It was my fourth and final day in Cambodia, with my first three days in the Siem Reap area been spent with my local guide, Thim Sonthi (who traditionally had his clients call him Mr. Sunny for ease of both remembering and pronouncing his name) and hired driver, making the most out of my USD $40 3-Day Apsara Authority Pass (the Apsara Authority being a government-sponsored agency in Cambodia responsible for management and protection of Angkor Archaeological Park), which visiting tourist simply call a 'temple pass'. The pass is required to visit the ruins of the former Khmer Empire's temples, monuments and other historic sites contained within the designated Angkor Archaeological Zones.
The most famous and heavily-visited sites lie on the outskirts of the city of Siem Reap, as does the Siem Reap International Airport. The number one site that has drawn as many as 2 million tourists into Siem Reap annually is UNESCO World Heritage site of Angkor Wat, with the iconic benevolent-looking face towers of Bayon Temple (contained within the walled and similarly carved face-adorned gated grounds of the Angkor Thom complex) and the nearby tree root-ensnared Ta Prohm Temple (featured in the Angelina Jolie film 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider') being the other main attractions in the vicinity of Siem Reap. During my three days of access to the temples of Angkor, I was able to visit the aforementioned de facto 'Big Three' in addition to several of the other equally impressive temples in the area (some of which struck me as much more impressive than Angkor Wat, in part due to their atmospheric jungle surroundings), and watch the sunset from the hilltop Phnom Bakkeng temple. On my third day in-country, my guide and I walked by flashlight in the pre-dawn darkness beneath a starry sky to the chirping of crickets and the distant early morning chanting of monks to experience the sun rising above Angkor Wat as scene was reflected in mirrored image on the surface of the water lily-studded northwest reflecting pool. That awe-inspiring sunrise was followed by an excursion by car further afield to visit Banteay Srei temple and trek to the Hindu motif-carved streambeds of Kbal Spean, a stop at the Cambodian Landmine Museum, firing automatic weapons at a public indoor firing range on the grounds of a Cambodian Army base, a visit to the roadside stall and orchard of a local toddy palm sugar farmer, and a climb to the upper terrace of the Angkorian temple ruins of Pre Rup to take in a view of the rural countryside (as covered in my earlier post). For my final day in Siem Reap sans Apsara Authority Pass, I would have a guided 1/2-day tour that would include taking in some sights around town and a drive southeast of Siem Reap to tour the Chong Khneas (Kneas) floating village on Tonle Sap Lake by long-tail boat, with the rest of the day and evening free for me to do more exploring of the city on my own.
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| The Apsara Authority Pass Required to Visit Sites Within the Angkor Archaeological Zone |
The most famous and heavily-visited sites lie on the outskirts of the city of Siem Reap, as does the Siem Reap International Airport. The number one site that has drawn as many as 2 million tourists into Siem Reap annually is UNESCO World Heritage site of Angkor Wat, with the iconic benevolent-looking face towers of Bayon Temple (contained within the walled and similarly carved face-adorned gated grounds of the Angkor Thom complex) and the nearby tree root-ensnared Ta Prohm Temple (featured in the Angelina Jolie film 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider') being the other main attractions in the vicinity of Siem Reap. During my three days of access to the temples of Angkor, I was able to visit the aforementioned de facto 'Big Three' in addition to several of the other equally impressive temples in the area (some of which struck me as much more impressive than Angkor Wat, in part due to their atmospheric jungle surroundings), and watch the sunset from the hilltop Phnom Bakkeng temple. On my third day in-country, my guide and I walked by flashlight in the pre-dawn darkness beneath a starry sky to the chirping of crickets and the distant early morning chanting of monks to experience the sun rising above Angkor Wat as scene was reflected in mirrored image on the surface of the water lily-studded northwest reflecting pool. That awe-inspiring sunrise was followed by an excursion by car further afield to visit Banteay Srei temple and trek to the Hindu motif-carved streambeds of Kbal Spean, a stop at the Cambodian Landmine Museum, firing automatic weapons at a public indoor firing range on the grounds of a Cambodian Army base, a visit to the roadside stall and orchard of a local toddy palm sugar farmer, and a climb to the upper terrace of the Angkorian temple ruins of Pre Rup to take in a view of the rural countryside (as covered in my earlier post). For my final day in Siem Reap sans Apsara Authority Pass, I would have a guided 1/2-day tour that would include taking in some sights around town and a drive southeast of Siem Reap to tour the Chong Khneas (Kneas) floating village on Tonle Sap Lake by long-tail boat, with the rest of the day and evening free for me to do more exploring of the city on my own.
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| Vendor and Customer at the Psar Chaa Old Market |
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| French Colonial Architecture Near the Old Market |
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| Impoverished Riverside Shantytown Near Sivatha Blvd. and Pokambor Street |
Siem Reap is the capital city of Siem Reap Province ('Siem Reap khaet') in northwestern Cambodia, with its provincial capital status combined with it being a city of more than 50,000 citizens (the population in 2019 was 245,494) making the official city name 'Krong Siem Reap'. In the Khmer language, Siem Reap translates to “Flat Defeat of Siam”, with the historically debated claim passed down through oral tradition being that King Ang Chan (1516–1566) had named the town "Siem Reap" after he repulsed an army sent to invade Cambodia by the Thai king Maha Chakkraphat in 1549. Despite the “Flat Defeat of Siam” assertion, Thailand (Siam) was in fact the ultimate victor, and controlled not only the city of Siem Reap but also the major northwestern cities of Battambang & Sisophon, from 1795 to 1907, referring to the administered provinces as Inner Cambodia. From the 16th to 19th century, Cambodia suffered a period of decline known as the “dark ages”, during which much territory had been lost to both neighboring Thailand and Vietnam. In 1867, Cambodia’s King Norodom was forced to sign a treaty of protection with France. In 1887, France formed French Indochina, which combined Cambodia with the three regions that comprise modern Vietnam, formerly known as Tonkin (northern Vietnam), Annam (central Vietnam), and Cochinchina (southern Vietnam), with Laos placed under French control in 1893 and becoming part of French Indochina in 1899. In 1907, Thailand finally ceded Inner Cambodia - including Siem Reap - as its last claim to Cambodian territory, after continued pressure from France in exchange for their held southeast Thai provinces of Trat and Chanthaburi that border Cambodia. With the re-discovery of the ruins of Angkor Wat by the French in the 19th century, the then-small town of Siem Reap began an evolution that would see it become an Asian jewel to the rich and famous until the late 1960's, luring visitors including Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Kennedy. Siem Reap would fall into hibernation under the strain of war and brutal rule under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, and for another two decades afterwards as the city was one of the last areas of the country to experience peace given that many areas in the north and northwest of the country were Khmer Rouge strongholds. By the mid-1990's, Siem Reap resumed its climb to prominence as Cambodia's top tourist destination, which raised concern among some that the city might become too developed and over-crowded with tourists, thus losing its charm.
Cambodia is one of Southeast Asia's developing countries, and signs of the poverty and hardships experienced by the less fortunate of the citizenry are visible in and around Siem Reap, which is particularly sobering in the case where someone's loss of livelihood resulted from the maiming or loss of limbs caused by the random contact with unseen landmines planted by the Khmer Rouge, or unexploded ordnance (UXO) left behind from prior civil wars and armed conflicts. Given the level of poverty in Cambodia, many of the needy locals are driven out of desperation to beg the visiting tourist for money or food, perhaps assuming that if the affluent tourist has enough money to travel, surely they have enough cash to help them out. Most visitors would tend view this frequent begging, along with the presence of numerous aggressive child and teenage wandering souvenir vendors that are found in abundance around the temples of Angkor or the streets and sidewalks around the Psar Chaa market, the constant curbside inquiries of the motor scooter taxi or tuk-tuk drivers looking to pickup their next fare, or the sidewalk solicitations of a local street prostitute (one I encountered on several occasions trying out the sex trade for the first time - and very unsuccessfully by her own accounts - out of desperation to support her daughter and mother), as just another passing annoyance. For the generous of heart, the begging can be an very trying predicament, especially when it is being done by one or more malnourished children gazing up with pleading eyes and a weak, moaning quality to their voices, or a younger landmine victim sans prosthesis hobbling up with aid of a homemade crutch and continues to follow you even after you've told him that you have no more money to give out, or an elderly victim sitting legless atop a blanket on the sidewalk looking up at you imploringly with their hand out, or an emaciated-looking mother in threadbare clothing holding a sleeping, underfed baby in one hand and an empty formula bottle in the other. The charitable traveler can quickly become conflicted when a donation to one impoverished beggar soon brings several more, whose disappointment and sadness becomes visibly palpable when the prospective donor apologetically tells them that they have no more to give. During my first three days in Siem Reap, I had personally experienced the aforementioned scenarios, and had previously written about the most sobering encounters in my blog post 'Glimpses of Poverty and Hardship in Siem Reap' .
Cambodia is one of Southeast Asia's developing countries, and signs of the poverty and hardships experienced by the less fortunate of the citizenry are visible in and around Siem Reap, which is particularly sobering in the case where someone's loss of livelihood resulted from the maiming or loss of limbs caused by the random contact with unseen landmines planted by the Khmer Rouge, or unexploded ordnance (UXO) left behind from prior civil wars and armed conflicts. Given the level of poverty in Cambodia, many of the needy locals are driven out of desperation to beg the visiting tourist for money or food, perhaps assuming that if the affluent tourist has enough money to travel, surely they have enough cash to help them out. Most visitors would tend view this frequent begging, along with the presence of numerous aggressive child and teenage wandering souvenir vendors that are found in abundance around the temples of Angkor or the streets and sidewalks around the Psar Chaa market, the constant curbside inquiries of the motor scooter taxi or tuk-tuk drivers looking to pickup their next fare, or the sidewalk solicitations of a local street prostitute (one I encountered on several occasions trying out the sex trade for the first time - and very unsuccessfully by her own accounts - out of desperation to support her daughter and mother), as just another passing annoyance. For the generous of heart, the begging can be an very trying predicament, especially when it is being done by one or more malnourished children gazing up with pleading eyes and a weak, moaning quality to their voices, or a younger landmine victim sans prosthesis hobbling up with aid of a homemade crutch and continues to follow you even after you've told him that you have no more money to give out, or an elderly victim sitting legless atop a blanket on the sidewalk looking up at you imploringly with their hand out, or an emaciated-looking mother in threadbare clothing holding a sleeping, underfed baby in one hand and an empty formula bottle in the other. The charitable traveler can quickly become conflicted when a donation to one impoverished beggar soon brings several more, whose disappointment and sadness becomes visibly palpable when the prospective donor apologetically tells them that they have no more to give. During my first three days in Siem Reap, I had personally experienced the aforementioned scenarios, and had previously written about the most sobering encounters in my blog post 'Glimpses of Poverty and Hardship in Siem Reap' .
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| The Thunborey Hotel, My Accommodations While in Siem Reap |
In the morning I allowed myself enough time for a leisurely breakfast before heading down to meet with my guide and driver to start my half-day tour that would include a cruise out on Tonle Sap Lake by long-tail boat to visit one of the ‘floating villages’ comprised of houseboats and pontoon-floated businesses, schools, fish farms and such, in addition to taking in some sights around Siem Reap. I ascended the stairs that lead to the hotel’s open-air, patio-styled dining room that occupied the top floor, where a small breakfast buffet was laid out on a side counter that featured scrambled eggs, sausage and stir fried noodles contained in covered steam trays, dried cereal and milk, assorted pastries and bread plated next to a self-serve toaster, and some sliced tropical fruits, along with a beverage selection of coffee, tea, juice and water. This had actually been my first time up in the Thunborey Hotel’s rooftop dining area, as all my prior meals in Siem Reap, including breakfast, had been eaten at the various restaurants, coffee shops and bakeries in the vicinity of the Psar Chaa Old Market, which similar to Siem Reap's Crocodile Night Market, was within a reasonable walking distance from the hotel. Formerly located on Phsa Krom Street (which had since expanded and renamed BBU Road for the Build Bright University Siem Reap Campus, the largest university in Siem Reap located about half a mile southwest of my hotel) and just a short walk southwest from the intersection of Pokambor Avenue and Sivatha Boulevard (which I would later learn also holds designation of National Road 63, abbreviated NR63), the Thunborey Hotel had apparently been recently renovated not long before my stay, and had more than met my needs for some decent accommodations in the old downtown area (the hotel had since closed in the years following my visit). The street in the vicinity of my hotel, consisting of mainly older buildings, was fairly quiet during the day and evening, though based on some street solicitations that I had received while strolling around the area during my stay, combined one of the male hotel front desk staff members offering to send a girl up to my room one evening as I went to retreive my room key, left me with the impression that this section of southwest Siem Reap was somewhat red light district.
The View from the Thunborey Hotel Top Floor Dining Area
As I surveyed the breakfast buffet on my last full day in Siem Reap, I had hoped that my being the only person in the dining area was by no means reflective of the quality, nor the reputation, of the hotels food. Before grabbing a plate and digging into the breakfast offerings, I decided to take in the view of the neighborhood from the top floor. In addition to the vista the city afforded by my elevated vantage point, the soundscape of chirping birds, the sputtering growl of passing motor scooters, the intermittent toots and honks eminating from the flow of morning traffic near the junction of Pokambor Avenue and Sivatha Boulevard, and particularly the tinny, reverberant melody of traditional Khmer music emitting from a loudspeaker somewhere in the neighborhood inspired me to take a slow-panning video clip with my compact Sony Exilim digital camera. It was during my slow video pan that I heard the door to the dining area open, followed by the sound of footsteps, the indistinct murmur of voices in conversation and a bit of metallic clatter that sounded like the handling of dining utensils, which suggested that staff members had entered the dining area to tend to the breakfast buffet. After some scrambled eggs, a bit of noodles and some black coffee, I returned to my room and grabbed my small day pack, some snacks and bottled water before heading down to meet my guide and driver to start the morning's activities. After a brief period of waiting down in the lobby, Mr. Sunny and my driver pulled in from of the hotel in the now-familiar white sedan. Mr. Sunny bid me a good morning as he opened the passenger door for me. After I got into the car and belted up, we turn left onto Sivatha Boulevard/NR63 and followed it northward. Passing through the intersection with Highway 6 that, by turning left onto leads to the Siem Reap International Airport, which I would be heading to the following morning to catch my Jetstar Asia 7:15 am return flight to Singapore's Changi International Budget Terminal 4. We continued up Sivatha until roughly two miles short of the turnoff to the western flank of the Angkor Wat Temple's moat and the causeway that takes visitors across the moat and through the Wat's west wall patio and passageway (which my guide and I had done by flashlight in the predawn darkness the prior morning to watch sunrise over Angkor Wat), we turned left at the intersection of Benoit Street and into the compound of Wat Thmei (or Wat Thmey), which is often referred to as the Siem Reap Killing Fields memorial, and was the first stop on my final day's itinerary.
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| Buddha Statue on the Grounds of Wat Thmei |
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| The Wat Thmei Killing Fields Memorial Shrine |
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| Various Views of the Killing Fields Memorial Shrine |
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| Remains from Victims of Siem Reap's Killing Fields |
Wat Thmei (‘New Wat’) is located in an area that served as
one of the killing fields during the 1975 to 1979 reign of the Khmer Rouge under the dictator Pol Pot, and
the site of the prison camps where suspected dissidents, intellectuals,
professionals, members of the government or military, students, and those of
religious beliefs or mixed/non-Cambodian lineage were detained, interrogated,
tortured and brutally murdered, with hundreds of local innocent Cambodians killed. The
Cambodian genocide, carried out by Khmer Rouge per orders issued by Pol Pot, resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.5 to 2 million people across the
country, with the executions carried out on such a massive scale that in order
to save on ammunition, most were cared out using hammers, spades,
pickaxes, axe handles or sharpened bamboo sticks, with the bodies subsequently
buried in mass graves. The Khmer Rouge as an occupying force was finally overthrown in 1979
by the invasion of the Vietnamese troops, though many areas in the north and
northwest of the country would remain Khmer Rouge strongholds for another two
decades until the last remnants of the group went inactive in 1999. The Wat
Thmei temple is an active monastery that also serves as an orphanage and school.
The temple compound contains a memorial shrine with glass sides that is
filled with the skulls and bones of those who died during the Khmer Rouge, which had been diligently gathered by local residents in memory of their families and
friends that were victims of the genocide. The ornate Wat Thmei temple building, which contains a large main Buddha
statue, and the memorial stupa were built on the site in 1997 to commemorate the
dead. Also within the temple compound is the building where the
Khmer Rogue’s imprisonment and torture of Siem Reap's residents took place, though at the time of my visit it appeared that the building was not opened to tourists.
To give the visitors a better sense of what the conditions were like under the reign of the Khmer Rouge, encased behind glass in a small kiosk structure with a Khmer-styled peaked tile roof near the memorial shrine was a plaque with a dedication at the top in raised, gold block letters, and a collection of old black and white photos, faded and yellowed due to age and direct exposure to the morning sun. Many of them were small, mug shot-styled portraits of the innocent victims, some wearing numbered badges around their necks, perhaps taken as they were being processed into the prison or before they were subjected to interrogation, torture, and finally execution. Some of the photos were of the inside of the prison building, showing things such as bare metal bed frames that prisoners were bound to and most likely torture by electrocution, the dead bodies of prisoners lying face-up on the checkerboard-patterned floor tiles, and an assortment of farming tools used in lieu of bullets for execution laid out on display. Other photos were taken outdoors, alternately showing groups of checked krama scarf-clad Khmer Rouge rebels standing or marching in formation, a Cambodian woman with long hair showed standing in profile from the waist up with her arms tied behind her back who appears to be tied to a wooden post behind her as if awaiting execution by firing squad, wooden gallows, a few of the dictator Pol Pot, a group of forced laborers in the fields, some of people posing with rows of stacked, unearthed skulls, and finally what appeared to be a courtroom tribunal photo. Though not as well-known and historically significant as the infamous Tuol Sleng (S-21) Prison and Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, nor the Choeung Ek mass graves site south of Phnom Penh, the Wat Thmei memorial to the victims of Siem Reap’s killing fields was a somber yet powerful testament to the brutality and inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge. Seeing the glass-encased skeletal remains of the Khmer Rouge victims, with the stacked array of random leg and arm bones topped with layers of jaw-less skulls (some showing signs of blunt trauma) whose outward-facing, darkly-shaded hollows of the orbitals and nasal regions hauntingly meeting the stunned and saddened gazes of the visitors, evokes silently introspection about what the victims must have gone through in their final moments, and what their surviving family members had to endure in the aftermath, some of whom would later die of famine, exhaustion, disease or randomly-administered execution, while others would make it to refugee camps and ultimately start a new life thousands of miles away. (During college, I would meet two Cambodian sisters - one of which I had a couple of classes with - who had fled Cambodia with the mother after their father, who was a college professor, was taken into custody by the Khmer Rouge during the roundup of those considered to be a threat to the newly-established regime, and summarily executed.) As we walked the grounds of the temple, Mr. Sunny filled me in on the history of the Wat Thmei killing fields and the memorial shrine as I took some photos and short video clips. I had only learned to my surprise the prior morning that Mr. Sunny had actually been in live-fire engagements with elements of the Khmer Rouge while we were hiking along a jungle trail to view the carved riverbeds of Kbal Spean. As we made our way along the rocky, winding path beneath the tree canopy, Mr. Sunny commented that the scenery reminded him of some of the patrols he did while in the Cambodian Army, serving in a commando unit that was tasked with locating remaining holdovers from the former Khmer Rouge, of which were still in some of the remote 'lawless' regions of the country at the time. He talked of being in fire fights with bands of the Khmer Rouge rebels, and of a number of his friends lost to enemy bullets, booby traps, and even poisoned rations that had been left behind by rebels.
To give the visitors a better sense of what the conditions were like under the reign of the Khmer Rouge, encased behind glass in a small kiosk structure with a Khmer-styled peaked tile roof near the memorial shrine was a plaque with a dedication at the top in raised, gold block letters, and a collection of old black and white photos, faded and yellowed due to age and direct exposure to the morning sun. Many of them were small, mug shot-styled portraits of the innocent victims, some wearing numbered badges around their necks, perhaps taken as they were being processed into the prison or before they were subjected to interrogation, torture, and finally execution. Some of the photos were of the inside of the prison building, showing things such as bare metal bed frames that prisoners were bound to and most likely torture by electrocution, the dead bodies of prisoners lying face-up on the checkerboard-patterned floor tiles, and an assortment of farming tools used in lieu of bullets for execution laid out on display. Other photos were taken outdoors, alternately showing groups of checked krama scarf-clad Khmer Rouge rebels standing or marching in formation, a Cambodian woman with long hair showed standing in profile from the waist up with her arms tied behind her back who appears to be tied to a wooden post behind her as if awaiting execution by firing squad, wooden gallows, a few of the dictator Pol Pot, a group of forced laborers in the fields, some of people posing with rows of stacked, unearthed skulls, and finally what appeared to be a courtroom tribunal photo. Though not as well-known and historically significant as the infamous Tuol Sleng (S-21) Prison and Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, nor the Choeung Ek mass graves site south of Phnom Penh, the Wat Thmei memorial to the victims of Siem Reap’s killing fields was a somber yet powerful testament to the brutality and inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge. Seeing the glass-encased skeletal remains of the Khmer Rouge victims, with the stacked array of random leg and arm bones topped with layers of jaw-less skulls (some showing signs of blunt trauma) whose outward-facing, darkly-shaded hollows of the orbitals and nasal regions hauntingly meeting the stunned and saddened gazes of the visitors, evokes silently introspection about what the victims must have gone through in their final moments, and what their surviving family members had to endure in the aftermath, some of whom would later die of famine, exhaustion, disease or randomly-administered execution, while others would make it to refugee camps and ultimately start a new life thousands of miles away. (During college, I would meet two Cambodian sisters - one of which I had a couple of classes with - who had fled Cambodia with the mother after their father, who was a college professor, was taken into custody by the Khmer Rouge during the roundup of those considered to be a threat to the newly-established regime, and summarily executed.) As we walked the grounds of the temple, Mr. Sunny filled me in on the history of the Wat Thmei killing fields and the memorial shrine as I took some photos and short video clips. I had only learned to my surprise the prior morning that Mr. Sunny had actually been in live-fire engagements with elements of the Khmer Rouge while we were hiking along a jungle trail to view the carved riverbeds of Kbal Spean. As we made our way along the rocky, winding path beneath the tree canopy, Mr. Sunny commented that the scenery reminded him of some of the patrols he did while in the Cambodian Army, serving in a commando unit that was tasked with locating remaining holdovers from the former Khmer Rouge, of which were still in some of the remote 'lawless' regions of the country at the time. He talked of being in fire fights with bands of the Khmer Rouge rebels, and of a number of his friends lost to enemy bullets, booby traps, and even poisoned rations that had been left behind by rebels.
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| Photos of Some of the Siem Reap Killing Fields Victims |
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| The Building Used By the Khmer Rouge to Imprison and Torture Victims |
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| The Main Buddha Statue in the Wat Thmei Shrine Hall |
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| Murals on the Walls and Ceiling of the Wat Thmei Shrine Hall |
After Mr. Sunny was finished walking me around Wat Thmei, he gave me some additional time alone to wander around and take photos, knowing only too well after three days together of my penchant for stopping often when a particular scene or some intriguing subject matter catches my fancy, at which time I would capture it digitally on SD card from at least a few different angles so as to try different still shot compositions, if not do a slow video pan. After taken shots of the memorial photo placard and the former prison building, I walked over to check out Wat Thmei's shrine hall. The main Buddha image, large, gilded and beaming a serene smile, was depicted in the 'Calling The Earth to Witness' posture, with the legs crossed, the left hand in the lap, and the right hand pointing to the ground with the palm facing inward toward the Buddha, symbolic of the moment of enlightenment for the Buddha. The story has it that the Buddha finally was at the verge of enlightenment after six years, but Mara, the Demon of Illusion, tried to dissuade The Buddha from completing the final steps. In order to overcome the fears and temptations sent by Mara, the Buddha meditated all night and then called the Earth Goddess to witness that the Buddha achieved enlightenment in order that the Earth Goddess could share his achieve of reaching Nirvana with the rest of the world. Upon witnessing the Buddha’s achieving of enlightenment, the Earth Goddess wrung her hair, releasing flood waters that swept away the Demon Mara and all the temptresses that he had released. The walls and ceiling of the shrine hall were colorfully decorated with murals depicting events from the life of the Buddha, which is commonly seen in the other Theravada Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos) in addition to Sri Lanka.
