We take the short flight from Luang Prabang to Siem Reap – as the aircraft approaches it’s already clear that we’ve left the limestone karsts of Laos behind and this part of Cambodia at least is much flatter terrain.
We take a tuk-tuk to our guesthouse the Golden Banana – there’s a delicious looking swimming pool and we have a lovely big room with a bed each for the children – luxury! We have just 4 days here and our time is spent largely between visiting the temples of Angkor Wat and hanging around the pool (ie split between what Fi & I want to do and what the kids want to do!).
We immediately get the sense that it is impossible to visit this country and be unaware of its horrific recent history. In the intro blurb of the hotel brochure, the owner tells his personal story – he was the youngest child of a family of 13 when the the Khmer Rouge ‘liberated’ Phnom Penh on 17th April, 1975. Only he and one other survived the next 3.5 years. He arrived in New Zealand via Thailand and was brought up in an orphanage there – it was only 20 years later that he returned to his homeland and set up his business, recruiting his staff based on attitude & enthusiasm rather than skill & experience and training them up to give them a better future.
The constricting power of trees at Ta Prom – but where’s Angelina?
Taking young children to see temples, however fabulous, is HARD! We get a 3 day pass and our first visit is at Ta Prom. We’ve done what we can to generate some excitement by telling the children that it’s where ‘Lara Croft – Tomb Raider’ was filmed and even let them watch it (which we probably wouldn’t have done otherwise) to whet their appetite. Unfortunately, however, this tactic backfires. Their expectation is to see the entire set of the film, with underground caverns, swinging logs, magic triangles, the lot! Still, I think they are at least moderately impressed by the enormous roots of rainforest trees entangling the ruins and slowly reclaiming their jungle!
The next day’s temple (we were only ever going to attempt one per day!) is the mighty Angkor Wat, the largest religious building in the world. It’s a steamy hot day with the sun beating down – we should have got up early and avoided the heat of the day (and at least some of the tourists). Needless to say, it’s incredibly impressive both in scale and the detail of the carvings – and the statistics about its construction are fairly mind blowing (eg the stone was transported for over 50km to the site; construction involved 300,000 workers and 6,000 elephants); also the fact that when it was built Ankor had a population of over 1 million when London’s population was just 50,000! We have guide who is admirably enthusiastic but who has a heavy accent and is rather difficult to understand – he has his work cut out to maintain the attention and interest of our brood, I’m afraid!
Angkor Wat on a very hot, steamy day
One of the many stone faces at Bayon – with more of a smile on her face than our children!
Our third and final effort is Bayon temple, with its multitude of enormous stone faces. We get up early this time, so it’s much cooler and quieter, but any hopes that our children are getting into the swing of this temple visiting are short lived – in fact Jemima admits in her blog that she got out of bed on the wrong side this morning! So we drag them round, encouraging them to invent games to keep themselves entertained; trying to find any interesting carvings that might amuse them, etc. You won’t be surprised to hear that this is another fairly brief visit – we hop back into our tuk-tuk and head for a butterfly farm, which turns out to be far more successful (and quite a good biology lesson).
The countryside around Angkor Wat is flat but gorgeous – almost all cultivated, with golden ripe paddy fields everywhere. The houses are all on stilts, the ground floor effectively being left open, with hammocks swinging between the supporting pillars and domestic animals wandering freely. The walls on the upper floor are made of woven bamboo or occasionally, wooden planks. It looks like it hasn’t changed in centuries (apart from the sealed roads).
Petrol on sale in Siem Reap – this is mainly in Johnnie Walker bottles but more typically it is sold in used Pepsi bottles (not sure how this impacts brand equity!)
Millie’s godmother Shunmay works a lot as a paediatrician and infectious diseases expert in Phnom Penh but has managed to coordinate a visit to Siem Reap’s children’s hospital with our visit, so we get to spend a day and an evening with her. It was lovely to see her and how much the children enjoyed playing in the swimming pool with her (see their blogs) – despite her being the first friend from home we’ve seen in 4 months, I notice that we slip back into conversation almost instantly – we might as well be sitting in a London coffee bar! Sadly it’s over all too quickly but we arrange to catch up with her and her partner Nicola later in the week in Phnom Penh.
We go to a circus, performed by a group from Battambang – it turns out not to be a traditional circus, rather dance performed by gymnasts. It’s really incredible – the artists only have cardboard boxes for props; it’s very moving but also very dark in parts as it’s the story of the choreographer’s personal experience through the Khmer Rouge years, telling the story of a small child who loses her family and yet overcomes the trauma to once again see hope and joy in the world.
So after 4 brief days, in which once again I feel we’ve only scratched the surface, we head south to Pnohm Penh…
Five Go Round The World 