It’s time to check out Siem Reap. We rose early and decided today was cooking class day. Well, I’d have to say it was the best meal we’d had since being in Cambodia. The cooking classes are all run by restaurants. The chef took four of us (Carol and I and an older Canadian man and a girl from Hong Kong) to the local market to learn what all the ingredients in our dishes were. I was making a mango salad and fish amok. It was the most local market we’d been to. There were crazy looking monk fish that can survive on land and they were wiggling around. We saw whole pig heads, weird and wonderful fruit and bags and bags of spices including a huge bag of saffron which was a couple of dollars – surely it wasn’t pure saffron? The smells range from delicious jasmine and musky incense to raw fish and what smells like a tip. The heat (36 degrees) also makes everything more pungent.
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| My mango salad |
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| Stirring the fish amok |
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| The class standing very proud |
After the market we went up two storeys above the restaurant to a small kitchen equipped with everything we needed. We did everything from scratch and got to learn how to make everyone else’s dishes as well. Now I know how to make a kick-ass fresh spring roll sauce and paste for any amok recipe – just need a pestle and mortar. For mango salad they use green mango and grate it. For dessert we were all going to share coconut custard steamed inside a hollowed out pumpkin, but we forgot about it and the pumpkin totally split so it wasn’t quite right, but still tasty. Khmer people eat their desserts and drinks very sweet so we halved the amount of sugar! A lot of menus specify ‘no sugar’ for that reason. We had to make both courses before we could eat – it was so hard seeing my mango salad there and not being able to hoe in. We all tasted each others and gave the instructor our email addresses to get the recipes – delish.
After trying to pack a lot of information into our tired brains at the museum we headed out for a drink on Pub Street – the main tourist/restaurant street in Siem Reap. Cocktails range from $1.50 - $3.00 and beers start at 50c. I had a cuba libre and decided it was best to stick to beer. It was clear they’d used local rum and the coke wasn’t fizzy. We bumped into Lee from our cooking class and she joined us for dinner at Angkor Palm Restaurant. We shared a few dishes; sweet and sour chicken, fish cakes and a yummy soupy thing and then we headed back to the guesthouse for some R & R.
The next day we hired bikes and headed for the temples. There are two tracks that cover the main temples and then you can explore temples further afield as well. For the first day we’d planned to ride the small track. After getting our three-day pass (US$40) issued (with ID photo and all) an Austrian girl approached us asking if we’d like to share their tuk-tuk and tour guide. We said yes please, but it wasn’t that simple! After about 20 minutes of negotiating with the tour guide, tuk-tuk driver and a few policemen, four of us got on the tuk-tuk and the Austrian chap and tour guide rode bikes. For the tour guide and ride it cost US$11 each – excellent. Angkor Wat was absolutely incredible and I didn’t really understand what I was seeing until reflecting on it later and looking through the photos. It’s the largest religious structure in the world and is the most famous of all the temples. Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II (1113-50) and the temple is dedicated to the God, Vishnu. It’s so hard to fathom the age of it. An estimated 300,000 people built it, taking almost 30 years.
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| Angkor Wat |
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| Bas relief |
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| The crew |
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| We were lucky to see some Apsara dancing being filmed in Angkor Wat for the King |
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| The steps to the top we closed off |
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| No pregnant woman allowed - Te Papa aint that different! |
The second temple for the day was Bayon which is one in the ‘city’ of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom was built by the greatest Angorian king, Jayavarman II (1181-1219) and was inhabited by about I,000,000 people when London had a population of about 50,000. This temple is really decorative and its bas reliefs are very special, depicting everyday life in 12th century Cambodia. It’s hard to belive Cambodia was such a prosperous and wealthy country. When we were there work was being done in partnership with the Indian government. The Terrace of Elephants is also part of Angkor Thom and was where the king and public would watch all sorts of processions and ceremonies. The final temple for day one was the one from the Angelina Jolie film, Tomb Raider. The trees have completely overtaken the structure destroying it and supporting it. Unlike the previous temples this one is being left untouched so visitors can understand the different stages and natural deterioration of the holy sites.
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| Example of different approaches to restoring the temples |
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| Bas relief at Angkor Thom |
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| Ta Phrom |
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| Our new German friend at Ta Phrom |
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| Ta Phrom |
IIt was Friday night and we’d had a big day so after a freshened up we headed into town. With a variety of bars to choose 50c beers from we did some barhopping. We headed to a rooftop bar we’d heard about that had a half pipe on the top. It was pretty dead but fun to look down on Pub Street and the goings-on. Angkor What? was the first bar in Siem Reap so we thought that deserved to be checked out. It was definitely cheap and the backpacker place to be with absinthe and red bulls. Again, we stuck to beer!
The beggars went to a whole new level tonight with children under the age of ten holding babies that looked like they’d been drugged and bottles asking for money.
Waking up after a later than usual night we decided to spend a day chilling out at the guesthouse catching up on our diaries and making a few bookings for the next week.
The second day at the temples was more adventurous. We got our own tuk-tuk driver (who wasn’t the usual friendly sort) and went further afield. Preah Neak Pean sounded interesting because it had a large pool surrounded by four smaller ones. Before this we’d only seen a single mote. This wasn’t nearly as dramatic as what we’d seen but it was interesting to see the comparisons between kings. Banteay Srei (construction began AD 967) was my favourite. It’s a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva and is made from red sandstone, so is a pretty pink/ochre colour. The carvings were so intricate and beautiful, for it to have stayed in this kind of condition is extraordinary. The lintels and columns are covered with gorgeous geometric designs. Banteay Srei wasn’t as busy as Angkor Wat but had a very professional visitor and interpretation centre and a gift shop (as well as the usual rip-off tourist restaurants) which none of the others have. The interpretation centre was fabulous and great to get a real sense of the timeline of temples and what was being done now to preserve them, or not. Going to Preah Ko next was such a contrast. Preah Ko is a Roluos Temple and is one of the earlierest. It was built in the 9th century and has some of the best examples of surviving plasterwork. The towers are made from small bricks which also made a change to the stone structures we’d seen.
That night we had BBQ frog for dinner. I have a real issue with eating things that can be identified as the animal, so I let Carol do the dissection which took me back to walking out of 3rd form science. We gnawed on the legs first and then tackled the upper body and arms. It was surprisingly tasty, a combination of fish and chicken and for US$1 we thought, why not?
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| Mr. Froggy |
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| Me nibbling on Mr. Froggy's upper leg |
We had to get up early for the bus to Phnom Penh and were lucky to make it because it turned up an hour early. We really thought we were starting to nail the transport, but there’s always a surprise. Mekong Express was all we’d hoped for and more. They had an English speaking tour guide who informed us how long the trip would be, how long we had at stops and a little bit of history along the way. We got water and yummy pastries as well as cleansing wipes. What a difference! We arrived in Phnom Penh before schedule and our guesthouse in was a 20 minutes to the river (main part of town), but it took us an hour going through some real slum areas of the city to get there. The smells were worse than Bangkok; rubbish, sewerage and some smells I couldn’t identify. After a random man reached out and rubbed me on the way into town I thought a tuk-tuk home that night would be safer.
There are lots of sights, smells and sounds that I’ll always remember about Cambodia. Among them are: children doubling their siblings to school on bikes, land mine victims begging and selling, woman burning rubbish and sweeping streets, lemon grass, jasmine, tuk-tuk drivers asking if I’d like a ride, women in pyjama suits during the day and men sitting on motos (motorbikes) smoking.
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