After my walk-through of the shrine hall, I headed outside and met back up with Mr. Sunny, who was already waiting at the car chatting with the driver. We turned right onto Sivatha Blvd./NR63 and retraced our earlier route in reverse, and continued south after passing Pokambor Street to follow the course of the Siem Reap River through the city's Sangkat Sala Kamreuk quarter. This section of Siem Reap seemed more quaint and laid back relative to the area around the Old Market that we had just passed through, perhaps in part due to the lack of Western tourists, something which is normally seen in abundance around town. The environs felt almost rustic, given the numerous stilted and thatched homes topped with rust-streaked corrugated tin roofs, which stood adjacent to suspended bamboo poles hung with drying laundry amid clusters of palm trees along the far bank of the river, with the idyllic semi-rural scene mirrored on the surface of the still waters. Having spent my free time during the periods in between visiting the old temples and monuments of the Kingdom of Angkor exploring the often bustling streets and alleys of neighborhoods dotted with colorful examples of French colonial architecture that surround the old market during my prior three days in Siem Reap, I decided that exploring some slightly less urban scenery amid the more peaceful setting that this particular stretch of Sivatha Blvd. offered would make for a good final afternoon's hike before leaving Cambodia the next morning. As we continued southward, a slight change in elevation increased height of the bank above the water and caused us to lose the pleasant view of the water's edge out the left-side car window, and replaced it with a procession of passing palms and broad-leaf shade trees occasionally broken up by one-lane bridges that spanned the river over to the far bank. Where a bend in the river's course allowed for a wider swath of land between the road and its near bank, a small cluster of rustic roadside houses or small commercial establishments displaying their signage in Khmer script along the edge of the road's compacted dirt shoulder would occupy the available space. The view out the right-side car window was decidedly more urban, a nearly unbroken procession of homes (mostly wooden, with some of them stilted), small business, the occasional three-story building with large polished steel water storage tanks and satellite TV dishes on the rooftops that looked to be small hotels, hostels or guest houses. The structures were interspersed with sections of wooden, wrought iron or corrugated tin fencing, or short spans of brick or cinder-block walls (some overhung by the large verdant, wind-split leaves of leaning banana stalks or drooping palm fronds) separating family or business compounds from the flow of street and foot traffic. Some of the businesses had partially-lowered rolling cloth blinds to keep out the bright glare of the hazy sunlight, whereas others opted for the large folding umbrellas setup in front of their embellishments, most of them with their poles secured to the factory-provided weighted bases while others were set into improvised bases comprised of large cans filled with concrete, branded with the trademarked logos and color schemes of international brands like Coca-Cola and Tiger Beer.
After my walk-through of the shrine hall, I headed outside and met back up with Mr. Sunny, who was already waiting at the car chatting with the driver. We turned right onto Sivatha Blvd./NR63 and retraced our earlier route in reverse, and continued south after passing Pokambor Street to follow the course of the Siem Reap River through the city's Sangkat Sala Kamreuk quarter. This section of Siem Reap seemed more quaint and laid back relative to the area around the Old Market that we had just passed through, perhaps in part due to the lack of Western tourists, something which is normally seen in abundance around town. The environs felt almost rustic, given the numerous stilted and thatched homes topped with rust-streaked corrugated tin roofs, which stood adjacent to suspended bamboo poles hung with drying laundry amid clusters of palm trees along the far bank of the river, with the idyllic semi-rural scene mirrored on the surface of the still waters. Having spent my free time during the periods in between visiting the old temples and monuments of the Kingdom of Angkor exploring the often bustling streets and alleys of neighborhoods dotted with colorful examples of French colonial architecture that surround the old market during my prior three days in Siem Reap, I decided that exploring some slightly less urban scenery amid the more peaceful setting that this particular stretch of Sivatha Blvd. offered would make for a good final afternoon's hike before leaving Cambodia the next morning. As we continued southward, a slight change in elevation increased height of the bank above the water and caused us to lose the pleasant view of the water's edge out the left-side car window, and replaced it with a procession of passing palms and broad-leaf shade trees occasionally broken up by one-lane bridges that spanned the river over to the far bank. Where a bend in the river's course allowed for a wider swath of land between the road and its near bank, a small cluster of rustic roadside houses or small commercial establishments displaying their signage in Khmer script along the edge of the road's compacted dirt shoulder would occupy the available space. The view out the right-side car window was decidedly more urban, a nearly unbroken procession of homes (mostly wooden, with some of them stilted), small business, the occasional three-story building with large polished steel water storage tanks and satellite TV dishes on the rooftops that looked to be small hotels, hostels or guest houses. The structures were interspersed with sections of wooden, wrought iron or corrugated tin fencing, or short spans of brick or cinder-block walls (some overhung by the large verdant, wind-split leaves of leaning banana stalks or drooping palm fronds) separating family or business compounds from the flow of street and foot traffic. Some of the businesses had partially-lowered rolling cloth blinds to keep out the bright glare of the hazy sunlight, whereas others opted for the large folding umbrellas setup in front of their embellishments, most of them with their poles secured to the factory-provided weighted bases while others were set into improvised bases comprised of large cans filled with concrete, branded with the trademarked logos and color schemes of international brands like Coca-Cola and Tiger Beer.
One such business was a combination 'Asian old school'-styled gas station (similar, though much more up-scaled, to something I had first encountered on the rural outskirts of Pagan, Burma back in 2000) and a rustic motor scooter repair shop, located adjacent to a stilted wooden house that I assumed belonged to the owner of the business. In lieu of the typical service station pump island equipped with an LCD display, keypad and credit/debt card stripe reader that one is accustomed to seeing, the gas pump consisted of a red 55-gallon fuel drum with some off-white insulative material strapped to the outside of it with a hand-cranked pump that fed a clear glass vessel above it roughly three-quarters full of yellowish gasoline and a hose with which to dispense the pumped gas into the fuel container, motor scooter or car placed or parked in front of it. Next to the gas pump was a stair-stepped, multi-shelved, rolling metal rack containing what appeared to be large re-purposed liquor bottles (one actually looked to be a Bombay Blue Sapphire gin bottle) similarly filled with gasoline, with both the fuel drum and the to-go bottles of gasoline shielded from the direct sun beneath a blue Tiger Beer umbrella, whose base was cast directly into a formed square of concrete. Next to the fuel drum was an old compressor whose well-aged motor was assembled to what was at one time a blue pressure tank, but now predominantly rust-orange with spotty vestiges of its original color. The repair shop was little more than a shred constructed of thin rusted beams with corrugated tin walls, a peaked roof and awning, with a display case stocked with bottles of fluids and boxes of replacement part face outward from the open front of the shed-like structure, and what looked to be spare motor scooter wheel rims and tires hanging from a ceiling-mounted racks. A bit further down Sivatha Blvd./NR63, I caught a very brief passing glimpse of Wat on the opposite bank of the Siem Reap River a short distance from the far end of a road bridge flanked by trees, and decided to make that the intended destination for my planned afternoon semi-urban trekking.
We continued southward in the direction of Tonle Sap Lake, as Sivatha Blvd. continued to follow the course of the Siem Reap river through a series of mostly shallow though occasionally tighter curves, with more of the now-familiar urban-rustic views out the right-side window and predominantly tree-lined, riverine views to the left as we passed into the Sangkat Siem Reab quarter. Roughly four miles further down the road, a portion of which coursed through a serpentine series of curves, we veered westward in the vicinity of Russei Luk village and left the river behind. We traveled along a couple of miles of straight road that afforded view of verdant rice paddies, some of which were flooded but not yet planted and reflect the color of the hazy morning sky, which extended out onto the plains in both directions. Mr. Sunny then directed my attention to a hill ahead in the distance, the base of which we would be passing shortly on the way to the lake. Located roughly 12 km southwest of Siem Reap, the 140 m (460 feet) Phnom Krom hill is the site of Prasat Phnom Krom, an Angkorian temple that was built on its top at the end of the 9th century during the reign of King Yasovarman (889 A.D. - 910 A.D.), and is dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Unfortunately, as my 3-Day Apsara Authority temple pass had already expired, there was no way that it could have been added to the day's itinerary. Near the base of Phnom Krom hill, NR63 took a southerly heading into what looked to be a far-reaching lowland floodplain made up of a patchwork of rice paddies, with the paved roadway and its shoulders elevated above the surrounding land by a raised, levy-like earthen berm, from which spindly-looking wood and bamboo bridges extended from the crest of the sloped embankment out to stilted homes, with the berm's shoulder built up and widened in some areas to provide a firm foundation for some roadside commercial buildings and, in one case, the Masjid Ar-Rafee Ah Mosque. A short distance ahead, we passed what looked to be the end of a rectangular-shaped, brown-water lagoon out the right window whose shoreline appeared to contain one or more floating villages, with our route following the length of its eastern flank to its southern end, where its far (western) bank tapered inward to form a wide channel that connected it with Tonle Sap Lake. Further down the road another smaller channel dotted with houseboats along its banks appeared out the left window as we approached a bridge where the Siem Reap River's course takes it beneath NR63 near where it empties into the wider that channel we had been following, which at last flows into Tonle Sap Lake. The location of the lake's banks can very greatly between the dry and rainy seasons, particularly with the backing up of the Mekong River during the monsoons into the Tonle Sap River (the confluence of which lies in the city of Phnom Penh), whose source lies at the south end of Tonle Sap Lake. The driver then slowed as we approached a wide stretch of shoulder with a lot of parked cars and vans that overlooked a section of the channel whose banks were cluttered with long-tail boats and old, battered houseboats tied up to small docks or otherwise anchored in place, small canopy shelters and improvised lean-to's occupied by those seeking shade from the morning sun, and a some rustic shanty-like homes. He parked near the edge of the shallow slope that lead down to the water's edge, where my guide and I got out and I followed him along a well-used compacted foot path to where the bows of some long-tail boats were beached near an open-air stilted canopy comprised of slanted corrugated tin roofs and rolled-up tarpaulin cloth shades to accommodate the changing direction of bright, already hot sunlight throughout the course of the day. Given the great fluctuation of the location of Tonle Sap's waters' edge through the seasons over the course of the year, it made sense that the long-tail boat boarding area would look so transitory and easily movable ad hoc.
The scene along the canal called to mind the last time that I had taken a long-tail boat tour of a lake on which the residents lived out on the water, though in that case the houses and traditional cottage industry handicraft workshops were not floating but rather built upon stilts anchored into the muddy bottom of the shallow lake. That had been back at the beginning of January 2002 during my second trip to Burma (Myanmar) where, after spending two days amid the old Buddhist temple ruins of Pagan (during which I was stricken with severe food poison, but spent the following day of recovery under the care of a young Burmese artisan that I met by chance, who took me around to meet his family & friends, and to tour numerous artisan workshops in the vicinity - as covered in my previous blog post), we traveled by van eastward up into the country's ethnic minority Shan State to the town of Nyaungshwe, which is situated at the northern end of Burma's scenic Inle Lake. Ranked highly on the Burma Top 10 Tourist Attractions list, the photogenic and very popular Inle Lake is perhaps most famous for its leg-rowing fisherman. Standing on the bow of their slender boats to be able to see signs of rising fish, the fishermen propel themselves with a single long paddle which is supported by one hand and the crook of the knee of one leg while balancing on the other foot and leaning inboard. The fish are caught with a net attached to a large conical rattan frame that is plunged into the water, with the net then released to entrap the fish. The lake is also known for its picturesque stilted thatched homes that are inhabited residents of the lake, who are known to as the 'Intha people' (the males being referred to as 'Intha' and the females as 'Inthu'). Many that live out on the lake farm it by use of 'floating gardens' made of bundled masses of buoyant vegetation, atop which a layer of soil is spread to allow the planting of seeds and the growing of crops to harvest. Inle Lake is also well-known for its stilted traditional handicraft workshops that are accessed by boat, which produce items such as woven silk and cotton cloth, in addition to finished products such as the traditional loom-woven Shan shoulder bags and women's 'longyi' silk sarongs, 'cheroot' Burmese cigars, handmade sterling silver jewelry and farming tools forged by the lake's blacksmiths. The mountains surrounding the lake are home to the Pa-O ethnic minority tribe, who are identifiable by their black garments and colorful turban-styled headdress, which can be seen in abundance around the lake and particularly at the circuit of villages that alternately host the 'Five-Day Rotating Market', though visitors that cannot attend the rotating market are still bound to encounter numerous 'floating vendors' that will paddle up to any idle tour boat and attempt to sell their souvenirs, handicrafts, produce and snacks.
Given that prior lake-touring experience, I was curious as to how this tour of Tonle Sap Lake would compare with the former, wondering if any cottage industry workshops would be visited, or if there would be any 'show house boat' that would be stopped at to give the visitor a quick walk-through tour of a typical floating home so as to get a sense of how the inhabitants of the lake lived? I also wondered if there would be any chance to stop at one of the inhabited house boats and actually interact with the residents, or if it would only be a voyeuristic 'drift-by viewing'? Another question that came to mind was if the planned itinerary included an obligatory stop to allow us to be briefly inundated by floating vendors, whose merchandise-laden canoes would encircle our boat as one or more vendors would give me their 'hard sell' sales pitch to buy their trinkets or snacks. (This would be the case the following year in northern Vietnam, roughly a two-hour drive south of Hanoi, while taking a rowboat tour of Tam Coc, a slow-moving 2 km stretch of the Ngo Dong River - often referred to as 'Halong Bay On Land' - located on the outskirts of the town of Ninh Binh. The Tam Coc portion of the river meanders through rice paddies and dramatic limestone karsts, with its course passing through three limestone cave, and the visiting passengers left as captive audiences to the mercies of the floating vendor girls for a minimum of 15 minutes at the exit of the third cave before reversing course. My visit to Tam Coc and the nearby sights of Hoa Lu Temple and Bich Dong Pagoda will be covered in a future blog post on Hanoi and Ninh Binh.)
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| The Boarding Area for the Long-tail Boat to Chong Khneas Floating Village |
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| A Young Deckhand Positions the Boat |
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| Scenes Along the Siem Reap River En Route to Tonle Sap Lake |
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| Approaching Chong Khneas Floating Village |
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| Young Students Paddling to School |
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| A Rustic Houseboat of the Chong Khneas Floating Village on Tonle Sap Lake |
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| The Chong Khneas School's Floating Basketball Court |
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| Standing Room Only on a Resident's Boat |
Mr. Sunny walked over to one of the canopies where a Cambodian gentleman got up from his stool in the shade and came out to meet him, where they chatted briefly as some sort of printed confirmation was shared and reviewed, after which I was motioned over to one of the waiting long-tail boats, where Mr. Sunny offered me a hand as I boarded the boat via an angled wooden plank, then followed me aboard. Our pilot joined us and shortly pushed the bow away from the shore with a long wooden pole, during which I was surprised to see a young Cambodian boy on the bow of a boat next to us supporting a similar long wooden pole angled down into the muddy water, despite the fact that it was likely four times or more as long as he was tall. Through a well-practiced series of coordinated pole movements, alternately plunging, leaning into, pushing against, and pulling in the pole to reposition it, our pilot soon had our boat out into the narrow channel and pointed in the direction of the lake, at which point the long-tailed Chinese outboard motor coughed to life, the propeller churning the surface of the brown waters to a roiling froth a short distance aft of the stern. With a twist of the throttle we got underway, our expanding wake causing the line of canoes and long-tail boats with their bows tied to the shore to bobble as we passed, with rustic views of stilted homes and open-air thatched roof patios further up the bare dirty bank drifted by in a lazy procession. Our smallish channel shortly merged with a much wider one that opened up our limited field of view to a much wider-reaching one, with swaths of green wild grasses extending from the crest of the earthen riverbank back to a dense growth of darker green trees. Ahead of us in the distance, a larger long-tail boat able to accommodate a substantially-sized tour group made its way towards the lake, its shallow-running propeller extending beneath an exposed T-shaped metal bracket frothing the muddy waters behind the outboard's angled shaft as it left an arching whitetail in its wake.
Rounding a slight bend in the channel and passing some clumps of flooded trees, we reached the mouth of the channel and with a slight increase in throttle made our way out into the open waters of Tonle Sap Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Southeast Asia. We soon began to the see the grouped clusters of floating homes, businesses and community facilities such as schools, houses of worship and such, of the of Chong Khneas floating village (referred to as 'Chong Khneas Commune' by the locals), as Mr. Sunny started to provide me with some background on the village in a somewhat louder voice to compensate for the increased in the hiss and lapping of water breaking across the bow. The village is home to over 5,000 residents, with the population made up of both Cambodians and Vietnamese nationals, living among more than 1300 houseboats, with many of the impoverished residents make their living off the lake's declining fishing industry (perhaps in part due to rising pollution levels), though fish and crocodile farming is also done on the lake. A lot of Vietnamese nationals chose to live on the lake given that their non-citizen status prohibits them from owning property, thus leaving them with the options of either renting an apartment or house, or purchasing a houseboat to stay on the lake, presumably rent free (though I neglected to confirm if that was in fact the case with my guide). Our pilot again throttled up a bit once we ventured into deeper waters, which increased the pitch of the growl-like chugging of the long-tail outboard, and created a pleasantly cool and refreshing wind-over-deck as we motored past the occasional tops of slender tree branches fringed with sparse foliage protruding above the lake's surface as we continued our advanced towards the floating village.
Our boat rocked and bounced slightly to the rhythmic hiss and slapping of the crests of advancing ripples breaking across the hull as we crossed the expanding wake ripples of a large long-tail boat flying the Cambodian national flag. It features a black lined/white filled drawing of the 12th century Angkor Wat temple (depicting only three of the five iconic prang-style towers) meant to symbolize 'Integrity, Justice and Heritage', in the center of a band of red meant to symbolize 'Bravery', bordered by bands of blue meant to symbolize 'Liberty, Cooperation and Brotherhood'. The flag of the Kingdom of Cambodia in its current form was first adopted in 1948, and remained in use through the French protectorate period (1948–1953) and after independence from France (1953–1970). From 1970 through 1993, the country would go through a series of transitions that would change the flag a number of times, particularly during the brutal rein of the Khmer Rouge, as the country would become alternately known as the Khmer Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, National Government of Cambodia, Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, People's Republic of Kampuchea, United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) during a period as a United Nations protectorate, and final back under the current flag as the Kingdom of Cambodia with the restoration of the monarchy in 1993.
The boat was then throttled back to a slow cruise as we approached the massed houseboats and floating businesses that had almost resembled an island when viewed earlier from a distance, with the closer proximity revealing that most of the floating structures sported TV antennas atop crooked, flimsy-looking masts. It appeared that the residents predominantly used canoes and rowboats, often with narrow, pointed bows that curved upwards high above the waterline as is seen in other parts of Southeast Asia, to navigate around the floating community. Some of the boats were overloaded with goods purchased from one of the floating markets, with the cargo occupying most of the center of the boat and appearing to require the rower or paddler to stand near the narrow raised bow, and carefully maintain his or her balance as they propelled themselves through the water. One of the canoes that we passed contained three Cambodian kids, with a dark-skinned girl whose long black hair tied back and who wore a blue and yellow back pack on her back piloting the canoe from the stern with a long, slender oar, which suggested that they were perhaps local primary school students on their way to class. A bit later on during my floating village tour we would drift past a floating basketball court enclosed in a blue-painted cage ringed with chain link fencing that I assumed was associated with one of the community's floating schools. We also passed some longer floating buildings displaying signage in Khmer script with a number of canoes and rowboats tied around the perimeter of the covered veranda that looked to be floating stores or restaurants. The wide variety of houseboats styles that made up the floating village ran the gambit from quaint, well-maintained floating cottages painted in the typical, sometimes garish, palette of colors commonly seen throughout Southeast Asia, to old open riverboats upon which cabins were improvised from wood, bamboo, hanging canvases and corrugated tin. Some of the houseboats looked very dilapidated and only marginally 'lake-worthy', with hulls of warp, sun-beaten and well-weather wood from which old tires were hung to serve as bumpers, and cabin living spaces built from thin and warped wood and bamboo beams with woven reed walls and sagging palm fond roofs that I would likely feel uncomfortable staying in should a tropical storm with high winds sweep across the lake.
One such houseboat that we came upon was in the form of a peaked roof canopy-style structure, with the partial wall facing us comprised of a hanging canvas cloth covered with mottled, irregular-shaped patches of color that made it look as if someone of average artistic talent had attempted to paint a picture of a deep blue sky scattered with billowing white clouds, a rectangular door flap cut near the back portion of the hanging wall that had been rolled up and tied into place, a load of wet laundry draped over a sagging clothesline strung beneath the roof, and the front end of a person lying in a suspended hammock and gently swaying to and fro visible in the non-walled end of the houseboat. The improvised houseboat sat listing in the water to the aft and a bit to the port side due to a number of floating old wooden poles that were being salvaged for reuse which had one end resting on the deck of the houseboat, with a tied-up pontoon boat overloaded with more old wooden poles and scrap lumber that was being salvaged. As we approached the houseboat, we saw a man in the aft end of a canoe reaching out to hold onto one of the stacked wooden poles resting on the deck of the houseboat as if to keep himself from drifting away. As we advanced beyond the front end of the canoe I was surprised the head of a man wearing a white brimmed hat who was holding on to some additional floating wooden poles, that appeared to be trying to gather the wooden poles together to secure them to the houseboat. I was able to capture the scene on video as we passed, but it was only after I exited the video record mode and lowered the camera that the thought dawned on me that the man was in the water next to a houseboat that lacks any sewage hookup or likely any sort of septic/waste tank, and whatever goes into the toilet can be assumed to go into the lake directly beneath the houseboat. (This relieving one's self into the water was also the case with the stilted-house residents who live on Burma's Inle lake, where our guide told us that burials of the deceased are also known to occur on, or rather in, the lake. These thoughts came back to mind after our lunch near the lake's revered Hpaung Daw U Pagoda when, as our long-tail boat left the dock to enter the canal leading back out to the lake, we drifted past a street food vendor woman who was washing the customers' plates in the canal.) As I continued to take photos, Mr. Sunny walk to the back of the boat to briefly chat with our pilot, and then came back to tell me that we were going to make a stop at one of the fish and crocodile farms that provides a source of income for some living on the lake, as our pilot opened up the throttle a bit and slewed the bow of the boat away from the concentration of houseboats and out to some larger distant floating structures further out in the lake, which would presumably have better water quality given the separation distance from the cluster of houseboats.
Rounding a slight bend in the channel and passing some clumps of flooded trees, we reached the mouth of the channel and with a slight increase in throttle made our way out into the open waters of Tonle Sap Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Southeast Asia. We soon began to the see the grouped clusters of floating homes, businesses and community facilities such as schools, houses of worship and such, of the of Chong Khneas floating village (referred to as 'Chong Khneas Commune' by the locals), as Mr. Sunny started to provide me with some background on the village in a somewhat louder voice to compensate for the increased in the hiss and lapping of water breaking across the bow. The village is home to over 5,000 residents, with the population made up of both Cambodians and Vietnamese nationals, living among more than 1300 houseboats, with many of the impoverished residents make their living off the lake's declining fishing industry (perhaps in part due to rising pollution levels), though fish and crocodile farming is also done on the lake. A lot of Vietnamese nationals chose to live on the lake given that their non-citizen status prohibits them from owning property, thus leaving them with the options of either renting an apartment or house, or purchasing a houseboat to stay on the lake, presumably rent free (though I neglected to confirm if that was in fact the case with my guide). Our pilot again throttled up a bit once we ventured into deeper waters, which increased the pitch of the growl-like chugging of the long-tail outboard, and created a pleasantly cool and refreshing wind-over-deck as we motored past the occasional tops of slender tree branches fringed with sparse foliage protruding above the lake's surface as we continued our advanced towards the floating village.
Our boat rocked and bounced slightly to the rhythmic hiss and slapping of the crests of advancing ripples breaking across the hull as we crossed the expanding wake ripples of a large long-tail boat flying the Cambodian national flag. It features a black lined/white filled drawing of the 12th century Angkor Wat temple (depicting only three of the five iconic prang-style towers) meant to symbolize 'Integrity, Justice and Heritage', in the center of a band of red meant to symbolize 'Bravery', bordered by bands of blue meant to symbolize 'Liberty, Cooperation and Brotherhood'. The flag of the Kingdom of Cambodia in its current form was first adopted in 1948, and remained in use through the French protectorate period (1948–1953) and after independence from France (1953–1970). From 1970 through 1993, the country would go through a series of transitions that would change the flag a number of times, particularly during the brutal rein of the Khmer Rouge, as the country would become alternately known as the Khmer Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, National Government of Cambodia, Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, People's Republic of Kampuchea, United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) during a period as a United Nations protectorate, and final back under the current flag as the Kingdom of Cambodia with the restoration of the monarchy in 1993.
