for a shopping opportunity and look at a crocodile pit. From the way the animals were behaving it looked like they were due a feed so we didn’t get too close! The main road between Siem Reap and Tonle Sap is nothing more than a dirt track in places with cattle, bicycles and tuk tuks being the main users. The petrol stations were most interesting with fuel decantered from large drums into whatever plastic or glass bottles the owner could find. We saw petrol for sale in a Jack Daniels bottle!      

Although we only skimmed the surface with brief time in Cambodia I would advise anyone contemplating a visit to go sooner rather than later before it gets too commercialised.

    

First published in VISA 106 (December 2012)

Good Morning Vietnam and Cambodia

by David Whiting

We decided to treat ourselves to a really good holiday in 2006. We chose a tour of Vietnam and Cambodia from the brochure of Thomas Cook. It includes all hotels, breakfasts, flights, sightseeing, and pick-up from home and return home at the end of the tour. The following notes are some of my impressions from our trip.

In Hanoi, there are more motorbikes and cycles than other vehicles, not surprising when we learn that the tax on a car is 215%. Roads are adorned with gigantic advertising hoardings. There are speed limits but they are ignored by many, as are the rules of the highway if any: traffic travels in any and all directions at once; how there are no accidents is a miracle! And to cross a road, pedestrians just walk - traffic won’t stop but will avoid them. Drivers use their horns continually, often without reason, day and night. But the danger isn’t all on the road - at My Tho, an elderly man in our group tripped over the uneven pavement, sustaining nasty cuts which needed hospital treatment. Tourists need to be wary of uneven surfaces of roads, paths etc.

One late afternoon, we were taken for a cyclo ride for an hour through the busy streets. Cyclos are cycles with front seat passengers; it is terrifying to be driven so close to traffic rushing by. Cyclo riders work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. Roads between the various locations are not well maintained; the 170km journey from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay took three hours.

In Ha Long itself, we boarded a junk. There was room for 36 but the 8 of us (including the guide, Phiem) had the junk to ourselves. Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and contains over 1600 limestone islands of all shapes and sizes, with caves, eagles, jellyfish and other wonders. We cruised among some of the islands, where many of the scenes of the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun were photographed. We returned to Hanoi in time to catch the rush hour chaos!

In Cambodia, on one of the world’s largest lakes, Tonle Sap, we stopped at a river station and boarded a flat bottomed boat. The river was narrow, shallow and very busy. One boat was stuck crosswise and had to be pushed by people power and by another boat to clear the way. We passed a floating school - the classrooms, gymnasium etc are on boats, and the children travel to school by boat from the floating villages on the lake. Apart from being residences, some of the boats serve as shops, fish farms - we stopped at one which keeps alligators, sold for their skins - souvenir shops etc.

The people in Cambodia have a higher ratio of cars than Vietnam, but many are imported and can be left or right-hand drive. Only the main roads are tarmacked, side roads are dirt tracks and often extremely bumpy.

Around Hanoi, the fields are full of crops, mostly rice, but also sweetcorn, sugar and others. Many people working in them are dressed in ‘coolie’ hats; we saw many water buffalo and cattle. People weed and kill insects by hand to reduce crop damage. The majority of Vietnamese people wear masks to cover almost their entire face, partly to guard against pollution but more against the harsh sun’s rays.

Health care is free in Vietnam for children only up to their 6th birthday, then everyone has to pay. We pass numerous cemeteries, at least one in every village. Many tombs are very elaborate. Even farms have private graveyards. Three years after burial bodies are dug up, the bones cleaned and reburied. Superstition says this benefits the offspring. Houses are almost all 4m wide; each property is allowed 80 sq m. Houses are built according to the owner’s finances. Tax is paid according to the width of the frontage. Pigs, water buffaloes, cattle etc are tied to the backs of motorcycles as they are transported alive to slaughterhouses.

Our aforementioned cyclo ride ended at Hanoi’s water-puppet theatre, founded in 1969. Nine puppeteers and six musicians perform for almost an hour. Puppets are operated by pushing sticks underwater from behind a screen. The show depicts scenes from Vietnam’s life, culture and legends. It is not very sophisticated, childish even at times, and visibility for the audience is poor, but it is a colourful, enjoyable show.

In the Cambodia countryside, we passed through several villages. Many houses are temporary dwellings made of odd pieces of timber on stilts, held together with rope. People are terribly poor, some have no shoes and some of the children are naked.

