angkor evening (last night in angkor, day 5, by Amy)

Today many good things happened, I'll start from tonight and work backwards. It has just gotten dark and we were just walking around our neighborhood around the Borann hotel through back streets and most recently were in front of the Royal Residence where monks were holding a small ceremony with chanting and music, and everyone was buying lotus blossom and young coconut offerings with incense, or fragrant tuberoses or other fragrant flowers and coming in and out this elegant shrine the size of a garage, leaving their shoes with the shoe watcher and getting their small children balloon sculptures or ice creams. Light streamed out from the small wat and music filled the air.

In our neighborhood, we walked through some apparently middle class areas on one lane streets with two story houses with nice fenced yards, and also along the river where dwellings were more crowded, more makeshift. Everywhere people especially children were very kind, all the children were calling out hello, and people especially the women met my eyes with nice smiles in return. It's a pleasure to feel people's lively curiosity and general welcoming spirit. Before we came to Cambodia we watched a lot of backpacker travel shows and this was something often commented on. People sure don't have much and sure have it hard but but they don't seem to have anger at outsiders at least not visibly because of this. Amazing since so much has happened in Cambodia. Earlier today our tuktuk driver gave us an unplanned stop at Wat Thep Pothirong, so that we would be sure to see the memorial there to pol pot, complete with small pagoda like structure containing carefully stacked leg bones and skulls and a wall with photos of many of the people who ended up dying there. I was actually very happy that he took us there, not that we didn't know about it but that it was so important for him that we go there.

(Later on when we took a cab ride to the airport, it turned out our cab driver is the younger brother of our tuktuk driver, by 7 years; he told me that they had both lost their dad, and an older brother, to Pol Pot, and that the brothers and mom had spent time in Thailand; and that the tuktuk driver brother had worked a long time in Bangkok before he was able to return. The younger brother speaks better English, has a car not a tuktuk, and is much less shy; he seemed more like the younger Cambodians we met, whereas his older brother was definitely more self contained and pretty self effacing and took a while to get to know us before sharing things or offering suggestions).

This afternoon had a very nice feel for us. We have had a chance to spend a lot of time in the temples, and as the week has moved from Friday Saturday Sunday and into the week, it seems that the volume of people has dropped a lot; it may be that the weekends a lot more people who work in Singapore, Bangkok or Saigon are able to come over as tourists, we don't know. Anyway either the town is less crowded, or we are more comfortable with it and it seems so much more peaceful. We also saw a lot of new things today and heard them also. This afternoon as I was napping at the hotel, a buddhist monk's chant started, the guys at our gate who offer motorcycle and tuktuk rides told us they think this is a nearby family having monks come chant and hold a celebration at the 3 months anniversary of some family member's death. Anyway, the chant starts and continues on one fairly perfect tone and goes on for a long time like maybe an hour seemingly without break and it does seem to be one monk chanting. Meanwhile, at a nearby house in another direction, Cambodian music was playing.

Music was definitely a key part of today. This morning while we were visiting the Bayon, one of the nearby buddhists temples that is active had a service of sorts; about six cambodians playing music with some monks officiating. They played one of my favorite instruments in appearance, a 3/4 circle of bells or gongs, and the 3 stringed lutelike instrument played with a bow, and the xylophone like instrument which is played in octaves with 2 hammers, and a pair of loud drums which were sometimes played on the hide top and sometimes by striking the wooden sides of the drums. The rhythm varied a lot and not, to me, predictably. This was all happening on the dais near the very large golden buddha, in one of two very large open air temples near the Bayon, which are nonetheless dwarfed by the Bayon itself, which is four or five stone stories tall and feels much taller due to the way it is build and the large benign faces of the king which look out in all directions, about 200 in all on 54 towers.

At the same time as we were enjoying this music and chanting, a happy group of japanese tourists were riding in pairs on about seven elephants and they passed right by the temple and the Bayon, which has a carpet of green lawn in front of it where the local horses that draw romantic carriages were having a snack. On one of the two buddhist temples, a very large ornate pair of wooden carved chickenlike or phoenixlike birds can be seen; I don't know what they are, but I also realize you see them on the rooftops of wats, and I bought a nice wooden carving of one because I like its form and shape, but I'd like to know what it is. Nearby, puppies were playing in front of the souvenir and coffee stands. It was all really nice. Behind the temples is a small village where a number of the monks seem to live and also probably local villagers: small wooden and palm shacks with lots of banana trees. The monks were involved in repairing or building one of the local toilets and they were sawing concrete and pulling hoses and running some kind of generator or pump and having a lot of laughter. Meanwhile, at the nearby water supply, which is a pump just like our grandparents used, many women came to pump themselves some water to use (probably, to help cook for us tourists).

