Cambodia, part 9c – Angkor: Bayon

This is the third post describing our visit to the Angkor area. The first post provides a map and a list of references that I’m using to supplement my descriptions.

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After entering the ancient city of Angkor Thom through the south gate, we proceeded north 1.5 km to Bayon, the temple that sits at the very center of the city. Here is the approach to the temple from the east, a direction associated with life…

Bayon

In my mind (and probably in the minds of most visitors), the outstanding feature of this temple is the 216 smiling faces of King Jayavarman VII looking down at you from 54 towers. (Alternatively, the faces may be of a figure who represents the compassion of Buddha. Quite likely, it’s both: a blurring of lines that is meant to reinforce the god-like status of the king.)

Faces

(And more faces.)

The other feature of the temple that sticks in my mind is the bas-reliefs. Mr. Guest Complacent pointed these out to us. Apparently, the total length of these reliefs is over 1.2 km, with over 11000 figures depicted. On the outer wall, the carvings depict scenes from every day life. This wall would have been accessible to the general populace.

Battles

Battles and business transactions

Aquatic life

Crocodile and prey

Monkeys

Birds

Libations?

The inner wall would have been in a more restricted portion of the temple. The carvings depict scenes from Hindu mythology. I don’t have pictures of those reliefs.

We passed a spot where restoration work was under way…

Restoration: preparing the ground

Restoration: building the walls

Even though it was still in the early part of the morning, the temperature and humidity were already getting high. At some point as we trekked up and down temple steps, Youngest Daughter lamented,

I wish there was a slide!

Finally, a few other random photos from our exploration of Bayon:

From Bayon, we split up. Some of us walked past Baphuon, and others went to visit a large contemporary statue of the Buddha. We met up again at the Terrace of the Elephants.

Coming up: The conclusion of our visit to Angkor Thom

Cambodia, part 9b – Angkor: The South Gate of Angkor Thom

This is my second post describing our visit to Angkor. I had planned to write one really long post, but quickly decided (for my own sake) that I’d break it up into pieces. The first post contains maps and references.

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On Monday, November 21st, we tried to get to the temples early in order to avoid some of the crowds. We bypassed Angkor Wat (since many people start there) and proceeded to the ‘Great City’, Angkor Thom.

Angkor Thom was the last capital of the Khmer empire, constructed during the reign of Jayavarman VII around 1200 CE (although some portions were built earlier). The city is in the shape of a square and surrounded by a 100-meter wide moat. Each side is about 3 kilometers long and has one gate (or gopura) in the middle. (The east side has an extra gate for the king.) At the top of each gate are four sandstone heads – one facing each of the cardinal directions. These heads may represent the Buddha, the king, or both. The southern gate is the most popular with tourists because of the carvings on the causeway leading up to the gate. It is also oriented toward Siem Reap.

Visitors usually walk through the southern gate and meet their ride on the other side. We did the same.

The south gate of Angkor Thom. Notice the carving on either side of the causeway.

Most historians believe that the carvings along the causeway depict the “Churning of the Ocean of Milk“, a well-known Hindu story. The asuras (demons) are on the right side as you enter, and the devas (demigods) are on the left. They tug back and forth on Naga (the guardian of Buddha; note the mingling of Hinduism and Buddhism) which rotates the holy mountain, represented by Bayon, the temple at the center of Angkor Thom. This back and forth motion churns the Ocean of Milk to provide the Nectar of Immortality.

(At least, I think that’s sort of how it goes.)

For tourists like us, the churning of the Ocean of Milk provides opportunity for taking pictures…

Asuras (demons)

More asuras

Devas (demigods) and the moat

The girls with the asuras

Middle Daughter helps the asuras to churn the Ocean of Milk

Once we completed our picture taking, we continued through the gopura…

The south gate gopura

…to meet our ride on the other side. We chose the van over the elephants.

Elephants at the south gate

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 Up next: Bayon

Cambodia, part 9a – Angkor: Phnom Bakheng

This is my first post describing our visits to the temples and other ruins at the Angkor area. My information about the various structures is derived from a number of different places:

• Our tour guides (The Guest Complacent)
• Wikipedia
• The Angkor Guide
• Canby Publications travel guide
• Angkor by Dawn Rooney (Odyssey Publications, 2001) – There are more recent editions available now.
• Angkor Wat and Siem Reap by Nick Ray (Lonely Planet Publications, 2008)

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Map of the Angkor area by Holger Behr. (Click for an enlarged view.)

