Cambodia

 Southeast Asia

We've just finished up 3 days in Siem Reap visiting the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and a number of other temples that I honestly can't remember the names of(not that they weren't awesome, there were just so many temples with such similar names!). 

Our first night however, Sammar found a fun event for us to go to that was much more modern than the ancient temples. Phare is Cambodia's version of Cirque du Soleil. On top of the crazy acrobatics and great humor that we enjoyed at the show, we were happy to contribute to a worthy cause. Phare was started by a non-profit organization that provides free training in the arts to Cambodian children and gives them an opportunity to express their passions and fears through this medium. On top of this, the show is comprised entirely of local talents that have found a way to earn money doing something that they love and are bringing their families out of poverty. They performed many impressive stunts, but my personal favorite was when one of the men balanced a top a board that was sitting a top not one, not two, but five free standing metal cylinders. I've tried to do it on one before and it was difficult, but what he did was nothing short of amazing!

For the temples, we had an awesome tour guide, Sophat, who shared with us many stories of the long history of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, and his personal experiences growing up in the country.

Before I get into the rest of our activities though, I must recognize some the history of Cambodia that Sammar and I did not have a great grasp of before we arrived. Many people don't realize that while the Vietnamese first struggled to rid themselves of the French, then the Japanese, then the French again and later the United States, Cambodia was also battling for their own independence. After initially gaining it's independence from France in 1953, they struggled for years and eventually were caught up in the Vietnam war as well when the U.S. conducted a 14 month long bombing raid to destroy North Vietnamese strongholds just over the Cambodian boarder. Political turmoil later followed and eventually the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers, or communists) overthrew the government in 1975 and in 4 years of ruling, massacred near 25% of Cambodia's population. As if this fact isn't staggering enough, it is believed that 85% of the country's doctors and teachers were killed by the regime in an effort to rid the country of any intelligent challengers to the Khmer Rouge's rule. Fortunately the government was overthrown in only 4 years, however beyond 25% of the population being killed, the country continues to be affected by the millions of land mines that were planted in unknown locations throughout the country. A land-mine museum in Siem Reap features over 10,000 mines that have been deactivated, however this pales in comparison to the number that still remain. Our tour guide was taught as a young boy how to recognize traps where these mines might be hidden so that he could avoid them around his village while he played. Today, Cambodia is still has the 3rd most land mines planted of any country, only behind Afghanistan and Cuba.

Now on to happier times! The temples of Cambodia are a site to see. Our first visit was to Angkor Wat, the most famous of all the temples (it even is on the Cambodian flag), except it wasn't exactly what I had expected. I'm embarassed to say that I thought Angkor Wat was the temple that had giant trees whose roots had overtaken the building forming a harmonious combination of man and nature. Needless to say, I was wrong, that was another temple altogether, but fortunately it was also in Cambodia! We enjoyed traveling around for two days with Sophat learning about god's like Shiva, Krishna, Brahma and seeing temples built in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries in Cambodia. Back in that time, Cambodia was apparently one of the most populous areas of the world. Sophat told us that between the 10th and 13th centuries there were over a million people in the Angkor area compared with only 50,000 people in Rome. I have no idea if this is right, but it sounded impressive!  

On the second day, we visited a floating village on the lake. You may remember that we visited a floating village in Halong Bay and were amazed that people were able to live on houses that literally floated on the water, well Cambodia took floating villages to an entirely new level. Instead of the 40-50 houses that we saw in Vietnam, this village had over 50,000 people living in it. There were churches, stores, restaurants, and even schools floating in the middle of this lake and we learned that depending upon the time of the year, homeowners would simply pick up their anchor and float or tow the house with their boat up to 10km away from the location that we saw them in! Needless to say this was a pretty cool thing to see and the breeze along the lake felt incredible compared to our bodies drenched in sweat at the temples.

Anyways, all things said, we enjoyed the temples and if we did it all over again, we probably would have also travelled to Phnom Phen and to some of the rural countryside to get a better sense of the culture of Cambodia outside of Siem Reap. Guess we’ll have to see those on Round the World Trip II!

2 countries down, 12 to go! Now on to Thailand!