Wandering Angkor Wat

I dragged myself out of bed well before dawn, blearily noting the silence outside my window. It seemed even the neighboring rooster, who'd spent more than an hour crowing the previous afternoon, was still asleep. I, however, had better things to do: this was my day to visit Angkor Wat.

In addition to being a reliable driver, Mr. Thorn
was a good sport and agreed to pose for me.

After a hurried breakfast, I greeted Mr. Thorn, who'd picked me up at the Siem Reap airport the day before, hopped in the back of his tuk-tuk and off we went. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply as we tore down dirt roads in the dark. The pre-dawn air was lovely, the omnipresent Cambodian dust tamped down by an overnight rain and the sweltering heat of the Southeast Asian sun still an hour or two beyond the horizon.

The noisy confusion and fluorescent lights at the entrance to Angkor Archaeological Park jolted me halfway back to reality as I purchased my ticket, and I climbed back into the tuk-tuk a little more alert. I watched the fog that hovered above the surface of the moat running parallel to the road, guiding us toward the entrance to Angkor Wat itself as the nighttime shadows began to lift, nudged back by the first fingers of dawn creeping over the landscape.

The sun peeking through a momentary
break in the clouds over Angkor Wat.

Wading through the masses of tourists and salespeople, I eventually settled down on the steps of one of the libraries that flank the main causeway, watching light slowly seep into the sky around Angkor's unmistakable triple silhouette. A bank of clouds from the night's rain lingered, hovering above and behind the temple, and it quickly became apparent that it wasn't going to clear before the sun was well into the sky. The photographers around me grumbled about missing a typically stunning Angkor Wat sunrise but I was oddly unperturbed, content to absorb the feeling of being nearly 9,000 miles from home, standing in the midst of a complex ordered built by a 12th-century king.

As the sun crept higher in the sky and deeper into the cloud bank, I made my way into the enclosure around the temple itself, marveling at the beauty of the bas-relief devatas guarding it and their apsara cousins, seemingly poised to begin a dance. After a climb up dauntingly steep steps with a railing so rickety I felt safer not holding onto it, I wandered one of the towers as the sun burned through the remaining clouds, sending hazy light spreading over the city surrounding the temple as sunbeams found their way through gaps in the sandstone to dance over the carvings lining the tower corridors.

A trio of apsaras at the base of one of the towers, with another tower at left.

The view from the stairs up to one of the towers (complete with rickety railing!)

Sunlight slowly seeping into the tower corridors.

The view over one of the tower balconies, with the Angkor balloon just visible among the treetops.

The South Gate entrance to Angkor Thom and
the Bayon. The statues lining the road are
fascinating - gods on the left, asuras (demons)
on the right.

I could happily have spent all morning in that one small corner of the 150-some-odd square mile complex that is the archaeological park, but I eventually pulled myself away to find Mr. Thorn and make our way to Angkor Thom and the Bayon.

The Bayon was perhaps my favorite of the sites I visited at Angkor, although it was also the most crowded. The serene smiles of the huge faces carved into the stone make for a peaceful setting, and I curled up in as quiet a spot as I could find to write some postcards before moving onto Angkor Thom city itself.

The Terrace of the Elephants, the South Gate entrance and parts of the Preah Pithu Group aside, Angkor Thom city itself was my least favorite part of the day and didn't have as much of an impact on me as the other sites I visited, but I'm still glad I took some time to wander through one of the major sites in the archaeological park.

One of the side corridors leading off from the main entryway
into the Bayon.

One of the Bayon's many face towers.

My favorite of the face towers - I wrote my postcards sitting near this guy.

When I arrived at Ta Prohm, the last site I visited, I felt as if I had stepped into some sort of Eden. The shade from the surrounding jungle and the cool morning air retained by the stone protected most of the complex from the sweltering midday heat. Despite being another of Angkor's most popular sites and full of camera-wielding tourists, Ta Prohm seemed to instill a sense of awe in most of its visitors and the hush that filled the temple was a welcome change from the chaos of Angkor Thom. With its crumbling corridors and overgrown doorways, it was easy to wander Ta Prohm wrapped in a sense of solitude, absorbing the feeling of peace that seemed to float through the air. As I climbed back into Mr. Thorn's tuk-tuk, I faced backward to watch first the temple and then the jungle treetops for as long as I could before turning around to watch the dusty road as we headed back to the vibrant, noisy reality of Siem Reap.

