Banteay Srei and Kbal Spean

We have walked a fair deal of the city of Siem Reap, back streets and major boulevardes. Quite dusty and hot even wandered around a 700 year old temple, as if we weren't going to do enough of that over the next few days.

  After Saturday's wanderings and buying a Japanese Hotcho square tip kitchen knife from Citadel Knives, we wandered back to the hotel pool for some relax time and lunch.

We have been trying to work out exactly how to plan our survey of Angkor Wat. The place is massive and there are many aspects to it.  We decided to leave Angkor Wat for last and take in a few of the more remote temples and sights first of all.  So off to Banteay Srei and Kbak Spean about 30km and 50km northeast of Siem Reap. Got the hotel to organise a car and driver, because neither of us felt like going in a tuk-tuk for 100kms.

We had to purchase a ticket to get entry to various temples 1,3 or 7 day ticket cost $20/$40/$60
We chose the 3 day ticket each, which is printed with your photo on it and must be shown at each sight you visit.

Banteay Srei

 Many beautiful rock carvings in very fine detail.  It was "rediscovered" in the late 1890's by some French dudes, and after clearing the rainforest away restoration commenced in the 1930's.

 The temple is dated to around 1000

It was blisteringly hot in the sun but there was much shade available as well, we sat down for a cup of coffee afterwards and this helped put things right.  After an hour or so we headed further north to Kbal Spean - the river of a thousand linga's

 It was an easy 1500m walk up the hill into rainforest and rock formations within a National Park.

 Vishnu Shiva and those round things are linga's

 We were sweating up a storm, pants and shirts were soaked through and we had drank two bottles of water each.  The Biodiversity Conservation centre was closed on Sunday. Boo.

Then headed back had some lunch -delicious noddle soup with vegetables and spring rolls. Back into the car, stopped at a landmine museum but the heat had taken its toll on us, I couldn't really relate and we had seen similar displays on this topic in Saigon, Phong Nga and Hanoi. Back to the hotel!

Plan on dinner at the Golden Palm tonight.

Siem Reap - saturday

Royal Palace and National Museum

This morning has been quite relaxing wandering about the city and checking two more locations off the list. We are both quite aware of not overdoing it, staying hydrated, keeping clean,
We have a long bus ride tomorrow to Siem Reap and a little bit of wandering is good, just not too much in the heat of the day. That said it isn't insanely hot and there are some fresh breezes to get the sweat airconditioner working.  Plenty of shade in Phnom Penh too with many street trees.

Last night we wandered north for a place to eat, Sandy had ideas of the Quay in the north of the city, we asked a tuk-tuk driver and he shook his head. OK then. Keep walking. Masses of traffic along the river. Click. Water Festival. Click click. Fireworks. Click Click Click.

Everybody was on the riverfront. And everybody was trying to leave at the same time, we had left our run too late to get there, so walking against the traffic was the best thing to do.  Found a happy hour bar, beers and grazed the menu, tasty Khmer dishes and vegetarian spring rolls. And more cold beer, and football Champions League to ignore on the big screen.

A slow wander back south and photos of pandas (advertising) for my cousin. And to bed and no alarm to wake to.

Woke and booked the bus to Siem Reap, then searched and booked the hotel for our last night in Cambodia at the end of the trip, no we didn't choose the Asian TeaHouse in Street 242. It's ok, it's not ok for $A90 per night knowing what we know about Vietnam accommodations, maybe I need more time, but this location is a bit too south given where we have naturally walked.

Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. Two places a republican/anarchist/democrat/atheist should visit.

Inside both buildings was an invisible force that prevented photons being captured. Many thousands of buddhas, much gold, emeralds, diamonds, jade, silver, silks - all with zero reflective surfaces.  I can't remember what anything looked like as my memory was wiped as I exited each building. Which was a shame as the one kilo gold coronation crown would look good in the pool room. Our guide Kiry was an excellent interpreter of the building, of buddhism, hinduism, the Royal Family and the Dark Times of the Khmer Rouge. His head was recently shaved in mourning for his father-in-law and was very pleased that we had been to Cheoung Ek and Tuol Sleng.  He was born after those times and received a high school education to age 18. His family comes from Battambang province, from a village 30km from Battambang city.

In some way paying respects at the Killing Fields was our way of presenting our hope for the future of Cambodia, a pawn in the cold war, and struggling to emerge during the national identity demands of post-colonialism. The Khmer Rouge may well have been the poster child for the defeat of an American puppet state and removal of a bulwark in the cursed 'Domino Theory', so many years of civil war in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos. How quickly did the Khmer Rouge destroy so many lives. Norodom Sihanouk fled to Paris in exile in 1970. The royal family as a unifying meme for the people of Cambodia did not exist in the same way that the Thai monarchs have ruled with manufactured consent of the military. Too many variables, interests, mining royalties, logging contracts and positioning of spheres of influence.