We saw a number of sights relating to Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot and their roles in their countries’ histories. In Hanoi, a major attraction was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh’s successor had him embalmed, contrary to his desire to be cremated, and a great marble mausoleum was built 1973-5. There are strict security procedures and we had to follow a red carpet (made of plastic) around his body. Nearby are the bright yellow Presidential Palace, Ho Chi Minh’s ‘House on Stilts’, a simple two-storey house which shows how simply he lived, a pond where the carp came to Ho Chi Minh whenever he clapped his hands; the One Pillar Pagoda, a small temple built in 1049 in a lotus pool; and the Ho Chi Minh Memorial Museum, which portrays various events in his life and the history of Vietnam.

40km north-west of Hanoi are the Cu Chi tunnels, which cover an area of 420 sq km. They were complete underground towns, dug by hand, and included 200 infantry units. The tunnels were built when it was too dangerous to live above ground. The people planted rice while wearing rifles on their backs. The first basement was used for dwellings, the second level to move from place to place, the third level for hiding; the second and third levels were only accessible by crawling. There are ventilation shafts every 15m. Wells were sunk for water. Some escape tunnels led into the Saigon River.

The Cu Chi park is an open air museum. One can see how the villagers worked and lived, even a school. Various forms of traps are on display, used to maim and kill. They used pieces of American weapons and unexploded bombs for their home-made weapons. Some of the tunnels can be explored, about 40-50m long, but one can only bend low and they are pitch dark so a torch is essential. The Americans had a base about 5km from Cu Chi; the guerrillas dug a tunnel under the base and the Americans only found out about it three months after the war ended.

In Cambodia’s Phnom Penh is the Genocide Museum. This refers to the recent history under the Pol Pot régime, when there were no schools, religion, markets, cars, singers etc. Pol Pot - his name was an abbreviation for Political Potential - was responsible for the deaths of around 3 million Cambodians. People were taken prisoner for 1-6 months torture. We visited one such prison, number S21, previously the Tuol Sleng school and now the museum which opened in 1980 with the photographs of victims in order that they could be identified. Tourists only started coming here in 1999. Of the 20000 prisoners, only 7 survived. Alcatraz was a luxury hotel compared with S21. The photographs show prisoners being tortured and after death.

Afterwards we visited Choeung Ek, the nearest Killing Field to Phnom Penh, 16 km away. 129 mass graves have been identified, 86 have been opened so far revealing 8985 skulls. The prisoners from S21 were brought here; the wooden prison has been dismantled and the wood used for local housing. A grim thought - people are living in houses which witnessed torture and executions. A modern stupa has been built to contain the victims' skulls. Pieces of bone and clothing are still clearly visible in the earth.

90 minutes from Hanoi by plane is Hue, a small city with a population of 500,000, with broad streets. Hue was the capital of Vietnam 1802-1945. 13 Emperors ruled from here, following the rules of feudal lords. There is a 'forbidden city' on a slightly smaller scale than that of Beijing; it was badly damaged by American bombing during the Tet offensive in 1968.

We visited the Forbidden City, commencing with the Imperial Palace, dating from 1836. At the entrance stands a fortress, part of a 10km wall with ten gates around the City. Southern Vietnam used to be inhabited by Champa people who originated in India. In the 14th century, when the Champa disappeared, the province was given to the Vietnamese king. Danang, Vietnam’s fourth largest city with a population of 1 million, has a Cham Museum, built by the French in 1915-16 to contain relics. It was not realised until 1930 that the items belonged to the Cham civilisation. 44 Cham sites have been recognized across the country.

We also saw My Son, a holy area built by the Cham people for their kings after their death. A Cham folklore show was in progress with music and dancing (under cover) when we arrived. The site itself is in a valley surrounded by mountains; by 10am, the temperature is 45C/113F.

A pass issued by the Cambodian tourist police is required to enter the ancient Angkor site, capital of the extensive Khmer empire from the 9th to 15th centuries. Valid for 3 days it costs $40 and requires a passport photograph. 1000 years ago, the city of Angkor had more inhabitants than London. When the Khmer capital moved from Angkor to Phnom Penh in 1472 only Buddhist monks remained. There are more than 100 temples.

We passed the principal temple, Angkor Wat, en route to our first visit at Angkor Thom, which means big city. There are many standing columns and relief sculptures of Apsaras, dancing girls.

We then visited the Bayon Temple, rediscovered by the French in 1860 when it was almost completed enclosed by jungle. The site was cleared in 1907-13. There are 49 towers each with four faces of the smiling Buddha facing in each direction. The walls of this temple are covered in bas reliefs depicting life in Khmer times.

