Trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia (9)

After a forgettable foot massage, I chatted online for 10 minutes to my bro in S'pore. Now internet access is cheap 50 cents an hour. So have some of that Cambodian money on you or you'll have to pay a dollar. Some places just do not want to give you change at all. Siem Reap is hot, muggy ..humid even in December. There is no cool season there at all. At least here in Mandalay we have about three and half months cool season and its even a bit chilly in the mornings. 42 miles from Mandalay, there is a hill station where it can get a bit freezing at night. But Siem Reap is just plain hot. So if you are ever going there pack those shorts and T-shirts. How long a stay should I stay in Siem Reap? I hear you ask! Well, for those not really into culture / archeology / social work / cooking classes, I guess about three days should be just about right. Two days for the temples and one day for exploring the town. They say there are other places like lake-dwellers communities and faraway temples but you would need about another 2-3 days to visit them all. Siem Reap has a newish shopping mall and I think I also saw about 2 others in various stages of development. When I told my friend Chris when I got back from Cambodia, he was astounded. What? Shopping malls?

Crikey !

Cos there weren't any in 1994ish when he was there. Man, " Only Angkor was open to the public then and we had an armed guard and they were still clearing landmines, so all the other temples were off limits. "Well" I told him "Times have certainly changed." Yes the town and temples and number of tourists has certainly changed.

But what of the people? Especially the younger ones? And orphaned ones? I am sure there are respectable organizations working in those areas, but I saw some very badly written (in English) fliers distributed by 7-8 year old kids who said they were from orphanages with donation boxes in front of the Romulus temples asking for donations. Shouldn't these kids be doing lessons? And I guess so many tourists has sadly turned some kids away from going to school, but starting off careers in tourism by beginning with asking for a dollar for stuff like rearranging your flip flops at monastery door unasked. The "one dollar please" here, and "one Dollar" there can be a nuisance. I had to borrow a pen off one lady tourist in a temple and she sarcastically said, "One dollar" as she gave it to me. But enough of this stuff. Who am I to criticize others ?
But anyway, I advise you to check out credentials in depth / detail, any orphanage anywhere in Asia ( or the whole world for that matter ) as some people try to make a living off being a " Director of so-and-so Orphanage ". You know, kind of like the kids are like the Giraffe women of Burma on display in pseudo villages for tourist perusal in Thailand. I mean the kids are brought (with consent of parents ) from genuinely poor families ( so not technically orphans )and fed and taught badly and then discarded or sent back without the means to make a livelihood when about 15 years old to make way for the younger ones who will bring in more donations and cement the livelihood of the so-called directors or founders of the place.

It's sad.

In the morning as we were off to the Romulus group of temples we saw an on-foot procession of locals, proceeding to the monastery with offerings all carried by hand. The town gentlemen were in smart trousers and shirts, the town belles were all made up, coiffured and in silk sarongs. My mum remarked she was getting a Cambodian sarong after seeing their nice colours.

It was wonderful that customs like that are still in existence.

Written By Mr. Soe Lwin, Principle of BEST Language School in Mandalay.

These posts are relayed from Singapore.

Trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia (7)

Next day at dawn there we were at the mythical Angkor. From the car approaching we could see the enormous moat surrounding the temple complex. Our guide started to explain about the place. My mum tramped off on her own leaving him with me. The day was a bit cloudy, you know murky, so there was not a grand hit-you-in-the-face first view of the Angkor. But it was good enough, the first sight of the place. Beckoning one forward to the mysteries of its interior and history. Actually Ihad not read up much on the place at all. Some people like to read in advance about everything about a place. Some like to read 'n look. I like to read everything afterwards. That way I get to kind of like, visit the place twice. Match the scenes and views in my mind with the opinions and information of the books. I leave the names and places of the various temples for your perusal of guide books, in the information on the internet and expert analysis for the… the..experts. I will just tell you that we took the "Mini-tour" the first day which means all the "must see places". But I tell you the temples, murals, art, architecture was fabulous. The names I remember: Angkor Thom, Bayon, Terraces of the Leper King and Elephants and the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider temple and whole lot more. All with their own large compounds, heaps of fallen stones to negotiate and crannies to explore and photograph. And take photographs we did. Of ourselves, in turn. Me and my mum's photos snapped by otherpeople. Other people by us. It was eerie, strangers from many foreign lands exchanging modern cameras in ancient temples, and capturing their souls and those of the temples to take home with them for display on screens if anyone would look at them photos. Sharp photos, murky outta focus ones, pics showing sweat smears on the lenses, all were taken back as booty from our own personal tomb raids. Cameras of all shapes, lengths, and sizes were out of their holsters and "shooting" away. We needed to record our journeys to one of the wonders of the world and record we did. That digital archive by all of us will remain until the end of time or until digital records are destroyed by some computer virus.

Trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia (6)

The car from the hotel was there to pick us up at the airport and on the way there we saw hotels of all sorts. Most of them looking very similar. Big blocks of pale brown all with signs with the word, "Angkor" in them. Angkor Central Hotel, Angkor Millennium Hotel, Royal Angkor this, Royal Angkor that. There were LOTS of hotels, the whole town seemed to be full of hotels. Our hotel was not on the main road but on a quieter side street.
After checking in, arranging a guide and transportation for the next day, we went off on foot to see the town. The guide offered to take us around and show us the sights of Siem Reap, but we declined. We wanted to see, explore and feel out the place ourselves. The back streets of the town seemed pretty much like Myanmar in many ways except for the numerous phone card and handset selling shops. I noticed that the motorcycles and tuks tuks went SLOWLY! Can you believe that ? Slowly, gently, not a lot of honking at all. This must be what the traffic is like in heaven . LOL. We strolled along the main boulevard, dropping into replica antique shops, handicrafts shops. But why were there so many "foot massage" places? I was to know on the morrow.
The Cambodian currency is the "Riel" but dollars are accepted too. The problem is if you pay with dollars there no change. A Coke is "a dollar" whether it is really 50 cents in Riel or at a supermarket. So change some money into Riel (the rate was 4000 Riel to a dollar then) if you ever happen to be there. Yes, you can use the US dollar everywhere but it is good to have some riel on you too. Much cheaper!
On the main road to the main "Old Market" area we stumbled into a comparatively dimly lit market with tourist knick knacks and lots of stuff. I wanted a T-shirt with the word "Angkor" on it and got what I wanted: an "Angkor Beer" T-shirt and another one saying, "Danger! Landmines ". But that was after some hard haggling. Those XXL size ones for me cost 2 bucks apiece, that whittled down from an initial 5 dollar asking price.
My mum got 3 small T- shirts for 4 dollars, a good price but only after checking out the quality of them. They come in so many types and qualities that you must be careful.
After a so-so meal of noodles and a warm "Angkor Beer", we went back to the hotel with our plunder. Around 9 my mum said she was a bit hungry again and out I went for some bread. I took a tuk tuk to look for a bakery with some fresh bread and found a marvelous French bakery called the "Purple Pumpkin". They had great ice-creams too. But the tuk tuk driver was a bit of a nuisance offering to take me to night clubs and asking if I wanted companionship of the female or boy-female kind.
I politely declined.
Anyway the next day at dawn, we were to be at the famed Angkor Wat and after some late grub we dropped off to sleep.

Mr. Soe Lwin is the principle and teacher of the most respected English Language School in Mandalay.
He took our mother, on a trip of her dreams (her latest dreams) in the last week of 2008.
Please read previous posts for a full account of the trip.

Trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia (5)

By Soe Lwin, Yangon

Please accept my apologies for not posting in the last 2 weeks. Since returning from Cambodia, tons of work was awaiting me. A backlog of truly epic proportions that dragged me down and ate all of my time, like a monster from the deep.
But yesterday I managed to get that beast of work under control and now happily will continue my posts of our travels. The trip to Mrauk U, I will fill you in on later.
We jump to the Angkor episode first.
Well we were ready to go and frankly speaking, a bit apprehensive.
What if…. this or that happened… would we … could we … be able to …..?
All that stuff goin through our minds. At the same time we had an "OK, we'll get there when get kinda acceptance". So away we were at 8 am on the 26th of December to the Yangon airport which is about 10 minutes from my mum's house on my brother's car, a small Suzuki 4 wheeler, me at the back with the bags when I heard a shrieking scraping noise from under me, from the rear suspension.
Here we go again. Another obstacle! But one of course that could be surmounted with ease. “Taxi!", I shouted and that was that. The flight to Bangkok was good. Thai Airways is pricier than a lot of other airlines but sure does serve good grub in card board boxes. I loved the touch where they offer you wine in the morning although I didn't have any. My mum remarked male cabin attendants had a thin layer of makeup on their faces and looked a bit girlish.
Suvarnabhumi airport, to me at least looked like a flat cake with big triangles painted in tidy patterns on it. So modernistic and futuristic it was that it looked "un-Thai” to me. If you don't use the moving walk-ways, getting about the place is hard on the feet too.
No need to visit the gym after going around that place. It looked half-finished and cold. Must have been a jollier place during the demos of last month, I thought.
We identified some Burmese military attaches and their families and introduced ourselves to them. They were going to their first postings in Hanoi and Phnom Penh and my mum proceeded to give them some advice about living abroad and to save and not spend on frivolous things etc.
I guess she was nostalgic when seeing them as our family had been like them 40 years ago. A bit out of our element she said as she was then and they must have been like that too.
The restaurants at the airport were all a bit pricey but a friend had told me there was a small cheap shop on which floor I had forgotten that was quite alright.
Then after a few hours we caught the Bangkok Airways plane to Siem Reap. The airline calls itself a "Boutique Airline". I am still scratching my head about what that means and how it is different from other airlines. The turkey sandwich in the paper lunch box was good. Out the window we could see the Cambodian lakes and marshes and after about 40 minutes we landed at Siem Reap Airport.

Mr. Soe Lwin is the principle and teacher of the most respected English Language School in Mandalay.

He took our mother, on a trip of her dreams (her latest dreams) in the last week of 2008.

Please read previous posts for a full account of the trip.

Trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia, Photos

Yes, YES, My Mom and Brother have reached and returned from Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

The stories will be posted, but here are some pictures (as proof) of their visit.

More to come!