Angkor What? Angkor Wat!

Ta Prom Temple Photo By Kathleen Broadhurst

By Kathleen

( Sorry it's been a minute, we've had technical difficulties)

 It’s not every day to get to see one of the wonders of the world, we were spun. The faces popping out of walls, the nine headed Naga snakes, the demons and gods at war. Shines and statues to the Buddha at every temple, it was a glorious jungle dream.

Together we wandered through some of the most glorious ruins on earth. Built in the 12th century when Europe was still in the mists of its middle age crisis the capital city Angkor was designed on sacred geometry, every temple is a reflection of heaven, every moat a symbolic sea.

To climb Angkor Wat, the most famous temple in Angkor, is to cross the seven seas and seven mountains and reach Mount Meru, home of the gods. There looking down over the jungle encrusted ruins it was impossible not to revel in the transitory nature of being.

Angkor Wat, though the biggest and most famous is not the only temple in Angkor, there are literally dozens and they dot the landscape like forgotten lego towers built by giant children. There’s the administrative seat of power with elephants and gods, there’s the bridge to Angkor Thom, with giant Lord of the Rings like sculptures and demons battling deities leading you deeper into Angkor’s mysteries.

There’s Ta Prom, the Temple of Bramha, where the jungle is slowly wining the battle against the stone, eating away at this ancient monastery’s sacred halls.  And then there’s the Temple of the Snake Maiden where, legend has it, the king would go every night to join in spiritual and sexual union with a snake Goddess. Given how many stairs there were to get to the top, I’m guessing the sex was really good.

The giant trees that encases the ruins are as much a part of the attraction as the moss covered stones, you can climb them or just get a group of five and see if you can circle them with your hands still touching. It would be easy to spend a week in Angkor and we only had one day. It was a temple marathon.

Thankfully, despite it being the rainy season, the day was dry and we were able to get to every major sight before the clouds rolled in, though we did miss out on Angkor’s famous sunset.

After dark, when we all had had a cool dip in the pool (an I had discovered that I missed getting sunscreen on part of my shoulder) we took to the streets of Siam Reap.  About the same size as Phnom Penh, Siam Reap is a much more affluent thanks to the hordes of tourists that descend like crazed monkeys onto the temples. There are many good restaurants to refuel at. We ended up at the Warehouse, though most of us were fairly unconcerned with food and looking forward to having a night off to hit the clubs.

Pub Street, is something of a letdown, its literally one street and there’s not much other than your typical Khmer happy pizza/ fried rice type restaurants and a few bars. On the far end on opposite sides of the street are the two big clubs. The Temple which plays the same music in a continuous loop but has air-conditioning and drinks in glasses and Angkor What? Which has a more alternative playlist and no flashing lights. We opted for Angkor What?.

With $1 shooters named things like Drunken Rabbit and Red Dragon, it wasn’t long before the crowd started bumping. Happy as clams in the heat and sweat we danced like the good little hippies we are, gaining the respect of fellow travelers and the giggles of a very tipsy Japanese girl who kept taking pictures of Fiz. By the end of the night there was no place to dance but the tables and we along with a dozen or more people dutifully climbed on top, where it must have been another 5 degrees hotter.

Finally falling out of the club, we wandered the streets looking for some fresh air. Tuk Tuk drivers came by to sell some sin. As a couple we avoid most of the sex trafficking touts but a friend got offered “ Girl, Boy, Two girls, pregnant girl?”. Mostly we just got offered an array of substances starting from the soft and getting progressively harder. It went something like this “ You want some smoke?”

 “ No.”

“ Marijuana”

“ No”

“ Cocaine”

“ No”

“ Molly”

 “No”

“ Crystal Meth”

“No!”

“ Opium”

“ No”

“ Heroin”

 “ No”, every ten feet or so, just another reminder that Cambodia is the Wild West of the East.