We continued to the Elephant walk, with its dozens of carved elephants and a late afternoon view of the magnificent Angkor Wat.

The itinerary said we would see the sun rise at Angkor Wat. This meant a wake-up call at 4 am and a 5 am departure in pitch darkness with packed breakfasts.

We were among the first of many hundreds to arrive for this magical dawn at 6.15; unfortunately, it was not worth an early start as it was cloudy! We heard the sound of frogs fighting in the trees and that of cicadas which became deafening.

After dawn we continued to visit Angkor Wat, an ancient Hindu site, built 1113-50. The centre consists of four towers around a central higher tower. The top level can be climbed but the steps are very steep.

The walls are adorned with reliefs of apsaras, warriors, scenes from Khmer mythology, their 37 heavens and 32 hells, etc. Each of the eight galleries is 44 metres in length. Many of the stones are massive, weighing many tons.

It is a marvel how they were brought here, cut precisely and assembled nearly 900 years ago. This temple is the symbol of Cambodia and even appears on the national flag.

First published in VISA issue 68 (August 2006)

 

Cambodia and the Mekong Delta

by Janice Booth

I’ve just eaten the last of my Vietnamese peanut brittle, savouring each sweet, sticky mouthful. I’d watched it being stirred in a massive iron wok above a fire of rice husks, then poured into heavy trays, pressed flat and scored into sticks as it cooled. The smell of smoke, hot metal and bubbling palm sugar filled the long shed where it was made.

The holiday had begun in Cambodia, at Siem Reap, where my father had visited Angkor Wat in 1933. As a child I’d been entranced by his photos of the great temples and particularly their friezes: full of little carved faces with enchanting upward-tilted smiles. I’d always promised myself a trip, and this year the imminent doubling of my travel insurance (I’ve just turned 70) was the nudge I needed.

From London I stopped overnight in Bangkok, at the 3-star Miracle Hometel Suvarnabhumi. Strangely, there was a price list in my room for anyone wanting to buy the furnishings: for example bed-sheets 550 baht, ashtray 60 baht, ‘cloth hanger male’ and ‘cloth hanger female’ 150 baht. The hotel was comfortable and convenient – until my morning wake-up call didn’t materialise and I had a serious scramble to catch the shuttle back to the airport. However, I was so happy to be finally heading for Angkor Wat that it didn’t matter: I loved everyone and everything. The love dissipated slightly when the pilot announced that heavy rain might prevent our landing at Siem Reap, but after we’d circled a few times the clouds parted and down we went. A driver from my guesthouse was waiting and gave me my first of many big Cambodian smiles.

Temple tourism has turned Siem Reap into a large, busy town and the drive in from the airport doesn’t offer much excitement, but once we started twisting among little side-streets it livened up. Small houses and shops jostled together and cyclists festooned with bags and packages wobbled their way through muddy puddles. From the website www.angkorhotels.org I’d picked the Angkor Discover Inn at US$22 a night and it was ideal: peaceful and relatively new, traditionally built, with simple wooden rooms set back from the road in a shady garden. I fixed transport to the temples for the next day and then launched into Siem Reap and its cheery tuk-tuks (motorbike rickshaws). The ride to the central market took ten minutes; returning to the guesthouse in the dark took 45 as the driver didn’t know the town! ‘No plobrem!’ he kept reassuring me as he dismounted to ask yet another stall-holder for directions and then ‘No far’ as he chugged off on the next wild-goose-chase. It’s a measure of Siem Reap that I never felt anxious. ‘Tank you! Tank you!’ he beamed, when we finally arrived and I paid him.

The temples are astounding: their scale and quantity, the colossal work involved, the volume of carving, and the meticulous details of daily life – for example a man blowing the embers of a fire to life, dogs, cockfighting, women with children, fishing, and even a turtle biting a man’s backside. Military scenes abound, as do elephants – which, interestingly, have knees, whereas in early carvings in English churches they mostly don’t. Our sculptors had never seen one! The swarms of brightly dressed children hawking their postcards, scarves, bracelets and other souvenirs amid the massive stonework reminded me of butterflies fluttering against the trunk of some venerable oak. In fact many temples still have big trees rooted among their walls, as they did when Europeans first saw them in the 19th century. John Keeble’s Tales from theTemples (VISA 48) gives some good descriptions and background. Towering Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, absolute treasure-houses of carvings, date from the 12th/13th centuries, not so far in time from the building of our own great cathedrals: on opposite sides of the globe, builders and stone-workers were exhibiting similar skills, devotion, and loving attention to detail.

