Distant Temples to Dusty Classrooms

I knew that the three weeks in Siem Reap would fly by and fly they did.  I'm home now and still trying to recover from the crushing jet lag that goes with an epic 30-hour trip home and and 11-hour time difference.

There were two day excursions during my last week.  On Tuesday, we rented a car and drove to Kulen National Park.  There is a hefty price of admission to this park ($20) and once we were inside, the old Toyota Camry (a very popular model here for some reason) trundled its way along the pitted, and unpaved streets until we arrived at a river bed that had been fully carved with lingas and images of Buddha...all underwater.  When the car pulled up near the river, we saw a small team of boys towards us screaming 'Hello'!  Our driver told us that they wanted to be our guides along the river and when we agreed, he spoke to them sternly for a few moments and they watched him with open faces and all said 'Bai' which means 'Ok' and then we all took off towards the river bank.

Our driver explained that he told them that we would only tip a dollar or two and that they had to share.  It was so interesting to see how the older boys with better English would boss around the younger ones (telling them to stay out of the water, to not run ahead, and so on).  A popular game with boys and girls alike seems to be trying to catch fish in little plastic cups.  I think that if I was 5 years old I might want to do that too.

We then got back in the car and drove to a temple that was carved out of the stone of the mountain.  Even the reclining Buddha was carved out of stone. 

As you climb the steps to the temple, our driver exchanged a couple of dollars from each of us for the smallest denominations of the local currency because there are beggars lined up along the temple steps and people just seem to give.  I have had to re-evaluate my attitude about giving money to beggars directly here because there is no real social assistance the way we understand it.  Every time we were approached by beggars on the street, in the markets, or along the highway, Chanda or our driver would reach open their wallets.  I figure, if they have so little and still give...well...you know.  Kyle remarked that he would rather gather a bunch of the children, give them 5 dollars, and get them to run around picking up garbage.  I honestly don't know how that idea would fly here given that donating to the poor outside of temples is an act of good karma (literally) for these devout Buddhist people.

No visit to Kulen Mountain is complete without a visit to the waterfall and swimming hole.  Even though it was the end of the dry season, and the water levels were at their lowest, the waterfall was still very exciting and there was plenty of water for swimming.

 

One thing I was not counting on was the fact that water in the area is all inhabited by those little flesh-eating fish that you find in the 'Fish Massage' tanks of the markets.  You had to keep moving or else the little buggers would come along and nibble on your fingers and toes.  It is absolutely unnerving and I think the locals thought we were very entertaining as we screamed and thrashed around with our legs trying to keep the camera steady for photos.

 

After this, we drove to Beng Melea temple.  I have been wanting to visit this one for quite some time because it is remote and completely overrun by jungle.  It is actually quite large with libraries and gates, and a moat.   Because it is so far, not included in the general Angkor ticket, and because it is low season, there were very few tourist there.

I think I could have counted them on a single hand.  And for anyone who has seen the sunrise at Angkor Wat with 4000 of their closest Korean friends, this is a wonderful thing.

The following day was a school holiday and Diane had made a plan to take any remaining Singapore teachers out to one of the floating villages for the afternoon.  We met for lunch at FCC and took tuk tuks (oh how I miss them) down the highway and then along dusty roads.  We passed some relatively affluent houses that I felt could be the second homes of wealthy city people (if such a thing exists) and then the scenery turned depressing very quickly.  Shabby little huts with scrawny chickens became the norm as we approached the ticket gate for Kompong Pluk Village.

After paying our entrance fee, we had drive another 15 minutes along the river because the water levels are so low that boats are beached every which way.  Eventually, we got to a place far enough along where there were a couple of small boats that could take us.  The boats were narrow, rickety, and didn't to confirm to any sort of safety standard at all. 

But we were never in any real danger because the entire length of the river, and then even quite a bit of the beginning of the lake, was so shallow that we could have walked if we had to.  I am grateful that we didn't have to though because the water was absolutely filthy.  As one of Diane's friends described it:  it's like being splashed by dirty boogers.  There were several traffic jams along the river as we made our way to the lake because it was coming up on the end of the day and the locals were coming back to the village with their catch. 

We saw several people getting out to push their boats along.  We finally reached our destination of Tonle Sap Lake, and rewarded ourselves with cold beers on a floating home/bar.