The boat was then throttled back to a slow cruise as we approached the massed houseboats and floating businesses that had almost resembled an island when viewed earlier from a distance, with the closer proximity revealing that most of the floating structures sported TV antennas atop crooked, flimsy-looking masts. It appeared that the residents predominantly used canoes and rowboats, often with narrow, pointed bows that curved upwards high above the waterline as is seen in other parts of Southeast Asia, to navigate around the floating community. Some of the boats were overloaded with goods purchased from one of the floating markets, with the cargo occupying most of the center of the boat and appearing to require the rower or paddler to stand near the narrow raised bow, and carefully maintain his or her balance as they propelled themselves through the water. One of the canoes that we passed contained three Cambodian kids, with a dark-skinned girl whose long black hair tied back and who wore a blue and yellow back pack on her back piloting the canoe from the stern with a long, slender oar, which suggested that they were perhaps local primary school students on their way to class. A bit later on during my floating village tour we would drift past a floating basketball court enclosed in a blue-painted cage ringed with chain link fencing that I assumed was associated with one of the community's floating schools. We also passed some longer floating buildings displaying signage in Khmer script with a number of canoes and rowboats tied around the perimeter of the covered veranda that looked to be floating stores or restaurants. The wide variety of houseboats styles that made up the floating village ran the gambit from quaint, well-maintained floating cottages painted in the typical, sometimes garish, palette of colors commonly seen throughout Southeast Asia, to old open riverboats upon which cabins were improvised from wood, bamboo, hanging canvases and corrugated tin. Some of the houseboats looked very dilapidated and only marginally 'lake-worthy', with hulls of warp, sun-beaten and well-weather wood from which old tires were hung to serve as bumpers, and cabin living spaces built from thin and warped wood and bamboo beams with woven reed walls and sagging palm fond roofs that I would likely feel uncomfortable staying in should a tropical storm with high winds sweep across the lake.
One such houseboat that we came upon was in the form of a peaked roof canopy-style structure, with the partial wall facing us comprised of a hanging canvas cloth covered with mottled, irregular-shaped patches of color that made it look as if someone of average artistic talent had attempted to paint a picture of a deep blue sky scattered with billowing white clouds, a rectangular door flap cut near the back portion of the hanging wall that had been rolled up and tied into place, a load of wet laundry draped over a sagging clothesline strung beneath the roof, and the front end of a person lying in a suspended hammock and gently swaying to and fro visible in the non-walled end of the houseboat. The improvised houseboat sat listing in the water to the aft and a bit to the port side due to a number of floating old wooden poles that were being salvaged for reuse which had one end resting on the deck of the houseboat, with a tied-up pontoon boat overloaded with more old wooden poles and scrap lumber that was being salvaged. As we approached the houseboat, we saw a man in the aft end of a canoe reaching out to hold onto one of the stacked wooden poles resting on the deck of the houseboat as if to keep himself from drifting away. As we advanced beyond the front end of the canoe I was surprised the head of a man wearing a white brimmed hat who was holding on to some additional floating wooden poles, that appeared to be trying to gather the wooden poles together to secure them to the houseboat. I was able to capture the scene on video as we passed, but it was only after I exited the video record mode and lowered the camera that the thought dawned on me that the man was in the water next to a houseboat that lacks any sewage hookup or likely any sort of septic/waste tank, and whatever goes into the toilet can be assumed to go into the lake directly beneath the houseboat. (This relieving one's self into the water was also the case with the stilted-house residents who live on Burma's Inle lake, where our guide told us that burials of the deceased are also known to occur on, or rather in, the lake. These thoughts came back to mind after our lunch near the lake's revered Hpaung Daw U Pagoda when, as our long-tail boat left the dock to enter the canal leading back out to the lake, we drifted past a street food vendor woman who was washing the customers' plates in the canal.) As I continued to take photos, Mr. Sunny walk to the back of the boat to briefly chat with our pilot, and then came back to tell me that we were going to make a stop at one of the fish and crocodile farms that provides a source of income for some living on the lake, as our pilot opened up the throttle a bit and slewed the bow of the boat away from the concentration of houseboats and out to some larger distant floating structures further out in the lake, which would presumably have better water quality given the separation distance from the cluster of houseboats.
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| The Koh Andeth Floating Fish Farm, Restaurant and Souvenir Shop |
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| The Koh Andeth Fish Farm's Floating Crocodile Enclosure |
Our destination, the Koh Andeth Fish Farm, Restaurant and Souvenir Shop, was a large floating structure whose two stories likely provided for both retail/commercial and living spaces for the owners. It was equipped with elevated decking to accommodate transitory visitors and diners, and attached floating dock-like structures used for fish-farming, to which were tethered a couple of tour boats that had dropped off their load of passengers. Anchored or stilted in-line with the Koh Andeth Fish Farm in the distance and spaced at intervals of perhaps a quarter mile or so where two similar floating commercial establishments assumed to be part the lake's fish-farming industry, though both looked to be larger than Kon Andeth and each had two tiers of elevated decking. Our pilot cut the motor and we drifted the final distance to the dock, where once the boat was secured dockside, my guide and I got out and I followed him across the veranda and through the entrance of the front reception area-cum-souvenir shop and through a door along the right side leading out to some fish containment pools. The fish farm, with its adjunct restaurant and souvenir shop making it more desirable as a tourist attraction, was decidedly up-scaled relative to the traditional, more rustic 'kelong' (a Malaysian word) floating fish farms that can be found around coastal Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. I had previously seen several kelongs anchored off-shore along parts of Singapore's coastline (especially from Singapore's Pulau Ubin Island located in the Straits of Johor, the narrow strip of sea that separates the City-State of Singapore from Johor Bahru, Pennisular Malaysia), and also from above during the final moments of our numerous banked approaches into Singapore's Changi International Airport, though few remain as the city-state continues to urbanize. A kelong is a predominantly wooden offshore platform normally sited in shallow waters that is anchored to the bed of the sea, lake or river using wooden pilings, with some kelong variant having mobile portions of the structure that float freely. The kelongs are built primarily for fishing or fish farming purposes, with the decks of some kelongs having open spaces with nets or meshed enclosures that hang partially in the water, allowing for both captured fish to be kept live until they are sold or cooked, and also for fish to be raised from from the fry or fingerling stage to full adulthood for sale. Kelongs are often built with larger structures that can function as dwellings for the fishermen and their families, with massive structures made up of groups of kelongs joined together sometimes forming large offshore fishing community, such as those seen in Vietnam & Thailand. Some kelongs are connected to land via a wooden gangway, particularly when fish farming is done along the banks of a river. One such kelong-raised freshwater fish sold in the USA is the swai (also called basa), a catfish-like species native to the Mekong River and Chao Phraya River basins of Vietnam and Thailand, respectively, with those in the USA coming almost exclusively from Vietnam. Available in both the Asian markets and larger Western grocery store chains and mainly in the form of frozen or thawed fillets, swai is particularly popular given that it is fairly inexpensive and has a mildly sweet yet savory flavor, lacking the muddy, gamy taste normally encountered with catfish. Note that some have reservation about eating swai due to rumors that the fish farmers feed their stock on a diet of chicken poop, which began to circulate through the Asian communities during the rise of the bird flu epidemic.
[Swai is particularly tasty when the fillet is first sprinkled with garlic powder, ground black peppercorn and a little sprinkle of both cumin and turmeric powders, pan-seared over medium heat for a for one minute per side using oil infused by first browning a slice of ginger, followed by steaming covered over medium-low heat with a little water or chicken stock added for four minutes. Optionally, some thinly-sliced shiitake mushroom can be added to the pan around the sides of the swai fillet during the searing portion of the cooking process, and some stalks of small choy sum can be added on top of the swai fillet to limp during the final minute of the steaming portion of the cooking. Swai fillet as prepared above is exceedingly moist and tender, and as such is a good choice for adding to rice porridge/congee/jok/chao.]
We passed through a small patio shaded by hanging bamboo matting, at the edge of which was a rectangular cutout in the deck that opened onto one of the kelong's net/mesh-lined fish pens encircled by blue-painted guard railing that was flanked by some potted plants and, at one corner, a gold-painted spirit house atop a decorative pedestal. Near the spirit house, a Khmer woman dressed in a light purple blouse and skirt with her long black hair tied back in a bun stood near an oxidized metal tub filled with some type of ground meal for feeding the fish, and a plastic mesh laundry-type basket filled with what looked to be strands of dried stems, curled-up leaves or some other such vegetable matter. As we walked over to the edge of the fish pen to have a look, the Khmer woman took a seat on a padded cushion in front of the feed tub as she turned her gaze in our direction. The angle of the sun cast a shadow of the patio roof over the near half of the fish pen, with the other half catching the sunlight as the dark dorsal fins and upper tail fins of the fish lazily wagged and fluttered above the surface of the beige waters, which textured the framed patch of the lake's surface with intermingling ripples. I raised my compact Casio Exilim camera and hit the video button in the upper right corner to capture some video of the fish in the pen. It was at that point when the Khmer woman reached down and picked up a flat wooden spoon that rested against the mottled light-gray sidewall of the fish meal tub, scooped up some of the feed onto the spoon and casually lobbed it towards the center of the fish pen. About a half-second after we heard the splash of the first morsels of the tossed ground meal hit the surface of the fish pen, the waters suddenly churned and frothed as the fish began to leap and quickly converge on where the food fell, as numerous tail fins came high out of the water and slapped forcefully back down on the surface with loud splashes, which sent long beads of water droplets into the air. After about four seconds, the frenzied slapping and splashing sounds quickly faded back to the pre-feeding level of the sloshing, lapping and trickling of the water as the fish resumed their lazy meandering around the surface of the pen. "That's a catfish...", Mr. Sunny said to let me know the type of fish they were farming at this kelong. "Caaht-fiss...", the Khmer woman said in Cambodian-accented English from her sitting cushion next to the feed tub to acknowledge and confirm my guide's statement.
Mr. Sunny let a few seconds pass, and then said, "Okay, now we'll go check out the other pens...", and pointed to an elevated section of decking on the far side of our fish pen that was accessed from our deck via some angled wooden planks with some thin cross-pieces of wood nailed to them to provide for some traction, with more lengths of blue metal railings visible around the open pen portion of the raised deck. I told the Khmer woman 'Thank you very much.' in Cambodian ("Arkoun chraen.") and we rounded the spirit house corner of the fish pen and made our way over to and up the sloped wooden ramp that led to the adjacent pens. Setting foot onto the elevated wooden deck, a couple of steps brought me to the blue-painted steel railing, below which a number of sizable crocodiles sunned themselves on a sunken wooden deck made of thin, widely-spaced wooden slats that sat perhaps a foot above the water. Their grayish-green bodies and tails were covered with armor-like scales, and their limbs were tipped with dagger-like claws that shined beneath the bright and hazy glare of mid-morning sun. The oral mucosa of their elongated opened mouths is used as a means to cool themselves by allowing some of their internal body heat to be dissipated through the mucosa into the air, similar to a heat exchanger in function. The mouth's pastel yellow color was similar to that of durian fruit flesh, with the pointed scales along the side ridges of their tails also reminded me of the spiky thorns on the on the outer husk of the durian (with the fruit's name being derived from the Old Malay language word 'dûrî' meaning 'thorn'). I took some photos and video clips of the crocodile pens, where some lounging crocodiles opted to bask in available patches of shade while lying partially on top of one another. Finished with my shots, we retraced our steps to head back to the boat, where Mr. Sunny told me that this was the only stop on the lake, and that we would motor back to the car to take in the final stop on my half-day itinerary. As I heard his comment, I felt a slight tinge of disappointment that this was essentially the extent of the tour, that there would be no more chances for interpersonal interactions with the residents of the lake, nor even the chance to see the interior of a floating 'show house'. I also assumed that there would likely be no obligatory stops to hear the sales pitches of floating vendor that would paddle up alongside our idle boat in old weathered canoes offering to sell us tropical produce, readymade traditional cooked food, snacks & drinks, or souvenir handicrafts. Denied my anticipated opportunity for interesting photo or video clip that floating vendor encounters that floating vendors always present based on my prior Inle Lake experience in Myanmar, I debated whether or not my Tonle Sap Lake tour was really worth the USD $10 included in my total tour cost as I took in the slowly-changing passing views of the lake to the monotonous chugging of the the small-block car motor that powered our boat.
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| House Boat on the Siem Reap River |
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| Thatched Homes on the Siem Reap River |
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| Heading Back to the Car for the Return Drive to Siem Reap |
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| Stilted Homes Along Sivatha Boulevard/National Route 63 Near Tonle Sap Lake |
On the boat ride back to the car we passed quite a few outbound long-tail boats loaded with tourists, particularly as we left the lake and made our way up the Siem Reap River, suggesting that departing when we did earlier in the morning allowed us to avoid the crowds when we stopped to tour the kelong fish farm. We also motored past a number of overloaded canoes being paddled by woman in bell-like, woven brimmed hats, and rustic houseboats whose living spaces were shielded by a windowless, semicircular wall-cum-roof made of long cut slats of bamboo logs that were bowed to match the curvature of the hull, with old tires on the ends of lengths of rope draped over its perimeter, calling to mind a river scene from Apocalypse Now. The final stretch of the ride back to our car and waiting driver took us again past dilapidated thatched and corrugated tin floating homes, and an elongated stretch of what looked to be conjoined shanties whose patchwork of thatched and colored tarpaulin roofs followed the contour of the sloped bank. Once back at the dock, Mr. Sunny offered me a hand as I stepped up onto the wooden plank that flexed and shook with each step as we went ashore and got back in the car, whose engine and air conditioner were already running as the driver must have seen us as we exited the boat. Once back on the aged, dust-strewn tarmac of NR63 for the drive back to Siem Reap, I reached into my small day pack for an energy bar to nibble on as I gazed out at the passing scenery the stilted homes at the edge of the flood plains. As we again passed through Russei Luk village and again followed the winding course of the Siem Reap River, now out the right-side window, Mr. Sunny mentioned that we were now heading to the last stop on our half-day tour, the Les Chantiers Écoles vocational school which, conveniently, was located fairly close to my hotel. We continued up Sivatha/NR63, re-entering Siem Reap's Sangkat Sala Kamreuk quarter and passing the junction with Pokambor Street, after which we turn left onto Steung Thmei Street and then left again onto a narrow street where we soon pulled into the compound of the Les Chantiers Écoles vocational school.
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| Students Practice Painting at Siem Reap's Les Chantiers Écoles Vocational School |
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| Glazing a Ceramic Statue at Les Chantiers Écoles Vocational School |
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| The Carving Workshop at the Les Chantiers Écoles Vocational School |
The Carving Workshop at the Les Chantiers Écoles Vocational School
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| A Statue on the Grounds of the Les Chantiers Écoles Vocational School |
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| Les Chantiers Écoles Vocational School's Artisans Angkor Showroom Logo |
Siem Reap has become the epicenter of the drive to revitalize Cambodian traditional culture, particularly the decorative arts and fine artisan handicraft skills like carving, painting and silk weaving, which was dealt a harsh blow under the reign of the Khmer Rouge as such activities were officially outlawed, and the majority of the country’s artists executed, when the country underwent a forced transformation into a purely agrarian one, entering a dormant period which continued during the years of instability that followed the end of its rule. Launched in 1992 under a joint Cambodian/French initiative, the Les Chantiers Écoles vocational school trains up to 650 impoverished young Cambodians apprentices from the Siem Reap area each year, including 160 in the fine arts & crafts. The candidates, aged 18 to 25, are selected based on an assessment of their precarious living situations and low level of, or complete lack of, their formal schooling, after which they follow a 6 months training course in the subject they have chosen: stone sculpture, woodcarving, the art of wood lacquering and stone patina known as polychrome, silk weaving or traditional silk painting, lacquer-ware fabrication or other artisan skills. On completion of the initial training, they spend another 6 months in a production unit on-site to learn to perfect their art. At the end of that year they are set up in groups of 12 to 15 at one of the 35 Artisans d’ Angkor ('Artisans Angkor') rural workshops created in villages located throughout Siem Reap province and continue to produce from there, with the pieces created sold to the best hotels and boutiques in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.
We first entered the painting studio, in which all of the artisans-in-training were Khmer girls in their late teens to early twenties with long, black hair tied either back or gathered up into a bun. The majority of them were wearing short-sleeved, pastel T-shirts (some also wearing light, long-sleeved sweaters beneath them) emblazoned on the back with 'Artisans Angkor' in brown English and Khmer script beneath the organization's gold silk-screened logo, over a mix of casual pants or skirts and thin plastic flip-flops of varying colors, some of which the girls had opted to slip off. They sat on wooden stools before work tables fitted with plastic covers patterned to look like wood parquet floor (a very common design element in Southeast Asia), whose unfinished wooden legs were randomly dotted with spots of dried paint in a variety of colors. The Artisans Angkor logo's design was a banyan leaf whose veins are depicted as having been skillfully knife-cut away to reveal the yellow background of the base fabric, around which small banyan leaf shapes had been artfully cut such that each leaf vein is transformed into the branches of a banyan tree, with a few of the small leaf cut-outs floating in space near the upper right tip of the leaf as a compositional element to continue the visual flow established by the central vein of the banyan leaf. The logo's design was suggestive, likely by intent, of the lace-like, finely-carved leather puppets used in the ancient Khmer art of shadow puppetry, or 'sbaek' (alternately, 'sbei tuoi'), that had been performed in Cambodia for thousands of years. In sbaek, the puppets are used to represent old stories (such as parts of the epic Reamker - the Khmer version of the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic poem) on a white screen that is lit from behind by burning the coconut shell, creating shadows that the audience can see as two storytellers narrate the performance while a traditional Cambodian orchestra plays (shadow puppetry is also a tradition in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and China). We briefly strolled among the rows of work table as the young painters-in-training practiced their learned techniques to recreate the sample pieces that they worked from, and near the exit of the studio passed another female student seated barefoot on a short blue plastic stool (similar to those seen flanking the sidewalk street food vendor stalls that are ubiquitous throughout much of Southeast Asia) who was applying what looked to be a coat of black glaze to a wooden stool-raised, cast terra cotta figure of a kneeling woman in ancient courtly attire (possibly depicting an apsara, or celestial nymph, a type of female spirit of the clouds and waters in Hindu and Buddhist culture that represent an important motif in the stone bas-reliefs of the Angkorian temples in Cambodia during the 8th–13th centuries AD) with the finger tips of her pressed palms brought to her chin as if praying, or showing respect to a monk or high official. Mr. Sunny provided a bit more background on the vocational school and some commentary on what I was seeing, and then gave me a few moments to take some photos before we moved on.
We next walked over to the wood and stone carving studio, which was housed in a brick building whose large, glass-less windows were covered with wide, thin, diamond-crisscross patterned screening that allowed for both indirect natural lighting and ventilation from the light, variable breeze that caused some hanging bamboo shade blinds to sway lazily, which filled the outdoor compound with a chorus of distant rhythmic tapping as we approached. As we stepped through the doorway I got my first glimpse of the studio's interior, an open shop with rows of square wooded workbenches, most of which equipped with a vice for holding in-process pieces, with cabinets along the near-side wall and a drill press in the far corner, reference drawing, sketches and other instructional sheets posted along the wall, and a tall wooden table near the far-side wall upon which was a variety of finished stone carvings reflective of mainly Buddhist themes, with a few statues of the deity Ganesha, with the head of an elephant and the body of a human with four arms and a big belly, a hat tip to Cambodia's earlier Hindu heritage, as the litany of hollow-sounding taps and gritty, high-pitch pings as mallet strikes drove chisels into wood and stone, respectively, mixed with the lilting melody of Khmer lyrics rendered sweetly by a soft feminine voice as a reverberant mellow pop or adult contemporary Cambodian tune played from an unseen speaker. The students were predominantly male save for at least two females, nearly all wearing the standard issue Artisans Angkor shirts, with most also wearing hats and the stone carvers wearing face masks. Before we left, I took some photos and a slow video pan of the carving workshop, and then we walked back to our waiting car for the short drive back to my hotel, after which the next time I would see Mr. Sunny and my driver would be the next morning when they would meet me out front for the drive back to Siem Reap International Airport for the flight back to Singapore.
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| Stilted, Thatched Houses Along the Far Bank of the Siem Reap River |
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| An 'Old School' Gas Station on Sivatha Boulevard/National Route 63 |
Back at the Thunborey Hotel, I briefly went up to my room to grab another two water bottles and a couple more energy bars, as I figured with those I could put off lunch for another couple of hours until after I did my southbound walk along Sivatha Blvd./NR63 that I had decided to do during the morning's drive to the lake. Leaving my room key at the front desk, I walked up Phsa Krom Street and turn right onto Sivatha Blvd., getting a glimpse of the impoverished, stilled and thatched hut squatter's shantytown on the far bank of the Siem Reap River that I had attempted to stroll through and take photos during my second afternoon in-county as I rounded the corner. (That attempt photo shoot had abruptly ended before I had even entered the rustic enclave, as I encountered first a desperate impoverished woman with an undernourished baby and an empty baby bottle, and then three similarly-impoverished landmine victims in need, which resulted in me distributing all of the 40,000 Khmer Riel that I had on me in the form of four 10,000 Riel notes among the four, before walking back to my hotel with yet another begging landmine victim following me on crutches as he had lost his right leg from the mid thigh down.) As I started to walk south along the west side of Sivatha Blvd., there was a fairly long break on the flow of traffic, which was made up of older-model cars, pickup trucks motor scooters with a rider and often one or more pillion (a small added cushion seat behind the main seat used by the scooter driver) passengers, and the Cambodian version of the tuk-tuk, comprised of a motor scooter pulling a canopy-covered, passenger-carrying 'remorquere' (French for a two-wheeled trailer). As the river side of the road was decidedly more picturesque, I took advantage of the then-empty stretch of road to walk across to the other side, which enabled me to take photos of the rustic stilted, thatched huts that lined the far bank, with their mirror images reflected in the calm surface of the river. By using the camera's optical zoom, I was also able to to a photo across the road to capture the 'old school' gas station with the hand-cracked pump inserted into the fuel drum and the rack with the repurposed capped glass bottles filled with gasoline for sale that we had seen in passing earlier that morning.
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| Entrance Ticket to the Siem Reap Crocodile Farm |
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| A Resident of the Siem Reap Crocodile Farm on Sivatha Blvd. |
A bit further down Sivatha Blvd. where the course of the Siem Reap River veered further east away from the roadside, and just beyond a dirt road leading to a bridge across the river I came upon a stretch of dirt shoulder flanked by the low outer wall of an enclosed compound, with a sign printed in both English and Khmer script identifying it as the Siem Reap Crocodile Farm, something that I did not see listed in my 6th Edition (August 2008) copy of the Lonely Planet's Cambodia guidebook. Intrigued at the prospect for a second crocodile encounter, albeit a landlocked one this time, I headed to the open section of compound wall and over to a ticket booth located at the front of a covered patio area where, upon seeing my approach, a staff member walked over to occupy the booth and point to a small placard which indicated the USD $3 admission fee. I handed him the money, and from a roll of pre-printed numbered tickets he lifted the loose end of the paper strip and, with a hand placed on the roll just above the light perforation on the inboard end of my ticket (#1168), roughly tore it off the roll along a jagged angle to the perforation line and handed it to me. I walked through the entrance and first went to check out a raised rectangular concrete containment enclosure that was a bit over waist-high that was located beneath the shade of the covered patio, though as I approached it I noticed a growing stench of ammonia with just a hint of old fish, which seemed particularly noxious given the heat of the hazy afternoon sun. I attempted to breath through the mouth instead of the nose, and peered over the concrete barrier to see a number of baby crocodiles lazily floating on the surface grayish-green water whose level was somewhat below ground level.