Sixty years after enjoying my father’s photos I was still captivated by the faces, whether smiling shyly in the friezes or scanning the landscape with huge, ancient eyes from the temple towers. I’d brought some of the photos with me and people stroked them lovingly, spotting the changes and murmuring nostalgically about the past. I showed them to gardeners, guides, policemen, stallholders, local families, tuk-tuk drivers – and got big Cambodian smiles in return.

A taxi-drive out to a remote temple, Beng Melea, took me through the countryside: paddy fields stretching into the distance, and scattered wayside hamlets where the occasional stall of fruit or vegetables had been set up to catch passing traffic. The houses, mostly wooden, were built on stilts, giving them a useful extra living/storage area underneath. A ladder or thin staircase led up to the rooms. Scrawny dogs dozed, children played, and men sat repairing rusty bits of machinery.

I’m deliberately not talking politics in this piece, but my involvement with Rwanda’s tourism for the past decade made comparisons interesting. Two tiny countries, Cambodia with amazing temples and Rwanda with mountain gorillas, both rebuilding their tourism after genocide, both needing to diversify their attractions so that tourists stay longer: so far, very similar. The difference is that at least 5% of Rwanda’s tourist income from the national parks goes directly to finance small, rural enterprises, and practicalities like village water tanks. No-one could tell me of similar investment in Cambodia – and it’s needed. With around two million tourists in 2008, even a very small percentage of the temple fee (US$20 per day, $40 for 3 days, $60 for a week) could have achieved a lot.

Beforehand I’d also booked an eight-day riverboat cruise with Pandaw Cruises (see www.pandaw.com), down the Tonle Sap River and Mekong Delta to Ho Chi Minh City, preceded by two more days in Siem Reap. Now it was time to leave my guesthouse and hook up to Pandaw – and to a huge treat. Tourist numbers were low, so they’d decided to upgrade my hotel to the gorgeous Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, supreme among Siem Reap hotels since 1933. Wow! Not at all my usual style, but I gulped bravely and adjusted to the deluxe bedroom, huge squashy bed, large swimming pool and delightful, friendly staff.

I loved Siem Reap, not just the amazing temples but also strolling and people-watching. The centre of town has plenty of Asian charm, the market is lively and there’s a pleasant tree-lined walk along the river. I found friendliness everywhere. There’s certainly poverty but also a sense of energy, of people doing their best to recover from the past and get on with their lives. I’ve seen the same in Rwanda. But now my riverboat was waiting and I had to leave.

The boat – the Tonle Pandaw – takes 60-odd passengers but there were just 16 of us: Aussies, Danish, Dutch, American and me, the only Briton. We piled into a coach for a four-hour drive to reach her. It poured the whole way – far too wet to stop and explore Skoun, the ‘spider capital’ where women sell crunchy roasted spiders from stalls beside the road. The Tonle Pandaw was moored alongside a muddy bank on the Tonle Sap River, to the amusement of locals whose homes were only a few yards away. I don’t do cruising normally but this was very laid back: no dressing up, no Captain’s table, no impressing the Jones-hyphen-Joneses. My tiny cabin was comfortable and the top deck gave wonderful views of the river as it gradually widened and grew busier. Small local craft with croaky outboard motors buzzed about among container barges and dredgers, and traditional canoes drifted gently by. Houses and temples peered out from the trees along the bank. We passed islands, some of them large enough to support small villages and farms. Other ‘villages’ floated on the river: ramshackle collections of houseboats containing homes, shops, markets, bars and workshops. Some of the homes had deep cages directly beneath them, for fish farming.

Most of each day was spent ashore, exploring. We visited towns, villages, markets, temples, and inevitably craft workshops. That’s where I bought my peanut brittle: they also made wonderful pop-rice (like popcorn but with rice grains popping and bouncing in a bed of red-hot sand) and carvings from local stone and wood. Once we strolled through paddy fields where villagers were busily transplanting rice seedlings. In Phnom Penh (where we rode in cyclo rickshaws) we went to the Royal Palace, still magnificent despite the looting of 60% of its treasures during Pol Pot’s era. I bought myself some traditional fisherman’s trousers in the Old Market; the stallholder and I had no common language but gestures go a long way! That night a sudden storm whipped up the river and waves splashed against my cabin’s porthole. One Khmer island village, Koh Deak Chor, had been visited by cruise passengers only once before so tourists were still a novelty. Villagers led us along the leafy paths to see their ‘cottage industry’ of making rice-flour noodles, much in demand on the mainland, as well as their breeding pens of tiny pink piglets. Their ‘shop’ was a woman on a bicycle, pedalling and peddling her load of vegetables, fish and meat. A child came running in from the paddy field to show us a bird’s nest she’d just found.

