DJ-RTW's Travel Blog

Angkor – not just a good beer - Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia

 This place was Great visited Feb 19, 2008

After drinking Angkor beer for the last few weeks that we’d been in Cambodia, we figured we had better go visit the country’s iconic ruins after which the brew was named! Angkor Wat is the most famous of the ruins of the temples and palaces built during what is known as the Angkor period (years 802 to 1432 A.D.). It isn’t just one monument as most people believe, but some 40 sites spread over an area of 200 square kilometers (77 square miles). We went late in the day in order to still be there for sunset. The buildings here feature some beautiful galleries full of bas and haut relief sculpture depicting historical and mythical tales of the great Khmer empires of old. These remain in very good shape as they are inside the buildings and are protected from the rain, wind and sunshine. We also visited a fair trade shop which would have no problem paying a fair price to craftspeople as their prices were sky high. I guess they figured tourists can afford to pay twice or three times higher than the same goods sold in the local markets. Didn't spend any money here.

posted Feb 26, 2008 | Comments (0)

Nature Takes Over - Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia

 This place was Great visited Feb 18, 2008

The ruins at Ta Prohm provide amazing visuals as tree roots envelop ancient buildings as the jungle reclaims the land taken by the Khmers over a thousand years ago. Fichus trees have been particularly adept at wrapping their roots around enormous stones as well as splitting the building blocks of this temple. While the temple may not have been as important as some of the others in this area, it did provide for very interesting proof that the jungle, when left to do what it does, will take over anything humans may build.

posted Feb 26, 2008 | Comments (0)

The Great Temples of Angkor Thom - Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia

 This place was Great visited Feb 18, 2008

The famous temples surrounding the town of Siem Reap bring millions of tourists to the area every year. As with everyone else who visits here, we learned that there are many more temples than the well-known Angkor Wat and that the others are actually more impressive than the star attraction. The first ruins we visited was at Angkor Thom – a much larger complex with several temples, libraries and other important buildings. We took a tuk tuk for the half hour drive from town to the ruins but, of course, we had to stop for gas at a roadside ‘station’ where a ten year old boy dispensed it out of liquor and pop bottles. Angkor Thom is famous for its many towers each with a face carved into the stone and looking to the four cardinal points. The visages are graced by a faint smile providing a very unusual atmosphere to the experience of walking through temples built over a thousand years ago and being stared at by so many eyes! Just as we were finishing up our walk and getting ready to go to a second site in our tuk tuk, a stampede of oxen passed right in front of us. There must have been at least a two dozen beasts who trod past at great speed and would have crushed anything that got in their way. Just one more unreal experience that reminds us how little things have changed around here.

posted Feb 25, 2008 | Comments (0)

On the River Again - Siem Reap, Cambodia

 This place was Average visited Feb 16, 2008

Our last trip on the mighty Mekong River took us from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap in about five hours. We sat on the roof of the boat as we had been warned that the cigar-shaped craft was not sufficiently ventilated and would get extremely hot. Unfortunately, the high winds kept pushing spray all over us and we got soaked and cold so we had to venture inside after an hour or so. For two years now we’ve watched locals ride on top of trucks, buses and boats so it was fun to do the same for a little while. All along the river we passed people making a living fishing, floating houses and school children being transported in sampans. You got the feeling that very little had changed in several hundred years.

posted Feb 22, 2008 | Comments (0)

From High School to Torture Prison - Phnom Penh, Cambodia

 This place was Great visited Feb 15, 2008

What at first glance appears to be nothing more than a well-built, if somewhat dated, series of educational buildings turn out to be S.21 – the notorious torture prison used by communist despot Pol Pot, leader of the Kmer Rouge. As with our visit to the Killing Fields, it was with a sense of duty and sadness that we made a pilgrimage to this site demonstrating the worse of human nature. It is estimated that of the 2,000,000 people killed by the regime, some 20,000 passed through S.21. These were killed through torture, long death marches and starvation. The worse thing to see wasn’t the tools of torture nor the blood-spattered walls but the hundreds of photos of victims – some as young as three-months old. The Pol Pot regime killed anyone suspected of being against his policies, as well as women who wore their hair long in defiance of the rule that everyone cut it short, people who wore glasses, and artists, writers, etc. who were as a group considered parasites on society. All intellectuals including teachers, government workers, university professors and students, engineers, and people who could speak a foreign language were also killed as the Kmer Rouge leader wanted Kampuchea to return to an agrarian way of life. The children of intellectuals were also killed in order to cleanse the gene pool of thinkers. One of the strangest things about S.21 is how meticulously the army kept records of all who were brought here including photos on the day they arrived and of their corpses the day they were taken out. Very much like the Nazi’s of Europe during the Second World War, the Kmer Rouge was intent on cleansing itself of a large segment of the population and it became very efficient at doing so. Also like the German SS, the K.R. was almost anal in the detailed documentation it kept.

posted Feb 22, 2008 | Comments (0)