More moments

A continuation of small events...

The monks' prayer
In Chau Doc I was waiting for the boat which would take me to Cambodia. It was about 7 o'clock in the morning and I sat at a table of my guest house's restaurant. On the opposite side of the street monks arrived, men and also women, and started to dress up in their orange suits. I asked a woman of the restaurant what was going on there, and showed my surprise about female monks. She told me that this was quite normal in Vietnam, also women were allowed to spend a certain time in a monastery. Now they gathered in the private house on the other side of the street, because the family had "invited" them. Two family members were mentally ill, and the monks were supposed to pray for their reconvalescense. The family had payed a certain amount of money, you could call it donation, to the monks or their monastery.
The prayer itself lasted about 15 or 20 minutes. It was carried out more or less publicly, in the living room that opens to the street. After having finished, the monks got out of their robes again. One after the other got into a tuk-tuk or cyclo and was brought back to the monastery... Life in the house continued as normal as every day...

Giggling about the foreigner
The evening before, I was walking through the streets of Chau Doc. As I had mentioned already, a quite pleasant little city. I didn't know what I wanted to eat and made several rounds... Finally I decided to sit down at one of the small food stalls on the sidewalks. Apparently very rarely foreigners eat there, because first they stared at me, then all started getting busy to serve me. They had only one dish, it was a noodle soup with tofu and tasted absolutely delicious. While I ate, two girls, maybe 16 or 17, sat down on the next table and watched me. They couldn't get over the fact that a foreigner ate at their "reataurant", yet it was a very friendly and sympathetic curiousity... When I had finished and paid, they all were smiling and waving me good-bye... Unfortunately I would leave the next morning, the soup was really good and I would have liked to eat there again...

Death of a cow
On the way from Khompong Chom to Kratie our bus was driving quite normal. That means that he used the horn to warn the others, motorcycles or cars, or to chase dogs and cows off the road. Slowing down is not necessarily a regular behaviour. To be fair, in Cambodia is it far better than in Vietnam, where the traffic could be called "absolutely crazy".
But finally there came a moment I had long waited for. Close to a small village a cow suddenly started to run across the road (it was not one of these big European cows, but somewhat smaller). The driver tried to brake, but he had no chance, it happened too quick. The bus fully hit the cow, with a speed of maybe 60 or 70 kms/h. It gave a loud dull bang, and the cow was thrown through the air and hurled to the side of the street. The driver slowed down for a second, then he continued...
I actually don't know whether the cow was killed, but I can't imagine that she survived the impact. For the driver it was logical to "run away"... There is no such thing as an insurance in Cambodia that covers this kind of accident. The driver's employer would never pay for the damage, so he himself would be liable... A cow means quite some value in Cambodia, and it might be the equivalent of maybe 3, 4 or 5 months wages which the driver would have to pay. Clear facts, so he simply continued...
The question was how the owner of the cow would deal with it. The best he could do would be probably to sell the meat, yet the bitter end of this story was undoubtedly on his side.

The rush

It's not one moment, it happens all the time, whenever one's arriving by bus in any city in Vietnam or Cambodia. Dozens of tuk-tuk drivers virtually jump on the bus to get a customer. It's shouting and gesticulating without interruption, you are surrounded by a whole bunch of people who want to drive you to a guest house or hotel. Often they are sort of affiliated with one or the other place and get a commission if they manage to bring you there. You know that it's there business and their way to make money, but often it gets almost annoying, especially in Vietnam. People are very pushy there and you want to be left alone to make up your mind, but no chance... they won't leave you alone... after a few times one gets used to it, tries to understand (it's their job), tries to take it as cool as possible, yet often enough it simply remains tiring... and you dream of being back in Laos, where everything is so much quieter and calmer...

Khmer specialities

In Siem Reap are two restaurants with the following sign outside:
"We don't serve dog, cat, monkey, rat or worms"
Now you might think that this still leaves a lot open, and right, they both have a "snake menu" on their dinner card. I didn't try it, I'm honest...
I also was a coward and walked past the huge plates full of grilled insects, which you can find at every street corner: cicadas, spiders, beegles, whatever you prefer... I thought that they must be coming from some kind of "farm", but was told that most of them are simply collected in the woods where they abound...