The locations that we visited on November 20th and 21st.

We arrived in Siem Reap on Sunday, November 20th in the late afternoon. Our plan was to spend Monday exploring various temples of Angkor. However, if you purchase your entrance pass for the next day after 5 p.m., you can enter the site in the evening and get a few extra hours of touring time. So on Sunday, after quickly checking into our hotel, we dashed off to get our passes for Monday. Cambodian citizens and children under the age of twelve don’t have an admission fee. The one day passes for the rest of us cost $20…

I was in a much better mood than this picture might indicate.

Phnom Bakheng

After getting our passes, we quickly continued to Phnom Bakheng. This hill rises about 200 feet above the surrounding area, which is relatively flat. The oldest major temple in the Angkor area is located right at the top and provides a good view of the surrounding area. The temple was carved from the pre-existing stone of the hill and then faced with sandstone. It was built around the year 900 CE during the reign of Yasovarman I and dedicated to the Hindu god, Shiva.

Because of the view (which includes a clear view of Angkor Wat about 1.5 km to the southeast), this is a very popular destination at sunset. Unfortunately, this popularity also threatens the long-term health of the temple. We observed that access is much more regulated than it was ten years ago. (Also, the elephant rides up and down the hill are much more expensive. We skipped those.)

Because of the more stringent access controls, we were late in getting to the top of the temple. Only a few of us got to see the last moments of sunset, but there was still enough light to explore the ruins and take some pictures. We could have taken pictures with some Buddhist monks, but we passed on that opportunity.*

* At Angkor there is an interesting mix of contemporary Buddhism (nominally 95% of Cambodians are Buddhist) with ancient artifacts and ruins that derive from both Hinduism and Buddhism. Ancient Khmer society followed the religious preferences of the kings, who themselves were often viewed as divine. Occasionally, the fervor that accompanied changes in the prevailing religion resulted in the purging of evidence of other religions from the temples. As a result, visitors to Angkor may notice empty spaces where once there were depictions of gods carved in stone. In that regard, the history repeats itself. Multiple times.

Here is a view from the bottom as we wait to climb the temple.

I missed the sunset by a minute or two.

The structure at the top of Phnom Bakheng

Some other structures near the top of Phnom Bakheng

The ordinary family at sunset

By the time we made it back down the hill to our van, it was nearly dark. We returned to the hotel, ordered some pizza (marketed to Americans!), and prepared for an early start the next morning and a full day at Angkor.

Mamma Mia!

Ordinary Spouse has an Abba album that she likes. The girls are starting to pick up some of the songs. Tonight, Youngest Daughter was singing Mamma Mia:

Mamma Mia!
Here I go again!
My, my!
How can I have a sister?

Cambodia, part 8 – Central Boutique Angkor Hotel

(Whoops! I changed my mind. I was going to write about Angkor next, but I decided to slip in some details about our hotel first. Our visit to Angkor will be next. I promise.)

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After our seven-hour trip from Phnom Penh, it was wonderful to pull into our hotel – the Central Boutique Angkor. We were served tea while we waited for our rooms, and then had the fun that comes with exploring the rooms and the grounds. On our first afternoon, we didn’t have much time to enjoy our accommodations after we unpacked – we were quickly back on the road in order to get to Angkor before sunset. But over the next three days, we had a really nice stay. You can regard this as a positive review:

The rooms were nice

Ordinary Spouse and I were thankful that The Guests Complacent had arranged for our family to have two connecting rooms. At night, it allowed us to put the girls to bed and still have the lights on in the other room. That was sweet. And we had air conditioning, warm showers, and a refrigerator - lots of luxuries!

The breakfast buffet was great!

Mrs. Guest Complacent said it would be. Eggs, hot and cold cereal, fruit, rice, hot and cold drinks, pastries – I’m sure that I’ve forgotten something. I quickly decided that my breakfast would consist of a bowl of muesli, topped with yogurt and mango. I also had a chocolate croissant and washed everything down with orange juice.

Here I am enjoying breakfast. I don't know why I've got that goofy grin on my face.

Hooray for the swimming pool!

Our daughters did great with whatever tourist activities we planned. Nevertheless, we knew that we shouldn’t push them overly hard, and so each day we returned to the hotel mid-afternoon. And after a hot day of trekking around, the pool was wonderful. It was clean, cool, and even had a waterfall at one end that the girls enjoyed.

