L is for Lake Tonle Sap

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

The first part of this post is here.

The brown canal

After we left the Floating Village behind, we were suddenly surrounded by mangroves on both sides. Despite the noise of the boat's engines, the world suddenly became peaceful - just the brown water, the green trees, the grey-blue sky, and us.

The mangrove

After a little while of this, we started noticing that the water was changing colour - it was becoming bluer. Soon, the mangroves thinned. The mud banks became more sandy. The horizons opened out and - we emerged from the canal onto a large body of water.

The border between the canal and the lake

I suddenly realized what this water body must be - this was Lake Tonle Sap! I'd spent many days dreaming of Cambodia and poring over Siem Reap on Google Maps, and I had seen this gigantic lake to the south of Siem Reap. (The lake is so large that it covers 1.5% of the surface area of CAMBODIA!) I'd wished then that we could visit it, but it had looked too far away from Siem Reap. But here we were! For some reason, I suddenly remembered the moment in Journey to the Center of the Earth where the accidental explorer stumbles on an underground ocean.

The lake was dotted here and there with floating structures - houses, restaurants, even storage platforms full of oil drums. Our rusty blue boat plodded heavily across the grey water towards one of the floating 'buildings'. The bright red awning told us it was a restaurant.

One of the restaurants

Ah, we realized, the usual tourist trap - the boat boy would take a cut of the money the restaurant owner earned from us. Which made us promptly decide not to eat there. For the sake of form, we got off and sat there for a few minutes before getting back on the boat - enough time for the boat boy to get a can of free soft drink.

On our way back, we stopped at a boat jetty we had seen on the way to the lake - a set of stairs led up from the jetty to a restaurant and to an attractive red walkway, which looked like it went quite a distance into the forest.

A board outside the restaurant

The walkway did, indeed, lead into the mangrove. It was a surreal sort of structure, a strange thing to find after the squalor of the village. Why had somebody decided to build this beautiful red thing in the middle of the forest? It looked like either their money or their interest had run out after a while. A few dozen meters from the restaurant, the walkway lost its railings, and then even the posts for the railings. That made us turn back, scared that the next thing to go would be the sticks supporting the walkway.

The walkway - the initial nice phase

And that was the end of our Kompong Pluk tour. We got back into the boat, which took us back past the mangrove, past the floating village, past all the boats and houses and people, to the muddy bank we had started from. Our tuk-tuk driver, smiling as always, collected us from the boat, and drove us back past the paddy fields, past the skinny cows, past the multiple entry gates, past the houses of rural Cambodia, back to our hotel.

It was our last day in Cambodia.

K is for Kompong Pluk

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

I've been dreading writing this blog post. Just remembering the 2-3 hours we spent at Kompong Pluk is somehow tiring - though we did very little there other than sit on various types of transport. The only good part about writing about the experience is that I can split this long account into two posts for the AtoZChallenge - K for Kompong Pluk and L for Lake Tonle Sap.

But as usual, I'm beginning somewhere near the end.

Let me begin on the morning of Day 3. We had just finished visiting the Ruolos group of temples, which is about 10-15 kilometers to the east of Siem Reap town. The next item on the itinerary our hotel had provided was the Floating Village, which sounded very exciting. Which of the Floating Villages would we like to visit, our tuk-tuk driver asked us - the smaller one or the larger one? Since we had no way of knowing which one was better, we replied - whichever is closer.

And so we started off. We drove for what seemed like hours (but was probably no more than half an hour) through rural Cambodia. The roads were untarred, but serviceable. We kept ourselves entertained by comparing rural Cambodia to rural Kerala, and by commenting on how similar the two were. Perhaps Cambodia is a bit drier and dustier, but that may just have been the season. Oh, and the houses are on stilts!

Rice grains laid out to dry beside a typical Cambodian house on stilts

After some time, we started seeing more greenery around us, and guessed that we were close. Soon enough, the trees on either side disappeared; the landscape opened out. Wet green paddy fields surrounded us, shimmering in the heat and the sunshine.

What is this green called?

We soon arrived at a sort of check-post, with a one-storey building to one side. Our driver told us that we had to buy tickets in order to proceed further.

And so we got off, glad to stretch our legs. Seeing us, one member of a group of men who had been lounging nearby scrambled behind the ticket counter. This made us faintly suspicious - were we being had? Here we were, in the middle of nowhere, being asked to buy tickets from a guy who had just got behind a counter at a small building in the middle of acres of paddy fields.

