Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 67

Now for the last day in Cambodia. We snapped a picture of the pool area at the hotel, since it was kinda cool. It is a very small pool, it is more for cooling off in than it is for swimming.

The first temple of the day was Ta Prohm (originally named Rajavihara), which is another Bayon-style temple. It was built by King Jayavarman VII as a Buddhist monastery and there is a stele that dates the temple to 562 AD, although most of the information I found says 1186. This temple has not really been reconstructed and has lots of ruins with the jungle encroaching on it. The temple's stele records that the site was home to more than 12,500 people (including 18 high priests and 615 dancers), with an additional 800,000 souls in the surrounding villages working to provide services and supplies. The stele also notes that the temple amassed considerable riches, including gold, pearls and silks. Expansions and additions to Ta Prohm continued as late as the rule of Srindravarman at the end of the 15th century.

If the temple looks familiar, it was used as a location in the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (with Angelina Jolie).

This is a really good view of how the jungle is taking over the temple, with the tree and it's roots climbing basically over the roof of the temple.

In case you are wondering what type of trees these are, they are Khmer Spoong trees, which are like a banyan tree. In addition, the tree is often encased in the wandering tendrils of the charay, which is a thick vine.

Here's Susan peeking out from behind the tree root, trying to give a view of just how large these tree roots are.

Next up is Banteay Srei, which is a 10th century template dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. It is unique in that it is built almost entirely of red sandstone, which made it easy to decorate with elaborate wall carvings. It is also the only major temple at Angkor (Siem Reap) that was not built by one of the kings, but instead, was built by a counsellor to king Rajendravarman II. The name Banteay Srei means citadel of the women, or citadel of beauty, and most likely comes from the bas relief carvings.

It has a small gateway for the entrance with one of these elaborate carvings above it.

Here you can get a view of the size, which is much smaller than many of the other temple complexes.

The site consists of three concentric rectangular enclosures, each with their own gateway.

This gateway shows Siva Nataraja.

Again, more views of just how much of this intricate carving there is.

Okay, not sure why we took this picture .. but there are cows! Perhaps it was to try to show how skin and bones they are .. almost all of the cows we saw were SOOO thin.

Then we stopped by the Land Mine museum. It was opened in 2007 and is both a museum and a home for some number of children, many who have been affected in one way or another by land mines.. The owner is a Aki Ra, who used to clear landmines with a stick and kept around lots of defused ordinance.

Then we were headed back to town and we stopped at this little road-side market where they made candy from sugar cane. They put the juice in this pot and cook it over an open fire, stirring it pretty much constantly. Once they cook it just the right amount, they can make small candies out of it, which, of course, is basically pure sugar. We bought a small jar of it, which you can either eat like that or can use it just like you would a sugar cube.

Lunch was at this little tiny cafe. It started with a spring roll traditional Khmer sour soup with preserved lemon and chicken (Chicken lemon pickle soup).

Next up was a green mango salad (which I fast became a huge fan of!)

Then seafood amok, which is seafood steamed in a savoury coconut-based curry. Dessert (which is a terrible picture) was Nhum Eh, which is glutinous flour served with sweet ginger and coconut milk. The glutinous flour part doesn't sound great, but it is really good.

Second to last on the agenda was the Tonle Sap (which means Great Lake). It is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, and it has two kinda unique characteristics. First is that it expands and shrinks dramatically based on dry season or wet season. The flow also changes direction during monsoon season. These first pictures are just of the rice fields that we passed as we were going there. These were quite green, which was interesting since everything else that we had seen was very brown.

Then we boarded a small boat (just us and the driver) for our trip out into the lake. It took a few minutes on a small "river" to get there. You can see how brown the water was. As we were heading out, we saw several fishermen throwing nets out in hopes of catching some fish.

And here we are actually getting out into the lake itself. You can start seeing houses, which are literally floating villages including houses, schools, and stores.

So here we tried to get a semi-closeup shot of one of the floating houses. Our guide was telling us that many of these are ethnic vietnamese that ended up living here when they fled the fighting in Vietnam (not sure how true that is). You can even see how they are even building houses there, already floating.

We stopped at one of the "tourist-trap barges" which contains a fish and crocodile farm. Here you can see the little crocodiles, and then the thing that looks like just water is a fish tank (look closely and you can see the fish in there).

We headed past the shops and up to the roof to get a better view of the whole area.

Last was the Artisans d'Angkor. This is one of several workshops that create job opportunities for young people living in rural areas of Cambodia. It also has been helpful in reviving some of the traditional Khmer crafts that were being lost.

First up was handmade silk and they are one of the finest silk producers in the country. They do both silk producing and weaving here.

Then there is painting. They do a variety of different painting techniques and you can see a few of them here. It is interesting to see the progression as they paint either statues or plates, where each person does one color and then it goes down to the next person.

This is copper hammering, where they make things like copper boxes with designs. They hammer out the design in the copper on a sheet and then form it into the box.

Sandstone carving was interesting, you can see how they start with the block, then trace the outline and using a saw, make a rough copy. Then they use a variety of smaller tools to get it down to the final shape.

They also use a similar technique for wood carving.

Random pictures ... this is a great statue in the middle of a circle in Siem Reap, near our hotel.

Walking around, we found a Soviet Dental Clinic ... I didn't know that anyone still used the term "Soviet", and are the Russian's known for their dental work???

Our hotel (the restaurant part) at night.

Dinner at another great little local place in downtown Siem Reap called Damnak Khmer.

I went with a local cocktail, while Tom went for the Cambodian beer.

Dinner started with a pomelo salad with a pancake roll

Then came the Chicken Satay and Eggplant minced port with steamed rice.

As many places, the dessert was tropical fruits, this time, pineapple.