Another speciality which I skipped are eggs. You see them in big heaps on plates at every food stall. When you take a closer look, you notice that they are not clean white as we are used to see them: they are covered with larger dark spots. The locals usually eat several of them at once. They cautiously break open the top. When you try to get a glimpse what's inside, you can see that it's not white, but somehow dark. Then they season it with salt or a spicy sauce and start spooning them out. It doesn't look very fancy and I quickly knew what it was because I had read about it before: the eggs are duck eggs, and they are almost fully bred, that means that the duck fledgling inside is almost ready to hatch out. At that stadium they are boiled, as far as I know, and in this state they are a real Khmer delicatesse.

Before you start thinking "what a strange country", I can ensure you that there are still lots of other specialities which can be eaten without any major consideration. Cambodian curries are great, as are a lot of fish dishes...
A few bugs shouldn't deter you from visiting this really interesting country...

Stung Treng

Another outpost town, the northernmost point in Cambodia on the way to Laos. I had to spend one night here, as it is not possible to travel in one day from Kratie to Laos. There is no regular traffic, it's mostly a handful of minibuses with tourists running that tour.
Departure in Kratie 1.30 pm, I have to wait, and again it's hot, hot, hot... finally we sit in the small bus which runs to Stung Treng, I'm the only foreigner among a few locals. About three hours on almost empty roads... northern Cambodia is only sparsely populated.
Stung Treng is like Kratie, only smaller. Again, I like the atmosphere... The guesthouse is on a square across from the Mekong, it has a rooftop terrace overlooking the river. Wandering through the dusty streets some people stare at you (it's a common route between Laos and Cambodia, the only crossing actually, but there simply isn't much traffic, and foreigners don't abound here, although they are a common sight).
For a while I linger around at the ferry landing, there's just always something to see. Rivers mean life, motion, activity. Small boats depart to I don't know where, a bigger ferry for a handful of cars crosses every half hour to the other side... I could stay the whole day here... yet dark clouds are approaching, thunder telling of the imminent afternoon rain. Slowly I make my way back to the guesthouse... in vain, as the clouds are passing, raining off somewhere else. Stung Trengs streets remain dusty for at least another day...

Kratie

4.6.
It doesn't look very far on the map, but there was no possibility to make it in one day: the stretch Siem Reap - Kratie. As I knew that before, I took a noon-bus that was leaving Siem Reap, heading east. In the afternoon I arrived in Khompong Thom, where I spend the night. Nothing fancy this city, but its Mekong-location makes it interesting for a stopover, besides that I managed to find a guest house with a room overlooking the river... not bad, eh?

Next morning I continued to Kratie, and this is a town I really enjoyed. It's also a river port, a nice little place to wander around and to get to know Cambodia (which you don't necessarily get to know that well in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap). Travel guides call it an outpost, and that's not a bad word. It's a bit the end of the world, but a really pleasant one... a small town center, just two or three blocks around the market, besides that wide empty streets, sometimes unpaved, lots of palmtrees, dust whirled around by the wind, not a lot of traffic, a very quiet small town. From its jetty longboats depart to other places somewhere along the river... as everyone knows, I'm fascinated by anything connected to big rivers and the sea...
Kratie is one of these towns where a lot of people ask what to do there... in fact, there is a lot to do, often nothing spectacular, but enough to get a glimpse of the country you are travelling in. It reminded me a bit of Savannakhet in Laos... in Kratie there are also lots of old broken down colonial buildings which emanate a fascinating atmoshere of decay.

In its neighbourhood one can find within a very short distance interesting pagodas, Khmer ruins, terrific landscape and the habitat of the only sweetwater dolphins worldwide. I planned to rent a small motorcycle for one day, but had to discover that I was running out of cash... in Cambodia the US-$ is accepted throughout the country (exchange rate 1 $ = 4000 riel), but you run into problems when you have to exchange travellers cheques in smaller towns... it simply might not be possible... So I counted the cash dollars I had left, thought that it would be enough to bring me across the border, and decided to discover the region around Kratie on my next trip... three weeks are simply not enough for this country...

Landmines

If Cambodia should be described with three terms, "Angkor" is a clear choice. One of the two remaining options would definitely be "landmines".
Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, due to the Vietnam war which extended into Cambodia, internal fighting, the Khmer Rouge takeover and, after the Vietnamese invasion, the ongoing guerilla war between government forces and the Khmer Rouge. I actually learned, that in Cambodia's east the problem are less mines than UXO - you remember what this is? If not, read one of the Laos posts again... but the consequences are very similar...