The swimming pool, looking toward the waterfall at left. (Our rooms are at the back corner on the lower level.)

The swimming pool and some of the guest rooms.

And there were orchids.

I couldn’t stop taking pictures…

Here is a slide show that includes other random pictures from our stay.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sweetness

Youngest Daughter likes Sugar Plum Spice tea, and she received a box of it for Christmas. At supper time, she was ready to make a cup. As it was steeping, I asked if she wanted milk and sugar with it. She responded…

Yes. I like sweetness. Sweetness is what I love.

Sugar Plum Spice

And now as I type…

I love Sugar Plum tea!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, y’all.

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(Turn your volume up a bit for this one.)

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(Freely downloadable on Carrie’s website)

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Santa is on his way!

Santa flying over Asia

So I see that NORAD is tracking Santa Claus again this year. Evidently, he is on his way to Jakarta, Indonesia, even as I type this. So far Santa has…

• delivered 537 million presents;
• consumed 33 thousand cookies.

And since it’s only 10:00 a.m. in Chicago, he’s got a lot more delivering and eating to do before he returns home tonight.

But watching Santa fly around Oceania and Asia has raised some questions for me…

1) Does Santa deliver presents to everyone? Or only people who deserve them (however you might define “deserve”)? Or only people who both believe in Santa and deserve presents?

2) Who decides whether someone believes in Santa or not? The elves? Santa’s wife? Santa himself? An editor at The Sun newspaper? And if so, is that a liberal or conservative newspaper?

3) What do you have to do to demonstrate that you believe in Santa? Pray a “Santa prayer”…

Dear Santa,

I’ve been a bad child, but I didn’t know that you existed. But now I know that you exist, and I’m going to try to stop being bad. Please help me to be good and to love my family.

Amen.

…or do you simply have to be nice, as opposed to being naughty? Does proper behavior a la Santa’s expectations constitute belief?

4) How does the value of the presents that Santa delivers correlate with the per capita GDP of the location where he is delivering? What does this imply about Santa?

5) Regarding NORAD: I suppose that if anyone can track Santa, it would be them. But their website also has a FAQ about Santa. Do I really want them to influence my belief in (and beliefs about) Santa?

And finally, does all of this questioning make me a heretic? Will I be getting anything in my stocking this year?

Cambodia, part 7 – The road to Siem Reap

After acclimating to a new climate and time zone for two days in Phnom Penh, our family (extended family – ten of us!) was up early on Sunday, November 20th, for a four-day excursion to Siem Reap.

Ten years ago when Ordinary Spouse and I visited Cambodia, there were essentially two ways of going between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in a timely fashion: airplane or boat on the Tonlé Sap. We had the “privilege” of experiencing both of them.

How times have changed!

Now there is a good road (National Highway 6) that connects the two cities. Granted, it may still be slower than either boat or plane. However, it is a significantly faster land route than it was a decade ago, requiring only a portion of a day, rather than multiple days.

So – by 9 a.m. we had piled into our van and had set out on the 323 km journey.

Here are some pictures and a video of the countryside, taken as we were driving. Nothing special – just examples of the scenery on Highway 6…

Mid-morning, we stopped at a rest area, and the girls had their first experience with “squatty potties”. It wasn’t altogether positive, although it should be noted that things improved (“Attitudes, not facilities,” says Ordinary Spouse!) over the course of our vacation. The Guest Complacent also visited some vendors to purchase an assortment of snack food for us, while my daughters struck up conversations with some local girls (who spoke English quite well, thanks to their interactions with tourists). According to Oldest Daughter,

They ask where you come from if they can tell that you aren’t Cambodian. They were commentiong on how tall I was for being 9 years old. They said I was pretty, too. They wanted the grownups to buy their products, too. They were asking who was my aunt and who was my mother and who were my sisters.

Food vendors at the rest area

What constitutes snack food in Cambodia? Well, there was pineapple, sticky rice, sugar cane, and this fried delicacy that Ordinary Spouse is trying…

“That picture is a bit too fuzzy,” you say. “What is it that she’s eating?”

I’m sorry for the blurriness. Let me see if I can find a better one. Ah, yes – here’s one…

Fried bugs. Mostly crickets. Some grasshoppers. Maybe some other random things.