Still, we trusted our driver, and paid for the tickets. We were also reassured by an official-looking board outside the building, which told us that we were entering ‘Kompong Puk Natural and Cultural Tourism Zone Development”. The guy behind the counter told us that the tickets were actually $20 per person, but $28 for a couple. Thank God for small mercies. $20 is how much an entire day's pass at the Angkor Archaeological Park costs, by the way.

The reassuring board

The road led straight on through more paddy fields. A narrow muddy channel of water kept us company on the left. Despite the wet paddy fields and the canal, the road was dry and dusty. On the way, we saw a brace of ducks, some skinny cows, a few farmers going about their daily routines. Being from India, we had never seen these things before in our lives, of course.

Ducks!

We finally reached another entry gate, with a one-roomed cabin next to it. Ahead, we could see a long line of old decaying boats tied to the muddy bank. The cabin had about half a dozen men, and one of them (a kid, really) leapt nimbly onto our tuk-tuk. He was to be our guide, we guessed. He guided us to one of the boats, even more dilapidated than the rest, and helped us in. It took him a couple of tries to start the boat. But the engine finally fired, and we were off!

The line of boats

The noise of the engine was terrific and terrible. Our boat created gigantic brown ripples in the narrow canal. On our left was what looked like a mangrove, and on our right the tall muddy bank. We wondered what would happen if another boat came along. Would the two boats pass each other unharmed? 

Our question was answered within a few minutes. We saw a boat with half a dozen fellow tourists heading towards us. Our boat boy went far to the right to avoid it. In fact, he turned the boat so sharply that we got stuck on the muddy bank. The tourists passed by, all waving merrily, but we were still stuck in the mud. It took the boy five minutes to get us loose. My husband and I sat still in the boat – partly amused and partly alarmed. Were we really trusting our lives to a boat that was barely able to float? Our only consolation was that the canal didn't seem very deep.

On we went. A few hundred meters further on, the first of the ‘floating houses’ started appearing - tall blue thatch structures that managed to be cheerful and depressing at the same time. Every house was on stilts, with narrow ladders for the residents to climb up. During the rainy season, the entire place will be covered in water, and the houses will seem, indeed, to be floating.

Interesting sort of bridge, that

The Floating Village is a village of fishermen and fisherwomen. Outside each house were half a dozen boats - both big boats like the ones we were on, and narrow canoes. We saw kids catching fish with nets, clad in barely anything. People sat on their front porch up above and stared at us. It soon became clear that the place is more of a slum than a village. 

We started feeling uncomfortable - who were we to spy into their lives like this, to stare at them going about their lives, to take photos of their houses and their boats and their laundry? We weren't rich aliens from another planet, we didn't belong to a different species. Hell, we came from a third world country too - with slums just as bad or far worse than this one. How they must resent us and our cameras, we thought. We fervently hoped that some of the money that we had paid would trickle down to them. 

Just as these uncomfortable thoughts were starting to bubble up in our mind, we left the village behind. The next part of the journey is in the next post. Till then, let me leave you with this comparatively cheerful photo of a fisher-woman happily having a cigarette while going about her daily routine.

J is for Jacques

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

The topic for my 'J' post is the one thing without which I couldn't have done the Angkor trip. I bought it on our very first morning at Angkor Wat, as the sun was rising over the five towers, and I hugged it tight for the two and a half days - so much so that when we were done with the temples on Day 3 and I had to put it back into the bag, I felt orphaned and unprotected.

What IS it, you ask? It's The Holy Book of the Angkor Visitor - Ancient Angkor by Claude Jacques (now you know where the J comes from!) and Michael Freeman. The book was our tour guide and our life-line for two and a half days. 

I read it on the tuk-tuk, I read it in the hotel room, I read it on sunny temple platforms and in the shade of tall shrines. I frowned at it while trying to figure out which carving it was referring to, and I smiled in delight whenever I spotted said carving. I felt a deep sense of camaraderie with all the other tourists who were also frowning and trying to follow in Jacques' footsteps.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Ancient Angkor is a guide book - an introduction to the Ancient Angkors. It starts with the Khmer kingdom's history, and goes on to provide descriptions and photos of all the major and minor temples around Siem Reap. Each temple is described in loving detail - its history, its plan, how to visit it and the major things to look out for. The most useful section for the tourist is the 'Visit' section, which is a guided tour along the lines of, "Turn left at the end of the gallery. Ahead of you is a richly carved figure of Vishnu reclining." You get the drift. 

Jacques, a scholar and expert on the Khmer kings, wrote the text, and Freeman took the photos. The book is literally a treasure trove. The text is richly detailed, and Jacques' scholarship clearly comes through. Freeman's photos, though a bit too red-tinted, add the required glamour. 