Many mines have one clear purpose: they are not designed to kill, but just to rip away legs or arms. The logic behind: dead soldiers or civilians won't cause high costs, they will be buried and sooner or later forgotten. A wounded person, with one or several limbs amputated, is a constant burden to enemy or society. Physically, because he/she can't work fully or not at all and has to be taken care of, mentally, because the continuous sight of amputees is supposed to demoralize the enemy...
Over the years since the wars, some 60000 people have been injured or killed by landmines in Cambodia (the population now is about 14,5 million). Especially in the bigger cities they can't be overseen, people with one leg or none at all, with no hands or arms... some of them begging, as they have no other choice to make a living. In Siem Reap they are "concentrated", because from there to the Thai border are the main mine fields and as a consequence the most casualties...

There are many national and international organisations trying to work on that "issue", either by clearing mine fields (will take about 100 years to make the country mine-free), by assisting land mine survivors, by producing prostethics...
If one is interested in more information, I recommend the following pages to get a closer insight into Cambodia's biggest "problem":
www.angkorad.org , the website of a grassroot-NGO set up by a mine survivor, which has much more to offer than statistics...
www.cambodialandminemuseum.com ,
or go to the websites of "Mines Advisory Group" or "Handicap International".

A little detour

Siem Reap, 31.5.
I stayed longer in Siem Reap then I had planned. The visit to Angkor took three days, besides that I tried to contact a handful of people to maybe get enough material and photos to make it into a story about the landmines. But it somehow didn't work out...

Siem Reap itself is a town as touristy as one can imagine. With Angkor next to it, you don't have to ask why. It's full of restaurants, boutiques, hotels and guest houses, and whatever tourism demands. I actually was quite tired of it, things with the landmine-story dragged on without a real progress, it was incredibly hot some days, monsoon rains in the afternoon didn't bring much relief, they just flooded the city, but the temperatures didn't really go down...

On the last day I made a very small tour, that compensated for the "hardship". It wasn't difficult at all, I just had to turn left when leaving my guest house, instead of turning right towards the city center. An unpaved street was following the river that flows towards the Tonle Sap lake. It led through the quarters at the outskirts of town, and it was pure Cambodia (you can't say that about a good part of Siem Reap). Every 200 or 300 meters a small bridge was crossing the river, the paved road on the other side leads towards the lake, but I stayed mainly on the unpaved street. There were lots of houses on stilts standing right at the river, canoes everywhere, school children were greeting me, I discovered a small water mill, the river was brown and muddy and full of garbage, and most important of all there wasn't much traffic, just bicycles, some motorcycles and a few pick-ups. Eventually I crossed over to the road and left the city. Driving through wide open land, with lakes and rice paddies on both sides, I didn't care about the sun, which was already hot again (it was maybe 8.30 in the morning). I came to a small village, to the right there was a big temple, to the left the road continued, but without tarmac. It was already now in a bad state, and the rainy season hasn't started yet... I wouldn't like to see it in two or three months...

Eventually I turned around, the bicycle just wasn't made for this kind of dirt road... very slowly I drove back to Siem Reap, following again the dirt street on the other side of the river, after reaching the city. It was one of these insignificant little trips which I will keep longer in my memory than most of the other days spent in Siem Reap. A little bit I felt like having wasted some time there, but that's how it goes sometimes, and as I said before, this little tour compensated for everything that didn't work out in the last days...

Angkor

If there's one "must-see" in Cambodia, it's Angkor. It's difficult to describe in a few words...
What is called Angkor today, are the remnants of the temples of the city with the same name, the center of the old Khmer empire. Angkor covered at its height I don't know how many square kilometers and about 1 million people were living there. Most of this is gone, as houses, palaces and most other buildings were constructed of wood. Stone was reserved for the temples...
The Khmer god-kings constructed Angkor between the 9th and the 13th century. What is left today, is one of the most impressive and fascinating archaeological sites on this planet. To get more than a glimpse of the temples and take an closer look at the marvels designed and constructed so many centuries ago, one needs easily three days... to discover some more remote sites, scattered all around Siem Reap and other provinces, one could spend a week or two... and there is much more all over Cambodia...
If you would like to get an idea of what Angkor is like, take a look at www.theangkorguide.com, which is still the definite guide and can be downloaded for free. To see some photos, employ your search engine... I didn't find a website I really liked, but then I also didn't spend much time searching...

Sorry to make it that short, but Angkor is too impressive to describe in a few minutes... the best is to try everything to make it there one day...