Jennifer, the kids, and I left earlier than the others so that we could be back in town for the evening, but it was not meant to be because our tuk tuk developed a flat tire not long after we left the floating village.  We were able to pull over at a roadside drink stand/gasoline bar/family home but it took us so long to repair that the others actually caught up to us.  The family who lived at this roadside general store (just a shack of a store really) were getting ready for bed since the sun was going down.   On by one, all of the kids were stripped naked, and had water dumped on them from the nearby well.  They then all gathered around the laptop in the middle of the open single room that was their home, and tuned in to some kind of local drama on television.  I hope we didn't disturb them too much because the show, and its music, seemed pretty dramatic.

On my last day at Bakong High School, Kyle and I picked up the last of our supplies early in the morning, and made the drive with Mr. Ouhok one last time.  I had skimmed some water from Tonle Sap lake and brought it to school so that we could look at it under the microscope.  I don't think even the teachers had ever seen a microscope other than in photographs in textbooks.  I had to bring it outside into the sun to capture the light because these microscopes don't have electric lamps, only mirrors.  The school director came by and talked to the students about what we were looking at.  One by one they sat down to look into the ocular lens to see the swath of green algae.  I asked the director to explain to them that if the lake has too much of that green stuff, then the fish will start to die. 

The kids were so incredibly shy, but eventually each person, with a little coaxing, looked through the lens.  I was hoping to see microinvertebrates but I don't think I drew the sample close enough to the shore.

We assembled the kits in the morning, and then were driven to what I thought would be a local restaurant but what ended up being a gorgeous but pricey tourist restaurant where we sat on a deck looking over a nice little creek.  After our lunch, we were offered naps in the hammocks that were slung up all in a row in a building that seemed to have no purpose other than to provide a siesta to tuk tuk drivers, restaurant staff, tourists, and anybody else who wanted to take a break during the hottest part of the day.  We definitely need a nap time at school...for the teachers...definitely.

Anyway, that afternoon, Chanda and our translator arrived, and we filmed ourselves performing the 4 trickiest experiments, and filling out the worksheets and graphs.

Before we filmed, we described the experiment to our translator and it's a good thing we did because he wasn't familiar with some of the vocabulary we wanted to use in the context we wanted to use it.  Figuring out a way to say 'acids of different concentrations' took some pondering and input from Chanda but eventually, it all got done.  The photo above has our translator San, and the photo below shows Kyle expaining magnetism to San, our tuk tuk driver Mr. Ouhok (who used to mix cyanide as a freelance gold prospector) looking on, and Chanda taking a rare break from being on her feet.

 

Chanda is so resourceful and clever, that she was able to figure out a way to keep the magnesium ribbon from getting caught up in the foam from the reaction (stupid glycol in toilet cleaners...) by holding it under the surface with a bamboo skewer.  It was kind of like a very deadly fondue.  It would have taken me much longer to think of a way to do that.  She is so dedicated and wonderful, and I would do anything for her.

Afterwards, Kyle and I spent a little bit of time obsessing about the little mistakes we had made, but then realized that our gaffes were so unimportant in the grand scheme of what we were doing.  Maybe the teachers will eventually get so comfortable with all of it that they will find us hilarious.

A final Happy Hour at the FCC, a final night sleep in the Frangipani Villa Hotel, a morning spent shopping at Artisans Angkor and around town, lunch with Pooky, and a final Thai massage rounded out my last day.  The kind staff at my hotel let me shower and change in the spa rooms before I headed out to meet Jennifer and Diane for a snacks and drinks at the Victoria hotel.  We returned to their guesthouse for a final goodbye to Kyle and the two kids, and then it was off to the airport for me in a tuk tuk.  When I arrived at the beginning, I was picked up in an air-conditioned car.  But really, nothing beats a drive through the hot, dusty, and smoke-filled air of Siem Reap in a tuk tuk.  It was the perfect way to end the trip.

The 32-hour trip home was epic.  I hung out with another nice Canadian couple for a while, and I learned that the Seoul airport has free hot showers and they even give you a towel.  The rest of the trip was a haze of airplane food and safety demonstrations.  In a way it took forever and in a way I was home all too soon.

I'll never forget this trip.  This one was special.

As always, thanks for reading.

Leslie