Our flight from Saigon took us to the airport in Siem Reap, Cambodia, where we met Mr. Ting, our new TEL (Trip Experience Leader, in OAT lingo) for the next five days. Ting was another great TEL/Guide, a local Cambodian, quite fluent in English, knowledgeable, and easily understood. This five-day tour of Cambodia was offered as a “post-tour extension” of our “Inside Vietnam” tour with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT). How could we resist?
Oh my God, It’s So Hot: During our stay in Siem Reap, the temperatures remained unusually high, often topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. As in Vietnam, our daily schedule was often re-arranged to get us out in the morning and back to our hotel for the more grueling hours of the early afternoon, and then out again for the evening. This helped, as did the air conditioning in the hotel and the many restaurants where we ate our meals. For our five nights, we stayed at the Tara Angkor Hotel, with lovely accommodations and great breakfast options included.
Siem Reap, the second largest city in Cambodia, is a major tourist destination due to its proximity to Angkor Wat, the most visited tourist attraction in the country. Much of Siem Reap is more modern and built to serve the tourists, but even here we could see plenty of poverty. In the countryside, and all around the temples like Angkor Wat, the villages were small and poor. People make their living through agriculture and selling their crops and their crafts.
Killing Field Memorial: After getting us settled in at the Tara Ankor Hotel in Siem Reap, Ting led us, “The Five,” on a short orientation walk and ride. Our first stop was at the Killing Field Memorial at a nearby temple, the Wat Kessaram Pagoda. Ting reminded us of the history. Under the dictator Pol Pot between 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge Regime systematically murdered over a million people. It was a wide, state-sponsored genocide, targeting anyone connected with the previous government, as well as intellectuals and professionals of any kind. Anyone who was educated was suspect and many were killed. Even wearing glasses was dangerous. The genocide was finally ended in 1979 when Vietnam invaded and ended the Khmer Rouge rule.
- The major monuments and larger killing fields are south of here, nearer to Phnom Penh. But many were killed in this area as well. The memorial site here features a glass-sided stupa (or temple) filled with the skulls and bones of many victims.
- Through his parents’ experiences, Ting knows about the dangerous Khmer Rouge years, when just being educated was dangerous. Despite his education and his eyeglasses, Ting’s father survived the regime, and he always wanted his children to be well-educated. One day when Ting was a child, the bridge that he normally crossed to attend school was blown out. Ting had to swim the river to get to school, but there were crocodiles in the river. So his father advised him. Climb the tree to look over the river. If you don’t see any crocodiles, you can swim across the rivers. And that’s how Ting maintained his good attendance record.
Wat Preah Prom Rath Temple visit and Monk Chat: Leaving the killing fields behind, we walked to another temple in town. This was a newer temple where we admired the colorful architecture and sculptures and enjoyed a brief chat with a young Buddhist monk.
A Village Visit and Dinner with a local Family: After a short bus ride, we stopped to meet a lovely young woman who led us for a short walk as she told us about her village. From our point of view, the homes were very limited. Some were simple shacks; others had solid structures built on stilts to protect them from floods. This village did not even have electricity until 2017. Even today, most villagers have no refrigeration. We reached the young lady’s home, one of the larger homes on stilts, where we met her mother and her aunt who had prepared a meal for us. They smiled and welcomed us, but they spoke little English, so Ting and our young leader did most of the talking and translating. The meal was very good, and we enjoyed learning about their simple village lives.
Angkor National Museum: This was great preparation for our upcoming temple visits. We learned more about Cambodia’s history, and the cultural heritage of the Khmer Empire’s golden age. Angkor Wat was the capital city of the Khmer Empire, which flourished here from the nineth to the fifteenth centuries. We saw the museum’s “Room of a Thousand Buddhas.” But historically this area was Hindu long before the Buddhists arrived. This helped us appreciate why many temples, and especially the great Angkor Wat, feature both Hindu and Buddhist images.
Angkor Wat: This is the big one! While touring in Cambodia and Vietnam, we visited lots of temples, both old and new. All were fascinating. But the largest and most spectacular, of course, was Angkor Wat, the largest religious complex in the world, according to Guiness World Records. Built in the 12th century for Khmer King Suryavarman II, as a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu. Toward the end of the century, Angkor Wat was converted to a more Buddhist temple. Today’s ruins still reflect both its Hindu and Buddhist heritage. Along with hundreds of other tourists, we spent hours walking the grounds and marveling at the towers and the many sculptures and reliefs that survive. This is the most visited tourist site in Cambodia.
Other Ancient Temple Visits:
- Banteay Srei: Built in AD 967, its name means “Citadel of Women.” It’s well-preserved, relatively small, and it features reliefs depicting the importance of women.
- Ta Prohm Temple: Late 12th Century. One remarkable thing about these ruins is how the trees have grown up, around, and through the ruins themselves, creating some eerie and strange views. Now it’s sometimes called the “Tomb Raider Temple” or the “Angelina Jolie Temple” after it provided a key site used to film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).