Then we crossed into Vietnam and very subtly the atmosphere changed: slightly brisker, slightly brasher, slightly more cosmopolitan – but the smiles were no less warm. Chau Doc was a bustling, lively town, with a huge street market selling all kinds of fish, meat and vegetables as well as snails, crabs, snakes, toads and crayfish – many of them still alive. Cu Lao Gian Island had a sad government-run home for old women, where we left little gifts of the free toiletries from our cabins and whatever else we didn’t need. In Sadec, we visited the ornate former home of Huyn Thuy Le, lover of French novelist Marguerite Duras. Then a final bus from My Tho took us to frenetic Ho Chi Minh City. I went straight to the airport for my flight to Singapore, where I had just enough time for a swim in Changi airport’s rooftop pool before continuing to London. My first trip to Asia was over.

But look – there’s just one small crumb of peanut brittle left in the packet...

First published in VISA 87 (Oct 2009)

Cambodian Water Festival

by Neil Harris

Tonlé Sap, the river that runs through Phnom Penh, is unique; twice a year it changes direction. Between November and May (the dry season, the Tonlé Sap flows into the Mekong River at the confluence just to the east of Phnom Penh. However, when the monsoon rains begin in June, the Tonlé Sap reverses direction and flows back into the lake; also confusingly called Tonlé Sap; that lies just to the south of Seam Reap, home to Angkor Wat. This event is celebrated annually at the time of the full moon in November and has become, for most Cambodians, their annual holiday.

The festival lasts for three days. Approximately 1.5 million Cambodians flood into Phnom Penh swelling the population to twice its normal size. All kinds of transport are used to get to the riverside, especially the ubiquitous moped. Mopeds speed past en masse; ones with only four passengers are common, many have five, some six, the most I've seen is seven on a moped. This inspired me to set up a website showing shots of overloaded mopeds and small motorbikes, called 7onamoped.co.uk. It's not just people, these means of transport can be adapted to carry almost anything, from two metre square plate glass through to a large wardrobe.

In 2006 I was in Phnom Penh the day before the festival began so got a taster as the dragon boats practised on the river. I decided to return and visited the festival in both 2007 and 2008 and am set to return again in 2009. What's the appeal? I know of no other event that presents so much potential for people photos. The Cambodians are in party mood; as most are poor, this represents their once a year chance to let their hair down. It also attracts every street vendor able to get into Phnom Penh; they mingle with the crowds trying to sell everything from sunglasses to boiled eggs. At the same time street kids are trying to earn enough to feed themselves by retrieving empty plastic bottles from both the river and the crowd. There's no holiday for them, alas.

The main event of the festival is dragon boat racing. Throughout the three days boats race, either in pairs or threes, at around one minute intervals, sweep down mid-river alongside Sisowath Quay. In 2007 there were 452 dragon boats, most from within Cambodia, but many from abroad, mainly from SE Asia. Tragically a Singaporean boat capsized and a few of the crew drowned. Most of the dragon boats are of a size not seen in the UK, many containing around 65 rowers, both male and female, who usually wear co-ordinated T-shirts. Some have rowers seated, others, in my opinion the most spectacular ones, have standing rowers using heightened rowlocks (not a phrase I've used before) as a pivot for the oar. Most boats will have a human mascot at the front, sometimes a pretty girl in Khmer uniform alongside an offering of fruit or flowers, while a cheerleader/cox, often with the help of a loudhailer, is likely to be positioned amidships to shout encouragement, perhaps accompanied by a drummer to liven up proceedings. The contests are taken very seriously, much physical effort being put into the race; the sight of 65 crew rowing in unison can be quite hypnotic. As yet, thanks to all race information being in Cambodian, the results, or even who has won the event, have remained a mystery to me.

Well before midday on festival days, the banks of the Tonlé Sap have become overcrowded. Fortunately, and rather unfairly, the Cambodians have built a free stand next to the Royal enclosure for 'Foreign Guests'. Here there is space to move around and the chance to sit on the sloping concrete riverbank just above the waterline to photograph close-ups of the crews returning upstream after a race. Most will give three cheers to the Royal Box. By staying within the foreigners’ enclosure, though, the atmosphere of the festival is lost, so I tend to wander around.