I have learned a few more 'dos' to add to Craig's list of do's. DO, bring a supply of postcards from home, or something similar, like pens. that way when the cute kids come up to sell you postcards, you can offer to sell them a postcard and then they laugh and they really seem to like being given these photos of another place. Craig is great with the kids, they bug him to buy something and if he's interested he does and if not, he just keeps talking to them anyway and they love the attention. I had a few extras also - when we remove stitches we open these kits with scissors and tweezers and are supposed to throw them away and instead I clean them and I had some fingernail scissors to give away and the 13 year olds loved this as the girls love to paint their nails. Anyway it was nice to have something to reciprocate with.

We had two more cool new experiences today. in the early morning as usual we went temple hopping. But after this, I was trying my hardest to find a museum my friend told me about, with no luck, and finally went to the place called "Conservation of Angkor'" which is a compound where all the archaeologists originally worked out of. About 3 different NGOs seem to work there now, one team from India, one from japan. No one at all official was around, but when I walked around the grounds (which are enclosed by a wall) I suddenly realized a lot of really great stone remnants from the ruins were there, those things that are small enough to move and lovely enough to be quite valuable on the illegal antiquities markets. I saw more behind a gate labeled Entry by Permission Only. Then, I saw a guard letting some tour guide in with some folks. Lucky me. We were able to join. We were in a very large warehouse, with about one hundred fifty buddha heads; several lovely buddha carvings including sheltered by nagas; lots of lingas; in short, many many of the buddhas and lingas that originally were in the corridor junctions in the heart of all the many angkor temples, that can't be left there due to thieves. The lingas (male organs so to speak) were smooth and polished from years of ceremonies. Many of the buddhas were dressed in the right cloth and obviously well cared for. Outside were many stone lion figures, a few elephants, many gorgeous pieces of cornices and 'frontons' with carved scenes. It probably was not as cool as the exhibit I had been looking for, which was of the buddhas that were buried centuries ago at one of the temples, to protect them from a change of religion from buddhism back to hinduism; but clearly these were the venerated images that have lived in the angkor temples and I was really really happy to be able to wander among them. Even if we did have to pay a small 'fee'for the entry. I'm not sure this could be an everyday experience. On reflection later, I realize this is not good, for people to be able to wander in and visit so unofficially, as it's certainly important for the security in these types of collections to be high, so that things don't 'wander' off into the black market for Angkor antiquities. But I was really happy to be 'inside'.

Another cool thing we did today was also luxurious. The guy who started the Sofitel hotel chain, Paul Dubrule, started a hotel and restaurant school in Siem Reap. He did this to help the impoverished kids get the skills they would need to be employable by him and other restauranteurs and hoteliers. Every year, they pick 200 students from many many applicants, and give them a one year intensive experience; when they are done, they can be hired by all the local restaurants and deal with western eating habits with comfort and skill. We went there for their fixed price lunch, $9, which is available daily between 12 and 1:30. We went out by tuktuk nearly to the airport, past all the nasty huge hotels you do NOT want to stay in in Angkor, to their little school. We had lunch and inadvertently met the director of the program, Beatrice, with her young cambodian son about age 10, he might be adopted as she has only been living there 4 years. She told us a lot about the program. What happens is this: kids who have lived in the slums and have not always had a lot to eat, and always ate cambodian style in a family with a shared pot, need jobs as waiters; yet, they have no idea what this means having no context for a fancy western style meal. So there is a huge cultural gap to cross, and who's to say Cambodians benefit in the long run from learning how to serve rich folks? Yet, they need the jobs, and the future of Cambodia for now is in tourist income, which comes more and more from pan-asian tourists rather than westerners. Anyway- with this program they get a subsidized education. The school has sponsors, from all the fancy hotels in asia and others as well. Then, they use videos and they have an intensive training program for a year where they teach chefs skills, presentation, how to run hotels and restaurants, be waiters and maitre ds. So, we were part of their learning experience. Very interesting and since in our stay here we have been served by a number of graduates of the school who have told us very happily about their experience learning this, we felt like it was ok to participate. So we sat down to a phenomenal little meal where each waiter pulled out our chair, placed our napkin for us, asked us for our eating preferences, came to check on us. The meal was great, first craig had a chilled cucumber soup with mint and I had a cold lasagna plate; then we both had Khmer style pork chops with morning glory greens; then he had an Isle Flotant which is not bad and I had an incredible little tart of lime custard with meringue topped with a sugar beignet. We had an argentinian malbec wine.

Siem Reap is certainly an unusual, tourist oriented town, with all its little French Bistrot and tourist stands and allnight massages; and we are definitely not roughing it, even though we also don't do the full luxury thing; I would have a very hard time sleeping, without the air conditioning that we pay for. We were quite insulated from the rigors of life here, not pumping our daily water supply and not sleeping in dust not bathing in a direty river. Yet, this stay was a great way to get our toes into the waters of Cambodian culture. I'm glad we stayed long enough to have a really relaxed time, with no hurry and a chance to learn a few phrases of Khmer and to have some time to learn the rhythm and nature of cambodian life. The temples are a wonder. I would really recommend this trip again.