Angkor and the Bolaven

I am right now in Cambodia, in Siem Reap right next to Angkor Wat. I spent the last two days wandering through ancient temples. It was, well, it was amazing, and it was also an amusing tourist experience aside from being amazing. On the amazing aspect of it, I took I think more pictures than I have ever taken in such a short time, including when my Lao friend commandeered my camera and filled it up with pictures of her and her family in front of Buddha statues...

Anyway, did I tell you about Pakxe? That was in southern Lao, and the most exciting thing that happened there was that I rented a motorbike for a day and went way up to some place called Bolaven Plateau and saw lots of coffee plantations, and ethnic minority villages, and an amazing waterfall called Tat Fan or something like that.

And tomorrow I will take the boat (I still do get to take a boat, only this is kind of a fast boat I think) to Phnom Penh, and I'll probably go the rest of the way to Saigon on Sunday. My boat starts near here, on the Tonle Sap Lake. This lake is weird - in the dry season it is one quarter of the size it is in the wet season. The funny thing is, that is not just because of runoff from around the lake. The Tonle Sap is connected to the Mekong by a relatively long river, and in the dry season the water runs down the river to the Mekong, and to the SEA at Ho Chi Minh City as one would expect. However, in the wet season the level of the Mekong rises and the water says ‘Hmm lets see now, should I go to Saigon or should I go to Siem Reap?’ and some of it decides to go to Siem Reap, and thus the river turns around and flows INTO the lake, taking away some of the extra water from the Mekong. I don't think it gets all that much deeper, but it is really flat here, so the lake just gets way way bigger. All that (and more) I learned in a museum here set up by an NGO that works with street kids.

Another place I went to was the landmine museum. The guy who set this up got thrown in jail for a while because either A) he had dangerous (still active) mines and ammunition in the museum like the police said, or B) the police and the people in charge here didn't want the road to Angkor Wat to be 'marred' by signs for a landmine museum, reminding tourists (like they had forgotten) that Cambodia has more history than the Angkorian period. Anyway, that was interesting and I only went there because the guy I hired to drive me around to all the temples on his motorbike told me about it - there are no signs for it anymore. And the guy who started this museum, really just a big collection of leftover bombs etc, is the same age as me - his parents were killed when he was five, he then worked for the Khmer Rouge and learned to lay mines, then was captured by the Vietnamese (who invaded Cambodia in 1979 and took power from the Khmer Rouge) and worked for their army, then after the Vietnamese left he worked for the new Cambodian army (still fighting the Khmer Rouge) and after the UN came in he stopped being a soldier and worked as a de-miner, which he still does, as well as providing a home for numerous mine victims. All of this in a little shack, really, that serves as a “museum”. So, like I said, that was interesting.

My flight here was uneventful, in spite of all the bad things I had heard about Lao Aviation. It was a propeller plane, but there were maybe 15 people on it with room for maybe 60-70, so we were certainly not overloaded. When I got here I had to sign a paper that said “I really really really honest to my Grandma do not have SARS, and if I do I'll stand in a corner with my nose on the wall all day long” ha.

Oh, that ha reminded me, when I was motorbiking in Lao I had a funny conversation. I got a helmet with my motorbike (rather a novelty in this part of the world, but it made me feel a bit better about my novice motorbiking skills). But they didn't have full face helmets, only the kind with nothing over your face/jaw. So, anyway, I am going along gaping at the forest and being amazed at life in general, when suddenly this fat bug comes sailing up to me and dives into the space between my head and my helmet, and I know he was fat because he got stuck right in front of my ear. That was good, because I could hear what he was saying - first he said “Well what the sam hill was that?” Then he said “Aha, it's a person, just a funny color, I know what to do with these people.” And he proceeded to firmly plant his sharp end in the side of my head. OW. Well I stopped my motorbike very quickly (without flipping myself off the front) and tried to take off my helmet as fast as possible without forgetting to unstrap it. Well, the bug left, ran or fell or flew or something, I don't know. But there was some big piece of him planted in my head. He was a good planter too. In a string of amazing coincidences, I had my swiss army knife with me in my bag, AND remembered that I had it in my bag, AND remembered that it had a tweezers in it. So, in probably the first time I ever legitimately used those tweezers, I got them out to pull out this piece of bug from my head. It was conveniently placed for me to see it clearly in my bike mirrors, and I could see exactly how it stuck in my head and when I pulled on it, my head moved right along with it - it must have had some nasty barbs on it or something. Anyway, I got it out soon, probably like two minutes after it was put in. My head is still sore there - I'm glad it wasn't stuck there too long, or I might not have been able to put my helmet back on! Anyway, that's just a note for anyone who was wondering what the dangers of riding a motorbike with a faceguardLESS helmet were!

I didn't really talk about Angkor did I? Well, there are loads of temples and monuments around here, Angkor Wat (Wat meaning temple, Angkor being the name of the place/kingdom I guess) is just the kind of best preserved/restored one. It's also really big. Most of the stuff was built around 11th - 13th Cent I think. Did you know you can go up in a hot air balloon to watch the sun rise/set over the temples? And the incredible $40 that it costs for a three day pass goes mostly to a Cambodian oil company... go figure. And I should go eat dinner now, I have to get up early tomorrow to get on this boat to Phnom Penh.