Yes – I did try them. I started out with the biggest grasshopper that I could find. I’m ashamed to say that I gagged on it, but only because some wings caught me off guard. The second one – a cricket – went down much better. It tasted ok. Really, there wasn’t anything disagreeable about it. They mostly just taste fried. But they’re high in protein.

And for the record, here is the sticky rice…

We stopped in at the Arunras Hotel and Restaurant in Kampong Thom for lunch.

I don’t have much to say about lunch. The Guests Complacent chose a nice selection of Khmer food for us, as they often did. However, there is one significant thing that sticks in my mind…

One of the dishes that we ate was Morning Glory. In my opinioin, it was ok – not bad, not outstanding. We ate it frequently throughout the trip. But it was new; and it was a cooked, leafy vegetable; and that made it a potentially challenging food for my daughters. However, Oldest Daughter put on a brave face and tried it. And apparently she liked it. And this seemed to set the stage for the entire trip. There weren’t any foods that she didn’t try. There weren’t any activities that she shied away from. She got nervous about some things, but she didn’t let her nervousness stop her.

The week after we returned from Cambodia, Oldest Daughter turned ten-years-old. When I look back at the trip – and perhaps in the future when I look back at her life – that lunch will stick in my mind as a symbol of her maturity – a coming of age moment. I was really proud of her. What a great way to end her first decade and start her next one!

Oldest Daughter has Morning Glory for lunch. She doesn’t look excited, but she’s still jet-lagged.

From Kampong Thom, we had a few more uneventful hours of travel to get to Siem Reap. And my next story will pick up there…

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Coming up: Central Boutique Angkor Hotel

Cambodia, part 6 – Shopping, continued

Part 5 described our trip to the Russian Market. The shopping continued across the road…

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After everyone had completed their “shopping” (cough… fabric purchases… cough) at the Russian Market, we crossed the street to visit Rajana.

Rajana…

…aims to give young, underprivileged Cambodian people the opportunity to be trained in the production and marketing of contemporary craft. Rajana is committed to the personal development of our workers as individuals in an economic, social, and spiritual sense. Rajana provides employment with fair wages and a safe work environment where people have opportunity for professional development.

Some of you (especially my Mennonite readership) may be familiar with some of Rajana’s work through stores (such as Ten Thousand Villages) that sell fair trade merchandise. Mennonite Central Committee partners with Rajana to provide business advice and support. Most of my souvenirs from this trip came from our visit to Rajana’s store:

(Mug, ring, and gecko T-shirt)

The ring is made from a spent bomb shell – a reminder not only of Cambodia’s past and present, but also of Isaiah 2:

He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

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After our visit to Rajana, we made a visit to Tabitha:

Tabitha Cambodia is a non-profit organization working to better the lives of Cambodian people by encouraging and enabling self-sufficiency. A cornerstone of Tabitha’s work is the Savings Program, through which families learn to save money in order to break the cycle of poverty. Beyond the emphasis on savings, Tabitha Cambodia runs an extensive cottage industry program that provides income to families throughout the country. Tabitha also raises funds to augment families’ contributions toward housebuilding, and the digging of water wells and village ponds. In recent years, Tabitha has initiated the construction of schools in areas where no classrooms are available to children.

The store that we visited specialized in silk goods, so it wasn’t as interesting to me. But there were others in our group who loved it…

The sewing room

Youngest Daughter talks on her silk “cell phone”. (It’s really a mirror.)

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The final stop of the day was the International Book Center – a western-style book and office supply store. Ordinary Spouse purchased a few interesting posters, books, and other miscellaneous knick-knacks. However, we decided to simply take pictures of these books:

One of the odd things that we encountered in IBC was a Christmas display – odd because it was 95 °F outside and because Christmas isn’t a holiday that the Khmer people generally celebrate. Mr. Guest Complacent hid behind a life-sized Santa Claus and started asking the nearby children whether they had been naughty or nice – all in Khmer. The cashiers had a good chuckle at that.

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We ended the day by sharing supper with friends from Ann Arbor. (OS and I lived there ten years ago.) They happened to be visiting their son and daughter-in-law, who also work for MCC. (In fact, their son works closely with Rajana.) It was a nice coincidence that they were in Phnom Penh at the same time we were.

And that pretty much wraps up the second day in Cambodia. We didn’t waste any time getting to sleep, partly because we were still jet-lagged, and partly because we had a long day of driving planned for the next morning…

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Coming up next: The road to Siem Reap