Time for a beer. Angkor. You've just bombed a struggling post colonial south east asian nation into the dark ages. Thanks Kissinger you fucking war criminal.

And so re-emerging from three and half years of internationally sanctioned institutionalised murder and mayhem, the Cambodian people seek solidity and reassurance and the cork of Norodom Sihanouk pops up out of his excrutiating exile in Paris (poor lamb) to bring together reconcilation to the hyper damaged peoples of Cambodia.

One of the diamonds in one of the gold buddhas (90kg) weighed in at 25 carats but I couldn't take photos of it.

Angkor is everywhere, beer labels, airlines, on the flag, and a model of Angkor Wat inside the palace grounds behind the silver pagoda - so called because the floor is lined with nearly 6 tonnes of silver tiles - apparently good luck to touch them.  Hey remember when Cambodia ruled the waves? That Jayavarman Seven he the man. Maybe he was.  I'll find out next week.

Time for a beer and some icecream.

whatevs, I am assured it was delicious, coconut and lime

The national museum was pretty good, some of the pre-angkor sculpture was undeniably beautiful. Again photons didn't obey physics or the "No photography" signs but that didn't stop the frenchies snapping off at every opportunity.

$3 tuk-tuk and some rest in the shade.

Might explore south tonight and then an early start and onto Siem Reap. Good evening my sweet sweet darlings.

Year Zero

Today has been pretty tough. We've been to the Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh and then to S-21 Tuol Sleng, the torture and interrogation centre in an old high school in the city centre.
It is a basic recognition of the madness of the years of the Khmer Rouge, and to pay respects to those they killed, not only through the torture and murder of suspect bourgeois, but the immense ruptures Year Zero did to the entire population of Cambodia. Clearing the cities and sending everyone into the country to do agricultural work whether they knew how to or not, food shortages, famine, disease, wholesale control of thought, public denunciation, private reporting back on behaviour, anything suspect was dealt with severe re-education.

I need to start this positively because it was an emotional morning. Here is a beautiful dragon I spied.

  Isn't she stunning?

Something we have learned about war is that it is much more efficient when done on an industrial scale. The Turks managed it against the Armenians, the Nazi's catalogued their ethnic cleansing, and Radovan Karadzic escaped justice by dying before he faced a verdict.  Darfur is another stain on the human population's inability to stop genocide. The Khmer Rouge, freedom fighters against an American puppet state, took control in Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975.

Truckloads of enemies of the state were rounded up and delivered to Cheoung Ek on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.  Blindfolded and forbidden to speak they were lined up next to pre-dug pits and bludgeoned, shot or stabbed and thrown down.

So matter of fact, a human slaughterhouse, murders done with shovels and iron bars, axes, machetes, or shot. This went on for three years, there were more than 300 mass grave sites across Cambodia.

Following the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, the stories of the Khmer Rouge insanity emerged and the Cheoung Ek Genocidal Centre is part of an international collaboration to bring awareness for this story.

The exhumation of those killed here is complete yet everywhere you look scraps of clothing or bones emerge from the alluvial soils after rains. A memorial stupa has been constructed to house the remains of those executed here, each identified by gender and method of execution.

 For more information on the Killing Fields
That beautiful dragon was sitting next to this shady tree.

Most of the nearly 9000 people killed here came from S-21 Tuol Sleng prison.

Where we headed to next via some back roads.
Yoen Soek was our tuk-tuk driver for the morning and was a extremely good guide as well with a wealth of knowledge for Cambodian history.

 Yoen Soek was 13 when the Khmer Rouge took power, his family were forced out of Phnom Penh, so taking us to these places must be hard - though is a necessary part of his work. His sister is still missing and they still hope to one day find her.

Back Roads

Phnom Penh sewage non treatment

A table with a pheeeyew

Rubbish dump

transporting lengths of metal

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum


Its been a hard morning and I am finding this very difficult to process.  Each one of those rigorously photographed and torture derived confessions recorded was a son/daughter/brother/sister/mother/father/friend/colleague to many other people.  How did Cambodia get to the situation where having this terror anyway preferable to any other alternative?  A regime where Barry Manilow is compulsory - sure just like New Zealand? Utter madness. Nearly 3,000,000 dead at the hands of these monsters. Blood will always be on their hands.