Soon after dusk on all three days there is a firework display for around 45 minutes; at the same time, floats glide up the river. These floats are rather quaint affairs consisting of myriad light bulbs arranged into a message or picture; a map of Cambodia, for instance. If the sky is clear there is a full moon as backdrop. The hotel I stay in, the Khmer Royal, is set alongside Sisowath Quay and is both conveniently located and also ideal for viewing the fireworks from its 5th floor open air restaurant. It's also great for people watching afterwards; the throng outside becomes so concentrated by mid-evening that exit from the hotel is difficult, especially if one tries to go against the flow.

In association with the event there is a large area given over to promotional stalls of retail companies and similar. These make for an interesting cultural experience, as does the small fairground where the kind of rides that would not pass health and safety in the UK are still a major attraction. Close by, a couple of temporary stages provide the chance for Cambodian pop stars to perform alongside rather naive promotional presentations for products such as toothpaste.

The greatest joy for me is seeing and photographing ordinary Cambodians enjoying themselves. By Western standards the fare on offer is rather tatty and dated, but in a society where most are very poor, a little goes a long way.

First published in VISA 87 (Oct 2009)

Tales from the Temples

by John Keeble

Some say the events in the killing fields of Cambodia, in which around two million people died at the hands of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in the seventies, were then the latest drama unfolding in the sacred politics of Angkor's temples.

Angkor Wat

In essence, the theory is based on Pol Pot dreaming of turning back the clock to an agrarian society after linking his knowledge of the Khmers' great empire days with a theory that their economic life was founded on sacred lakes and the pulsing of the natural Tonle Sap lake producing enormous quantities of rice on the Angkor plain.

A thought like that makes you gasp, like a sudden fall through a trapdoor. But, as you walk through the living death of Angkor's temples - including the world's largest sacred building, Angkor Wat itself - you can somehow imagine the theory to be right; the tragedy of the 20th century as a legacy of the misleading mysteries that underpinned the power of the Khmer rulers from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

That strange world is there for you to read in the sacred fabric of sandstone, the carvings in rivers, and the statuary of gods and demons churning beautiful apsara - the dancing girls of heaven - from the cosmic milk of life.

It is a strange, haunting story too. Of politics and power first; of religion and art as a means of control; of wars, victories and defeats in the pursuit of wealth and glory; of great inventions in engineering and agriculture... and of the idea, just one, that started it all and turned to stone in edifices as tall as Notre Dame and bigger than Egypt's greatest pyramid.

That idea was the 'god-king': the indivisible blend of the king and the gods of a tailored cult based on Shiva worship and Hinduism. Later, when Shiva failed to protect the Khmers from the Chams, the new cult used Buddha instead. But the idea stayed the same: the king was the gods' representative on Earth and everyone must obey. The result was the growth of an empire, with a ferocious army, a stable and powerful political organisation, centralised and uniform society, excellent techniques for rice production - and all of these were informed by deep religious beliefs and artistic genius focused almost entirely on its expression through religious building and decoration.

Banteay Srie

It was the apex of a civilisation that started from the dynamic mix of local people and the ideas of Indian traders and Indian-influenced Chams from Vietnam - they introduced Hindu ideas and art that gained strength from the 5th century and fuelled the rise of the Khmer empire.

In 802, Jayavarman II began the building era as the first 'god king' embodying the power and virtues of Shiva. He declared independence from Java and set himself up as king. He built a 'temple mountain' at Phnom Kulen, 40 miles east of Angkor, to represent Shiva's mythical Mount Meru - today's Cambodians regard the mountain as the most sacred in the country.

By the 10th century, Angkor art was emerging from its Cham origins and the most beautiful of all the temples was built at Banteay Srie, the Shrine of the Women. This Hindu temple, dedicated to Shiva, was the greatest achievement of artists in the 10th century. Each of the pink sandstone buildings was distinctive with inventive architecture and decoration - there were mythical guardian animals and a structural vibrancy that still rocks the senses.

Through the 11th century, the water from the hills flowed in blessed vitality and the bizarre seasonal backward flow of the Mekong and Tonle Sap river continued to quadruple the size of the lake to provide an amazing bounty of fish and crops. The well-fed population was on its way to one million when London boasted only 35,000. And, of course, wealth and people accumulated for expansion into neighbouring regions and for labour on the temples.

