Traveling

Today I flew from Siem Reap back to Saigon.  Funny how it feels comfortable to come "home" to a place I have already been.  I could zip through the airport this time.  And in Saigon, they have the real thing - DP - and I don't have to settle for DC.  My hotel is nicer than any of the hotels in Cambodia with a great room, but I don't usually need to be told to take my clothes off when I shower.

I always say that I don't like traveling; I like being in a different place.  The travel part is the most problematic and least fun.   I try to make my flights in the late morning/early afternoon so I am not rushed in the morning and have the late afternoon and evening to walk around in my new place.  Today I had a leisurely breakfast in Siem Reap and had some time to talk on the phone before taking a tuk-tuk to the airport.  It was still light when I got settled into my hotel, so I had a nice walk around Saigon this afternoon.  I even felt comfortable enough here to go to Tokyo Deli and have sushi for dinner.  I would not trust anything raw in Cambodia.

Despite the best planning, there are always travel problems.  First, I am using a new technology (for me) - a Chrome book.  Joe helped me set up everything, and I had my computer at home spend two days uploading my music from Itunes to Google Music.  When I first got to Vietnam two weeks ago, I opened Google Music and was able to play my albums.  The next time I opened Google Music, all of my albums had disappeared.  I tried several times over a few days but there was nothing there.  So I gave up.  After all, Google Music could only record 20,000 songs, and I have my entire collection on my Ipod and my top 100 albums on my Iphone.  I guess I can manage.

Second, I have become positively OCD about checking my possessions.  Nonetheless, moving every day while touring was difficult.  On New Year's Eve I was texting with Steve about the problem I was having with comments on this blog.  He told me to call because he could explain it faster.  I looked all over and realized that my headset was missing.  The headset is crucial for turning my computer into a phone.  The next day I asked our guide, Binh, to check at our last hotel.  Sure enough, I had left it.  Binh said another group with his tour company would be coming from that hotel to Siem Reap in a few days and could bring it to me, or they could send it by public bus which would cost something.  I opted for the group because I had doubts about the public bus.  I asked him a couple of days later when it would come.  He made a few more phone calls and said they would send it that day by public bus since I seemed "nervous."  Et voila.  It arrived at the office of his tour company.  The agent there got on her motorcycle and brought it to me at the restaurant where our group was having our farewell dinner.  I just had to reimburse her for the bus cost ... $2.50.

The next day my kindle died.  This seemed like a real catastrophe to me.  I had uploaded a dozen books or so to read (plus the classics library of hundreds so I will never run out of books) and was in the middle of three of them.  I tried charging, rebooting ... nothing.  David Salem suggested the Kindle app on my Iphone but that seemed like a really unsatisfying way to read.  Amazon was surprisingly unhelpful.  I was hoping they could send a new Kindle to my next hotel in Vietnam, but they said they had to send it to my home address.   They mentioned apps, too, so I checked the Chrome app store et voila, there's an app for that.  I downloaded it to my Chrome book and magically, all of my books appeared, although I did have to find my place in each of the books.  I was also able to "pin" the books I wanted so I could read them off-line while waiting at the airport.  The chrome book isn't quite as easy to read at poolside as the Kindle but it works.

While trying to solve the Kindle problem, I opened Google Music for the first time in a week et voila, all of my albums are there.  My kids are sure this is user error, but this one is a complete mystery to me.  All I did was open Google Music.  The first time, my music was there; the next five times, there was no music; and now there is music again.  I'm not taking the rap for this one.  I think Google is messing with my mind.

A few pictures that I hadn't put in previous posts ...  While driving to Siem Reap, we stopped at Spider City where they serve fried spiders, cockroaches, and other delectables.  Our Cambodian guide, Som, said he wouldn't eat the spiders because you cannot tell if they are fresh.  Sometimes they put yesterday's back out.

The day I killed my knees climbing that little "hill," we took a few pictures as I held the setting sun in my hand and toasted it with a DC.

