phnom penh
the more i travel, the more i become convinced that a place is capable of having a certain innate quality that renders it far greater than the sum of its obvious attractions. some cities just do not possess this unquantifiable quality (mandalay, mumbai), others you have to coax it out (kolkata, saigon), but for others it becomes apparent fairly rapidly. i'm happy to say that, despite appearances, phnom penh falls into the latter category.
there is a traveller ghetto, a khao san road with some integrity, which means that cheap accomodation and people to talk to are abundant. it also means however that if you resist the temptation to jump on the back of a moto to the nearest tourist spot and actually walk, you can find yourself in a little cambodian suburb, without a henna tatoo or beer lao t-shirt in sight, in minutes. phnom penh also benefits from having been a french colonial headquarters: they may not have been very nice to the natives, but sweeping boulevards and attractive, rather than aggressively imposing, buildings are a happy legacy that stay with a city.
i only arrived at around 2pm so i've just had a meander about and it's been really pleasant. tomorrow i'm going to go to s21 (where the khmer rouge tortured people) and the killing fields (self explanatory) so you may fnd me in a more reflective mood.
emergency over
nipple is better: all can now relax.
a quick bit of vanity, i'm running a couple of (much shorter) blogs which just state the books i'm reading and music i'm currently listening to.
www.bicromabroadbooks and
bicromabroadmusic.blogspot.com if you really want to slack off work.
angksore
three days bike riding was going to take its toll, and i now have a very delicate little derriere. i also, somewhat more surprisingly, have a sore left nipple... i'm presuming it has something to do with chafing? either way, it just goes to show that cultural interest can be hazardous. today was more of the same, but with glorious weather, and i was able to finish seeing some of the more remote temples. i ended my three day bonanza with an hour at the baphuon, before going on to angkor wat. foolish: it was packed to the rafters with tour groups. it might be big, but china and japan are bigger, and they seem to empty themselves out nightly for cambodian sunsets. as it was, i just walked around the perimeter, which was still relatively secluded, and called it a day. i want my lasting memory of the place to be its grandeur, not a desire to lamp some camera toting fool in socks and sandals.
having a day of rest tomorrow, before arriving in phnom penh for friday night... so silly it might just work.
angkor wet
in mira nair's film 'monsoon wedding' the coming of the seasonal rains is seen as a cleansing, positive, thing, heralding in a new age of love, happiness, and understanding. if i ever meet the infernal ms nair i will personally dunk her in a vat of murky, clay reddened, water and ask her to rethink her opinion on this meterological blight. monsoon rains are designed to do nothing but overly moisten innocent people going about the, some might say worthy, business of exploring and appreciating ancient cultures. is that a crime?
in case it's not clear i got caught in the bastard rain today. to be fair i can't complain too much: i had blue skies all day yesterday, and the rain only hit when i was in my penultimate temple of the day. it's just that the downpour was so unreasonable... in india this kind of thing consists of five minutes of downwards insanity and then a happy calm. here, it lasted for almost two hours, at the end of which i was soaked following the complete inability of the temple i was naively sheltering in to have a roof.
actually as far as sightseeing goes it's been another good day. i went to some of the older temples, some of which are little more than rubble. despite this however you can still appreciate the previous scale of the buildings: this, coupled with the extraordinary carvings on various rocks lying around on the floor, and the enormous tree roots slithering around the foundations, combine to create an effect not so much of plain decay but glorious decrepitude.
trying desperately to head off a potential cold: i have a day left of my $40 pass and come rain, shine, or phlegm i'm going to use it.
angkor
the three day pass to visit the temples of angkor cost $40, which is the financial equivalent of cyanide in the eyeballs for budget backpacker bicrom. after just one day however, it already seems totally worth it. i went prepared for disappointment, and yet was continually stunned despite myself. i'm imposing an auto-hyperboleator on the following descriptions: however amazing i try to make it sound, it will never do justice to just how majestic the major structures are.
angkor wat is the biggy, and at first glance it is just that: big. for a lot of things sheer size is enough, but for the wat (as, er, noone but lazy bloggers call it) the intricate details all along the walls and carved on the towering spires are just as awe inspiring. there were a fair few package tourists about (why do the japanese insist on fulfilling every sterotype and run around making inconceivable amounts of noise in temples?), but the joy of da wat (that works even less well) is that it's so big, you can always find yourself some solitude amongst the ruins.
the baphuon meanwhile is the temple that is bedecked with hundreds of peaceful faces gently smiling down at you... i found myself a nook and took in their serenity, emerging an hour later feeling more relaxed then i have done for years.
what's really bizarre, and i find myself thinking this in india too, is how these civilizations crumbled so completely: the fall from the pinnacle of global achievement to third world poverty is complete. blaming imperialism is the easy route, but it doesn't explain how the people got so weak as to be colonised in the first place. it just makes you realise how cyclical national (this is an anachronistic term, but used for convenience) power can be. maybe in a few millenia it will be africa sending aid to the states... and if they are i hope they send nothing but leaflets encouraging contraception laden sexual promiscuity, and condoms.
anyway, that's it, i haven't really got the lexical prowess to do these places justice: you'll just have to wait for the photos. i also cycled over 50kms today, mostly over dirt tracks, on a bike with no suspension, so i'm feeling more sorry for myelf than verbose.
off to some of the more remote temples tomorrow, where the line between monument and jungle has become blurred. was all set for a 4.30am start, but received wisdom is that there is nowhere to catch a decent sunrise: the brief reccy that i had today seemed to confirm this, which is a bit of a bugger (although i'm pretty sure i wouldn't have been thinking that while it was still dark at wrong o'clock tomorrow).
santorino reap
siem reap is the jumping off point for the temples of angkor. it's a pleasant enough place, but unsurprisingly well touristed. the conflagration of reddened white faces and bars advertising live english premiership and fry ups means it is more reminiscent of tenerife than south east asia. it's strange, i love a beer and the footy as much as the next man, but i'm finding the atmosphere here slightly disheartening: it doesn't seem worth travelling halfway across the world to be surrounded by the paraphernalia of friday night english suburbia. i'm hoping that angkor wat et al will remind me of why i'm here, and mean that the nocturnal lagerdom of siem reap proves a happy corrolary to days stumbling around ancient temples.
thought it'd be clever to watch batman begins and the fantastic four rather than sleep on the plane so i'm off to eat and then crash.