The southern wall of Preah Paliley today

It quickly became evident that the text and the photos are at least ten-fifteen years old. Though that may sound like a disadvantage at first, it works out strangely well. The photo of Preah Paliley, for example, shows two huge trees growing out of the southern wall of the shrine. Today, the trees are gone; only the bases remain, with thin saplings shooting out. Comparing the decade-old photos with today's reality led to some interesting private musings on the passage of time. 

We bought the book for the princely sum of $7. The seller initially quoted $28. Since we had been warned by a friend, we responded with a quote of $5, and stuck to it till he came down to $6. But he disappeared before we could strike a bargain, and we finally bought it from another seller for $7. But honestly, the book is of such glossy high quality that I don't see how it's worthwhile for anybody to sell it for just $7. And here I'm comparing with the Indian market, where books are famously much cheaper than elsewhere in the world. (I just saw that it's selling for $12 on Amazon.) Either way, Ancient Angkors is definitely looking very classy on our bookshelf. And best of all, I can refer to it while writing these blog posts! 

I is for Indians in Cambodia

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

Given the number of people the husband and I know who've visited the Angkor temples, we had somehow thought that the place would be swarming with Indians. But during our stay in Cambodia, we saw exactly two Indians - two jeans-clad Tamilians who must certainly have been melting in the heat. There were a handful of NRIs and PIOs as well (identifiable by their accents).

The lack of Indians is a bit strange, because Hindu Indians are the people best placed to understand and appreciate these temples and their iconography. The Khmer kings carved every inch of their temples with Hindu Gods and scenes from Hindu mythology, and Hindus who know their mythology would be best able to put these carvings in context.

The Asuras doing their part in the churning of the Sea of Milk

In fact, I thought these temples would make great Hindu pilgrimage spots, though most are not active (and the ones that are have long been Buddhist). As I watched huge buses disgorge dozens of Chinese / Caucasian tourists, I wistfully imagined similar buses full of sari-clad paatis and maamis eager to see the temples and their carvings.

But it's not that Indians have never been there. We found out quickly enough that people from our country have been there and have left a solid reputation behind. On our very first night there, we went out for a stroll and landed up at Central Market, which is on the main road of Siem Reap.

We decided to do some window-shopping, and liked something (I can't remember what it was). We asked the shopkeeper for the price, and she told us. We thought it was too high to even bother negotiating, and we started to leave. And that's when she laid the bombshell, "You Indians. You look, you no buy."

Well. I couldn't argue because in that particular instance, it WAS true. Though we did end up buying stuff later, I can't fault the Indians who decided not to buy anything. Cambodia's street markets are clearly targeted at people who earn in dollars and so don't mind spending in dollars. Indians who earn in rupees and have access to India's cheaper street markets would definitely think twice before buying anything.

H is for the Heat

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

People, it's HOT in Cambodia. When we visited in the last week of March, the temperature was in the mid-thirties, and the humidity was 70-80%. And it's a sapping kind of heat, a heat that makes you unable or unwilling to move once you sit down.

We suffered particularly on Day 1, when there were a lot of temples that were in the open and provided very little protection from the sun. Baphuon temple (morning of Day 1) stays in my memory particularly, because we just collapsed inside one of the galleries in the upper level, unwilling to climb to the open and sunny highest level.

So do everything you can think of to deal with the heat. Hat, towels, umbrellas, tiny cotton clothes - whatever works for you. But if you're wearing tiny clothes, beware that some temples mandate knee-length shorts / skirts, and shirts / tops with sleeves. Baphuon temple and the central shrine of Angkor Wat are the ones where this is strictly enforced, but I saw the warning board at Ta Prohm as well. 

Water is a huge necessity - the two of us drank 4-5 liters a day there. You can't possibly carry enough water to last the entire day, but bottled water is available inside the park. As with anything in Cambodia, be sure to negotiate. A large 1.5 L bottle of water costs $0.5 in reality, but you'll never be quoted that rate. Stick to your $0.5 figure and you'll be rewarded. If nothing works, get your tuk-tuk driver to buy water for you. A 1.5 L bottle may seem heavy and unwieldy, but you'll be surprised at how quickly it gets over.

Oh, and carry sunscreen. When we look at our own photos now, we can see ourselves getting progressively darker over the three days we were there. 

G is for Getting Around

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

Siem Reap is quite a small town; walking from one end to the other doesn't take more than fifteen minutes - now if only it wasn't so hot and humid! Thankfully, there are tuk-tuks available everywhere. But be sure to negotiate. The drivers will quote $3, but will agree to $1 (in fact, we were left feeling that we should have quoted $0.5).