I next headed outside to check out the rest of the crocodile farm, which consisted of a series of elevated concrete walkways with steel safety railings that looked down onto a number of zoo-like holding enclosures, some with fully or partially concrete-paved floors surrounding large rectangular pools of greenish water of indeterminable depth, and other enclosures having bare dirt floors with some trees around the edges, with a border of thin concrete edging between the pool and the dirt, and a combination of red brick and mortared rock walls flanking the perimeters of each pen. I walk past each enclosure, taking photos and video clips of the farm's myriad crocodiles, some floating in the murky waters, many basking in the warmth of hazy sun's glare, often draped lazily over one another, and some holding their elongated angular jaws open to varying degrees, showing off their sharp teeth and durian flesh-like pastel yellow of their oral mucosa as they dissipate some of their internal body heat into the air, to the chirps of birds and the background sounds of water trickling and lapping as crocodiles transitioned in and out of the pools or randomly sloshed the water with a flick of a tail, and the occasional whoosh and sputter of passing cars and motor scooters. At one point, some stately-sounding traditional Khmer music featuring a female vocalist began playing from somewhere in the vicinity, with her melodic voice at times taking on a more wailing quality as she belted out a passage of sustained higher-range notes to dramatic effect. In between the end of her song and the beginning of the next one of a similar style sung by a male Khmer voice, the relatively quiet was punctuated by the sounds of hammering somewhere on site and the distant laughter and chattering of children's voices from outside the farm compound. After some additional photos and video clips and having completed the elevated walkway circuit, I made my way back past the ammonia fumes of the shaded baby crocodile pool and out the farm's entrance, and turned left to continue south along the dirt shoulder of Sivatha Blvd./NR63.
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| Strolling Sivatha Blvd./NR 63 in South Siem Reap |
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| Transporting a Reclining Buddha (or a Body?) Under Wraps |
I strolled past the assortment of small businesses and the random street vendor stalls, both of which often featured large, logo-branded umbrellas stuck into improvised weighted bases providing a pool of welcomed shade amid the heat of the sun for their patrons, mixed in with roadside homes ranging from quaint and colorfully-painted to old and rustic, sometimes flanked by fences and walls enclosing family compounds shaded by leafy trees, palms and leaning banana stalks that lined the dusty boulevard. Rounding one of the road's gentle curves, I noticed ahead in the distance what looked to be a tall, exceedingly slow-moving vehicle straddling the left side on the pavement and the dirt shoulder, with people along both side of it that appeared to be pushing it. As the relative distance to it closed with our combined opposing advance, I saw that it was some sort of four-wheeled, flatbed trailer, shiny gold in color, on top of which a blue, truss-columned pavilion with a gold roof had been built, with a seated male driver in a long-sleeved shirt, camouflage pants and flip-flops manning a center-mount steering wheel in the front and multiple people pushing it from the sides and the rear of the trail like a parade float. I pause to let them pass so that I could get a better look at what they were pushing and get a photo of it. As it continued its approach and then slowly rolled by, I saw that it was actually an ornately-decorated rolling Theravada Buddhist shrine or ceremonial carriage, with a gold filigreed grill in front and similarly-styled side panels in the form of two mythical Naga serpents with their heads arched upwards at the front of the carriage and their tails arched upwards at the back of it, with a short two-level pedestal similar to the base of an altar in a Buddhist shrine flanked by potted plants at each corner behind the driver, the ceiling of the pavilion above the pedestal painted with a Buddhist-themed mural similar to what I had seen earlier that morning at Wat Thmei with a decorative banyan leaf motif painted on the outside of the angled roof, and what appeared to be the form of a body lying on its side beneath a white sheet. I didn't get a good passing look at it as I attempted to snap photos on the fly, and the backs of the men pushing the carriage prohibited a good view of the top of the pedestal as it receded from view, but given the very briefly-glimpsed inclined profile of the shrouded form suggesting it was resting on its right side with its head tilted upwards, I assumed that it was a reclining Buddha statue being transported to a nearby monastery or temple, and not the body of one recently deceased.
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| Stilted Homes Along the Siem Reap River Near the Wat Svay Entrance |
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| Wat Svay Buddhist Temple in South Siem Reap |
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| Protective Mythical Multi-Headed Naga Serpent Statues |
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| A Prang Tower-Styled Shrine at Wat Svay |
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| Rows of Chedis on the Grounds of Wat Svay |
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| Romantic Graffiti on the Grounds of Wat Svay |
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| Local Khmer Girls, Likely From Wat Svay Primary School |
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| Final Temple Photos Before Leaving Wat Svay |
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| The Neighborhood Between Wat Svay and the Siem Reap River |
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| Students and Rustic Homes Across from Wat Svay Primary School |
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| A Broom Vendor on Sivatha Blvd., South Siem Reap |
Strolling Sivatha Blvd./NR 63 in South Siem Reap
I noticed some houses flanking one of the bridges spanning the Siem Reap River, and headed over for a quick look, finding that most of the houses cantilevered out over the steep river banks on both sides, and were supported by stilts. I snapped a photo then continued southward for some distance, though on the far side of the next downstream bridge I passed, I saw the ornate arched gate that marked the entrance to Wat Svay and through which the arched, multi-tiered roof of the main temple and some smaller chedi (stupa) pagodas could be seen (the same that I recalled briefly glimpsing in passing while en route to Tonle Sap Lake earlier that morning). I decided to spend a bit of time at the Wat taking photos, then reverse course and head back to the Psar Chaa old market area, stopping to take photos of, or explore, any thing or place that caught my interest along the way. Crossing the bridge and passing through the Wat's entrance, I stopped to take some photos of the main temple and its low perimeter wall flanked by numerous small pagodas painted in a variety of somewhat muted colors, and beyond it some additional monastery buildings presumed to contain the monk's quarters, admin offices, kitchen and such. The Wat Svay Primary School is located near the main temple, hence there were a number of bicycles parked nearby in addition to the sound of kids' voices in the distance. Continuing east of the main temple I passed the Wat's stone prang tower, a richly-carved spire-like structure that is a common shrine element of Hindu and Buddhist architecture in the Khmer Empire, which was later adapted by Buddhist builders in Thailand from the mid 1300's to the early 1900's. Further beyond the prang tower, with its two protective multi-headed Naga serpents guarding the base of its stone stairway, were two rows of colorful chedi pagodas running parallel to the Wat compound's eastern wall. After a few photos of the chedis I began to head back towards the main temple and entrance, but had to stop for quick photo upon seeing some odd, though romantic, graffiti spray painted in pastel yellow on some sheets of corrugated tin hanging between two columns of a covered porch that read in English, "I want kiss you." I figure that the graffiti was likely the handiwork of a smitten primary school kid, or a student from the adjacent Hun Sen Wat Svay High School, instead of that of a smitten Theravada Buddhist monk, and couldn't help but chuckle to my self as that thought came to mind. As I turned to continue on my way, I noticed two Khmer girls watching me with curiosity who, upon seeing me raise my camera and smile, conveyed permission for me to take their photos by returning my smile and nodding their heads, and then giggling when I showed them the photo on the LCD preview screen.
I walked back to the main temple to take additional photos before beginning my walk back up Sivatha Blvd. to the Psar Chaa old market area, where I planned to grab a snack a the Blue Pumpkin, a bakery and café not far from the market that I had discovered during my first afternoon in Siem Reap and had already visited a couple of times, and then perhaps find some place to grab a cold beer nearby. After shooting a number of photos of the temple with minor tweaks to the compositions and content that I had enough images from which to down-select from for final cropping into a couple of nice captures, I passed through the front gate of the Wat. Glancing to the left down the intersecting dirt road, I saw a row of rustic business establishment and homes laid out along the narrow strip of land between the dirt road that flanked the compound walls of Wat Svay and the Wat Svay Primary School and the east bank of the Siem Reap river. On a whim I turned and strolled in that direction to briefly wander down a dirt road for a closer look and perhaps a couple of photos of the quaint single-file hamlet before continuing across the river to begin the walk back to my part of town. The row of structures appeared to extend at least as far as a bend that the dirt road made in the distance to follow the course of the river, so I figured I'd walk down at least as far as the bend to check things out. The building nearest to the intersection with the bridge and the Wat's entrance were small family-run businesses, with some of their goods for sale displayed in front of the establishments on wooden tables, hanging from posts and beams supporting the building's corrugated tin awnings, on metal hooks protruding from upright wooden placards, or simply displayed on the ground atop plastic sheeting in the shade cast by suspended tarps or large umbrellas. A single vendor cart shaded by a large umbrella was setup next to Wat Svay's compound wall near a line of a half-dozen short palm trees, whose leaning trunks caused their intermingled canopies of fronds to drape over the center of the road. Making up what looked to be the south end of the hamlet near the bend in the road were four closely-spaced stilted houses located opposite from the arched gate entrance and compound wall of the Wat Svay Primary School. The walls of the rustic homes were built of a combination of warped and weathered wooden planks and beams, nailed vertical sheets of corrugated tin, and a matrix of thin bamboo poles backed by layers of dried palm fronds (in the case of one house, a eclectic mix-and-match of different materials used for adjacent walls), and rust-streaked corrugated tin roofs. There was not much to see around the bend after the last house, so I turned around to continue my northbound hike after taking a shot of the houses near the bend and a mix of kids and teenagers in the vicinity that I assumed must be students of Wat Svay Elementary School and High School, respectively.
As I made my way up Sivatha Blvd., this time opting to walk along the west-side shoulder of the road given that I stayed on the 'riverside' during the southbound portion of my hike, I began to hear what sounded like a slow piece of traditional Khmer instrumental music playing softly from somewhere in the vicinity, which gradually became louder as I continued up the road. As the music became clearer, the quality of it became more tinny with a faint, intermittent crackling that made it sound like a low fidelity record of a live Khmer orchestral performance was being played over a loud speaker, with the somber, courtly style of the music rendered by what sounded like a small orchestra comprised of a two-string Khmer fiddle called a 'tro u' (similar to the Chinese 'erhu' two-string violin that utilizes a tightly-stretched snake skin resonator box), a 'roneat thung' xylophone, a 'kong vong thom' gong and a 'pan' woodblock. The performance piece reminded me a little bit of Javanese Gamelan music, which is a tradition style of instrumental music played on the Indonesian island of Java that is known for being more slow and stately, verses the more upbeat and frenetic Balinese Gamelan played on the neighboring Indonesian island of Bali. When I reached a location where the volume of the music appeared to be the loudest, I shot a video clip so as to record the music while executing a slow pan of the camera to also capture the visuals of what could be referred to as 'urban-rustic' surroundings.
As I made my way up Sivatha Blvd., this time opting to walk along the west-side shoulder of the road given that I stayed on the 'riverside' during the southbound portion of my hike, I began to hear what sounded like a slow piece of traditional Khmer instrumental music playing softly from somewhere in the vicinity, which gradually became louder as I continued up the road. As the music became clearer, the quality of it became more tinny with a faint, intermittent crackling that made it sound like a low fidelity record of a live Khmer orchestral performance was being played over a loud speaker, with the somber, courtly style of the music rendered by what sounded like a small orchestra comprised of a two-string Khmer fiddle called a 'tro u' (similar to the Chinese 'erhu' two-string violin that utilizes a tightly-stretched snake skin resonator box), a 'roneat thung' xylophone, a 'kong vong thom' gong and a 'pan' woodblock. The performance piece reminded me a little bit of Javanese Gamelan music, which is a tradition style of instrumental music played on the Indonesian island of Java that is known for being more slow and stately, verses the more upbeat and frenetic Balinese Gamelan played on the neighboring Indonesian island of Bali. When I reached a location where the volume of the music appeared to be the loudest, I shot a video clip so as to record the music while executing a slow pan of the camera to also capture the visuals of what could be referred to as 'urban-rustic' surroundings.
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| Masking bundled Threads for Resist Dying, Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles |
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| Weaving with a Manually-Powered Loom at the Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles |
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| Manually Spinning Raw Yellow Silk Thread |
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| A Child of One of the Workers Lying in the Background |
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| Masking Bundled Threads for Resist Dying to Producing a Woven Pattern |
Continuing northward towards the old market, I again passed by the crocodile farm sign on the other side the road, after which a left-hand curve in the road brought the riverbank back into view. A bit farther up as I began to round a right-hand curve where a narrow side-street merged in from the left, I came across a two-story wooden building within a fenced compound displaying a blue sign printed with white characters in Khmer, English and Japanese script identifying it as the 'Institute For Khmer Traditional Textiles (IKTT)'. This had been yet another potential point of interest for me that I hapened upon by chance that had not been listed in my Lonely Planet edition. My curiosity in the place was mainly piqued given that as I approach the building I began to hear the familiar hollow, wooden clacking sounds suggestive of manual weaving looms in use, something that I had observed before in the stilted, water-borne workshops on Inle Lake and on the outskirts of Mandalay during my prior trips to Burma/Myanmar. The left-front portion of the building's ground floor, which was the production or workshop floor, had open-air sections of the street-facing wall that appeared to allow for ample natural lighting of at least the front part of the interior, with an outdoor L-shaped staircase on the right-front of the building leading up to the second floor and a small sign indicating that the establishment's shop was located upstairs. I entered the production floor and stopped for a second to scan the interior so as to take in the sights, sounds and first impressions of the place before walking the aisles for a closer, more detailed look around the establishment. All the activities on the shop floor appeared to performed exclusively by the girls and women of various ages, some with their young children sitting nearby and watching them, at the various work stations to the backdrop of the rhythmic, hollow wooden clacking and tapping of manual looms being worked, and the metallic squeak, rattle and ticking of thread spooling wheels being turned by hand crank by women young and old, mixed with the melodic, inflection-rich sounds of female voices speaking in Khmer punctuated by occasional softer, higher-pitched sound of a child's or baby's voice.
I took out my camera and shot a short video clip of a middle-aged Khmer woman wearing a knitted hat the color of a Theravada Buddhist monk's robe turning a hand-crank to spool what looked to be yellow silk thread. I found the unique combination of sights and sounds around me particularly intriguing and oddly pleasurable, and decided that video clips would be the best way to capture the true 'sense of place' of the workshop and preserve the experience of this purely by chance visit, though I would still want to take some photos to perhaps post and share online later. I figured that I would benefit from first walking through the workshop to not only snap some photos I wanted, but also to determine which sections of the workshop, the particular looms or workstations, or even which of the weavers themselves would be the most intriguing and photogenic to capture on video from visual and compositional standpoint. The women and girls spinning thread and hand-weaving pieces stretched on raised, square and rectangular wooden frames, most parallel to the floor but some angled upward like a inclined drawing table, all worked while seated cross-legged and barefoot atop colorful rugs laid out on the workshop's concrete floor. Some of the women sat with a leg outstretched or extended but partially bent - which was particularly the case with the wooden frame hand-weavers - presumably for comfort, whereas the manual loom weavers that sat at their machine's integral wood-framed, bamboo-slatted bench seats, most of whom wore plastic flip-flops while other preferred working with their bare feet resting on the cool concrete floor. Next to a row of seated hand-weavers and thread spinners, a boy laid on his stomach atop a woven multi-colored floor mat near his mother, supporting his inclined upper body with his forearms as he drew or wrote something with a stub of pencil on a sheet of white paper beneath him, while nearby an orange cat slept on its side, its hind quarters in contact with the hips of a seated Khmer girl who hand-wove a design pattern into a swath of cloth stretched tightly across an inclined wooden frame.
I next switch into video mode to capture the things that most caught my attention during my initial photo walk-through, first moving back to the entrance to do a slow pan of the row of manual looms along the left-hand side of the central aisle that ran the length of the building. I took a static clip of two girls hand-weaving thin strips of off-white or light beige fiber into colorful pieces stretched across wooden frames as the voice of a female Khmer announcer blared from a radio somewhere nearby, with the girls taking strips of some type of dried plant fibers from baskets and pulling off thinner strands to work into their stretched fabric as a thread spinning wheel was hand-turned in the background. Next was a clip of two hand-weaving girls that both had cats (one older, the other still a kitten) sleeping next to them on the mats as they worked to the sounds of an animated conversation between women seated nearby, followed by footage of a girl working her manual loom and some additional thread-spinners, one of which was a girl and the other an older woman whose young daughter wearing a light blue dress and pastel yellow necklace warily watched me record her mom with curiosity and a little trepidation. In one segment shot, two women were working together to hand-weave the same piece, with the blouse of one of the women nearly matching the color of the cloth they were working on, and the older-looking other woman sporting a graying crew cut that had me wondering if she had recently finished a period as a nun at one of the nearby Buddhist temples or monasteries. The most memorable video clip shot included the sleeping baby of a seated woman who was spinning thread being rocked in a gently-swinging net hammock that had been tied shut at the top, with a length of red box strapping cord tied to the hammock bundled at the woman's side so that she could tug the chord to sustain the rocking motion, as a group of women closer to the open entrance sorted long green strips of what looked to be palm leaves or reeds. Having finished the video clip, I turned to retrace my route to see if there were any other video clips that I wanted to capture before continuing my northbound stroll and noticed a doorway along the right side wall leading out to a narrow courtyard. I headed through it to have a quick peek and saw an older Khmer man (the only male worker I encountered there) seated on a wooden stool drawing a knife along what looked to be a long, narrow strip of bamboo reef to slowly remove material to reduce its thickness or true up its profile, and took what turned out to be my final clip of my visit.
As I re-entered the workshop and began to circle back around to the entrance, I noticed a bespectacled man of perhaps middle-age whose features suggested that he was Japanese leaning over and speaking with one of the hand-weavers, and as I was about to walk past the two of them, he sensed my approach and broke off the conversation with the artisan and turned to greet me with a friendly smile. He may have casually observed me earlier wandering around the workshop with my camera in hand, and noticed that I was not accompanied by a guide nor appeared to be part of a group of tourists, and perhaps also found it odd that I had been fastidiously trying to position and contort myself to be able to get just the right composition for my still photos, or adjust my footing and dry-run my full range-of-motion sweeps to confirm I'd be able to execute smooth video pans of the workshop. He asked if I was here on my own, and when I confirmed that I was, he next asked how I came to learned about the institute. I told him how I had come upon it totally by chance during my solo stroll through the area, and as it hadn’t been listed in my Lonely Planet guidebook, I would not have know about it had I not walked by. When I adding that I found the workshop very interesting and had visited similar traditional weaving workshops while traveling in Burma, he nodded and smiled appreciatively, commenting that he was glad that I had noticed it and decided to come in for a look. We continued chatting, during which his knowledge of the workshop and of silk textile processing combined with his bearing made it readily apparent that he was the senior IKTT staff member that supervised the operation. He quickly assumed the role of impromptu host and tour guide, as he not only provided me with an overview and history of the IKTT project and the Cambodian ikat weaving technique, and also periodically stopped to briefly point out and explain what the artisan workers that we observed were doing as we walked the workshop floor together. It was during one of these instructive interludes in which I was taught that what I had originally interpreted as 'hand-weaving' on the frame-stretched pieces was actually 'hand-masking' of silken threads with banana fibers that would undergo repeated dying iterations involving different colors as the essential step in the Cambodian ikat textile weaving process.
Japanese Master Artisan Mr. Kikuo Morimoto was the founder and director of the IKTT project, which he had initially set up in a suburb of Phnom Penh in 1996, and later established this workshop in the Viheachen Village neighborhood of Siem Reap in 2000. The aim of the project was to train local workers in Cambodia's traditional Ikat textile technique in order to revive and preserve it, and also to revive the practice of sericulture, or the rearing of silk worms for the purpose of silk thread production, in Cambodia. The Khmer silk industry got its start during the 13th century, and by the 19th century the Cambodian ikat silk textiles were considered among the finest in the world. Ikat weaving was one of Cambodia’s traditional handicrafts that was ended under the reign of the Khmer Rouge and would have vanished altogether if not the efforts of the IKTT to revive it. Cambodian-style Ikat weaving is a weft ikat technique, whereby the resist-dyed weft (or transverse) thread is attached to the shuttle and is drawn through and inserted over-and-under the warp (lengthwise or longitudinal) threads that are held stationary in tension on a multi-shaft loom. The yellow raw silk used to weave the ikat textile at the IKTT workshop comes from the native Cambodian golden silkworm, which thrives in the specific tropical conditions of the region by sustaining itself off a diet of mulberry leaves, with the roughly 300 meters of raw yellow silk that can be unraveled from each cocoon being known for its strength and lustrous fiber. The ikat textile weaving technique is unique in that it creates often intricate colored patterns on bundles of silk thread prior to the weaving process, which is achieved by tightly tying the bundles of thread with banana fibers to mask them prior to dying the bundles several times (known as resist dyeing), similar to the tie dye fabric process. The technique results in a design motif that almost appears as though it was painted onto the cloth, as the pattern predefined by the created color variation along the length of the silken threads are skillfully woven on a multi-shaft loom directly into the cloth, creating a distinctive fuzziness or blended look along the design's borders. The intricately-patterned Cambodian ikat woven fabrics are referred to as 'hol', with over 200 established motifs. The 'sampot hol' motifs are used in sarongs and skirts worn by women, with the 'pidan hol' motifs having religious implications and employed in wall hangings used to decorate in interiors of temples and pagoda, or the home for special ceremonies.
As we reached the open-air front of the building and I prepared to bid my short-time host farewell and continue on my way back to grab a snack near the old market, he mentioned that he had some brochures that he wanted to give me and asked that I follow him up to the second floor, where his office was located next to the IKTT's shop and showroom. We made our way up the L-shape stairway and entered the showroom, walking past examples of the fruits of the workshop artisan's labor on display in the form of fine silk scarves, shawls and intricately-patterned bolts of silken cloth and decorative wall hangings draped over hung bamboo rods en route to his cluttered corner office area, whose bookcases and wall shelves were packed with hardbound and paperback reference books whose spines were a mix of English, Japanese and Khmer scripts, with framed certificates reflecting a similar mix of scripts, reference charts and assorted photos sharing the wall space. He walked over to a standing file cabinet and opened one of the drawers, as he continued to offer further insights on the IKTT project and Cambodian ikat textiles while he thumbed through file folders, and paused briefly to extract single copies for two different folders, which he offered to me along with an IKTT business card in the respectful, 'two-handed, right side up-facing to the recipient, slight forward bow' Asian fashion. I accepted the two documents in the same fashion save for a somewhat deeper bow appropriate to his advanced age and higher social standing, and briefly glanced at them as he explained what he had just given me. The larger, standard letter-sized, double-sided document, with the upturned face being a photocopy of the Sponsored Section of the International Herald Tribune dated September 30, 2004 which featured The 11th Rolex Awards for Enterprise's piece on IKTT's founder Kikuo Morimoto, entitled 'Rescuing Cambodia's Silk Culture'. It summarized Mr. Morimoto's background from training in yuzen, the Japanese art of dying silk for kimonos, in his hometown of Kyoto, to supervising a dye company in Thailand, followed by his first exposure to traditional Khmer ikat textiles in a museum during a visa run into Cambodia, his subsequent travels through the Cambodia countryside in search of 'silk grandmas' who could pass on their skills to younger weavers, and the later establishment of the IKTT project and the Siem Reap workshop in 1996 and 2000, respectively. It also covered his then-envisioned 'Wisdom From the Forest' project, a comprehensive program to revive Cambodia's silk industry by not only training weavers, but also planting trees used in the traditional dying process and building self-sustaining silk workshops. The smaller, half letter-sized, double-sided document written in both English and Japanese, provided a brief description of both the Cambodian ikat textile process and the IKTT 'Wisdom From the Forest' project on one side, and on the other side a hand-drawn figure summarizing in leaf-shaped caption bubbles the traditional natural dyestuff's (woods, barks, leaves, the nest of the lac insect) that IKTT uses in its silk production, and the associated colors produced by each material, in addition to IKTT's phone number, website and email. He mentioned that he had to get back down to the workshop floor, so I thanked him for his time and kindness and we exchanged our farewells with mutual respectful bows and a handshake before going our separate ways.