- Angkor Thom, established in the late twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII, was a fortified city and the last capital city of the Khmer Empire. On the sides of the towers, large faces smile out at you from the stones. Various sculptures and faces line both sides of the entry road.
- Bayon Temple: The towers rising above the temple feature more of those remarkable, serene and smiling faces, looking in four directions — presumably the faces of the Buddha. Take a closer look at the beautiful and well-preserved reliefs reflecting all aspects of Cambodian life.
Visit to the Tonle Sap Lake: After about an hour’s ride in our small but comfortable travel bus, we arrived at the shore of Tonle Sap Lake, part of the Mekong River system, and the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. It’s home to thousands of Cambodians, who survive and make their living from the water. Even the size of the lake varies greatly from its peak during the rainy season to dryer times when it’s much smaller.
- A Boat Ride to a Floating Village: First we took a longboat out into the lake. Along the way we saw many other boats, and some that were just rafts. We also saw quite a few water buffalo enjoying the water on a hot day. To our eyes, this water looked far too brown, but people here live on the water, drink the water, eat the fish, and then sell all the fish they catch. The lake feeds a great many Cambodians. Finally, we reached the “Floating Village” area. It was fascinating to see folks living in their floating homes. There were also floating Buddhist Temples, a floating city hall, floating restaurants and bars, and a floating village hall.
- Visit with Fisherman, his family, his floating home: Before our boat ride on the Tonle Sap Lake, we visited a fisherman in his own floating home, which was now securely tied to land, as he waits for the water to rise and the fishing to improve. The boat was a single story tall, the size of a small apartment, where he lived with his wife, his mother-in-law and five children. We met them all, and they were most kind and welcoming. We chatted with the fisherman and his wife, while Ting translated.
- Laughing at Cultural Differences: The fisherman asked if any of us had experience fishing. Sara and a few others spoke up that they had enjoyed fishing, but Sara explained that it was most often “catch and release.” When Ting explained this to the fisherman, he really started laughing. He said to Ting, and Ting translated, laughing a bit himself; “These people have no idea how to make money.”
- Along the road we stopped to visit a roadside vendor selling “Palm Sugar.” We were curious. So we learned how the locals make sugar and candy from their native palm trees.
Pub Street in Siem Reap: On our “Free Night” in Siem Reap, we all (The Five = Caroline, Kevin, Brian, Sara and Evan), wanted to check out “Pub Street,” our only major outing without our TEL, Mr. Ting. Pub Street was colorful and fun, the center of night life in Siem Reap, but it’s strangely short on good beer. We saw no evidence of a craft beer scene. In one spot we saw the Guinness sign, but no, they had no Guinness on tap or in bottles. Then another place featured a Coors sign. Brian is from Colorado, so I thought he’d be excited. But again, when I asked about the Coors, they had none. Apparently, they just like the signs. So we found a recommended spot with really good food and settled for the usual local lager. Kevin doesn’t drink anyway, so he didn’t mind. And Caroline preferred something stronger. Anyway, we enjoyed the colorful atmosphere and the good company, proving once and for all that you can have a good time, even in the absence of craft beer.
Making Rice Noodles: While visiting another village, we helped to make rice noodles and then enjoyed a delicious lunch of the noodles in fish broth. Our host and her daughter greeted us warmly and put us right to work.
- Her Process: First you grind the raw rice with water. Then separate the rice water from the solid to make rice dough. Then press the rice dough through a mold that shapes the noodles and drops them directly into boiling water. We helped with the grinding and the pressing.
- A Delicious Dinner: She then treated us to a lovely dinner of rice noodles in her delicious fish broth. She earns eight to ten dollars a day: she grinds 100 pounds of raw rice to make about 50 pounds of rice noodles. Her neighbors in the village stop by each morning to buy her noodles and broth for the day.
Our Farewell to Cambodia: On our last night with Ting, we bused to a spot where we could enjoy the sunset overlooking Angkor Wat. It was a beautiful evening, not even too hot anymore, as we looked over the large moat and the huge structures of Angkor Wat. And Ting provided drinks and snacks for the celebration. Drinks: local beers, palm sugar wine, and a Coke for Kevin. Snacks: peanuts and pistachios, water buffalo jerky, and of course KFC – no, not Kentucky Fried Chicken. Here KFC stands for Khmer Fried Crickets. And when I look at that photo of Ting holding “The Wrestler” with Angkor Wat in the background, I’m sure that Ting would do very well in advertising.
- And Farewell to The Five: Next morning we flew from Siem Reap back to Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City for an overnight. From there on the next day, Caroline and Brian flew back to the States, Kevin flew to Japan for another tour, while Sara and I flew off to meet our friends Emily and Van in Prague, Czech Republic.