Finally, we visited a brick "factory" one day.  They dig up clay, mix it with water, run it through a machine to shape the bricks, and then bake them.  You apparently don't need shoes or shirts or motorized vehicles to perform this work.

Floating villlage

Today I took a day trip to visit the floating village of Kampong Kleang, although it is really a stilted village.  About an hour drive from Siem Reap, Kampong Kleang is built on the shores of Tonle Sap, a huge lake.  During the rainy season, the Mekong runs into Tonle Sap, raising the water level in the lake several meters.  During the dry season, the Mekong reverses direction as water runs out of Tonle Sap back to the Mekong Delta, lowering the water level in the lake by several meters.  They have an annual event in Phnom Penh to celebrate the change of direction of the river.

The houses in Kampong Kleang are built on stilts high enough for most high waters although there is occasional flooding.  Pictures tell this story best.

The main street of Kampong Kleang

A house made of banana leaves.  It lasts about two years.

View of houses from Tonle Sap

More houses

The school

A school bus.  Four children rowing across the "street" since there are houses on both sides.

The church

Real floating houses where the Vietnamese live

More of the Vietnamese neighborhood

Moving day

This frame will be rebuilt on now that the water level has dropped

No one else had signed up for my tour today so I had a private guide and personal driver in a Toyota Camry, as well as a boat driver.  I single handedly employed three Cambodians today.  My upwardly mobile guide, Sophon, is the son of a farmer from a very rural area eighty kilometers from Siem Reap.  Although his mother never went to school, his parents pushed the children to be educated.  Sophon was sent to five different elementary schools, and then to live with monks in Siem Reap so he could finish high school.  He told me he was lucky because his older siblings had been educated before the Khmer Rouge came to power.  I'm not sure how that was lucky.  His father was an official in Lon Nol's government, so he had to go into hiding when Pol Pot came to power.  His oldest sister died of starvation during the civil war before Sophon was born, and he was not told for years that there had been one more sister. 

After finishing school, Sophon, who is Rachel's age, tried to go home but his parents insisted that he stay in Siem Reap.  He worked in construction and odd jobs until he saved money to buy a motorbike and he became a moto-cab driver.  Then he was able to move up to tuk-tuk driver.  He taught himself Japanese and English, was a guide at Angkor Wat for a short time, and eventually landed a job with this tour company.  His wife is a receptionist at a hotel and they have a two year old.  He also feels responsible for an eight year old boy that his parents adopted or took in.  The boy's parents divorced, the father disappeared, and the mother ran off to Thailand.  Sophon considers the boy his son.

I couldn't make this stuff up.

Once more with feeling

I forgot to post the obligatory Claremonster Racing in Cambodia (Angkor Wat) photos as well as a few more photos there.

My tour officially ended after breakfast today and everyone else left.  I hung around the hotel to say goodbye to a Suzanne and a few others, and then finally had a morning to talk on the phone.  My mornings are California evenings, but I have been out riding every day before 8 and don't get back until the middle of the night in California.  Around 11:30 I left the hotel, rented the best bicycle I could find for $6 a day, and headed back to the temple area.  It was a little different without a support wagon carrying our water and gear, and there was not even a pannier on the bike.  I had to wear my backpack.  I started with half a liter of water and when that was gone, I didn't want the weight of another liter, so at every temple stop, I bought a Diet Coke for wan dollah.  It might have been a four DC ride.

I rode back out to Angkor Wat thinking I would take the loop road to the west, but ending up taking the loop to the east.  But this time, kids, it was not because I cannot tell east from west.  I really knew where I was.  I decided to ride back to Preah Khan because I couldn't remember what was special about it, and Preah Khan is on the northeast side.  Preah Khan is a series of concentric courtyards with narrow entryways in the middle of each side.  Each door jamb is two steps up.  If you were building a fortress to protect this would be it, but our guide said it was simply a temple.  In the middle is a very small, square room with the stylized symbol that represents male, female, and something else.  I guess this makes sense in some religion.