For those who are traveling to the area, Cambodia may see like a giant Las Vegas, but don’t be fooled, for every one of those dealers there was a cop standing at the wall and if we had decided to purchase anything you can bet we’d be paying a healthy bribe for the privilege.

Its is a well known fact that some shady dealers will actually sell you out to the cops before you even get your drugs. So if you’re going to party, party smart and don’t think just because it being offered that it’s ok to accept.

Furthermore, when it comes to chemicals, yeah, if you think they step on shit with nasty things back home, you can only imagine what they do it with here. In other words, cocaine really in Cambodia? That doesn’t even grow here. Stay safe, buy locally grown

Across the Border

By Fiz

So having been in Phnom Penh for a couple of days we have
noticed a few things.  The first is
that the money here doesn’t have silk sweatshops on the backs, and the second
is that the architecture is a pleasant blend of modern and traditional.  For example the hotel we are staying in
is a concrete rectangle seven stories tall, though the shape of the roof is
traditional, and so are the tiles.

I can’t see the roofs of only a handful of buildings when I
look out the window of our room on the 5^th floor, and most of those
are still under construction. 
Phnom Penh is a huge city that has, very literally, recently started
exploring new heights.

Between the broad boulevards and well lit roads lie small
neighborhoods of the less fortunate, with dark, winding alleyways between
corrugated steal roofs, which seem to be the only modern part of each house.
Many of them are built on small stilts, as the flooding here certainly gets
high enough to be a problem.

Polka-dotted between the steel roofs the traditionally tiled
roofs, some with a white trim, stand out in stark contrast in the afternoon
sun.  But what stands out even more
are the sleek new shopping centers popping up by foreign architects, attracting
fast food restaurants like KFC like flies. 

Inside these malls you could forget you are in a third world
country, forget you are in a world which only 15 years ago was torn apart by a
regime bent on the destruction of its own people, even forget that you are in a
world still recovering from the Khmer Rouge.  But as soon as you walk out the doors, and the refreshing AC
can no longer keep the oppressing heat at bay, you remember where you are, even
if the people around you don’t.

There is a curious phenomenon amongst the younger generation
of Cambodians, they hear stories from their parents about the tragedies they
lived through and witnessed, they can see the killing fields where their
countrymen were slaughtered.  But
few of them really believe it happened. 
They think the experiences of their parents are ghost stories, like we
think of the tales of the Boogey man.

Since Pol Pot was removed from power there has been no
conversation, no discussion in schools or colleges about the atrocities
committed not two decades ago. 
Although this is starting to change, many are concerned about the affect
this will have on the future generations, they worry that the fun, peace loving
youth of today will harden, becoming more aggressive.

The Cambodia of today is a safe place, for anybody to come
to, although it was not so some ten years ago. Today I was listening to a story
told by an Aussie fellow who has been coming to Cambodia since 1994 at first
for pleasure, then for work, and now to give back to the country he fell in
love with, giving money to NGO’s and charity organizations.  The story he told was from one of his
first visits to a friend of his who lived here in Phnom Penh. 

He sat down to dinner at said friends house and he noticed
that his friend had an AK-47 in his lap. Why? He wondered out loud. He found
out that his friends house had been broken into eight times while he was at
home, hence the 3 inch solid steel door. 
They went for an after dinner stroll, and everybody who was invited to
dinner was handed a pistol, with extra clips, just in case.  His friend still carried the AK.

But as I said earlier, Cambodia is safe these days.  Sure there are pickpockets (our first
night here we ran into a guy who’s bag got stolen off a bus), and Tuk Tuk
drivers who will try to rip you off, among other hazards that every city seems
to possess, but you really have to do something rash to warrant any hostility.

The beggars are tame, and so are the street vendors, a shake
of your head is all it takes to get somebody off your tail.  A smile goes a long way here, so does
common curtsey.  Don’t be shy to
have a conversation with the Tuk Tuk driver you employ for five minutes, you
wont ever see him again in the throngs of people, and you might just enrich both
your lives.

In this country you really do get what you give.