The last photo I got before my camera battery died, taken by a kind French couple who waited for or asked numerous other tourists to step out of one side or the other of the frame to get the perfect shot.

N.B.: My camera battery gave up its battle with the Cambodian heat not long after I arrived at the Bayon, which is why there are no photos of Angkor Thom city or Ta Prohm. (Advice: take a spare or two! This was the only place on my Thailand-Cambodia trip that I could have used one.) I was a little disappointed not to be able to photograph Ta Prohm for myself, but there's no lack of stunning photos of nearly every part of Angkor Archaeological Park available in books, prints and online. One thing that surprised me a little was the lack of English-speaking tourists, at least that I heard. The few fellow tourists I spoke with, either to take their photo or ask them to take mine, were French-speaking, although most tourists I encountered in nearby Siem Reap were native English speakers.

While planning this trip, I debated for a long time over whether or not to include this small piece of Cambodia and Angkor Wat on my itinerary, since it meant a harried beginning to my trip, but I'm very glad I decided to go. Thai temples are lovely, but I got a lot more out of my day among the stones at Angkor than I did my afternoon amidst the opulence of Bangkok's Wat Phra Kaew.

How Southeast Asia Broke My Internal Thermostat

It didn't actually rain the afternoon this was taken, so I'm
assuming that's mostly smog in the sky behind Wat Phra Kaew's
impressive ornamentation, not clouds - either way, it did a great job
of keeping Bangkok predictably hot and sticky.

I am not a hot weather person. Growing up in the temperate climate of Southern California, I was spoiled by summers that maxed out at about 27ºC and winters where temperatures of less than 10ºC were shocking. After an uncomfortable season or two on the U.S.' East Coast in college, I adapted to winters involving below-freezing temperatures without much trouble. I even, to some degree, learned to enjoy the cold that made spring seem all the sweeter once it finally arrived. Extreme heat, however, I stayed as far away from as possible. If I had a choice between bundling into a coat and baking in a tank top, I'd almost always choose the former - or the latter with a heavy dose of air-conditioning.

So while planning my April jaunt to Southeast Asia earlier this year, I expected to be pretty darn uncomfortable throughout the majority of my trip. April is the region's hottest month, meaning there are few places where the high is likely to be below 30ºC (or, really, more like 33°) and nighttime lows don't bring much relief.

On the evening of my arrival, I stepped out of Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport shortly after 11pm and, rather than the cool ocean breeze I'd left behind in Sydney, felt the sticky Thai heat creep under my skin. After spending five summers in swampy Washington, DC, I'm no stranger to the unpleasant combination of intense heat and sky-high humidity, but there's a pervasiveness to the Thai atmosphere that's unlike anything I'd experienced before: the air has weight, substance and pushes back against your every movement. Slow down, it says, you're not going anywhere in a hurry, so just relax and go with the flow. Mai pen rai - no worries! (The only thing in the entire country that seems to be immune to this is Bangkok traffic.)

By the time I got into the taxi that would take me to my hostel near Siam Square, every inch of my skin was coated with a fine sheen of sweat that felt like it had been there since the day I was born. I walked into my hostel room and whimpered when I saw the request not to set the thermostat any lower than 23ºC - as hot as I was, 20º sounded like it might, possibly, after several hours, be cool enough. But I'd come to Southeast Asia wanting to experience it as it is (as much as possible for a blonde-haired, blue-eyed farang), so I set the thermostat for the prescribed 23º and eventually cooled off enough to fall asleep.

In sticky Bangkok, it's the little things - like
a 20-baht fan and a cold Diet Coke - that keep
you comfortable.