So as long as I was on the east side, I decided to ride the east loop because it was only an inch on the map.  I stopped at a few more temples including a really cool one that you reach by a long boardwalk because it is built on an artificial island in the middle of an artificial lake.  After three hours of riding the east loop and temple hopping, I decided to give up on the west loop since that was an inch and a half on the map.  I stopped off at Angkor Wat again for a more leisurely look.  Angkor Wat is square with sides of about 200 meters.  On each side are incredible wall murals carved on sandstone in relief.  There are two murals on each wall, each about 100 meters.  One has an entire battle with the armies marching from either side and meeting in battle in the middle.  Another wall has the Angkor version of Dante's Inferno with horrible scenes of punishment and torture.  Another has fantastical animals - dragons, half bird/half man, half lion/half man.

I appreciated the temples a lot more today, going at my own pace.  The distances are too far to walk but ideal for bicycles.  The roads away from the main temples feel like pleasant country lanes even though I was never more than a short distance from another temple and an army of vendors.  And at the traffic jams in front of the main temples, I passed the buses and cars.

Some day I am going to start a company called Civilized Touring.  Why do all riders think they have to start at 7:30 and be done by noon?  I rode and toured from 11:30 to 5:30 this afternoon.  I had plenty of time for another massage, a nice dinner, and some walking around, and was back at my hotel at 9.  Civilized Touring.  Unfortunately, they are picking me up at 7:45 for tomorrow's tour to floating villages on the lake.  Oh, well.

Temples and more temples

I knew it was a mistake to skip a day because everything would run together, but I was a little under the weather yesterday and went to bed early.  And today ... everything is running together.  In short, I saw a lot of interesting temples and wall carvings.  But I can't really remember where or when.

Angkor Wat is a single albeit incredibly impressive twelfth century temple, but the area around here is dotted with the ruins of literally hundreds of temples.  When one goes to "Angkor Wat," one generally visits five or so of the closest or most popular sites.  The word "angkor" is from the Sanskrit for "city," but it refers to a period of Khmer rule from the 9th to the 15th century.  "Wat" means a monastery temple.  Most of the grand temples here are from the Angkor period, but a few are pre-Angkorian and, of course, some are not temples.

On our way to Siem Reap, the city that is the access to Angkor Wat, we rode our bikes to the pre-Angkorian ruins at Sambor Prei Kuk.  Then we had a long bus ride to Siem Reap, arriving on New Year's Eve.  We dined at the Red Piano and joined the masses in the streets.

The next morning we took the bus to the tenth century temple at Banteay Srei.

 Then we rode our bikes back to Pre Rup and Ta Phrom.  The stung and strangler fig trees in Ta Phrom have grown over the temples and walls in a striking manner.





You can see why my mind was a blur by the time we hit Angkor Wat in the afternoon.  This is the iconic picture of the area.  Unfortunately, there was scaffolding on the front, so our view was not quite so beautiful.



Today we cycled to the huge 12th century city complex of Angkor Thom, visiting Preah Khan and the Bayon as well.  The Bayon has hundreds of smiling Buddhas while other temples had incredible wall carvings that told stories of battles, mythology, and everyday life.



I have seen way too many temples in three days to keep straight in my head.  The tour ended today, and while everyone is leaving tomorrow, I have two more days in Siem Reap.  One day I will rent a bicycle and go back to a few of the temples.  The other confusing thing about the temples is that I could not quite understand what they are for or what they represent.  Religion during the Angkor period seemed to be very fluid, with influences from both Buddhism and Hinduism.  Some temples emphasized one religion while other emphasized another.  In addition, some were dedicated to Shiva, some to Buddha, and some to other gods or concepts.  And most are not "temples" in the sense I think of a temple.  Some are funerary and some are dedicated to the king's mother or father.  There apparently was not group worship like in a church or synagogue.  Rather, people made offerings to the gods, but I can't understand when or why.  And there was something about the struggle between good and evil, the gods and the devil.

In short, the last two days have been more confusing than enlightening for me, which makes this a not very interesting blog entry.