Notes From A Blue Pumpkin
Woke up for breakfast at Sala Bai and to news that Greg had taken ill during the night. I don’t think it was anything to do with the durian cookies the night before, but I still felt pangs of guilt. Jo’s back was playing up, and it was decided that just Ally and I would venture out for the morning.
Along with the unexpected cost of visiting Koh Ker, Greg’s illness finally decided the issue of what we would do – Ally and I would stay close to Siem Reap and visit the Roulous group of temples in the morning and do some shopping in the evening. It was disappointing not to visit Koh Ker and Beng Melea, as it had been something I had been very much hoping to do, but it leaves something to do on our next visit!
The three temples of the Rolous group, Preah Ko, Bakong and Lolei are the oldest around Siem Reap. Once again words fail me in trying to describe how beautiful they were – along with Pre-Rup, Bakong was perhaps my favorite temple. Their unexpected beauty – the vista from Pre-Rup and approaching Bakong just took my breath away. There were significantly less visitors than any other temples we had visited, and rather than the hoards of hawkers at the more popular temples at the Roulous there were just a handful – just as cute, just as insistent but less overwealming.
On the way out of Bakong a very young girl approached Ally with a very old ploy. She thrust a flower into her hand and proceeded to tie it around her finger with a palm leaf. Ally gave in and decided to pay the dollar demanded, which led to a chorus of four or five other children demanding the same, or at least a few thousand riel (equivalent to a few cents)
Again, pictures of the temples, which are beyond my powers of description, will follow.
We returned to Sala Bai for lunch, and to make sure Greg was feeling better. The highlight of lunch was a street performer who set up for an impromptu show in front of the hotel while we ate lunch, which climaxed in a leap through a hoop of knives and burning torch.
As Jo and Greg still did not feel up to visting any temples, we had a very quiet afternoon of shopping with Sanchey at a slightly dodgy silver shop and Artisans d’Angkor, an organisation dedicated to preserving traditional Khmer arts and crafts and creating opportunity of local Cambodians.
During the afternoon Sanchey mentioned that Siem Reap provence is, ironically, the poorest provence in Cambodia. Despite the enourmous amounts of tourist revenue which pour through very little finds its way to the poorest Cambodians and the lights may appear bright to Khmer from other provences, but the streets are rarely paved, let alone with gold. Labor is cheap and plentiful; service everywhere is better than anywhere I have ever experienced. This evening we went to KFC to get Greg, who was still feeling very weak, something familiar and safe – french fries – and were served a complimentary coke while we waited for our order! Even buying drinks at the local mini-marts feels like we are doing a great service, the shopkeepers, literally jump out of their seats to open the door and will chase you down the street if you wander away!
In the evening we had dinner at the Blue Pumpkin cafe, perhaps the best example of ‘tourist’ Siem Reap. I have rarely seen a cafe so clean, so orderly and so welcoming and so Western. Ally had a ham and cheese crossiant and I sampled the local specialty – linguini. Its chief attraction for us was free Wifi and we passed an enjoyable evening dipping into our lives at home, totally removed from the lives of almost every Cambodian. It is hard to describe how awfully privileged it feels to wander round Siem Reap as a Westerner. USD $10 is a princely sum: even at the tourists restaurants at which we have eaten it will buy a meal, and often a large bottle of beer, for both of us. We’ve become used to so much of the chaos – the traffic, the tuktuk drivers touting for business and the adorable hawkers and have become very comfortable here very quickly. I wish we had far more time and it will be hard to leave.
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Tune hotel was passable for a few hour layover. We paid about 50 cents for the room and about $5 for air-conditioning and another $2.50 for the comfort kit (e.g. towels). A deposit of twenty ringgit for each key and ten for each towel was required. The room was tiny, with just enough room to shuffle sideways around the bed and a small bathroom, with a standard shower cubicle. Tune advertise ‘5 star showers’ and the showerhead was good, if not exactly ‘5 star’. We ended up storing some of our luggage in the bathroom to create enough room to move about!
the Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur flight. Arrived in Siem Reap an hour late to be met which one of the most singular visions I had seen in my life. In the customs hall there was a large, half-moon sized desk behind which which were seated about 7 or 8 guards. Our visa application was passed along this line on identically dressed guards – all men – you all had one particular function to perform. After recieving our visas we got through customs without too much trouble, collected our baggage, smiled to the customs officials and prepared for the inevitable chaos beyond the airport.
Sala Bai, our hotel, is primarily a school. It takes in underprivilged (a family which earns less than $25 dollars a month) young Cambodians every year and trains them in the trade that makes this two tick – hospitality. It is primarily NGO funded. The young staff are amazing – always smiling and perhaps even more endearing in their occaisional mistakes and uncertainty. The restaurant looks equisite and we ordered lunch and some drinks – Ally had a coke, I had a freshly-squeezed lime juice and Jo and Greg each ordered a beer (which turned out to be a 750ml bottle!).
After a rest we hired a couple of tuktuks, intending to have a wander around Siem Reap and then to see sunset over Angkor Wat from Phnom Bakeng. After having to turn around to retrive Ally’s hat the two tuktuks ended up at different markets! After a short mobile phone conversation between the drivers we were all successfully reunited at the Central Market. We had a short wander round and the expert sales-people, whose high-pressure sales techniques can rival those anywhere, we were parted with about $20 for a selection of tourist tat. We met up with the tuktuk drivers who explained that it was now too late to see the sunset from Phnom Bakeng and suggested the Tonle Sap instead. Slightly incredulous, we consented to this plan.
When we arrived at the lake the ‘plan’ was to take a boat to view the sunrise over a floating village. However, it was immediately clear that quite a few tourists who had just returned from boat trips were rather disgruntled with what they had been charged and the length of the ride. The whole scene was rather unnerving and just smelt dodgy. We took a coupleo of photos, got hasselled by some amazingly cute kids and piled back into the tuktuks for the hold-on-to-your plastic handropes drive back into town. Got back to the hotel and, for the second time in the one day, needed some time to recover!
Went out for dinner an hour or two later and ended up at a tourist restaurant which did quite passable fish Amok, curries and more Western fare. Wanded around Siem Reap feeling slightly more comfortable as we realised that crossing the road between scooters and whathaveyou was possible. Just kinda thrilling!