I split the next day between the overwhelming sprawl of Chatuchak Weekend Market and Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, and realized a couple of hours in that, oddly enough, the heat wasn't that bad. It was still sweltering and the lack of a breeze made it more so, but at some point it had stopped bothering me. Maybe it was that I'd slowed my pace to a leisurely stroll or that I'd purchased a hand-held fan from a vendor at Chatuchak for 20 baht (quite possibly the best roughly 65 cents I've ever spent) that helped stir the air around my face. Whatever it was, by the end of the day I was pleased to conclude that, while 36°C with 95% humidity would never make my list of favorite weather conditions, neither was it going to bother me too much for the next two weeks. (In the interest of full disclosure: I still spent the day covered in sweat and gulping copious amounts of water, but I wasn't unhappy about it. Although knowing I had an air-conditioned hostel to go back to at the end of the day might have helped with that.)

It wasn't yet 8am, but the heat was enough to
have already drained half my battery. (At least,
I assume it was the heat and not the repeated
attempts at getting a photo with both me and
Angkor Wat in it...)

Several days later I had crossed the border into Cambodia, where the intensity of the sun made Bangkok look like a nice, shady park in comparison. To me, Siem Reap didn't feel as sticky as Bangkok had, but it was several degrees hotter and lacked Bangkok's thick smog to cut the beating of the sun's rays. The clearest indication of the difference came during my one and only day at Angkor Wat. Throughout my time in Thailand, as long as I charged my camera battery each night, I didn't have a problem; in Cambodia, the heat was so intense that my battery started sputtering three hours after I arrived at Angkor and died less than an hour after that. (Angkor Wat tip: Take extra camera batteries!) I spent the little time I had in Siem Reap sweaty and flushed, but - just like in Bangkok - didn't really care.

After Siem Reap, I headed back into Thailand, this time North to Chiang Mai, where the first day of Songkran was winding down as I arrived. For those of you who are unfamiliar with your Theravada Buddhist holidays, Songkran is the Thai festival that celebrates the Lunar New Year in mid-April. The rituals surrounding the New Year have to do with the bathing of living spaces, Buddha images and monks and making merit or paying tribute to elders...but for all intents and purposes, what it's really become is a nation-wide water fight lasting from one to three days (or more!), depending on where you are. And, as most of the travel blogosphere will tell you, Chiang Mai is the place to be for Songkran.

Songkran-enforced cool. I think I've left
water parks drier than this. (If you're not
seeing any wet spots, it's because there
aren't any dry ones!)

What does all of this Songkran business have to do with the heat, you ask? Well, when I say water fight, I mean an all-out assault with water guns, hoses, buckets and bowls, being sprayed, thrown at or dumped on you by everyone on the street, from children barely big enough to walk to their grandparents. Let's just say that, whatever the weather, it's not hard to stay cool during Songkran, especially if you happen to be in Chiang Mai. (It's also a ridiculous amount of fun, but that's for another post.)

One thing I did notice about my reaction to the heat while I was in Chiang Mai was that I was no longer wishing I could set the air-conditioning down to 20°, as I had that first night in Bangkok. In fact, I often found myself setting it at 25°, or even shutting it off altogether. The same was true when I reached Koh Lanta, one of the Southern islands on the Andaman Sea side. The humidity there was especially brutal, so I kept the air-conditioning on at night to cut through it and set the fan on low to keep the air moving around the bed and blow the few mosquitoes that found their way into my bungalow away, but I found myself setting the thermostat to 25° or higher and still needing to bundle into my sweater to sleep. What was happening to me?!

Back in Sydney, I arrived toward the end of April to find that it had been raining for a week and would continue for most of the next. It wasn't particularly cold, but I was freezing. I wore layers of sweats and two pairs of socks. I huddled in bed at night, shivering until I warmed up enough to fall asleep. I drank copious amounts of tea and coffee, clutching at the mug until every remnant of warmth had faded. When the temperature dropped to 15° at night - a temperature I had greeted with a sigh of relief in Tasmania when my visit coincided with Sydney's 40°+ February heat wave - I whimpered and briefly considered adding a third pair of socks. After a month of this, I decided it was official: Thailand and Cambodia had smashed my internal thermostat to pieces. In two weeks of steamy weather, Southeast Asia had not only overridden my lifelong aversion to temperatures above 24° degrees, it had me longing for them.

