Cambodia ... Phnom Penh and Siem Reap

So, Cambodia ... land of beautiful babies ... isn't this little baby so sweet? I got there pretty tired. I taught until 12 and rushed to the airport. I got to Phnom Penh around 3 and found a taxi to the hotel. Nice hotel ... the Cambodiana. My boss, Jan, had recommended it, as there are great views of the Mekong River and the sunrises are very beautiful. It had been a very long day and I hadn’t eaten since 5 or so, so I was close to a little meltdown when I was given a room that reeked of cigarettes and had a view of a concrete pad. I asked if it could be changed and the kind man helping me with my bags tried, but the hotel was full. Since I had booked the hotel several weeks previously, I was very upset. But I decided to go for a walk while the light was nice and have something to eat and CALM DOWN. Which I did.There is a lovely walkway along the river in Phnom Penh and I strolled along, looking for a restaurant. I finally found one with a balcony and parked myself at the railing and watched the world and one elephant go by. I saw so many interesting sights... lots of women (and some little girls) carrying big baskets of lotus pods and peanuts and ??? on their heads. By the time I headed back I was in a better mood, and I really enjoyed watching the dancing and exercise sessions going on at various points along the river. I really felt that I could see signs of deep poverty that I haven’t been so aware of in Vietnam ... or at least Ho Chi Minh City. I saw one little guy ... just a toddler really, walking along his mother. He was carrying a big bag of plastic water bottles ... no shoes, no pants, no chance to be a little boy. Omigoodness, how sad. We are so fortunate. So, it was with some gratitude and some hope that I asked if I might be able to change rooms the next day. When I explained about the smoking, the kind young man in reception switched rooms for me ... not a non-smoking room, but no odour to speak of ... and it had a river view! So happy me.
The next day, after a BEAUTIFUL sunrise and a GREAT breakfast, I went next door to the Himawari Hotel to go on a site tour. This was the view from my bedroom window in the morning, so you can see why I was so happy. All the CamTESOL presenters had been given an opportunity to visit various locations in order to familiarize ourselves with Cambodia and the level of English among Cambodian teachers. I couldn’t remember what tour I had signed up for, but was told it was the self-access centres. That sounded about right, as I knew I hadn’t wanted to sign up for anything too sad. So an interesting thing happened as I walked to the bus to take us to the SACs ... the first person I saw at the bus was Marina, someone whom I had met in Qatar and who would have been my colleague had I been able to take the job at Weill-Cornell. So, I was able to get all caught up on the news from Doha! Then the next person I met was Beth, a woman from UCanberra, who guessed I was Canadian by my (non-existent) accent, and when we got to talking, is good friends with Robyn, one of my colleagues at RMIT. Like Robyn, Beth had lived in BC, and had stayed in Canada for many years before returning to Australia. In fact, she studied French at UVic and went to Shippegan for their summer French immersion program ... so in the space of 10 minutes we knew that about each other. Now, how many people in Phnom Penh do you reckon would have been to Shippegan, NB? I had only been to the Nort’ Shore just the once, but it was a really colourful memory. My mother would say I never go anywhere without meeting someone I know or who knows someone I know ... and I guess that was true in these cases. Those two were enough to have me positively extroverted ... and I met lots of nice folks. I met a lovely Thai woman named Apiwan, who is studying for her PhD in Linguistics at Macquarie University. It happened that she was also staying at the Cambodiana, so we travelled to and from the conference after that. Another really friendly person was Ilene,a young woman who teaches at Southern Connecticut University, but who is in HCMC on a Fulbright, working with the University of Pedagogy. All the groups ended up at a restaurant that teaches street kids to work in restaurants, and while I didn’t love Hagar’s quite as much as I love Sozo’s in HCMC, it was pretty good. Cambodia has lots of NGOs and volunteers trying to do good works. In fact, a common career destination in Cambodia is to work with an NGO, whereas many of my students would have no clue what an NGO is.
In the afternoon, I took a rather overpriced tuk tuk tour of the city. For those of you who don’t know about tuk tuks, in Cambodia, they are little shaded carts with seats that are pulled by motorcycles. They are kind of neat, as the shade gives protection from the sun and rain, which you surely don’t get on a xe om, and you can have up to 4 or even 5 people travelling together. Phnom Penh is full of them. Phnom Penh has really suffered, along with the rest of the country for a very long and dark chapter of its history. And the architecture is an odd mixture of traditional Khmer buildings and somewhat uninspired modern edifices. I should probably just have gone to the silver palace and seen the sights there, but next time!
Later on that night was a function for presenters... a drink at the Himawari. In fact it was a lovely spread on the patio overlooking the Mekong River which was beautifully illuminated by a nearly full moon. Gosh, it was just gorgeous. There was a light breeze and it was balmy and just perfect weather. The conference was beautifully organized ... people leading the site visits were all volunteers from CamTESOL, local teachers most of them , and in fact a couple of language schools we visited were closing down on the Saturday in order for teachers and some students to attend and staff the conference. The next day we learned that this conference was just the 6th for CamTESOL, and that of the 1,225 attendees, 300 were from other countries, including almost 100 from Japan. Although there are 3 committees, IDP in Australia is the lead and they did a great job.