In the 12th century, the ambitions of the god-king, Suryavarman II, knew such awesome bounds that he created the world's largest sacred building - Angkor Wat. But the burden of building was immense - and in 1177, the Chams took advantage of a struggling state and the Khmer army being all but destroyed by jungle fevers, and captured Ankor, destroying the city and ruining many temples. The Khmers took their revenge in 1181 after a series of ferocious battles on the lake and canals; they went on to conquer Champa (in what is now Vietnam) and building a new capital, Angkor Thom - “the great city” - surrounded by a eight-miles moat. And, because the Hindu gods had not protected them in the past, the new protector would be Buddha.

Bayon

The biggest monument, Bayon - which means Buddha - was built around 1200 in the centre of Angkor Thom. It has216 faces of the omnipresent deity watching over the temple and the people - its 54 towers, with the coldly smiling Buddha faces, coincide with the 54 provinces of that time. Historians believe it was the intention to intimidate the people of the far-flung settlements with the all-seeing watchfulness...the faces were a blend of the god-king and Buddha.

Angkor Thom was the last major work, the height of the empire with the most people and the most power: then it began a slow decline, having reached the limits of its water supply and the land available on the plain of its birth. By 1430, nearly all of Angkor had been abandoned - only Angkor Wat remained in use as a Buddhist shrine. After the empire fell, the jungle reclaimed much of the land and it was not until the French colonial explorers found it in the 1860s that there was any attempt at restoration - its full extent was not realised until aerial surveys were flown after the Second World War.

While many think Angkor is just Angkor Wat, the extent of the architectural wonder stretches over scores of temples, many huge, and the sacred networks of canals, rivers and lakes.

Today's Khmers have much to thank their ancestors for: Siem Reap, the city nearest the historic site, thrives unusually well for Cambodia and there is currently a boom in luxury hotel building. It looks like the organisation of historic area into a coach-party tour centre will be completed before the end of this decade.

But while some benefit in money, others find other contentments.

The shrines, everywhere at Angkor, are alive with the worship of people. An altar here, a broken shrine there; a fragment of an icon, a huge Buddha or Vishnu ... there are always people, the wax of candles, the flower, the fragrance of incense. The old ways may be dead, but the sacredness lives on in the people.

Others are enjoying a social role, like those reviving and extending Cambodian dance. As part of the restoration of Preah Khan - the Temple of the Sword with corridors and chambers in a square some half a mile by half a mile - the World Heritage Fund has been paying for a dance teacher for local youngsters.

Prean Khan

Originally, dance was taught at the palace and then as a state art. But the Pol Pot years destroyed the system and mostly saw the murder of the people who ran it and performed in it. Dancers and trainers who fled to Thailand kept the dances alive by teaching and performing them in the refugee camps until they could return to Phnom Penh. Now, the Preah Khan group is among those working on the traditions of dance, music and dress.

And their teacher has been visiting the villages to collect the folk dances that tell the stories of life, work on the land, religious beliefs and the seasons. Now, in Preah Khan's Hall of Dancers they perform for chosen audiences. The mortal apsara in royal splendour, and shy village lads finding shy village girls in age-old stories in paddy fields.

The god-kings are no more than ghosts in the miles of sacred stone. But life goes on ...

**

Angkor Wat is one of more than 70 temples that fit into a sacred pattern of rivers, canals and lakes and make the sacred plain of Angkor one of the wonders of the world. Here are some of the temples to see:

Angkor Wat

Built between 1113 and 1150, it is the physical representation of Hindu cosmology adapted into Khmers' unique beliefs - it is the best example of the temple mountain, used over and over again in the Khmer building.

An enclosing quadrangle symbolises the world ringed by mountains with endless oceans (the moat, 190m wide, 1.5km by 1.3km around the quadrangle) beyond; in the centre, the five lotus-bud peaks of the celestial Mount Meru where the gods live through cycles of destruction and creation. There are 12,000 bas-relief carvings portraying religious scenes, the history of the Khmers and 1,700 figures of the celestial dancers, the apsaras, who awaited the lucky in heaven. The wat has the usual east-west orientation - but what is unusual is that it faces west, the death aspect, and this has convinced many that it was both a temple and a royal mausoleum.

Bayon

Bayon is one of the most mysterious of the Angkor temples: its 54 towers each has four faces to watch over the cardinal points - all the faces are the same, the serene but watchful blend of Buddha and the builder, Jayavarman VII, constantly watching everyone in the 54 provinces.

In contrast with Mount Meru of Angkor Wat, Bayon is a model of the kingdom. But beyond this, it is also the spiritual centre - literally the centre of the 10 square miles of Angkor Thom and its sacred buildings and waterways. Jayavarman VII, Angkor's greatest king, built it after the Chams were defeated: it was the City of Angkor which would never fall again to an invader. Except, of course, it eventually did. The city and its huge temples were encircled by a 100 metre wide moat once inhabited by crocodiles and an 8 metre wall. It has five monumental gates - one each to the north, west and south and two in the direction of life. Bayon is decorated with thousands of bas-reliefs of religious and military scenes, including the defeat of the Cham army.