I took out my camera and shot a short video clip of a middle-aged Khmer woman wearing a knitted hat the color of a Theravada Buddhist monk's robe turning a hand-crank to spool what looked to be yellow silk thread. I found the unique combination of sights and sounds around me particularly intriguing and oddly pleasurable, and decided that video clips would be the best way to capture the true 'sense of place' of the workshop and preserve the experience of this purely by chance visit, though I would still want to take some photos to perhaps post and share online later. I figured that I would benefit from first walking through the workshop to not only snap some photos I wanted, but also to determine which sections of the workshop, the particular looms or workstations, or even which of the weavers themselves would be the most intriguing and photogenic to capture on video from visual and compositional standpoint. The women and girls spinning thread and hand-weaving pieces stretched on raised, square and rectangular wooden frames, most parallel to the floor but some angled upward like a inclined drawing table, all worked while seated cross-legged and barefoot atop colorful rugs laid out on the workshop's concrete floor. Some of the women sat with a leg outstretched or extended but partially bent - which was particularly the case with the wooden frame hand-weavers - presumably for comfort, whereas the manual loom weavers that sat at their machine's integral wood-framed, bamboo-slatted bench seats, most of whom wore plastic flip-flops while other preferred working with their bare feet resting on the cool concrete floor. Next to a row of seated hand-weavers and thread spinners, a boy laid on his stomach atop a woven multi-colored floor mat near his mother, supporting his inclined upper body with his forearms as he drew or wrote something with a stub of pencil on a sheet of white paper beneath him, while nearby an orange cat slept on its side, its hind quarters in contact with the hips of a seated Khmer girl who hand-wove a design pattern into a swath of cloth stretched tightly across an inclined wooden frame.
I next switch into video mode to capture the things that most caught my attention during my initial photo walk-through, first moving back to the entrance to do a slow pan of the row of manual looms along the left-hand side of the central aisle that ran the length of the building. I took a static clip of two girls hand-weaving thin strips of off-white or light beige fiber into colorful pieces stretched across wooden frames as the voice of a female Khmer announcer blared from a radio somewhere nearby, with the girls taking strips of some type of dried plant fibers from baskets and pulling off thinner strands to work into their stretched fabric as a thread spinning wheel was hand-turned in the background. Next was a clip of two hand-weaving girls that both had cats (one older, the other still a kitten) sleeping next to them on the mats as they worked to the sounds of an animated conversation between women seated nearby, followed by footage of a girl working her manual loom and some additional thread-spinners, one of which was a girl and the other an older woman whose young daughter wearing a light blue dress and pastel yellow necklace warily watched me record her mom with curiosity and a little trepidation. In one segment shot, two women were working together to hand-weave the same piece, with the blouse of one of the women nearly matching the color of the cloth they were working on, and the older-looking other woman sporting a graying crew cut that had me wondering if she had recently finished a period as a nun at one of the nearby Buddhist temples or monasteries. The most memorable video clip shot included the sleeping baby of a seated woman who was spinning thread being rocked in a gently-swinging net hammock that had been tied shut at the top, with a length of red box strapping cord tied to the hammock bundled at the woman's side so that she could tug the chord to sustain the rocking motion, as a group of women closer to the open entrance sorted long green strips of what looked to be palm leaves or reeds. Having finished the video clip, I turned to retrace my route to see if there were any other video clips that I wanted to capture before continuing my northbound stroll and noticed a doorway along the right side wall leading out to a narrow courtyard. I headed through it to have a quick peek and saw an older Khmer man (the only male worker I encountered there) seated on a wooden stool drawing a knife along what looked to be a long, narrow strip of bamboo reef to slowly remove material to reduce its thickness or true up its profile, and took what turned out to be my final clip of my visit.
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| An IKTT Brochure Showing the Natural Dyestuffs Used in Textile Production |
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| An Example of Cambodian Ikat Weaving (Source: iktt.esprit-libre.org) |
As we reached the open-air front of the building and I prepared to bid my short-time host farewell and continue on my way back to grab a snack near the old market, he mentioned that he had some brochures that he wanted to give me and asked that I follow him up to the second floor, where his office was located next to the IKTT's shop and showroom. We made our way up the L-shape stairway and entered the showroom, walking past examples of the fruits of the workshop artisan's labor on display in the form of fine silk scarves, shawls and intricately-patterned bolts of silken cloth and decorative wall hangings draped over hung bamboo rods en route to his cluttered corner office area, whose bookcases and wall shelves were packed with hardbound and paperback reference books whose spines were a mix of English, Japanese and Khmer scripts, with framed certificates reflecting a similar mix of scripts, reference charts and assorted photos sharing the wall space. He walked over to a standing file cabinet and opened one of the drawers, as he continued to offer further insights on the IKTT project and Cambodian ikat textiles while he thumbed through file folders, and paused briefly to extract single copies for two different folders, which he offered to me along with an IKTT business card in the respectful, 'two-handed, right side up-facing to the recipient, slight forward bow' Asian fashion. I accepted the two documents in the same fashion save for a somewhat deeper bow appropriate to his advanced age and higher social standing, and briefly glanced at them as he explained what he had just given me. The larger, standard letter-sized, double-sided document, with the upturned face being a photocopy of the Sponsored Section of the International Herald Tribune dated September 30, 2004 which featured The 11th Rolex Awards for Enterprise's piece on IKTT's founder Kikuo Morimoto, entitled 'Rescuing Cambodia's Silk Culture'. It summarized Mr. Morimoto's background from training in yuzen, the Japanese art of dying silk for kimonos, in his hometown of Kyoto, to supervising a dye company in Thailand, followed by his first exposure to traditional Khmer ikat textiles in a museum during a visa run into Cambodia, his subsequent travels through the Cambodia countryside in search of 'silk grandmas' who could pass on their skills to younger weavers, and the later establishment of the IKTT project and the Siem Reap workshop in 1996 and 2000, respectively. It also covered his then-envisioned 'Wisdom From the Forest' project, a comprehensive program to revive Cambodia's silk industry by not only training weavers, but also planting trees used in the traditional dying process and building self-sustaining silk workshops. The smaller, half letter-sized, double-sided document written in both English and Japanese, provided a brief description of both the Cambodian ikat textile process and the IKTT 'Wisdom From the Forest' project on one side, and on the other side a hand-drawn figure summarizing in leaf-shaped caption bubbles the traditional natural dyestuff's (woods, barks, leaves, the nest of the lac insect) that IKTT uses in its silk production, and the associated colors produced by each material, in addition to IKTT's phone number, website and email. He mentioned that he had to get back down to the workshop floor, so I thanked him for his time and kindness and we exchanged our farewells with mutual respectful bows and a handshake before going our separate ways.
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| The Temple Club on Bar Street, Offering Apsara Dance Performance Dinner Shows |
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| A 'Sit, Don't Squat' Placard in the Restroom of the Blue Pumpkin Bakery |
At the Pokambor Street junction, I continued northward along Sivatha Blvd., shortly passing the Soksan Road intersection where the sight of the wall-mounted, unlit neon Soksan Palace night club sign a little ways down the street evoked thoughts of Sunitha. She had been the lovely earth-bound Apsara (celestial nymph) bar girl, clad in the tight-fitting, short-skirted, navy blue with orange trim standard-issue club hostess uniform that made her look like a sultry Tiger Airways stewardess, that I had chatted with at length over a couple of beers while waiting for the first Cambodian go-go dancers to take the stage on my second night in Siem Reap. What had made the pleasurable encounter a bit more memorable was that at one point during that evening, the middle-aged female bar manager-cum-mamasan who had been keeping tabs on us from afar while apparently watching the clock, walked over and told me that if I didn't want go with Sunitha to one of the back rooms for a massage right now, I would have to pay a USD $5 fine to the house to be able to continue sitting and taking with her. I also strolled past Ancient House Restaurant, a family-owned and run place whose narrow front face opened up to the street and four sidewalk tables flanked by tall potted plants via retracted accordion wall panels that offered Khmer, European and Myanmar cuisine. I had eaten lunch there on my second day in Siem Reap during a break period taken to avoid the heat of the day in-between my guided morning and afternoon touring sessions of the Angkor Thom complex's associated temples and monuments and those that lie in the vicinity to the east of it (including a visit to the famous tree root-shrouded Ta Prohm Temple that was featured in Angelina Jolie's 'Laura Croft: Tomb Raider', and a decidedly less-than-stellar sunset over the Angkor's West Baray - one of the largest hand-cut clean water reservoirs on Earth - that was viewed from the hilltop Phnom Bakheng Temple), though I also utilized the break period to check out the assorted produce and protein vendor stalls of the Psar Chaa Old Market. The Ancient House Restaurant was a pleasant surprise given that the owners, Mr. Nyan Win and his wife, are originally from Burma/Myanmar but had lived in Siem Reap for some time. Nyan was quite surprised when I began speaking to him in Burmese, and more so to learn that my wife is Burmese and that I had visited Burma three times already (and would be making my fourth trip to Burma after first flying back to Singapore for a ten-day stay). We had a nice chat over the course of my visit to the restaurant, during which I learned that Nyan is a talented photographer and the amazing Burma photos hung on the walls of the restaurant were all shot by him (and available for purchase if so desired), and that his wife is a very good cook of traditional Burmese cuisine; needless to say, her chicken curry was excellent.
From Sivatha Blvd, I turned right onto 'Pub Street', which is alternatively known as 'Bar Street' but officially designated as Street 08, to be able to eyeball The Temple Club, where I would later go this evening to take in a traditional Khmer Apsara dance and orchestral performance dinner show before leaving Cambodia. From there, I continued up Pub Street and then headed right on Pithnou Street, crossing the street a few doors down to enter the Blue Pumpkin, a bakery shop I had come across on my first afternoon in Siem Reap, where I grabbed one of their muffins and a small coffee for an afternoon snack, and an available chair to give my legs a brief rest as I quickly finished both. I opted to hit the restroom before hitting the road again, and had to chuckle when I saw a posted sign in one of the open stalls reminding the patrons sit on the toilet seat rather than squat on top of it to do your business. I had seen this sign before in other parts of Southeast Asia (and even in establishments in San Francisco's Chinatown), and remember back in the early 1980's while working in the electronics industry with a lot of Vietnamese refugees, I would sometimes see dusty shoe prints on the white toilet seats from some of the male coworkers (which was a minor inconvenience to have to wipe off the seat with damp toilet paper before use, which was more than offset by the amount I was able to learn about Vietnamese culture, cuisine and language - including being taught how to sweet-talk Vietnamese girls in their native tongue, which was always good for a laugh from my coworkers). After my snack, I felt in need of a cold beer as I strolled the short parallel streets behind the Blue Pumpkin, I came across the Funky Munky bar and restaurant near Pokambor Street and the Shadow of Angkor Guesthouse, which had received a mention in the Lonely Planet Cambodia guide book as a place for good hamburgers and something to drink, so I decided to check it out. The place was pretty quiet when I walked, with its interior decor comprised of a collection of movie posters, large painted renditions of movies stills from such films as 'Scare Face', 'The Deer Hunter' & 'The Big Lebowsky', and other elements of American pop culture on display creating a funky, laid-back environment conducive to chilling out for a while. I broke with my established routine since my arrival in-county of sticking with the local Angkor Beer and opted for a Beer Lao instead, which I sipped as a mix of classic rock played at background volume. The Beer Lao was quite good, and I would later be glad to find it available locally in the States, first in large bottles at Bayon Market in Long Beach, CA's Cambodia Town, and later in large cans for $1.00 each at the 99 Cents Only store in the Garden Grove portion of Little Saigon. Having finished my beer, I headed back up to Street #9 and walked in the direction of the Old Market to perhaps pick up a Khmer krama scarf or an Angkor Wat T-shirt (a light gray T-shirt with a detailed line drawing of Angkor Wat in dark blue or other dark color silk screen bordered by Khmer script and the word 'Cambodge' - French for Cambodia - above and below the iconic temple appeared to be the most popular and very affordable offerings around town, and one that I had previously seen being worn often by budget backpackers along Bangkok's Khaosan Road) as a souvenir of my brief stay in Cambodia. As I strolled along the stretch opposite the north side of the market between Pithnou Street and Street #11, I was pleasantly surprised to see the full-time students/part-time wandering vendor girls 'Happy Girl' (the hip nickname she prefers to Raksmey, her given first name) and Mai, whom I had met on my first evening in Siem Reap, in their white shirt/blue skirt school uniforms and walking with what appeared to be some fellow students across the street.
From Sivatha Blvd, I turned right onto 'Pub Street', which is alternatively known as 'Bar Street' but officially designated as Street 08, to be able to eyeball The Temple Club, where I would later go this evening to take in a traditional Khmer Apsara dance and orchestral performance dinner show before leaving Cambodia. From there, I continued up Pub Street and then headed right on Pithnou Street, crossing the street a few doors down to enter the Blue Pumpkin, a bakery shop I had come across on my first afternoon in Siem Reap, where I grabbed one of their muffins and a small coffee for an afternoon snack, and an available chair to give my legs a brief rest as I quickly finished both. I opted to hit the restroom before hitting the road again, and had to chuckle when I saw a posted sign in one of the open stalls reminding the patrons sit on the toilet seat rather than squat on top of it to do your business. I had seen this sign before in other parts of Southeast Asia (and even in establishments in San Francisco's Chinatown), and remember back in the early 1980's while working in the electronics industry with a lot of Vietnamese refugees, I would sometimes see dusty shoe prints on the white toilet seats from some of the male coworkers (which was a minor inconvenience to have to wipe off the seat with damp toilet paper before use, which was more than offset by the amount I was able to learn about Vietnamese culture, cuisine and language - including being taught how to sweet-talk Vietnamese girls in their native tongue, which was always good for a laugh from my coworkers). After my snack, I felt in need of a cold beer as I strolled the short parallel streets behind the Blue Pumpkin, I came across the Funky Munky bar and restaurant near Pokambor Street and the Shadow of Angkor Guesthouse, which had received a mention in the Lonely Planet Cambodia guide book as a place for good hamburgers and something to drink, so I decided to check it out. The place was pretty quiet when I walked, with its interior decor comprised of a collection of movie posters, large painted renditions of movies stills from such films as 'Scare Face', 'The Deer Hunter' & 'The Big Lebowsky', and other elements of American pop culture on display creating a funky, laid-back environment conducive to chilling out for a while. I broke with my established routine since my arrival in-county of sticking with the local Angkor Beer and opted for a Beer Lao instead, which I sipped as a mix of classic rock played at background volume. The Beer Lao was quite good, and I would later be glad to find it available locally in the States, first in large bottles at Bayon Market in Long Beach, CA's Cambodia Town, and later in large cans for $1.00 each at the 99 Cents Only store in the Garden Grove portion of Little Saigon. Having finished my beer, I headed back up to Street #9 and walked in the direction of the Old Market to perhaps pick up a Khmer krama scarf or an Angkor Wat T-shirt (a light gray T-shirt with a detailed line drawing of Angkor Wat in dark blue or other dark color silk screen bordered by Khmer script and the word 'Cambodge' - French for Cambodia - above and below the iconic temple appeared to be the most popular and very affordable offerings around town, and one that I had previously seen being worn often by budget backpackers along Bangkok's Khaosan Road) as a souvenir of my brief stay in Cambodia. As I strolled along the stretch opposite the north side of the market between Pithnou Street and Street #11, I was pleasantly surprised to see the full-time students/part-time wandering vendor girls 'Happy Girl' (the hip nickname she prefers to Raksmey, her given first name) and Mai, whom I had met on my first evening in Siem Reap, in their white shirt/blue skirt school uniforms and walking with what appeared to be some fellow students across the street.
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| Happy Girl (Raksmey's Nickname) |
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| Happy Girl's 'Little Friend' Mai |
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| Happy Girl's Note to Me, Delivered by Mai (Front) |
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| Happy Girl's Note to Me, Delivered by Mai (Back) |
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| Taking Happy Girl, Mai and Friends Out For a Meal on My Last Day in Siem Reap |
Anytime one's travel itinerary includes stops in major tourist destinations to visit the 'Must-See' or most popular attractions, it's a given that one will have to contend with being approached by the attendant throngs of wandering vendors of varying ages that make their living off of the visiting tourist by selling them overpriced souvenirs, sometimes in an overly pushy manner meant to break the will of the targeted prospective customer. Enduring the repeated wandering vendor solicitations at each of several famous tourist attractions over the course of the day can quickly wear on one's patience as the annoyance factor gets incrementally dialed up with each subsequent impassioned sales pitch from a vendor who has made very few sales that day. I had experienced this on multiple occasions in my travels, particularly in Southeast Asia and especially when ethnic minority hill-tribe wandering vendor girls are involve, be it the groups of Ahka girls brought down from northern Thailand (originally hailing from Yunnan province, China) to work the tourist haven/backpacker's ghetto of Bangkok's Khaosan Road in traditional tribal costume or a mix-and-match of tribal costume elements (particularly the elaborate headdress) and faded jeans or a printed T-shirt selling Ahka handicrafts, or (as I would encounter during my return to Southeast Asia the following year) the Black Hmong and Red D'zao girls (also originally from Yunnan, China) from the surrounding hillside villages amid the scenic rice terraces in their traditional costumes selling their respective tribal handicrafts along P. Cau May, the main tourist drag and Khaosan Road equivalent in the former French hill station of Sapa in northwestern Vietnam. Despite the frustrations that these repeated wandering vendor girl encounters can present, the upside is that by trying to keep the interactions friendly and even lighthearted instead of slipping into a stern, defensive posture, you can sometimes create enough of a distraction to throw them off their sales game and get them to stray from their well-practiced pitches or routines employed to increase the chances of a sale. This tactic can change the dynamics of the interaction from that of a 'just business' financial transaction between Seller and Buyer, to that of two individuals whose daily lives are lived thousands of miles apart briefly connecting through casual conversation, sometimes creating fond memories lasting as long as any digital photo. This was definitely the case with a young wandering vendor girl who worked selling postcards amid the indoor aisles and outdoor surrounding alleys of Rangoon's/Yangon's Bogyoke Zei (Scott Market) named Hla Thazin Aung that befriended me during our multiple visits to the market back in 2006, where the others would shop and I would walk around exploring and taking photos.
My initial meeting with Happy Girl and Mai had been a unique experience that I consider a fond memory of my visit to Cambodia. It had been during my first early evening in Siem Reap on a day that had started with a early morning flight from Singapore's Changi International - Budget Terminal Four into Siem Reap International, where I was met by my hired guide and drive and, after first checking into the Thunborey Hotel and then purchasing my Apsara Authority Three-Day Pass at the entrance to the Angkor Archaeological Park, did a morning tour of the Angkor Thom temple complex's Bayon Temple (famous for its iconic face towers), the Terrace of the Leaper King and the Terrace of Elephants. After a break for a solo lunch at a sidewalk cafe housed in a renovated, goldenrod with white trim-painted French colonial building with a view of the Siem Reap River across Pokambor Street, I rejoined my guide and driver for a lengthy afternoon tour of Angkor Wat Temple. At the end of the day's itinerary, I was dropped back off at my hotel and after a brief trip up to my room, went off to do a bit of exploring in the vicinity of the Psar Chaa Old Market to find a place to have dinner. As I strolled along Street #8 (a.k.a. Bar Street or Pub Street), I settled on a restaurant that had open-air seating in front of the establishment, with a row of three tables that would accommodate two diners butted up against the short leg of an L-shape wooden railing that aligned with the edge of the curb and established the boundaries of the restaurant's outdoor seating area. I walked up to the podium-like reception counter with a wooden caddy holding a stack of laminated menus mounted on its side as a waitress came out from the restaurant's interior to greet and seat me, grabbing a menu as she beckoned me follow her to one of the available tables located curbside, handing me the menu before leaving to go back inside. After browsing through the menu, I opted for a Cambodian pork kroeung plate which included a side of sautéed mixed vegetables and jasmine rice, with the dry curry-styled dish cooked using the traditional Khmer 'kroeung' spice paste to give it a distinctly Cambodian flavor. Similar to a Thai curry paste, the basic kroeung mixture uses lemongrass, magrut lime zest and leaves, galangal, turmeric, garlic, shallots, dried red chillies and various other rhizome rootstalks such as lesser galanga, which are finely chopped and then ground together using a mortar and pestle, after which the kroeung paste can be used as a marinade or simmered in oil and reduced as a curry base. The waitress returned and took my order, which included a cold bottle of Angkor Beer that was brought back out to me not long after she walked my order inside.
I sipped my beer as I waited for my order and casually surveyed the surrounding, which unsurprisingly included a lot of mainly Western tourists comprised of a mix of young adults in T-shirts, shorts and sandals, baggage-burdened backpackers possibly not long off of their budget bus from Bangkok that had been booked on Khaosan Road, elderly couples or solo seniors finally doing that longed-for world traveling in their retirement, and even some families with young children whose early experiences in an exotic locale may well instill in them a life-long wanderlust. As I gazed out over Street #8 to observe the ambling foot traffic and the occasional passing motor scooter with one to three (or more) riders, Khmer-styled, motor scooter pulling two-wheeled trailer tuk-tuk, or hired car with driver and tourists, I became aware of of the gritty sound of approaching footfalls behind my left shoulder which abruptly slowed as two blurry figures in white entered into my non-lens corrected peripheral vision. I turned to see two Cambodia school girls in uniforms comprised of white blouses over navy blue skirts, both with the dark complexions and facial features suggesting pure Khmer lineage, one older and a bit more full-faced and the other younger and slender, both wearing school knapsacks in addition to shouldered sling bags that I assumed must contain souvenirs for sale given that one girl held an accordion-type plastic package of Cambodia postcards in her hand, and the other some beaded bracelets and necklaces. I knew that I was about to be the recipient of yet another souvenir sales pitch for the day from the two girls, and they probably knew that they had me, seated at a curbside table and waiting for my order to come out, as a captive audience, so I figured I'd indulge them despite not having the desire to buy anything, and maybe enjoy a bit of conversation.
"Sua s'dei. Niak sohk sabaay te?" ('Hello. How are you?' in Khmer, as memorized and likely mispronounced from the back of my Lonely Planet guide book), I said with a smile. The girls eyes lit up a little and their faces expressed a bit of pleasant surprise. "Sua s'dei", the elder girl greeted me in return. "How do you know our language?", she asked as she returned my smile, to which I replied that I only learned a few words and phrases from my guide book, and noted that her English was quite good. They then showed me their items for sale and asked if I wanted to buy anything, to which I replied that I wasn't interested, as I only have a small pack with little extra room, and usually only buy a souvenir T-shirt, and besides, my photos, video clips that can be look at later and memories of my experiences in-country are the best souvenirs for me. They listened and nodded as I spoke, perhaps surprised that my response was more long-winded than just a simple 'No, thanks'. I asked them their names, to which the elder girl did the talking. "My name is Happy Girl, and...", as she nodded her head downward to the left, "...this is my little friend, Mai." I told them my name and then commented on Happy Girl's nickname. "Hmm, Happy Girl is a nice nickname. Earlier today at Angkor Thom there was a vendor girl that came up to me who called herself Spider Girl." Happy Girl's face brightened a little. "My name used to be Spider Girl, but I changed it to Happy Girl." "Yeah, I think Happy Girl sounds like a better name for you than Spider Girl...", I said with a friendly smile, prompting a little smile from her, and also from her quiet little friend Mai, who cocked her head slightly as her eyes tracked upwards to her big friend. Given that they were both wearing school uniforms, I asked how long did they did the souvenir selling after a full day at school, and was told by Happy Girl that, given the distance that they have to walk home and when her mom gets home from work, the could usually do about two hours of wandering vending before continuing on the walk home. During our brief conversation, I learned that Happy Girl was sixteen years of age and that Mai was thirteen, which would have put them in the upper secondary education level (3 years in duration, beginning at 15 years of age) and lower secondary education level (3 years in duration, beginning at 12 years of age), respectively, in the Cambodian school system. Happy Girl and Mai at one point exchanged a quick glance, after which Happy Girl said that they should be going now and that it was nice meeting and talking with me, to which we exchanged our good-bye's and they were soon on their way.