So, the next morning Apiwan and I caught a tuk tuk to the conference. We negotiated a price (not nearly as reasonable as in HCMC) and off we went. The conference went well, overall. My session was ok, but not great. I have some ideas on how to improve it and as I may have to repeat the session for RMIT, I am hoping my reflections on the session will benefit my colleagues (and me). The evaluations were overall very positive, but there were a few issues related to technology (an overheating LCD that meant most of my slides were not visible ... in a somewhat image-rich presentation, that wasn’t so good) and some confusion regarding the handouts. Glitches aside, I survived and went on to enjoy the rest of the conference. There was another lovely dinner overlooking the Mekong that evening and a few more sessions before I left Phnom Penh and headed on to Siem Reap.
So, the thing that bugs me about tourist buses is this ... people grab a window seat, close the curtains and sleep, leaving people like me with nothing to look at. Arggh. After a few hours, 6 to be exact, we arrived in Siem Reap and as it was getting dark, it was a bit hard to know where we were. The tuk tuk distribution was quite organized, but I was a bit unsure about my driver, as he had never heard of my hotel and didn’t exactly know where it was. He seemed to want to take me elsewhere. And was quite interested in making arrangements for the next day’s tour. I was unsure about everything, but decided to just trust the process ... we eventually found the hotel, which is a bit off the beaten track, and I agreed to hire him for the next day, despite there being several preferred drivers affiliated with the hotel. I figured I would give him one day’s business and another guy the other day’s business.
The hotel, the Angkor Spirit Palace, is lovely and a bit quieter than staying in the town itself.Siem Reap is full of tourists and new hotels are being built all over the town. It is a bit of a tourist hustle, but I just consider it training for Sapa.
So Chamreoun picked me up at 8 in the morning for my tour of the temples. We decided to do the short tour and it was a considerable venture. I was very sorry I didn’t know more about the Khmer dynasties and the history of Angkor beforehand, but I feel I learned a lot in a short period of time. There was a very interesting diversion at the beginning of the day. As we were travelling down the road, there was a large parade, a mass of people walking and carrying Buddhist flags. There were hundreds of people marching ... some monks and many nuns. It took me a while to realize that the nuns in Cambodia don’t wear robes, but rather white blouses and dark shirts. They do have their heads shaved, though. Chamreoun said that an important monk had died and this was his funeral procession.
Once we got to Angkor, what followed was just a whirl of Khmer history. I started off at Angkor Wat, and of course, it is incredible.There is much reconstruction going on, so the initial approach is a bit marred, for a good cause, no doubt. I wandered around on my own for two or three hours, looking at the amazing friezes that depict much lore related to both the Hindu and Buddhist elements that are evident at Angkor Wat. I ended up taking lots and lots of pictures of asparas, the heavenly nymphs.There was quite a line to climb up into the central tower, but it moved quickly and so I decided to go up. Compared to the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teōtīhuacān, the stairs were easy-peasy.But I am sure I was pretty red in the face as I reached the top! In fact, I was reminded of Teōtīhuacān at several points, but Angkor is very different in most ways. Once in the upper elevations, it was lovely to wander around at my own speed and look at everything. Once I made my way back past the temples and over the moat, off we went to Angkor Thom. One of the most incredible temples there was Bayon, with all the towers with huge faces on them. With my interest in masks, it was an incredible place to be. Chamreoun and I stopped for water and a little shopping here and there. It was incredibly hot. I kept thinking the tour would be almost over, but they kept coming. Omigoodness. At the last one, I saw a large reservoir that had been hand-constructed for the King ... nice to see some local kids swimming in it. I imagine no commoner would have been allowed to swim there during the reign of the god-kings.
So very tired and sore and happy, I arrived back at the Angkor Spirit Palace in time for a nice swim and a quiet dinner and an early night. Next day devoted to swimming and resting and a visit to a local orphanage. One of the waiters at the Angkor Spirit Palace, Siti, told me he had been raised in the orphanage and invited me to visit. The orphanage is called Wat Preah Yesu, which means something like Jesus Pagoda, in Khmer. It is run by some Australian folks who are Seventh Day Adventists. They have about 19 hectares of land and operate a school and have 11 or 12 houses with 18 or 19 kids in every house. They have parents in each house and a staff of volunteers to help out and build and teach various skills and do lots of other jobs. I visited the house that Siti grew up in. School was out and so the children were helping in the garden. Every house has to be somewhat self-sufficient, so Siti’s house has a fish pond and a garden and lots of fruit trees. Being Seventh Day Adventist, they are mostly vegetarian, but the families do eat some fish. Some of the kids have HIV/AIDS and the local children’s hospital contacts Tim and Wendy, when kids are abandoned or if their parents die. I guess they have over 200 kids right now and then some local kids attend the school. It seemed a happy enough place ... somewhat chaotic and disheveled in places, but it was great to see the kids riding bikes and climbing trees and playing soccer (and helping in the garden). Tim talked about groups that had come from Germany and Australia to do service-learning projects and how wonderful it had been for the volunteers. So meaningful! It was a lovely way to end my trip to Siem Reap; after a bit of time, Siti took me back to the hotel in time to catch a tuk tuk to the airport. Lots more hotels being built that way as well. I think there are more five-star hotels in Siem Reap than in Phnom Penh. Got to the airport in time to see the sun go down behind a plane from Laos. Arrived in HCMC after a 45-minute flight ... followed by a one-hour taxi ride. Nice to be back. Hope all is well with everyone. I look forward to hearing about your adventures! I will post pics on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raven_chick/ soon.