While I've gotten a bit better in the three months since my return (read: I don't start staring wistfully at the heater until it drops to 22°, rather than 25°), I still find myself craving heat at temperatures I used to think were ideal and sighing in relief when I step into the bright Sydney sun, rather than looking for a patch of shade. I imagine that I'll continue to shift back toward "normal" until I'm once again grumbling at 30° temperatures, but it may be a while. Or maybe I should just head back to Thailand or Siem Reap...at this point, I'm getting kind of sick of wearing two pairs of socks.

Profiles in Transit: Pau Thom

Siem Reap, Cambodia

"Hey lady, where you from?" echoed off the buildings on either side of the narrow alleyway as I turned down it and two boys no more than ten years old fell into step with me. Used to the rhythm of this exchange after two days in Siem Reap, I said "The U.S. - California" and kept walking, knowing they'd keep pace.

Sure enough, the boy who'd greeted me rattled off President Obama's name, the U.S. and California capital cities, (former) Governor Schwarzeneggar's name and even a couple of quotes from the Terminator movies. I laughed and kept walking.

"Hey lady, I remember you, I talked to you yesterday!" the boy said, unexpectedly. I stopped and looked at him, then smiled. "You're right, I remember you too!"

"So today you buy my postcards, eh? Yesterday no, but today yes?" I looked at the cards but realized I had bought the same set the day before outside Angkor Wat's Ta Prohm, from a girl no more than five years old who broke my heart when she said she hoped I would buy her postcards because she wanted to go to school.

"I'm sorry, I already have these ones," I said, feeling regretful and wondering if I should buy a second set - I genuinely liked this kid.

After a brief pause, he said, "I'm still hungry today, maybe you could buy me some food instead?" My heart cracked again and, after my own brief pause to consider the idea, I said, "Sure, what do you want to eat?"

"This way, I'll show you," he said, leading me down another alley and making me momentarily consider the potential folly of following a stranger - even a friendly, juvenile one - through the streets of a Southeast Asian city I didn't know particularly well.

"My name is Pau Thom," he said, practically skipping as his friend and I walked alongside, "what's yours?"

"Jessalyn," I answered, pronouncing it slowly.

The Siem Reap alleyway Pau led me down
(which, consequently, I'd taken a photo of an
hour earlier) in search of his favorite chicken amok.

"Jessalyn," he repeated (more accurately than most Americans, to be honest) "Okay, now I remember your name and we can play! I remember you when you go back to California."

I laughed and restrained the urge to rumple his hair as I would have done to my niece. "And I'll remember you whenever I think about Siem Reap."

We grinned at each other as we crossed a street and approached a small restaurant with tarps pieced together serving as a roof and a plastic-coated menu sitting on a rickety pedestal outside. Pau flipped through it, then pointed to a chicken amok dish. "That's what I want to eat."

"Okay," I said and asked the waitress to bring him an order of the dish, along with a Coke when he said that was what he wanted to drink. Pau's friend slipped away before I could ask what he wanted, but Pau got settled at a table and I paid the waitress for his meal (which cost all of $3.00, U.S.). He looked small and more than a little lost at the four-person table by himself, completely out of his element - happy about it in some ways, since he was clearly hungry, but not quite sure what to do with himself while he waited for his meal. I wanted to sit and keep him company but was already past the time I should have been heading back to my guesthouse to finish packing and head to the airport, so instead I told him I had to leave. He gave me his crooked, sunny smile and waved, "Bye, Jessalyn-California!"

I smiled and waved back, murmuring "Bye Pau," knowing I was leaving a little piece of my heart behind as I walked away, but glad to carry the memory of that crooked smile and sunny disposition with me as I moved on.

There are hundreds of children in the same position as Pau on the streets of Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, not to mention thousands throughout the rest of Cambodia. Some of them are bitter after years of watching foreigners come and go who are never hungry and don't lack for anything; most of them are resigned; and some of them, like Pau, are cheerful despite the hardships they face and, whether they know it or not, bring smiles to the faces of the people they interact with every day. Some people may question my decision to buy Pau a meal and that's fine - for me, it was a way to help that didn't involve simply handing over money (which, once I'd declined to buy his postcards, he didn't ask for anyway), since that's something I try not to do. Pau made my day significantly brighter and I hope that I was able to do the same for him in some measure.