Not long after Happy Girl and Mai left to look for perspective buyers, my waitress returned with my order of pork kroeung, which given my appetite by then I had immediately dug into it found it to be quite tasty. Midway through my meal and just about the time that I was going to start on my second Angkor Beer for the evening, I again became aware of someone approaching me curbside, and as I turned to see who it might be I was pleasantly surprised to again see Mai standing before me, yet a little bit perplexed that Happy Girl was nowhere to be seen, and figured that perhaps she was busy with a customer at the moment. I greeted Mai with a smile, and was about to ask her about Happy Girl when Mai raised her hand and I saw that she had a folded piece of lined note paper with something drawn in ink on the upward-facing surface held between her right thumb and bent index finger. She grip the free edge of the folded paper with her left thumb and index finger and extended it with both hands across the wooden railing the separated us, then raised her head slightly to look up at me and said that Happy Girl wanted her to give me this note. I accepted it with two hands and looked at the paper, upon which was a pen drawing of flower petals and the words 'for good luck' in very neat, stylish and decidedly feminine handwriting with a decorative S-shaped squiggled underline beneath the words. I unfolded the paper to see the full sheet, which revealed that the flower was attached to a single-stemmed plant with leaves, and written around the flower in clockwise fashion starting from the three o'clock were five lines of text that combined together read, "flower, for you, for souvenir, for good luck, forever", which brought a smile to my face. I found it very touching that Happy Girl would draw that for me, and briefly glanced at the other side of the unfolded paper to see that she had also written a note for me. Not wanting to take up Mai's time while I read it, I thanked her for bringing me Happy Girl's note, and asked her to convey my thanks to Happy Girl, as it really made my day and I deeply appreciated it, to which Mai seemed genuinely pleased before she went on her way. After she left, I began to read the note and soon felt a smile form on my face as Happy Girl's note turned out to be very sweet and quite touching. In her note, Raksmey, a.k.a. Happy Girl, wrote how she had drawn the flower for me as a souvenir to remember her and her little friend by, and hoped that I liked her gift, she offered an apology if she had bothered me at all and thanked me for coming to Cambodia, she was very glad to meet and talk with me, and wished me and my family all the best, she complimented me on my smile and being both nice & friendly, and that she hoped to see me again soon and that I returned to Cambodia someday, including her email address at the bottom of the note. Still smiling after I finished reading it, I carefully folded the note back into the state I had received it in and placed it into the ziplock plastic bag in the secure thigh pocket of my cargo pants that held my passport, a spare SD memory card for the camera, some larger Cambodian Riel notes, and the new-condition USD $100 bill (the other two having been spent the prior day at the Cambodian Army's Fourth Troops Training Center's indoor machine gun rental range to fire the AK-47, SA-26 and PPSh-41 sub machine guns, and DP-27 light machine gun) for safe keeping. As luck would have it, I would see Happy Girl and Mai again in the vicinity of the Psar Chaa Old Market after dinner, and was able to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation personally to Happy Girl, telling both her and Mai that hopefully I would run into them again, as I really wanted to be able to treat the two of them to a meal or a snack - possibly at the Blue Pumpkin for some ice cream or something from the bakery counter? - before I left Siem Reap, if at all possible. Thankfully, the opportunity had presented itself on my final day in-country.
I walked across Street #9 to meet them, with Happy Girl noticing me as I reach roughly the middle of the tarmac and greeting me with a wave and a surprised smile. We chatted briefly on the sidewalk, with Happy Girl introducing me to their three friends from school, two boys and one girl. I told Happy Girl and Mai that I would like to be able to treat to a snack if they had time, as this was my last day in Cambodia, and when they asked if their school friends could come along, I agreed to include them too. I asked where they felt like going, and Mai pointed to Psar Chaa Restaurant across the street from where we stood, saying that the food was inexpensive but very good for the price. We headed over to the restaurant and were shown to a table near the establishment's open-air front that looked out onto Street #9 that would accommodate the six of us and settled into our plastic chairs as our hostess in a yellow T-shirt and a flora sarong distributed menus around the table, which I handed back and told her that I would just be having tea, and would get the bill for the table. Happy Girl, Mai and their friends, a boy and girl whose ages ranged between that of Happy Girl and Mai and a boy who was a year younger than Mai, chatted among one another in Khmer as they decided what to order, which when the meals arrived turned out to be lunch plates with a protein main dish, rice, papaya salad and sliced vegetable garnish. As they ate, we chatted a bit and I shared some LCD preview images of select photos on my SD card, including some of the prior morning's sunrise over Angkor Wat, and noticed that as we sat some clouds had moved in, with the graying sky taking the edge off the afternoon heat. When the others had finished their meals, I took some individual photos and a group shot before we exchanged our thank you's and goodbye's, bringing my brief time with Happy Girl and Mai to a bittersweet end, but creating a fond memory in the process and reinforcing the idea that sometimes those random encounters with locals off the beaten path when traveling can become the most defining and memorable moments of the journey.
My initial meeting with Happy Girl and Mai had been a unique experience that I consider a fond memory of my visit to Cambodia. It had been during my first early evening in Siem Reap on a day that had started with a early morning flight from Singapore's Changi International - Budget Terminal Four into Siem Reap International, where I was met by my hired guide and drive and, after first checking into the Thunborey Hotel and then purchasing my Apsara Authority Three-Day Pass at the entrance to the Angkor Archaeological Park, did a morning tour of the Angkor Thom temple complex's Bayon Temple (famous for its iconic face towers), the Terrace of the Leaper King and the Terrace of Elephants. After a break for a solo lunch at a sidewalk cafe housed in a renovated, goldenrod with white trim-painted French colonial building with a view of the Siem Reap River across Pokambor Street, I rejoined my guide and driver for a lengthy afternoon tour of Angkor Wat Temple. At the end of the day's itinerary, I was dropped back off at my hotel and after a brief trip up to my room, went off to do a bit of exploring in the vicinity of the Psar Chaa Old Market to find a place to have dinner. As I strolled along Street #8 (a.k.a. Bar Street or Pub Street), I settled on a restaurant that had open-air seating in front of the establishment, with a row of three tables that would accommodate two diners butted up against the short leg of an L-shape wooden railing that aligned with the edge of the curb and established the boundaries of the restaurant's outdoor seating area. I walked up to the podium-like reception counter with a wooden caddy holding a stack of laminated menus mounted on its side as a waitress came out from the restaurant's interior to greet and seat me, grabbing a menu as she beckoned me follow her to one of the available tables located curbside, handing me the menu before leaving to go back inside. After browsing through the menu, I opted for a Cambodian pork kroeung plate which included a side of sautéed mixed vegetables and jasmine rice, with the dry curry-styled dish cooked using the traditional Khmer 'kroeung' spice paste to give it a distinctly Cambodian flavor. Similar to a Thai curry paste, the basic kroeung mixture uses lemongrass, magrut lime zest and leaves, galangal, turmeric, garlic, shallots, dried red chillies and various other rhizome rootstalks such as lesser galanga, which are finely chopped and then ground together using a mortar and pestle, after which the kroeung paste can be used as a marinade or simmered in oil and reduced as a curry base. The waitress returned and took my order, which included a cold bottle of Angkor Beer that was brought back out to me not long after she walked my order inside.
I sipped my beer as I waited for my order and casually surveyed the surrounding, which unsurprisingly included a lot of mainly Western tourists comprised of a mix of young adults in T-shirts, shorts and sandals, baggage-burdened backpackers possibly not long off of their budget bus from Bangkok that had been booked on Khaosan Road, elderly couples or solo seniors finally doing that longed-for world traveling in their retirement, and even some families with young children whose early experiences in an exotic locale may well instill in them a life-long wanderlust. As I gazed out over Street #8 to observe the ambling foot traffic and the occasional passing motor scooter with one to three (or more) riders, Khmer-styled, motor scooter pulling two-wheeled trailer tuk-tuk, or hired car with driver and tourists, I became aware of of the gritty sound of approaching footfalls behind my left shoulder which abruptly slowed as two blurry figures in white entered into my non-lens corrected peripheral vision. I turned to see two Cambodia school girls in uniforms comprised of white blouses over navy blue skirts, both with the dark complexions and facial features suggesting pure Khmer lineage, one older and a bit more full-faced and the other younger and slender, both wearing school knapsacks in addition to shouldered sling bags that I assumed must contain souvenirs for sale given that one girl held an accordion-type plastic package of Cambodia postcards in her hand, and the other some beaded bracelets and necklaces. I knew that I was about to be the recipient of yet another souvenir sales pitch for the day from the two girls, and they probably knew that they had me, seated at a curbside table and waiting for my order to come out, as a captive audience, so I figured I'd indulge them despite not having the desire to buy anything, and maybe enjoy a bit of conversation.
"Sua s'dei. Niak sohk sabaay te?" ('Hello. How are you?' in Khmer, as memorized and likely mispronounced from the back of my Lonely Planet guide book), I said with a smile. The girls eyes lit up a little and their faces expressed a bit of pleasant surprise. "Sua s'dei", the elder girl greeted me in return. "How do you know our language?", she asked as she returned my smile, to which I replied that I only learned a few words and phrases from my guide book, and noted that her English was quite good. They then showed me their items for sale and asked if I wanted to buy anything, to which I replied that I wasn't interested, as I only have a small pack with little extra room, and usually only buy a souvenir T-shirt, and besides, my photos, video clips that can be look at later and memories of my experiences in-country are the best souvenirs for me. They listened and nodded as I spoke, perhaps surprised that my response was more long-winded than just a simple 'No, thanks'. I asked them their names, to which the elder girl did the talking. "My name is Happy Girl, and...", as she nodded her head downward to the left, "...this is my little friend, Mai." I told them my name and then commented on Happy Girl's nickname. "Hmm, Happy Girl is a nice nickname. Earlier today at Angkor Thom there was a vendor girl that came up to me who called herself Spider Girl." Happy Girl's face brightened a little. "My name used to be Spider Girl, but I changed it to Happy Girl." "Yeah, I think Happy Girl sounds like a better name for you than Spider Girl...", I said with a friendly smile, prompting a little smile from her, and also from her quiet little friend Mai, who cocked her head slightly as her eyes tracked upwards to her big friend. Given that they were both wearing school uniforms, I asked how long did they did the souvenir selling after a full day at school, and was told by Happy Girl that, given the distance that they have to walk home and when her mom gets home from work, the could usually do about two hours of wandering vending before continuing on the walk home. During our brief conversation, I learned that Happy Girl was sixteen years of age and that Mai was thirteen, which would have put them in the upper secondary education level (3 years in duration, beginning at 15 years of age) and lower secondary education level (3 years in duration, beginning at 12 years of age), respectively, in the Cambodian school system. Happy Girl and Mai at one point exchanged a quick glance, after which Happy Girl said that they should be going now and that it was nice meeting and talking with me, to which we exchanged our good-bye's and they were soon on their way.
Not long after Happy Girl and Mai left to look for perspective buyers, my waitress returned with my order of pork kroeung, which given my appetite by then I had immediately dug into it found it to be quite tasty. Midway through my meal and just about the time that I was going to start on my second Angkor Beer for the evening, I again became aware of someone approaching me curbside, and as I turned to see who it might be I was pleasantly surprised to again see Mai standing before me, yet a little bit perplexed that Happy Girl was nowhere to be seen, and figured that perhaps she was busy with a customer at the moment. I greeted Mai with a smile, and was about to ask her about Happy Girl when Mai raised her hand and I saw that she had a folded piece of lined note paper with something drawn in ink on the upward-facing surface held between her right thumb and bent index finger. She grip the free edge of the folded paper with her left thumb and index finger and extended it with both hands across the wooden railing the separated us, then raised her head slightly to look up at me and said that Happy Girl wanted her to give me this note. I accepted it with two hands and looked at the paper, upon which was a pen drawing of flower petals and the words 'for good luck' in very neat, stylish and decidedly feminine handwriting with a decorative S-shaped squiggled underline beneath the words. I unfolded the paper to see the full sheet, which revealed that the flower was attached to a single-stemmed plant with leaves, and written around the flower in clockwise fashion starting from the three o'clock were five lines of text that combined together read, "flower, for you, for souvenir, for good luck, forever", which brought a smile to my face. I found it very touching that Happy Girl would draw that for me, and briefly glanced at the other side of the unfolded paper to see that she had also written a note for me. Not wanting to take up Mai's time while I read it, I thanked her for bringing me Happy Girl's note, and asked her to convey my thanks to Happy Girl, as it really made my day and I deeply appreciated it, to which Mai seemed genuinely pleased before she went on her way. After she left, I began to read the note and soon felt a smile form on my face as Happy Girl's note turned out to be very sweet and quite touching. In her note, Raksmey, a.k.a. Happy Girl, wrote how she had drawn the flower for me as a souvenir to remember her and her little friend by, and hoped that I liked her gift, she offered an apology if she had bothered me at all and thanked me for coming to Cambodia, she was very glad to meet and talk with me, and wished me and my family all the best, she complimented me on my smile and being both nice & friendly, and that she hoped to see me again soon and that I returned to Cambodia someday, including her email address at the bottom of the note. Still smiling after I finished reading it, I carefully folded the note back into the state I had received it in and placed it into the ziplock plastic bag in the secure thigh pocket of my cargo pants that held my passport, a spare SD memory card for the camera, some larger Cambodian Riel notes, and the new-condition USD $100 bill (the other two having been spent the prior day at the Cambodian Army's Fourth Troops Training Center's indoor machine gun rental range to fire the AK-47, SA-26 and PPSh-41 sub machine guns, and DP-27 light machine gun) for safe keeping. As luck would have it, I would see Happy Girl and Mai again in the vicinity of the Psar Chaa Old Market after dinner, and was able to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation personally to Happy Girl, telling both her and Mai that hopefully I would run into them again, as I really wanted to be able to treat the two of them to a meal or a snack - possibly at the Blue Pumpkin for some ice cream or something from the bakery counter? - before I left Siem Reap, if at all possible. Thankfully, the opportunity had presented itself on my final day in-country.
I walked across Street #9 to meet them, with Happy Girl noticing me as I reach roughly the middle of the tarmac and greeting me with a wave and a surprised smile. We chatted briefly on the sidewalk, with Happy Girl introducing me to their three friends from school, two boys and one girl. I told Happy Girl and Mai that I would like to be able to treat to a snack if they had time, as this was my last day in Cambodia, and when they asked if their school friends could come along, I agreed to include them too. I asked where they felt like going, and Mai pointed to Psar Chaa Restaurant across the street from where we stood, saying that the food was inexpensive but very good for the price. We headed over to the restaurant and were shown to a table near the establishment's open-air front that looked out onto Street #9 that would accommodate the six of us and settled into our plastic chairs as our hostess in a yellow T-shirt and a flora sarong distributed menus around the table, which I handed back and told her that I would just be having tea, and would get the bill for the table. Happy Girl, Mai and their friends, a boy and girl whose ages ranged between that of Happy Girl and Mai and a boy who was a year younger than Mai, chatted among one another in Khmer as they decided what to order, which when the meals arrived turned out to be lunch plates with a protein main dish, rice, papaya salad and sliced vegetable garnish. As they ate, we chatted a bit and I shared some LCD preview images of select photos on my SD card, including some of the prior morning's sunrise over Angkor Wat, and noticed that as we sat some clouds had moved in, with the graying sky taking the edge off the afternoon heat. When the others had finished their meals, I took some individual photos and a group shot before we exchanged our thank you's and goodbye's, bringing my brief time with Happy Girl and Mai to a bittersweet end, but creating a fond memory in the process and reinforcing the idea that sometimes those random encounters with locals off the beaten path when traveling can become the most defining and memorable moments of the journey.
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| Wat Preah Prom Rath, on Pokambor Street Near the Old Market |
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| A Row of Stone Chedi's (Stupa's) at Wat Preah Prom Rath |
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| Multiple Riders on a Motor Scooter, a Common Sight in Southeast Asia |
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| A Family of Three and a Cambodian-Style 'Remorque' (Trailer) Tuk-Tuk |
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| A Family of Five on One Motor Scooter, the Most I've Seen Yet |
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| Young Siblings on Phsa Krom Street Near My Hotel |
As Happy Girl, Mai and company headed to the right down Street #9 after leaving the restaurant, I turned left, then headed right on Pithnou Street towards the river followed by a left on Pokambor Street where, after rounding a bend in the road, entered the grounds of the Wat Preah Prom Rath Buddhist temple and monastery, which was constructed around the late 15th or early 16th century. The ornate gateway leading into the Wat featured stacked bas-relief faces similar to the face towers of Angkor Thom's iconic Bayon Temple, with the inner compound containing a garden featuring a large statue of a boat, at the bow of which stood the figure of an alms bowl-holding Preah Ang Chang-han Hoy, a revered monk from the late 14th to early 15th century who was fabled to have sail by boat from Siem Reap to the ancient former Cambodian capital city of Longvek on the outskirts of Phnom Penh in search of food. The outside of one of the temple hall was painted with a series of large, colorful murals depicting stories from the life of the Buddha, beneath which was a row of gold-painted curved plaster reliefs of lotus petals upon which some women were writing Khmer inscriptions with green markers, and at one location sat an old cannon mounted on a pedestal atop the jade-colored floor tiles in front of the hall. I walked the grounds of the temple compound for a while, shooting some representative photos of the Wat and then headed back out onto Pokambor Street to swing by my hotel room to pick up some additional Khmer Riel notes to cover dinner, beer or two and such during my last night in town.
There was the usual level of motor scooter traffic on the street near the Old Market, with the typical percentage of passing motor scooters bearing anywhere from two to five riders aboard (including a baby held in the arms of a mother sitting on the small pillion seat behind scooter driver's seat, and perhaps a toddler sitting in front of the father, who was driving while sitting near the front tip of his seat, with the young child leaning forward to grasp the inner portion of the handlebars for stability), so I decided to pause near the bend overlooking the river between Wat Preah Prom Rath and the Old Market to see if I could get a decent shot of a multi-rider motor scooter on the fly, knowing that my camera's auto-focus would have a hard time fixing on a moving target as I attempted to pan the camera to keep it centered. As anticipated, the motor scooters cruised past me at fairly short and regular intervals, often one at a time but sometimes in groups of two or three, sharing the road with cars, trucks, Cambodian-style 'remorque' (two-wheel trailer) tuk-tuks, bicycles, the odd vendor pushcart 'threading the needle' between the flow of traffic and the curb, and sometimes jay-walking pedestrians (in one case, a young boy and girl in their white shirt/ blouse and navy blue shorts/skirt school uniforms stepped off the riverside curb of Pokambor Street into oncoming traffic, then stopped just beyond the dashed center lane dividing line and looking to their right for an opportune break in the traffic flow, as a group of three motor scooters passed close by).
I spent about 10 minutes curbside and watched the passing motor scooters, waiting to pick out the ones that most interested me before I attempted to take photos, with the main criteria being that the motor scooters had more than two passengers. Given that it was later in the afternoon, several of the scooters were driven by the mother or father, most wearing helmets but many not, with two kids in their white and navy blue school uniforms either holding or wearing their school backpacks, but surprisingly not wearing helmets most of the time. Three riders on a motor scooter seemed to be quite common during the time I was taking photos (which resulted in 13 total shots), with some of the women occupying the rearmost portion of the scooter opting to ride sidesaddle. I did see four on one scooter (a mother and three children, nobody wearing helmets), and one even had five riders that included a father, mother, two young children, and a baby held in the arms of the mother at the back of the scooter, again nobody wearing helmets. One mother seated behind her husband driver had their toddler stand upright on her thighs, with the back of the young child's legs resting against the father's back as the mother supported the toddler beneath the arms. Often, the cargo baskets attached the front of the scooter were seen to be filled to capacity while the driver and riders carried more cargo in backpacks, shouldered sling bags or handbags held at their side or on their laps, and in one case the driver appeared to have been carrying a large bag of rice nestled in-between the open space between the scooter seat, the scooter's angled body/frame behind the front wheel, the handlebar column and his spread legs. Satisfied that I likely had enough photos of multiple-rider motor scooters to yield a least a few keepers, I continued up Pokambor Street en route to the hotel, figuring that besides getting some cash from my room I might as well throw some additional charge on my camera battery before the planned dinner and evening Apsara Dance performance and get a little bit of rest while I was at it.
As I neared the Psar Chaa Old Market, I was approach by a group of five street children, a mix of boys and girls in ages that likely ranged from five to seven years, all of whom were skinny and likely malnourished, and similarly dressed in dingy, faded and borderline threadbare clothing. Having encountered such children before during my time in Siem Reap, I knew that they would soon be pleading for me to give them money that I currently did not have, and telling them so would result in their expression of palpable sadness, which would in turn evoke my sadness at not being able to help them out, and thus mentally prepared myself for what was to come. A young, petite girl assumed the role of spokesperson for the group. "We're hungry...", she said in a weak voice that had a low, moaning quality to it, as if she barely had the strength to speak and thus her words could only be rendered in a droning, monotone fashion. "We need food...Give us money...", she continued in reasonably proficient English. I told her that I did not have any money to give them, and was sorry that I couldn't help them out. "Please...", she continued unabated by what I had told her. "We are so hungry. Please feed us..." As bad as I felt, I reiterated that I did not have anymore money with me to give them, and began to continue on my way towards the hotel, though the group also started to keep pace with me, with the girl serving as spokesperson repeating her plea that I please give them money to buy food with. I stopped and turn to face the girl, telling her yet again that I was sorry, but I didn't have anything to offer, which appeared to do the trick as they slowly turned in unison and made their way down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.
One always feels bad after such an encounter, but that often goes along with traveling in the Developing World. As I strolled past the Old Market, I wondered if I would yet again have another random passing encounter with 'Madam S', the impoverished Khmer single mother that had approached me several times since my arrival in town with offers of various sexual services (and in the most disturbing moment experienced during my travels in the East, even suggested if I wasn't interested in any services from her, she could perhaps see about locating a willing young girl for me if I wanted, implying it would be for some financial compensation). After rejecting her multiple propositions and then seeing her on Bar Street on a subsequent night looking particularly sad and dejected, decided to show her a bit of kindness by buying her a Coke at an open-air café of her choosing (apparently owned by the only friendly acquaintance she had come to know since her recent arrival in town) and engage in a bit of conversation while I sipped my beer. It was during that chat that I learned she had come to Siem Reap to try to make money by becoming a street prostitute, something she had done out of desperation to support her child that she had out of wedlock (actually her second child out of wedlock, as the first baby she had been pregnant with out of wedlock had miscarried in the third trimester), and her mother who was looking after her young daughter back at their home village a roughly two-hour drive north of Siem Reap. As she recounted her sad backstory, at one point she became very emotional and began to softly cry, until she caught herself and tried to dismiss her sadness with a sniff and a nervous giggle as she wiped the tears and beginnings of black mascara streaks from the corners of her eyes with her right pinkie finger, which along with my encounters with gravely disfigured, poverty-stricken landmine victims on the streets and among the riverside stilted shanties of Siem Reap ranks among my most poignant memories of Cambodia.
From the junction of Sivatha Blvd. and Pokambor Street, it was a short walk back to the Thunborey Hotel on Phsa Krom Street, where I figured I could charge my camera battery for about 90 minutes or more and still have time to walk over to the Temple Club before the start of the Khmer Apsara Performance dinner show. My hotel was surrounded by a mix of other businesses, including what during the day was a closed roll-up door-shouded storefront unmarked by any signage below what was assumed to be a couple of floors of apartments across the street and kitty-corner from my hotel, but during the first night I had learned was some sort of neighborhood pool hall that I had never gotten around to checking out, and some assorted older wooden, or wood atop a raised concrete or cinder block foundation, Asian-styled houses spaced fairly close together. Two doors down from my hotel, I walked past one such rustic home whose front yard featured a short cast concrete water trough that was filled by way of an old-school hand-cranked pump facet near the base of the combination concrete and wooden steps that lead up the the home's elevated front porch, with the presence of an iron clothes rack hung with plastic hangars, a large plastic tub in the trough and an assortment of steel bowls and plastic strainers suggesting that the setup was used for both dish washing and laundry. What drew my attention to the front yard of the house was a young Khmer kid holding their toddler sibling who watched me pass with curious expressions and cute smiles who, upon my greeting them in Khmer and then pantomimed my desire to take their photos, posed for me so that I could get a shot of them with the front of the house in the background before continuing on.
I spent about 10 minutes curbside and watched the passing motor scooters, waiting to pick out the ones that most interested me before I attempted to take photos, with the main criteria being that the motor scooters had more than two passengers. Given that it was later in the afternoon, several of the scooters were driven by the mother or father, most wearing helmets but many not, with two kids in their white and navy blue school uniforms either holding or wearing their school backpacks, but surprisingly not wearing helmets most of the time. Three riders on a motor scooter seemed to be quite common during the time I was taking photos (which resulted in 13 total shots), with some of the women occupying the rearmost portion of the scooter opting to ride sidesaddle. I did see four on one scooter (a mother and three children, nobody wearing helmets), and one even had five riders that included a father, mother, two young children, and a baby held in the arms of the mother at the back of the scooter, again nobody wearing helmets. One mother seated behind her husband driver had their toddler stand upright on her thighs, with the back of the young child's legs resting against the father's back as the mother supported the toddler beneath the arms. Often, the cargo baskets attached the front of the scooter were seen to be filled to capacity while the driver and riders carried more cargo in backpacks, shouldered sling bags or handbags held at their side or on their laps, and in one case the driver appeared to have been carrying a large bag of rice nestled in-between the open space between the scooter seat, the scooter's angled body/frame behind the front wheel, the handlebar column and his spread legs. Satisfied that I likely had enough photos of multiple-rider motor scooters to yield a least a few keepers, I continued up Pokambor Street en route to the hotel, figuring that besides getting some cash from my room I might as well throw some additional charge on my camera battery before the planned dinner and evening Apsara Dance performance and get a little bit of rest while I was at it.
