Asian Adventure: Siem Reap

Yesterday First Lady Michelle Obama was here in Siem Reap as part of her Asian tour promoting education for young girls.  We didn’t see her, but saw lots of evidence—police, armed guards, and security vans around one of the nearby hotels.  Siem Reap has grown exponentially in the last ten or so years to a population of around one million people. This has been driven in part by the explosion of tourists coming to see Angkor Wat and the other Khmer temples here.  But, like other cities in the developing world, Siem Reap is a study in contrasts between new hotels and resorts for the international visitors and the very basic life of people living in the countryside. Running water is not a given and many people have no skills and need training and assistance in order to have a better life.

Our hotel, Shinta Mani Club, is modern with traditional elements and is a model for effective community outreach.  The building, set around several courtyards with reflecting pools and balconies, was recently renovated and has air conditioned rooms and modern bathrooms.  Most of the staff are young men (a few women work in the restaurant) and they always greet us with palms together and a slight bow.  At night, the main floor corridors and lobby are lit with candles–votives on stalks, votives in sculptures like one in the shape of four hands, and tall thick orange pillars sitting on the floor.  It makes me feel like I’m in a monastery or a temple, which is probably deliberate on the part of the architect, and is a bit eerie.

But the hotel is up to date.  Upon arrival, we were given a local cell phone to use and the reasonably strong Wifi is complimentary.  Even better, here on the other side of the world far far from home, Facetime works.   Thanks to Wifi, we enjoyed a screen call with our granddaughter.  Simply amazing!  We had connected in Hanoi and Hue also and marveled at how technology has transformed how we stay in touch.  When I was a child, my grandparents would call long distance from Michigan to New York State and my siblings and I each got a turn talking to them—but we had to be brief because it was long distance and each minute cost.

The hotel restaurant, Kroya, is excellent.  The breakfast buffet has everything you could want either Asian or Western, hot and cold dishes, and the dinners are very good.  There is an a la carte menu, but more fun is to do their tasting menu of Cambodian dishes.  The portions are small and the menu is different every day, but usually includes some sort of salad, a sour soup, rice, and two other small dishes with pork and fish and then a sweet, often something based around rice.

More important than the hotel itself is what Shinta Mani is doing for the people of Siem Reap.  They run a School of Hospitality at the hotel which trains young people in all aspects of hotel operations, providing them a stipend while they learn and equipping them for future jobs.  This was so successful that more recently the Shinta Mani Foundation was established and their efforts now also include a program on farming techniques for villagers, start-up loans for small businesses and support for healthcare check-ups in rural areas.

Yesterday morning, we went at dawn’s early light to the Banteay Srei temple which is a Hindu temple to the god Shiva built in the 10th century.  It is made of reddish pink sandstone and is simply lovely!  Smaller in size and scale than the other Angkor temples, it has been dubbed the “Lady Temple.”  Since we were there so early and almost alone, we meandered around, had time to frame our photo shots and even got inside the ropes for an up close look at some of the beautifully intricate carvings.  We easily spent an hour in that peaceful pink setting.  Hard to say, but this may be my favorite of all the temples we’ve seen.IMG_9393IMG_9336IMG_9395IMG_9403

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Asian Adventure: Tuk Tuking to the Temples

Our last morning in Ho Chi Minh City was devoted to a tour of some notable sites.  We visited the Presidential Palace and I admired the elegant state reception rooms in particular and noted in the war council and secure rooms that not only was there the one important “red phone” which was red, but also phones of every pastel color imaginable midst a few black ones.

We stepped inside the intensely mustard yellow grand central post office built about 1880 and learned that the exterior will be re-painted its usual more subdued yellow now that the new year’s festivities have ended.  We also spent a bit of time in the War Remnants Museum which mostly dwells on the Vietnam (or American) War and the atrocities committed by the Americans—everything from torture and the wiping out of whole villages to the ravages of Agent Orange.  It is a wonder after seeing all that that the Vietnamese people are so welcoming of us Americans.

Our last stops of the morning were a Chinese pagoda temple still in active use and a wholesale market that had everything from stacks of ball caps to piles of plastic ware to clothing, spices and grains, fresh meat and produce and lots of small food stalls where one could sit to eat or buy something to take away.

We spent almost as much time in the air as we did getting processed at the Siem Reap airport to enter Cambodia.  Immigration procedures from completing a health form to filling out the required visa application to waiting for the return of our passports and then waiting in another line to have said visa and other immigration forms examined and stamped in different places with at least five different stamps took a bit over an hour.  But getting our luggage and getting to the hotel were smooth and the hotel staff, all young men as far as I could tell, very welcoming.

It was a short night as we met Eric de Vries at 5:15 am for a day of photography at some of the Angkor temples.  A professional photographer he offers a variety of tours from temples to city streets to Cambodian countryside.  From Holland originally, Eric has spent time in Cambodia since 2000 and lived here since 2007.

We traveled by tuk tuk, pictured above and called by some, “auto rickshaws,” which was more easily able to navigate the narrow roads around the temples.  Leaving in the dark meant we got to the first temple just as dawn was breaking and ahead of some of the tourists and, we got well started before the heat and humidity became oppressive.  It got up to about 95 degrees, but fortunately was somewhat hazy.  Within some of the temple ruins, there was shade and an occasional breeze.

Eric took us to his favorite spots for shots and gave us pointers on what settings to try and then gently critiqued our efforts.  He had us re-take the photo several times until we made it better or tried a different approach.  One of his mantras was “make it darker” and generally, the result was better.  We visited several temples from early morning until after 2:00 in the afternoon with a break for Khmer cuisine for lunch.  I was especially fond of the Preah Khan temple and all the shadings of stone it was possible to bring out with the camera.  The day was a great experience and I’m glad I persevered despite the heat!

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