Angkor Wat!

Tuk-tuk

Right then, having escaped the floods in Bangkok we landed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Picasa link) on a hot and humid morning. Walking off the plane onto the jet bridge, it felt like we'd hit a wall - wall of heat and humidity. It was 9 AM and the mercury was well north of 30 C. Loading our bags into a tuk-tuk we headed into the city. For those of you who don't know what a tuk-tuk is, allow me to explain. Its basically a carraige on two wheels attached by a pivot to a severely under powered motorcycle (think old school M80 for those from India). In short, a 100cc engine with or without gears pulling a home built carraige into six adults can squeeze themselves into on a good day.





Anyhow, after getting to the city and settling in, we then spent the next four days taking in the various sights that included a museum, the Royal Palace, and a couple of pagodas. The museum, S-21, deserves a special mention. The museum was a prison/interrogation center used by the Pol Pot regime in the late 70s. What makes it so eerie is its location, bang in the middle of a residential neighborhood and its original function, a high school. Still standing on the school grounds are bars and ropes for gymnastics, which the Khmer found more dark uses for. Having visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, I thought S-21 wouldn't faze me much. However the location, its original purpose and the fact that it was used as a prison/torture center just 30 years ago was a bit unnerving.

Aerobics!

Before I move on from Phnom Penh though, there's one more issue I'd like to talk about. It deals with exercise, specifically the Khmers and their apparent love for exercise. Just across the road from where we were staying was the one and only stadium in the Phnom Penh. On our first evening as we lounged about on the balcony I happened to look over at the stadium as the sun set behind it. I could see the upper level of the bleachers and around a thousand stick figures moving, not in unison, but close enough to see that it was organized. Awanti and I headed over there to check things out and saw around 10 large groups performing aerobic exercises. Each group had a boombox (along with some big speakers) and a instructor (along with a mike to shout out instructions) at the fore. The age group ranged from kids as young as 10 to grandmas pushing 70. The concept's really simple - you just walk up and join a group and at the end pay a couple of cents to the instructor. There appeared to be no fixed length and you could join or leave as you pleased. What amazed me is that Cambodia is still very much a third world country and yet, a number of its citizens, especially the middle-aged ones, were taking an active interest in their health. India and even the US definitely have a long way to go. This was confirmed the next day as the same scene was repeated while walking along the river-side promenade.

Flood proof

From Phnom Penh we caught the slowest possible bus to Siem Reap - think seven hrs for just over 300 kms. The country-side was beautiful though - the monsoon had just finished and everywhere there were water-logged rice fields and green forests. There's not too much to write home about Siem Reap. Its the sights that lie around seven kms north of the city that draw most tourists to Cambodia - the Temples of Angkor. The Angkorian civilization really came into its own around the 9th century and like all good kingdoms with a point to prove, embarked on a temple building spree that was only rivaled by the Egyptians and possibly the Mayans. For the next 600 years each successive king strove to outdo the king before him resulting in a series of stunning temples. Angkor Wat is undoubtedly the jewel among them and is so big that its said to be the largest religious building in the world. On our first day we hired a tuk-tuk to seek out the far-off temples, but then picked up bikes for the next two days to check out all the main temples at a more leisurely pace. The scale of these temples is truly beyond belief and their setting among the forests gives them a magical quality that is definitely worth checking out. When the temples were built, they were sorrounded by villages and cities - the biggest of which housed over a million people and this was when London could count only a couple of thousand as residents. However, Angkorian culture deemed that stone would only be used for building temples as stone is permanent and so shall be the house of God. All other structured were built of wood of mud that quickly disintegrated once the cities were abandoned in the 15th century. This being the tropical zone, the forests quickly made a come-back resulting in famous photo-ops like the Tomb Raider temple. Most of the temples are sorrounded by moats or reservoirs that in some cases were 7 kms by 3 kms - and these were dug out by hand!

Voila!

Having checked out the temples, we decided to take it easy in the city for a day. Awanti attended a cooking class that included a visit to the market for the ingredients and cooking a 3 course Khmer meal. I joined her for the best part of the course - where you get to eat your preparations - and thoroughly enjoyed it. Vietnam is next on the itenerary, though its been called up for action a bit sooner than planned. Cambodia like Thailand is also facing severe flooding - though without the accompanying publicity. As a result our plan to continue onto the more remote parts of Cambodia was vetoed by the management and we're heading to Vietnam instead. A 20 hr bus/boat journey awaits us..sounds like fun.

- Ashish