My one regret is that I didn't get a picture of that cheerful, charmingly crooked smile of his. I'm still painfully shy when it comes to asking people I meet while traveling if I can take their picture and, while it doesn't affect my memories, it does have an impact on the degree to which I can share those memories with you. Hopefully by the next time I meet someone like Pau, I'll have overcome my shyness enough to ask if I can take a quick snapshot to remember them by.

A Whirlwind Romance in Cambodia

I didn't expect to fall in love during my not quite three days in Cambodia. I planned to see what I could of Angkor Wat in such a short time, browse some local markets and head on to Chiang Mai with no regrets. But then my flight from Bangkok started its descent, I caught my first glimpse of the Cambodian countryside and my grasp on my no-nonsense, let's-see-the-sights-and-move-on mentality slipped. Why didn't anyone tell me Cambodia's beautiful? I wondered. Variations on that same thought played through my mind on repeat every moment I was there and long after my feet had left Cambodian soil.

My first glimpses of Siem Reap were full of
dust and intense heat from the back of a
tuk-tuk - and were absolutely enchanting.

The tuk-tuk ride from Siem Reap International Airport to my guesthouse was windy, dusty and brutally hot - and I loved every moment of it. I couldn't stop the smile that kept stealing over my face as I looked around, watching the motorbikes that zipped past, the farmers working in fields and rice paddies near the road and the multi-colored houses and shops that lined the streets. Most of the big hotels looked ridiculously out of place - I've never been more pleased that my budget doesn't run to luxury accommodation.

Mr. Thorn, my tuk-tuk driver, pulled up in front of a pretty, peach-colored building and I walked into the charm of Hotel 89's lobby.

After arranging for my visit to Angkor Wat the next day with the front desk, then making myself at home in a room that was comfortable and welcoming (and air-conditioned!) at only USD $15 per night, I wandered toward Pub Street and the center of Siem Reap.

The quality of light in Cambodia is unlike anything I've seen
anywhere else in the world, and it adds to the lush beauty of
the countryside in a way that's completely captivating.

With every step, I was more enchanted. I'd never before been in a place where all of the action on the street seemed to take place so completely at the same level. Sure, I was (sometimes) on a sidewalk, but motorbike drivers grinned at me as they went flying past my elbow, local occupants of tuk-tuks looked at me with curiosity and the cars quickly made it clear that the idea of pedestrian right-of-way definitely does not exist in Siem Reap and that if I wanted to cross, I had better saunter partway (and not at an intersection - who uses those?), wait in the middle of the street for them to drive past and then continue on my way, like everyone else.

After a souvenir stop at fair trade merchant Rajana and a dinner of delicious tofu amok and Angkor Beer at Pub Street's Le Tigre du Papier, I wound my way back through town, sharing a stricken look and then a laugh with a moto driver who happened to speed past just as I was catching my balance after tripping over a crack in the sidewalk.

Angkor is a vast subject unto itself (and will have its own post somewhere down the road!), but I can tell you that I loved it and that it only deepened my appreciation for the region and the Cambodian people.

Life in Cambodia may not be easy, but it's
as vibrant as its street traffic.

I don't want to give the impression that Siem Reap is all rainbows and butterflies - it's very far from it. Landmine victims hobble down the street on what's left of their legs, begging for money or food; children who should be in school fall into step with you, asking where you're from and repeating a litany of facts they've had drilled into them about your country or state, trying to convince you to buy a set of postcards; both poor standards of living and abject poverty are evident everywhere you look.

But the strength of spirit of the Cambodian people is equally evident. They may have nothing more to offer than a smile and a joke, but they're unfailingly generous with those. Their sunny cheer, as they call out "Hey lay-dee, need a tuk-tuk?" from across the street or offer directions when you're looking particularly lost, is incomparable and blends with their country's mesmerizing quality of light and colorful culture to form a national charm that's impossible to hold out against.

I flew into Cambodia expecting a couple days' worth of history lessons. I flew out with an entirely unanticipated love of the country and deep respect for its people that will keep me ready to jump at any chance to go back.