Getting around the Angkor Archaeological Park is more of a problem, though. Angkor Wat itself is about 6-8 kilometers from Siem Reap town. Most of the temples inside the park are quite far away from each other too.

Most people, especially when travelling as couples, hire tuk-tuks for the entire day. The tuk-tuk driver takes them to each temple, parks outside while they walk around, and then takes them to the next one. We also saw that some hotels had arranged minivans for their guests. Some crazy people had hired bicycles and were cycling around as well. Foreigners can no longer hire motor-bikes in Siem Reap, so that's not an option anymore.


We hired our tuk-tuk with our hotel's help. We didn't bother to negotiate, because many people on TripAdvisor had mentioned that our hotel had the cheapest tuk-tuk rates. Here are the rates, for what they're worth. The photo (click to enlarge) provides the detailed itinerary for each day.

• Day 1: The inner round - $12 ($15 including sunrise at Angkor Wat)
• Day 2: The outer round - $18 including the far-off Banteay Srei 
• Day 3: The Ruolos temples and surrounding areas - $18

Out of these, the only day I felt we didn't get value for money was Day 3 - but that was for a whole different reason which I'll explain in a different post. Our driver was a smiling Cambodian who introduced himself as 'Phun' and dressed in formals throughout. When he saw us buying bottles of mineral water at $1, he took pity on us and offered to buy them for us at $0.5. He very openly told us that if we had lunch at the restaurant he took us to, he would be able to eat for free there. Unfortunately, we missed taking a photo with him and his tuk-tuk (red with a white canopy, what a happy sight it was at the end of each tiring temple visit!).

F is for the Food

This post is part of the AtoZChallenge, which I'm doing on my recent trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

I think it was unfortunate in a way that we came to Cambodia from Thailand. Our four days in Bangkok had made us so sick of Thai food (how it smells!) that we had decided that we hated all South East Asian food. I had decided that, for all my supposed enthusiasm about traveling and seeing new cultures and what not, food was definitely not something I was willing to experiment with.

And so we stuck to very conservative things for the first couple of days in Siem Reap - we even ate at KFC one night!

The bread was strangely-shaped and salty

Which was pretty stupid of us, actually. Khmer food, it turns out, is much tastier than Thai food. Not only that, Siem Reap is much better than Bangkok when it comes to food - because it's a tourist town, after all. It has sprung up and grown purely because of Angkor-related tourism, which means that the food available at most joints in Siem Reap has been tweaked to suit touristy (mostly Western) tastes. Authenticity be damned, tasty food is what matters!

But it took us a day and a half in Siem Reap to finally try some Khmer food - and we actually liked it! The Husband gobbled down his Khmer Fish Amok so fast that a Japanese girl at the next table asked, astounded, "That tasty, huh?" My Khmer Chicken Curry, chicken and vegetables drowned in coconut milk, was the best thing I'd eaten in days.

That's the Khmer Fish Amok on the right, and my half-empty bowl of Khmer Chicken Curry on the left

After that, we were firm converts.

The only problem was that we didn't feel like eating much during the day. The incredible heat of Cambodia made us thirsty, but never hungry. Every day, it was only after the sun went down that we became aware of our stomachs. And then we couldn't get enough of rice and curry.

Food prices in Siem Reap depend on where you're eating. At the roadside stalls inside the Angkor Park, a single dish is around $4, which is pretty steep considering the general price levels. But in Siem Reap town, you can find food to suit whatever budget you have. Below is a page from the menu of the restaurant we ate at on our first night there.

Strangely enough, drinks are amazingly cheap. "Happy Hours" in Siem Reap last all the way till 10 PM. Though the menus mention drinks at $1 and above, it's perfectly possible to get something for half that; many restaurants have one-plus-one offers which work out super-cheap. The only exception was Coke - nobody was willing to go below $1 for a can.

The main street in Siem Reap for food and restaurants is Pub Street. It has restaurants to suit all tastes and budgets. And since all the restaurants follow the practice of displaying their menus outside, it's possible to walk up and down and see what the restaurants offer before making a choice. Many restaurants advertise strange kinds of meat - apart from the usual frog and snake, we saw kangaroo, dog, and crocodile. A girl on our bus for the return journey said she'd eaten tarantula the night before - gross! (Here's the wiki page for what I think she must have eaten.)

We also spotted a handful of Indian restaurants - I have no idea who they cater to in Cambodia. Below is the board of the Kerala restaurant in Pub Street, which was Kerala only in name. It served dishes from across India, but didn't have a single soul inside when we saw it.