As I neared the Psar Chaa Old Market, I was approach by a group of five street children, a mix of boys and girls in ages that likely ranged from five to seven years, all of whom were skinny and likely malnourished, and similarly dressed in dingy, faded and borderline threadbare clothing. Having encountered such children before during my time in Siem Reap, I knew that they would soon be pleading for me to give them money that I currently did not have, and telling them so would result in their expression of palpable sadness, which would in turn evoke my sadness at not being able to help them out, and thus mentally prepared myself for what was to come. A young, petite girl assumed the role of spokesperson for the group. "We're hungry...", she said in a weak voice that had a low, moaning quality to it, as if she barely had the strength to speak and thus her words could only be rendered in a droning, monotone fashion. "We need food...Give us money...", she continued in reasonably proficient English. I told her that I did not have any money to give them, and was sorry that I couldn't help them out. "Please...", she continued unabated by what I had told her. "We are so hungry. Please feed us..." As bad as I felt, I reiterated that I did not have anymore money with me to give them, and began to continue on my way towards the hotel, though the group also started to keep pace with me, with the girl serving as spokesperson repeating her plea that I please give them money to buy food with. I stopped and turn to face the girl, telling her yet again that I was sorry, but I didn't have anything to offer, which appeared to do the trick as they slowly turned in unison and made their way down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.
One always feels bad after such an encounter, but that often goes along with traveling in the Developing World. As I strolled past the Old Market, I wondered if I would yet again have another random passing encounter with 'Madam S', the impoverished Khmer single mother that had approached me several times since my arrival in town with offers of various sexual services (and in the most disturbing moment experienced during my travels in the East, even suggested if I wasn't interested in any services from her, she could perhaps see about locating a willing young girl for me if I wanted, implying it would be for some financial compensation). After rejecting her multiple propositions and then seeing her on Bar Street on a subsequent night looking particularly sad and dejected, decided to show her a bit of kindness by buying her a Coke at an open-air café of her choosing (apparently owned by the only friendly acquaintance she had come to know since her recent arrival in town) and engage in a bit of conversation while I sipped my beer. It was during that chat that I learned she had come to Siem Reap to try to make money by becoming a street prostitute, something she had done out of desperation to support her child that she had out of wedlock (actually her second child out of wedlock, as the first baby she had been pregnant with out of wedlock had miscarried in the third trimester), and her mother who was looking after her young daughter back at their home village a roughly two-hour drive north of Siem Reap. As she recounted her sad backstory, at one point she became very emotional and began to softly cry, until she caught herself and tried to dismiss her sadness with a sniff and a nervous giggle as she wiped the tears and beginnings of black mascara streaks from the corners of her eyes with her right pinkie finger, which along with my encounters with gravely disfigured, poverty-stricken landmine victims on the streets and among the riverside stilted shanties of Siem Reap ranks among my most poignant memories of Cambodia.
From the junction of Sivatha Blvd. and Pokambor Street, it was a short walk back to the Thunborey Hotel on Phsa Krom Street, where I figured I could charge my camera battery for about 90 minutes or more and still have time to walk over to the Temple Club before the start of the Khmer Apsara Performance dinner show. My hotel was surrounded by a mix of other businesses, including what during the day was a closed roll-up door-shouded storefront unmarked by any signage below what was assumed to be a couple of floors of apartments across the street and kitty-corner from my hotel, but during the first night I had learned was some sort of neighborhood pool hall that I had never gotten around to checking out, and some assorted older wooden, or wood atop a raised concrete or cinder block foundation, Asian-styled houses spaced fairly close together. Two doors down from my hotel, I walked past one such rustic home whose front yard featured a short cast concrete water trough that was filled by way of an old-school hand-cranked pump facet near the base of the combination concrete and wooden steps that lead up the the home's elevated front porch, with the presence of an iron clothes rack hung with plastic hangars, a large plastic tub in the trough and an assortment of steel bowls and plastic strainers suggesting that the setup was used for both dish washing and laundry. What drew my attention to the front yard of the house was a young Khmer kid holding their toddler sibling who watched me pass with curious expressions and cute smiles who, upon my greeting them in Khmer and then pantomimed my desire to take their photos, posed for me so that I could get a shot of them with the front of the house in the background before continuing on.
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| Sunset from the Thunborey Hotel Top Floor Balcony |
Food Vendors Along Sivatha Blvd. Near Pokambor Street
Back in my hotel room, I put my camera into the docking station to charge for about an hour as I relaxed on the bed and flipped on the TV to surf the channels, which offered a mix of perhaps old soap operas or dramas shot in low resolution, a local news broadcast, some random commercials and something sports-related, all in the Khmer language, and a Western movie in English with Khmer subtitles. Given the overcast and light haze of the late afternoon, the sky visible through the West-facing window began to take on a yellow-orange hue after about 30 minutes, so I decided to head up to the hotel's top floor dining area to take in the sunset, which turned out to be more photogenic than the one I had watched two evening prior for the hilltop Phnom Bakheng Temple. Following sunset, I returned for a bit more channel-surfing as my camera continued to charge, with the docking station finally indicating a full battery status after a bit over an hour of charging. I retrieved my camera and some Khmer Riel notes from my pack and took the stairs down to the lobby to drop off my room key and began the walk to Bar Street, strolling past the retracted roll-up doors of the now-opened pool hall across the street whose dim, unfinished interior made it looked like someone's garage, with a single person playing at one of the tables beneath the pool of illumination cast by the lamp hanging over the table. Just up from the corner of Sivatha Blvd. and Pokambor Street along a narrow open lot, a night street food market had been setup with the food vendor stalls lit by hanging lamps lined up along the sidewalk, with some assorted produce vendors and a number of tables and chairs laid out for diners in the space between the vendor stalls and the wall that spanned the back the open lot, which was covered with a patchwork of tarpaulin canopies. There were a number of customers lined up in front of the vendor stalls and the curb behind them lined with parked motor scooters backed by a slow procession of traffic along Sivatha Blvd. that advanced into the controlled chaos of the Pokambor Street traffic circle, so I shot a couple of shot slow-pan video clips to capture the scene before continuing up the street. A short distance beyond the intersection with Sok San Road, I turned right and proceeded up Bar Street/Street #08 where, roughly midway between The Red Piano bar (now and forever associated with Angelina Jolie, who was said to be a regular there during the filming of Tomb Raider) and Pithnou Street, I arrived at the Temple Club, one of the venues in town that hosts traditional Khmer apsara dance and pinpeat musical ensemble performances.
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| An Apsara Dancer (Right) Depicted in a Carved Stone Bas-Relief Inside Angkor Wat Temple |
Apsara dancing is essentially a form of classical Cambodian ballet stemming from the country's Hindu and Buddhist mythology, which evidence suggests existed as early as the 7th century based on bas-relief stone carvings at Sambor Prei Kuk temples in Cambodia's Kampong Thom province, which had become iconic with Khmer culture. During the 1975–1979 reign of the Khmer Rouge, 90 percent of the country’s artists, included apsara dancers, were killed and the art form was nearly wiped out. Thankfully, a few dancers survived and passed on their knowledge to younger generations to revive the ancient art form, and in 2008 was placed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Originating in Hindu mythology, Apsaras are beautiful female celestial nymphs that visit Earth from heaven to entertain both gods and kings with their enchanting dance. Said to be the wives of the servants at the palace of Indra, the King of the Hindu Gods, apsaras were believed to have protected King Indra by seducing mortals and divinities who were seen as threats with their renowned beauty, who could not resist the celestial dancers’ incredible powers and charm. The apsara dancing style incorporates slow-paced, mesmerizing moves meant to hypnotize audiences, symbolic of the way that apsaras were said to to entrap mortals with their beauty.
The main traits of the dance are the traditional hand gestures, said to number more than 1,500 finger movements and positions, with each movements having its own distinct meaning, from worshiping the spirits of nature by depicting a flower in bloom, to referencing one of the hundreds of Buddhist and Hindu legends. One of the classic hand positions is the 'jeeb', a position that is defined by pressing the thumb and forefinger together and fanning the remaining fingers out, carries many different meanings, including shyness, laughter, love and sorrow. The apsara dance is extremely complex, with the graceful, fluid and intricate dance movements skillfully executed making it look like the women are floating on clouds to mesmerizing effect for the audience, and as such the girls must start training from a young age to ensure that they gain the flexibility that is needed of their hands and feet to smoothly carry out the movements. Apsara dancers perform in elaborate costumes comprised of sampot sarabap, an elegant type of rectangular silk brocade cloth that is draped over the lower part of a woman's body and intricately pleated in the front over which a decorative red belt is worn, a decorative red collar worn just below the neck embellished with detailed gold-colored copper ornaments and beaded designs, a jeweled headdresses (similar to those worn by the apsaras depicted in the carved stone bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat and other temples) with three points or tips, with two rows (for the lead apsara dancer) or one row (for the subordinate apsara dancers) of spherical decorations and draped with garlands, and stunning precious necklaces, earrings, bracelets and anklets. The apsara dance, of which the modern ones performed for the benefit of tourists normally include some rural folk dances, are accompanied by one of the traditional Khmer music forms known as 'pinpeat', in which an orchestra or musical ensemble performs the ceremonial music of the royal courts and temples of Cambodia, in addition to the classical ballets (Lokhon Khol for male dancers, Apsara for female dancers), as well as the traditional Sbek Thom shadow puppetry. The ensembles generally consist of up to nine or ten instruments, and normally includes a ching (cymbal), roneat (bamboo xylophone), pai au (flute), sralai (oboe), chapey (bass moon lute or banjo), gong (bronze gong), tro (fiddle), and various kinds of drums.
The Temple Club's ground floor restaurant seating was pretty full as I entered and made my way over to the stairs against the right-side wall near the back with a posted sign indicating with an arrow that the Apsara Show was upstairs. When I entered the upstairs dining room, I saw that the tables located closer to the stage, which was set against the near end wall of the rectangular-shaped venue, were already occupied, and the dining room looked to already be at roughly two-thirds of its seating capacity with the show due to start in about 20 to 30 minutes. I was able to find an available two-person table located near the midpoint of the dining room's length on the left end row, with my back facing the aisle that ran along the room's left wall, which was convenient it that it would allow me to get up and walk to the stage to take photos and video clips without blocking anyone's view along the way. The stage's dance floor was centered about the width of the dining room, with a stairway leading to a floor above the dining hall located near the left rear corner of the stage. The instruments of the live pinpeat musical ensemble, including a bamboo or wooden xylophone and sets of tuned drums and horizontal gong-like cymbals (laid out in a circular or semicircular fashion around the musician), were setup in an alcove along the right side of the stage, with one of the musicians dressed in a shimmering, formal-looking white silken tunic over a dark maroon sarong squatted over one of the drum or gong kits that was setup on the floor atop a thin maroon-colored rug, and appeared to be making adjustments to it. The outer regions of the stage floor was covered with light grayish linoleum, with the center portion of the stage where the dance would be performed demarcated by large square section of light brown and tan-patterned linoleum. The stage's wooden vertical columns, exposed wooden ceiling beams with decorative carving along their lengths, crown moldings and the walls flanking the stage, were painted red, with the walls accented with shiny gold banyan tree designs either painted on, or adhered to, its surface. The sight of the carved red beams set against the contrasting white-washed ceiling was somewhat reminiscent of the Shinto shrines that I had visited in Japan some twenty-odd years earlier, with the pale gray and rust-colored streaks staining the rear-center stage section of ceiling that indicated water damage on the floor above, possibly from the roof leaking during the last rainy (monsoon) season. Centered along the back wall of the stage was a large, gilded Reclining Buddha statue lying atop a red pedestal similarly accented with shiny gold banyan leaves, depicted as both free-floating and also attached to thin branches, along its side, with some small cylindrical offering vessel flanked by two green offering bowl placed at the base of the pedestal shrine. At both ends, and perhaps a few feet in front of, the Reclining Buddha's pedestal resting place were rectangular wood panels with carved bas-reliefs of apsaras similar to those seen on the stone walls of the Angkorian temples, which were used to partially conceal right and left stage entrances for the dancers. The back wall of the musician's alcove had a large shadowbox-type vertical display case on the floor in front of it, whose deep recess contained a large standing Angkorian statue that looked to be carved from stone, with rows of shiny gold text on the red wall above the display case that I couldn't see clearly enough to read given the distance, but may have been a combination of Khmer and Western scripts. Against the adjacent alcove wall behind the laid out musical instruments was a carved stone statue of a voluptuous bare-breasted apsara dramatically bathed in the bright illumination of a ceiling spotlight. At the rear corner of he musician's alcove was the doorway to a dimly-light hallway leading backstage, which the ensemble member who had been adjusting instruments passed through after he finished his task. The waiter had seen me taking a seat and soon brought over a menu for me to look at, from which I selected the beef sautéed in Khmer spices with cauliflower which included rice and vegetable garnish and an Angkor Beer, after which I killed some time by reviewing the photos and video clips I had taken over the course of the day while waiting for my beer to be brought out.
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| Apsara Dancers' Opening Number at Siem Reap's Temple Club on Bar Street/Street #8 |
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| Apsara Dancers, Now in the Classically-Depicted Costume |
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| The Lead Apsara in White, With Multiple Rows of Headdress Spherical Decorations |
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| Apsara Dancers and the Members of the Pinpeat Musical Ensemble on the Right |
About the time that the waiter brought my meal out to me, the musicians of the orchestral ensemble, all similarly clad as the first musician seen in white silken tunics and dark maroon sarongs, began to file out from the alcove's corner doorway and either sat themselves behind their respective laid out xylophone, pair of drums or circular rack of tuned metallic gongs, or found an open place to sit on the alcove floor, as was the case with a male musician carrying an oboe and a drum, and a female musician sans instrument. Once the musicians were settled in, some final manual adjustments of the placed instruments were made, as a few seemingly random notes and short melodic riffs were struck or played which caused the heads of some of the diners to turn to the stage. I had just begun to dig into my meal when the dimming of the house lights and the raising of some ceiling and floor-mounted lights on stage quickly brought the background murmur of numerous conversations around the dining room down in volume as all eyes turned to the front.
The musical ensemble began to play a slow piece of traditional Khmer music that still had an upbeat feel given what sounded like the Major key of the song, rendered with a wooden xylophone melody whose repeated phrases were separated by brief trills backed by a slow hand-struck drum beats (perhaps two drums, or one drum with a combination finger and heel of the palm strikes?) alternating between dulcet, resonant and overtone-rich base tones and more mid-range, semi-staccato accents. The melody played for a number of barres to set the somewhat hypnotic, mesmerizing mood and perhaps build the audiences' anticipation of the dancers' entrance. The first apsara emerged slowly upward from the stage right dancer entrance steps near the Reclining Buddha statue's head from behind the bas-relief carved wooden panel and began to slowly and gracefully drift barefoot out onto the stage towards the incandescent brightness of the footlights. I noticed that she did not wear the classic apsara headdress featuring the tall, slender crown-like spires above spherical decorations depicted in the base-reliefs of the Angkorian temples, but rather a shorter gilded headdress that tapered inward in stepwise, round layer-cake fashion, with the form of a mythical bird (perhaps like a Thai or Indonesian garuda or Burmese hintha?) on top with its wing kept close to its body but extended outwardly behind it, and ornate vaguely J-shaped extensions on the sides of the headdress that angled downwards behind the ears of the apsaras, whose form reminded me of the mythical Naga serpents seen adorning the columns of Buddhist temples. The headdress had a white and yellow flower garland hanging near the left ear of the dancer, who wore a yellow flower behind her right ear.
(I would later learn through a bit of online research that the particular headdress and the rest of the Khmer Classical Royal Ballet-prescribed costume worn by the dancers for the opening number was actually meant to symbolize a 'devata', as opposed to an 'apsara'. Similar to an apsara, a devata is also a female celestial spirit which likewise appears in bare-breasted bas-relief form on the stone walls of Angkor Wat and other Angkorian temples. Thus, the dancer for this first performance would technically be referred to as a devata rather than an apsara. I also learned that what I watching at the time was a Cambodian Blessing Dance, or 'Robam Choun Por' in the Khmer language, that is one of the highly-stylized Khmer classical dances, or 'Robam Preah Reach Trop', originating from the royal courts, and is traditionally performed by a group of young Khmer girls in odd numbers of 3 to 7 performers at the beginning of a ceremony or special occasion to wish for good health, happiness, prosperity and success.)
She was dressed in an ornate red and gold brocade top that in the front angled downward from left to right across her breasts that was layered over a yellow silk blouse extending below it, with the shimmering sampot sarabap silk cloth draped over her lower body beneath the decorative gold-tinted belt being orange in color, a gold band adorned with a floral medallion worn on her right upper arm, multiple bracelets in both arms (one on the left in the form of a ringed, small white flower garland) and multiple anklets above both feet, with a stemmed metallic cup, light gold in color beneath the spotlights, balanced in her upturned left palm and the upward-extended fingers of her raised right hand curved as if forming a 'half-wai' gesture. As she advanced forward, her free hand started to gently flutter as if in slow motion, reminiscent of the way a long tail of silken algae trailing behind a boulder in a slow river gradually sways in the oscillating vortex cross-currents created as the water flow separates when it goes around the boulder. The devata dancer then slowly transferred the silver cup to her right hand and repeated the graceful gestures with the left hand, slightly bending her knee and ever so slowly swiveling her hips in time to the melody. As she continued towards the center-front of the stage, four additional devatas in similar costume and headdress, wearing either red or yellow flowers tucked behind their right ears, next entered in pairs from the stage right and stage left dancer entrances in turn, the first two with their lower body-draped sampot sarabap silk cloths in red, followed by the second two with sampot sarabap silk cloths in blue. They also had stemmed silver cups balanced in their upturned left palms and the upward-extended fingers of the raised right hands curved in similar 'half-wai' gestures, repeating with graceful fluidity the same hand and body gestures as the first devata to emerge, and similarly shifting their sliver cups to the right hands to replicate the stance of the first dancer.
As I brought up my camera up and began taking video clips of the performance, the five devatas gradually positioned themselves with graceful steps to form a circle about the center of the stage while facing the audience, slowly raising their right arms to hold up their silver stemmed cups, as their left forearms and hands began to execute a series of fluid coordinated movements and gestures with subtle graceful swaying of their lower bodies in time to the rather soothing and relaxing music of the pinpeat ensemble, with the at times splayed and arched-back fingers of the devatas reminding me somewhat of the legong dancers that I had seen perform at Ubud Palace during our prior trip to Southeast Asia. Balancing on their left legs and affecting a slight bow with a bend of the knee, the dancers then slowly bent their right knees to bend their lower legs backwards flamingo-style, some managing to smoothly and gracefully achieve a steep angle relative to the floor while maintaining steady balance, others wavering slightly in a struggle to maintain their balance. With the dancer nearest the front of the stage maintaining eye contact with the audience, the other dancers in the circle slowly turned inward to face one another, after which the troupe of devata dancers briefly formed into a single line facing the audience, followed by moving back to space themselves out across the stage with three of them remaining in the standing position roughly mid stage, and the remaining two, wearing the red silk sampot sarabap cloths, assuming kneeling positions near the front of the stage, as the dancers moved their silver cups to the left hands to perform the gestures and movements with their right hands. The song went through a down-tempo bridge section where the tinny, whiny sound of the multi-reed oboe's melody line gave way to a soft female voice sans microphone that made her singing hard to hear clearly over the volume of other ensemble instruments.
The dancers continued to perform their fluid, mesmerizing movements during the vocal interlude as the two rows of dancers next changed positions on the stage, as the red sampot sarabap-clad devata rose and retreated to yield the front of the stage to the other three apsaras, the first of which that appeared during the show's opening, wearing the orange sampot sarabap cloth, flanked by the two dressed in blue sampot sarabaps. As the vocal melody ended on a final sustained and vibrato-embellished note, the dancers all knelt down and placing their stemmed silver bowls on the ground in front of them as they brought their palms together in a 'wai' gesture of respect to the audience, with the music tempo then increased and the nasally-sounding oboe again carrying the melody. It was at that point that the devatas all leaned forward to retrieve their silver bowls from the floor and held them in their left hands, and as the three dancers near the front of the stage raised up on one knee and the back row of two dancers gracefully rose to a standing position, they began taking fingerfuls of flower petals from within the bowls with their free hands then flicking them forward towards the audience. The two devatas in red from the back row a last came forward with a subtle yet alluring swinging of the hips and gracefully lowered down onto their right knees to to join the other devatas, who simultaneously rose to a standing position and inched back ever so slightly to form a single line at the front of the stage as they continued to flick flower petals towards the audience, with the bodies of the standing dancers affecting a slight rhythmic to-and-fro swaying towards the front of the stage combined with a slow, just barely perceptible rolling of the hip, seemingly in time with each fingerful of petals retrieved from the pedestaled bowl and its subsequently cast out. The devata dancers concluded their blessing dance with a respectful bow to the audience and gracefully turned to slowly exit the stage, as the musical ensemble segued into a somewhat down-tempo, more restrained musical number between the acts of the evening's performance set.
After perhaps a few minutes, five each male and female dancers dressed in more rural-styled attire, each carrying the cut halves of polished coconut shells in their hands, emerged single-file from behind the bas-relief carved wooden panels flanking the Reclining Buddha statue (females to the left of the lying Buddha, makes to the right), paired up into couples, and arranged themselves in a semicircle arc about the center of the stage facing the audience with the guys standing behind their respective paired girls, who sat in a low kneeling position on the soles of their tucked bare feet, the tops of which pressed flat against the stage floor. The guys wore white pullover shirts and black pants with yellow silk sashes called 'changkibin' around their waists, and the girls wore shimmering gold strapless blouse worn over long-sleeved red tights and black sarongs with thin red silk belts around their waists. The costume and the props suggested that the next number was going to be a traditional Khmer folk dance, whose role is to highlight cultural traditions, particularly those of Cambodia's various ethnic minority groups, inspired by countryside lifestyles and practices. Relative to the Khmer classical dance form, the folk dances are characterized by faster paced movements and less stylized gestures, and are accompanied by a 'mahori' orchestra that incorporates plucked and stringed instruments in addition to flute. The polished shells (called 'trolaok nhi-chhmoul') as props indicated the folk dance to be performed was the 'Robam Kous Trolaok' (Coconut Shell Dance), a dance was originating from Romeas Hek district in Svay Rieng province traditionally performed during the groom procession in a wedding ceremony and other festivals and events, like Khmer New Year or anniversary celebrations, to promote a cheerful atmosphere.
The musical ensemble began to play an upbeat, bright and festive-sounding piece of music with wooden xylophones providing the melody backed by a dulcet hand drum rhythm as some of the male ensemble musicians began a rhythmic staccato chanting in time to the music (alternatively switching between syllables - a mix of huh’s, ha’s, hey’s and ho’s - uttered on the beat and syncopated on the off-beats), punctuated repeatedly with drawn out, tongue roll-trilled yelps similar to those heard uttered by the participants of a square dance number, or by the musicians during a Latin cumbia song. Each of the paired dancers began clacking their coconut shell halves together in time to the music, rhythmically extending both arms in unison alternately to the left and to the right in a somewhat hula dance fashion following each clack. At one point, the kneeling female performers raised up slightly, bending their feet such as to elevate their heels off the floor until the soles of their feet were held vertically while keeping their toes flat on the floor to bear part of their body weight, then settling back down to sit on their heels. At this point, each paired standing male dancer began doing an alternating ‘heel-toe, left foot forward, then back, repeat with right foot’-type maneuver, as the paired dancers would first click their own coconut shell halves together, then the female dancer would extend their hands upward to meet the forward-extended hands of the male dancers to clack each other’s coconut shell halves, with the pairs alternatively crossing hands to do left-to-right/right-to-left clacks.