River of a Thousand Lingas

This quiet river flows down from the Kulan hills - part of Shiva's creative powers to irrigate the Angkor plain as a favour to the king. The walk through the jungle is part of the charm of the visit. But it is the river bed, sculpted with lingas and images of Shiva, that makes it worthwhile.

Ta Prohm

This is one of the most visited temples after Angkor Wat and Bayon - it has been only partly restored to show how the jungle had reclaimed the temples before work revealed their old magnificence. About 12 feet of loam was removed from around the roots. It was built 1186 as a Buddhist temple - it is so huge (like others) that 80,000 people were required to attend to the temple and maintain it, including 2,700 officials and 615 dancers.

Banteay Srie

The Shrine of the Women was dedicated to Shiva when it was built in the 10th century. It was the greatest achievement of artists of the time. The pink sandstone and mythical creatures still rock the senses.

Perhaps most captivating of all - and another of the enduring images of Angkor - are the apsaras, the page three girls of the Khmer period. The apsaras were the erotic beauties waiting for the good in heaven but, also, they had an earthly presence too, because they could visit the mortal, they were seen in court and temple dancing, and their representation - thousands of them - were all different, showing the (extremely scanty) clothing of the time, the fashionable jewellery and hairstyles. As the sun falls into the kingdom of death at the end of the day, the warm rays and the subtle pink of the sandstone still bring the apsaras to life at the Shrine of the Women.

Preah Khan

The temple of the Sacred Sword was built in the late 12th century. It has miles of narrow stone corridors, centring on a Shiva linga, and towards the back a beautiful open area that links to the Hall of Dancers where the lucky may find the local dance troupe performing - not for money, but for prestige groups organised by the World Heritage Fund, which is paying for the temple’s restoration. It was dedicated to 515 divinities and had 18 major festivals a year - needing thousands of people to maintain and run it.

First published in VISA issue 48 (winter 2002).

Between the lines

By John Keeble

Crossing borders is usually tedious. Queue here, queue there. But the Poipet (Cambodia) / Aranyaprathet (Thailand), for decades seen as the most dangerous crossing in Southeast Asia, was unusually interesting.

I arrived there at 7.30pm, almost a surprise after forgetting how dangerous it can be to travel on Cambodian roads at night, and queued at a slum of an immigration office for my exit stamp.

Then I walked through towards the Thai immigration -- and realised I was passing through very rich territory: big hotels, casinos, shops, what looked like tourists and gamblers staying there.

I didn't think my leftover dollars would quite buy me a good time there so I stuck to Plan A .... walk through to the Thai side and get a taxi to Sa Kaeo, about 30km east, to meet my wheelchair volunteers team.

I left Siem Reap (Angkor) at 5pm, arrived at the hotel in Sa Kaeo at 9pm. No time difference, so just four hours. Not bad.

And, as a bonus, got a glance at the rich life between the lines.

Eternally changing

By John Keeble
There are two manmade tourist photo ops from space -- I am here at one of them, Angkor Wat.

Just a quick visit this time. Enough time to snatch some good photos, note the big changes since my last visit 10 years ago, eat some great food.

The biggest changes are the way that temple access has been organised. Most temples now have 'way of visit' and 'possibilities of visit' routes that take in the important aspects but constrain the earlier freedom.

I enjoyed the new organisation - quite the opposite to what I usually find attractive - and happily went along with it because, despite the 'routes', there was still the fun and adventure. You can still wander off and break your neck easily enough: they are safe enough but without the paternal claptrap of developed countries' Health & Safety rules.

This is the start of the tourist season and it is possible to get pictures without others in the frame if you want that. For me, the people and their interaction are as interesting as the history of the temples.

This year, there are many Asian tourists, not just beautifully dressed but wonderfully colourful and enjoying their taste of travel with an enthusiasm that restrained 'seen it all before' Western tourists rarely show.

I flew in from Chiang Mai via Bangkok three days ago ... later today, I will take a taxi to the border with Thailand. I need to meet people at Sa Kaeo, about 30km into Thailand, by 10pm.

Dawn at Angkor Wat ... how could anyone miss that?

Sunset over the Angkor plain ... fun, crowded, maybe even a glimpse of sunset