The musical ensemble’s female vocalist began singing the piece’s melody in a somewhat nasally-sounding, higher register voice that further established the festive, happy mood of the dance, with her singing style somewhat reminiscent of some Indian female vocal and tabla drum musical pieces I had previously heard and enjoyed. (Back in the 80’s, I used to listen to KKUP, an FM community radio station, branding itself with the slogan “People’s Radio” broadcasting at a frequency of 91.5 MHz out of Cupertino and serving the south San Francisco Bay Area with a variety format that included jazz, blues and world music. One of my favorite shows was Tuesday evening’s Classical Indian Music hosted by Ravati Sampot, which fostered in me an appreciation for traditional Indian vocal and instrumental music.) The female dancers then rose to their feet and the paired couples (the male dancers standing behind their female partner) formed a circle about the center of the stage, with the females now joining in with the heel-toe step as the couples line-danced in a single-file counter-clockwise direction, swinging their arms from side to side as they double-clacked their coconut shell halves together in time to the festive music, the females periodically pausing to do a half-twirl to face their partners, who simultaneously did a full-twirl in place, and clacked shells with them. They again paired up in two parallel lines across the front of the stage facing the audience, first the females in front of their partners followed by the males getting their turn at the front of the stage, with more coordinated coconut shell-clacking twirls and body gestures, and some of the fancy legwork/footwork by the males being reminiscent of the Irish step-dancing exhibited in Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance performance (which ran in rotation on the Public Broadcasting Stations after the initial Pledge Drive premiere), though their arm gestures had more of a The Bangles’ Walk Like An Egyptian vibe. The troupe again formed up into a semicircle, during which a bit of partner-swapping went on as the male dancers would alternatively turn left and right to tap (or rather clack) the female dancers to either side of him, with the performer at the ends of the semicircle near the front of the stage that lacked clacking partners during their outward turns symbolically waving their coconut shell in the direction of the audience. The dancers then turned inwards towards the center of the semicircle, alternatively taking a step forward and back to rhythmically contract and expand the semicircle, gradually raising their shell halves forward and upwards on the inward advances, and lowering them behind their backs during the outward retreats. The females in the semicircle next stood in place as the male dancers began to circle around their female partners, followed by the males then forming a larger outer ring around the smaller inner ring formed by the females, with the male ring rotating clockwise in a hop-skip fashion around the smaller, counter-rotating ring of female dancers, as the members of both ring clacked their shell halves together to the rhythm with occasional clacking between the rings in passing. Both rings of dancers abruptly stopped in mid-step and held their stance for about a second, the males balanced on one foot with the other raised leg bent at the knee and angled outward, with both rings coiling into each other and forming separate angled male and female lines that interlaced through one another in a precise and orderly fashion on the way back to their respective corner stage exits adjacent the Reclining Buddha pedestal, as the musical ensemble substantially dropped the tempo of the final barre of the accompanying musical piece to emphasis the close of the performance.
Next up on the evening’s dance program after a brief interlude was the Apsara Dance performance, which was the driving factor in my choosing The Temple Club for the final dinner in Siem Reap before the return flight to Singapore, versus the other myriad indoor and al fresco dining options that were available in the vicinity of the Psar Chaa Old Market. The pinpeat ensemble began to play a somewhat somber piece of music that consisted of a lightly-tapped xylophone establishing the melody whose lilting progression of note phrasings were bridged with trills on the root note of the song's key, sometimes with a couple of beat's dramatic pause at the start of the bridge before the first note was struck, and each note after the one preceding it coming at an ever-increasing tempo so as to create a sense of anticipation. The xylophone was backed by slow and (at the beginning, at least) sparse drum accompaniment and the sralai, a quadruple palm leaf reed wind instrument with an only slightly conical body bore (versus its double reed, conical bore Western oboe cousin), which added a slower, tinny and almost nasal-sounding, counter-melody to that of the xylophone with long-sustained notes that sounded like a wailing lament vaguely reminiscent of a bagpipe. The start of the music again had the effect of lowering the murmur of conversation and the clank of tableware on ceramic plates as the stage lights were brought up. A single apsara slowly entered the stage the from behind the faux bas-relief partition the shields the view of the backstage passage nearest to the Reclining Buddha statue's head and gracefully advanced forward into the bright pool of illumination cast by the footlights that separated her from the audience, during which her body fluidly tilted and swayed in a slow, wavelike motion that, starting at her bare feet and slender crossing ankles, in turns caused her hips, waist, shoulders, neck and head to respond in kind and continue the movement.
Both the apsara's blouse and the sampot sarabap silk cloth covering her lower body, which draped from beneath a deep ruby-red belt decorated along its center and edges with a shiny gold floral motifs and fringed along its bottom with hanging leaf-shaped gold medallions, was white. She wore a decorative collar in a color, floral motif and hanging adornments that matched her belt, which draped over her shoulders and across her chest with a curved plunging neckline and a triangular base that overlapped her white blouse. There was a pair of thick gold, neckless-like chains branching out in a V-shape fashion from the inverted apex of the collar's bottom and fell in arcs down around her hips, accentuating the alluring shapeliness of them despite her otherwise slender build, adding another element to her being an example of what I perceive to be classic Khmer feminine beauty (in my opinion). Similar to the devata welcome dance that open the evening's performance, she wore a pairs of gold upper armbands and anklets, a large yellow flower behind her right ear, and gathered short strings of hanging white flower garlands tipped with yellow flowers hanging from the left side of her gilded apsara headdress, which given the six circular medallions laid out in two arched rows of three, established her as the 'lead apsara'.
As she continued her advance towards the front of the stage, her arms, hands and fingers skillfully executed a series of slow and gracefully fluid movements and subtle yet intricate gestures to an almost mesmerizing effect. The mood of the accompanying music piece, whose relaxed tempo was carried by the dulcet, rhythmic hand drum taps and the muted resonant tones of mallets striking wooden xylophone slats, was further imbued with emotion as the female singer joined in, with the solemn yet wistful-sounding melody rendered by her soothing high-register voice in an emotive vibrato-laden, note-blending Legato vocal style lending an almost hypnotic quality to the opening of the performance. The symbolic hand gestures formed by the lead apsara was a visual testament to the level of dexterity and degree of limberness that could be achieved through years of training beginning at a young age, as her long, slender fingers at times arched upwards and back in a height and radius that I wouldn’t have thought humanly possible without joint dislocation or extreme discomfort, which her serene expression and Mona Lisa-like smile showed no sign of. Her feet and ankles exhibited a similar level of limberness and elegance of movement with each graceful, unhurried step taken in a smooth, slinking feline fashion, at times pausing to rise high on her toes with her slender ankles crossed and feet rotated inward with her toes opposing one another in a manner befitting of a prima ballerina, as she affected a subtle sedate rhythmic swaying of her hips that set her upper body in a slow sympathetic tilting from side to side. Some of the intricate coordinated arm movements and hand gestures were vaguely reminiscent of those used in Hawaiian hula dancing, with at one point the fingertips of her hands gracefully coming together roughly mid chest level then slowly drifting down in unison to rest on one hip, with the elbow of the corresponding arm bent outward and the wrist bent back at a steep angle to rest the fingertips just above her shapely hip on the ruby-red and gold medallion-adorned belt as the opposing hand moved back up to the mid chest to expertly execute a series of stylized symbolic hand gestures. As she danced the angle of the bright footlights cast a shadow puppet-like image of her form and elegant movements on the back wall and ceiling behind her, and above the tops of the bas-relief embellished partitions that concealed the performers' stage entrances beneath the Reclining Buddha pedestal, the tops of the gilded and spired headdresses worn by two of the subordinate apsaras that would be soon joining the lead apsara on stage appeared.
At the front of the stage the lead apsara, rhythmically swaying with her right foot positioned to the left of her body centerline with a slightly bent knee, and her left foot positioned to the right of her body center and on its bent toes with the heel held nearly vertical to the sedate tempo of the dulcet hand drum, the reverberant trill-embellished notes of the xylophone and the lilting melody rendered of the female singer's emotive voice. Shifting her weight so that her right heel was roughly inline with her center of gravity while facing the audience, she gracefully brought her left foot high up behind her by bending her left knee enough that her calf appeared to angled up at least 60 degrees above the horizontal, as she slightly deepened the bend of her right knee to smoothly lower her stance. The resulting contour of her outer right thigh and the bend of her jutted right hip clad in the taught white sampot sarabap cloth, accentuated by the lines of her red medallion-embellished belt, and the form-fitting white blouse against her torso describing a shallow, elongated S-shape, as she slowly raised and extended her upturned palm up and outwards to the audience as if directing oncoming traffic to stop at an otherwise uncontrolled intersection, with the right upturned right palm similarly extended smoothly outward to the right, a slight bending & straightening of the right elbow together with a subtle bending of the wrist setting the upturned palm into a softly fluttering motion as if buffeted by a light breeze.
Straightening her palms and extending both arms out to the side, the left arm a bit below shoulder level and the right arm down at a moderate angle with the fingers arching steeply backwards, the lead apsara gracefully executed a bit less that a one and a quarter turn to her left as the fingers of the left hand smoothly arched backwards to an impressive extend, then bending her elbows to bring the hand in closure to the body to perform a series of intricate symbolic hand gestures, at times with individual fingers curled inwards while others arched backwards or thumbs splayed outwards, all executed smoothly and fluidly before bringing her hands together and resting them on her right hip. At this point, two of the subordinate apsara dancers were glimpsed briefly peering around the corners of the performer entrance partitions as they awaited their cue to take the stage, one of them revealing a sliver of her red sampot sarabap cloth as her left arm then extended slightly beyond the edge of the partition to practice some symbolic hand gesturing. The lead apsara next did a quarter to her right, presenting the audience with a left profile view and, while extending her right arm forward and left arm back, bent her knee to slowly raise her calf upwards to about 70 degree angle above the stage floor as she balanced flamingo-style on her right foot, her heel parallel with and nearly touching the wrist of her extended left arm as the back of her bent hand formed a V-shape with the sole of her left foot, smoothly lowering her pose with a slight deepening of the right knee bend and briefly holding the position.
The lead apsara then gracefully transition back to a forward-facing standing position, her hands brought together and into contact at the fingertips as they were lowered to rest at her right hip, as the Pinpeat ensemble's musical piece transitioned into something a bit more up-tempo in time signature and livelier in mood. As the lead apsara again pivoted to execute sequence of intricate hand gestures in left profile face the audience from front center stage with her left hand held at the middle of the stomach just above her red belt and her right hand held raised with palm forward. At that moment, four subordinate apsaras (two from each Buddha-side stage entrance, the first wearing red sampot sarabap cloths, the second wearing blue sampot sarabap cloths) entered the stage at a much quicker pace than the lead apsara had, with their arms and hands already held in the same position that the lead had assumed prior to their entrance. The four subordinate apsaras (their gilded and jeweled headdress topped with three spire-like points embellished with a single row of spherical decorations at their base establishing their ranking status) positioned themselves about the lead apsara, those with the orange sampot sarabap cloths up front to either side of her and the two with the blue sampot sarabap cloths roughly a third of the way from the back of the stage and slightly closer together than the two up front so as to be visible to the members of the audience. In unison they next turned to present left profiles to the audience while maintaining their arm and hand positions, then after a slight pause the dancers extended their arms (right arm directly behind them, left arm directly forward) and performed a precise sequence of highly-dexterous gestures. Bending and raising their left knees, they balanced on their right foot, flexing the supporting right knee slightly to affect a single slow, graceful vertical bobbing motion of their upper bodies before smoothly turning by rotating on the right ankle, with the left foot contacting the ground to the right of the support foot with the ankles crossed, to again face the audience, with their left palm held up and extended forward and the other palm held up and extended to their right side, with a slight flexing of the right elbow affecting a rhythmic horizontal bobbing motion of the palm. The sequence of graceful, yet precise and highly coordinated, movements appeared to be very similar to those that the lead apsara performed solo in the beginning of the performance.
With the left hands of the subordinate apsaras away from the front of their stomachs, it was seen that each of them had a single artificial flower (shiny gold in colored, likely metallic given its apparent rigidity and depicted as long-stemmed in form) tucked into the waistbands of their sampot sarabap cloths, with the leftmost apsara on the stage having two in hers. The dancers then performed a series of graceful coordinated limb and elegant body movements smoothly executed with feline agility in concert with the symbolic hand gestures, adding in subtle head and neck movements similar to those seen in Indian classical dancing to compliment, and at times served as a count point to, the supple and rhythmic swaying of their bodies. The four subordinate apsaras then slowly lowered themselves to a forward facing kneeling position, their hands lightly resting on the tops of their thighs as the lead apsara stood front and center between them on the stage, and slowly brought her arms down and together until her right hand held horizontal with the fingertips resting on her right hip, with the fingertips of the left hand angled down to rest on top of them. The tempo of the music was then slowed and the percussive strikes lightened as if to fade the melody down in both level and mood. After some gentle, deliberate arm movements and hand gestures, the lead apsara performed a slow, stylish half turn and paused with her back to the audience, her left foot gracefully slid back to stop, with raised heel and slender ankles crossed, beyond her right foot, as the four kneeling apsaras brought their palms and fingertips together as if to perform a wai gesture. The lead apsara then turned to the audience and began to slowly dance with gracefully fluid and intricately precise movements, her body affecting a slow rhythmic swaying that the kneeling apsaras also began affect to a lesser extent. As the lead apsara continued to dance, the others began to perform symbolic hand gestures from their kneeling position, before shortly rising to their feet and mimicking the movements of the lead apsara, at one point moving to the four corners of the stage with their backs to the lead apsara, who danced at center stage.
The four subordinate apsaras then rotated in unison to face the center of the stage as the simultaneously removed the gilded artificial flowers from the waistbands of their sampot sarabap cloths (the front left apsara removing both flowers from her waistband) with their right hands, then move in a bit closer to encircle the lead apsara. The apsaras then went down on knee and extended their right arms outward as if offering their gilded flowers to the lead apsara, with the fingertips of their upturned left palms lightly touching the bottom tip of the elbow joint, referred to as the olecranon of the ulna bone in human anatomy. (This fingertip-to-elbow gesture when handing or offering something to a person whose relative proximity only allows that the object be passed with one have versus the traditional two hands is an often-seen practice per Burmese etiquette.) The lead apsara then took one of the two flowers held out by her subordinate, after which the four apsaras settled into full kneeling positions as the continued to hold out their flowers with the right hand and began performing symbolic gestures with their free left hands as the lead apsara continued her graceful dance moves and gestures at center stage with her flower held raised in her right hand. The four kneeling dancers shortly lowered their left hands onto their laps and brought their gilded flowers to their noses as if to smell its fragrance, as did the lead apsara, and following that all the apsara dancers returned their flowers to the waistbands of their sampot sarabap cloths, with the kneeling apsaras again rising to their feet to again follow the steps of the lead as the melody of the pinpeat ensemble bridged into a section a bit more bright and festive.
The dancers began to perform more coordinated movements and footwork that showcased their ballerina-like agility, balance and grace of movement, right arms raised upwards with a 90 degree bend at the elbow, left hands held mid abdomen in a symbolic gesture, briefly forming a semicircle about the front of the stage on their knees with the lead apsara assuming the forward center position and performing a series of fluid arm and hand movements, then rising and turning to present left profiles as they balanced on their right legs with their left calves bent back to form steep angles with the stage floor, arms extended forward to provided counterbalance as fingers bent to seemingly unnatural degrees or recurve to achieve the prescribed hand and body poses with precision and apparent ease. Moving back to the front of the stage, the apsaras again removed the gilded artificial flowers from their waistbands with their right hands, holding them out and rotating/twirling them in slow motion with their left hands lightly resting on their hips, as they sauntered in line with a slight swaying of the hips in time to the music in a roughly oval-shaped path around the stage to the melody of the xylophone, stopping along the back of the stage for some alternating to and fro steps, which they repeated after stepping back to the front of the stage. They then briefly knelt, the right hands holding the flower angled upward across their chests, and placed their gilded flowers on the floor in front of them. Placing their joined hands first on their laps, the apsara dancers then gave the audience high respectful wai gestures, the fingertips of their joined palms coming up to the level of the circular medallions on their apsara headdresses, holding the wai for a couple of seconds before lowering their pressed palms to dwell at sternum-level for a second before again picking up their gilded flowers.
The music again stepped up a bit in tempo and liveliness as the kneeling apsaras continued the slow flower twirling with their right hands as their left hands and upper body performed coordinated movements, then rose and continued the apsara line dancing, again balancing on the right foot while the left lower leg was swept back to bring the heel high up behind them, the fingers of the left hand arched steeply backwards with a slight flexing of the elbow affecting a rhythmic to and fro motion of the upturned palm, followed by a coordinated fluid twirl by the line of apsara dancers, with the lead apsara in the center. The subordinate apsaras to the left of the lead apsara then moved to line up behind the subordinates to the lead's right, with the line of subordinates then following the lead apsara as she took them on a serpentine course that first took them around the perimeter of the stage first in a counter-clockwise direction, then following through a tight buttonhook turn at the front of the stage to retrace the route in the clockwise direction, and a final front stage buttonhook turn to retrace the stage perimeter again in the counter-clockwise direction. Once the apsaras dancers were back at the front of the stage with the lead apsara in the center, the apsaras turned their backs to the audience and converged into a semicircle near the center of the stage, then turned to faced the audience as the final notes of the Pinpeat ensemble were played, and were soon replaced by the audience's applause. As seeing the apsara dance performance itself was my sole reason for coming to The Temple Club and I had finished my dinner, I decided that it was time to settle up my tab and continue on my final evening stroll around Siem Reap. (I would later learn that the evening's perform also included some additional folk dance performances following the Apsara Dance number that I missed out on by leaving early, plus also a chance to have my photo taken with the apsara dancers.)
Leaving the Temple Club, I headed up Street #8, and figured I’d find an Internet café in the walk back to the hotel to check email, and touch base with a coworker to let him know that I would be flying back to Singapore in the morning and again have regular email access, save for the four days that my wife and I would be in Yangon visiting with family. I turned right on Street 2 Thnou and continued south in the direction of the Psar Chaa Old Market and Pokambor Street, as I vaguely recalled seeing an internet cafe in the vicinity of the Blue Pumpkin Bakery, where I had grabbed a quick snack a couple of times during my stay in town. One of the business establishments I came upon during my walk was a massage parlor whose door was propped open, with two Khmer girls, both perhaps in their early to mid-twenties with dyed and/or and highlight-streaked hair, dressed in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, sitting on the business' front step, both two-handed texting on compact cellphones cradled in their palms. I slowed my pace to a near-crawl so as to get a quick passing glimpse inside the massage parlor, which only revealed a swath of a somewhat dimly-lit reception area with a closed door along the visible portion of the back wall that presumably opened to a dimmer hallway lined with the doors or hanging curtains of private massage rooms, similar to the windowless, nondescript (save for the establishment's name and a neon or lit dot matrix 'MASSAGE' sign on the wall) Asian day spas in the USA at a strip mall near you. The Khmer girls took notice of my slowed passing and shifted their gazes from their cellphone screens up to me. “Massage? You want massage?”, one of them asked, both of them appearing younger from this vantage point than they did during my approach. “No, thanks.”, I responded, “just looking...”, to which they both nodded in acknowledgement then looked back down to their cellphones to resume texting. In hindsight, and if not for the early morning departure for the return to Singapore, I probably should have given the body massage a try (despite not having a desire to do so back in the day, and only learning a few years later Stateside how much I enjoyed a relaxing full body massage, particularly being oiled up and walked on), as a one-hour private room session in Cambodia could have likely been had for USD $8 or less (excluding tip), versus anywhere from $30 to $75 back home.
A bit further down, just beyond the intersection of Street #2 Thnou and Street #9, I found the internet cafe I was looking for and entered, telling the staff person at the front counter that I needed to briefly use a terminal to check my email, who motioned for me to follow him down the central aisle flanked by short perpendicular rows of tables containing three desktops to an available seat, then tapped some keys to unlock the screen and start my session. I had an aisle seat that was essentially facing out the opened front door, to which my wife (had she been there with me at the time) would have warned me that sitting such that I was facing the door would have been bad Feng Shui given the level of ‘chi’ energy coming into the building through the doorway, some of which could have been negative chi. I opened a web browser and logged first into the main email account the my wife and I share to scroll through the most recent inbox content, much of it being promotional pings from the retailers we have online accounts with, then logged out on the shared account and into my personal email, with which I use to keep in touch with my friends, including current and previous coworkers. I composed a quick email to my friend and coworker John, reminding him that I would be back in Singapore tomorrow by early afternoon (local time/date) and checking work email daily should anything come up. As he was a fellow shooter and also a fellow hand-loader (the hobby of the home re-manufacturing of spent ammunition shell casings using a mechanical press, caliber-specific steel reloading die sets, and purchased gunpowder, primers and bullets, which allows substantial cost savings and the custom tuning of the ammunition to achieve the maximum possible accuracy for a given firearm), I briefly filled him in on my full-auto firing session at the Cambodian Army base the prior day, figuring he would have appreciated it. Having sent that email, I quickly browsed the news headlines via the Drudge Report (a very popular news link aggregator website at the time whose creator, Matt Drudge, had a reputation for being the first to break important stories long before the mainstream media, and with humorous, quirky headline attached to the links), then logged off and settled up my bill before continuing down the street.
At the end of Street 2 Thnou, I turned right onto Pokambor Street and made my final stroll past the south end of the Psar Chaa old market, then continued down to the busy intersection with Sivatha Boulevard amid the heavy flow of motor scooter and foot traffic in the vicinity of the collection of street food and produce vendor stalls and rows of dining tables beneath tarp canopies and lit hanging light bulbs, then turned left when the traffic allowed and followed the course of the Steng Siem Reap River a short distance to the quiet, dimly-lit side street where my hotel was located. It was during that final stretch that I realized I had neglected to do any souvenir shopping while in and around Siem Reap, though not for lack of insistent offers from wandering vendors or shopkeepers standing out front and surveilling the passing tourist, hopefully calling out to anyone who stopped to browse or slowed to suggest a possible interest in something on the table or hanging from a rack or suspended pole. If nothing else, I should have at least bought myself a Cambodian krama scarf, preferably in the red and white checked pattern often seen in color photos of Khmer Rouge soldiers, or one of those light-colored T-shirts with a medium blue silkscreen image of Angkor Wat Temple with the French word ‘Cambodge’ and the Khmer script equivalent in an arched banners above and below the image, respectively. I felt a tinge of regret about my oversight, but figured a could always buy some souvenir at the Siem Reap International Airport after checking in for my flight back to Singapore in the morning. (Unbeknownst to me, my morning flight back to Singapore would have a one hour layover at Phnom Penh International Airport for a passenger exchange, giving me extra time to browse through a souvenir shop and select a black shirt with a gold silkscreen of a stylish Khmer-style Buddha head and the words Artisans d'Angkor, Cambodia; unfortunately the shirt shrunk excessively despite being washed in cold water and hung dry and ended up being too small for me to comfortably wear.) Entering my hotel, I swung by the front desk to retrieve my room key for the last time, the male staff member behind the counter handing it to me, but this time not extending the offer to send a girl up to my room as he had a couple of nights prior.
As I packed my things for my early-morning pickup by my guide and driver for the ride to the airport, I mentally flipped through the memories of the past four days in Cambodia: the majestic temple ruins visited, the awe of witnessing sunrise over Angkor Wat; listening Mr. Sunny's recounting of a firefight with Khmer Rouge hold-outs, as the similar-looking stretch of jungle trail that we hiked to the riverbed carvings of Kbal Spean prompted his sudden recall of the harrowing encounter; my sampling of Khmer cuisine, culture, and Siem Reap's local color, and particularly my becoming acquainted with Happy Girl and her little friend Mai; the day's unplanned stroll through the traditional silk weaving workshop during my wandering along Sivatha Blvd.; the adrenaline rush of firing automatic weapons at the Cambodian army base's indoor range and the surprise of a few unintended rounds of 7.62x54R sent downrange as the old Russian DP-27 LMG's sear failed to re-engage after releasing the trigger; my chance - and at times challenging - encounters with impoverished landmine victims and the street solicitations of street prostitutes; the beers had and pleasantries exchanged with the lovely Ms. Sunitha at Soksan Palace, despite being 'bar fined' USD $5 for NOT opting to take her to one of the back rooms for a massage with happy ending. The country of Cambodia, its rich cultural heritage and the warmth and kindness of the Khmer people had truly struck a resonant chord within me, and I would be leaving it with fond memories and the desire to one day return to experience more of it.
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