Back in the states, I played a little bit of co-ed beach volleyball, thanks to a Returned Peace Crops Volunteer introducing me to the team. The captain of our team, Mercedes, frequently travels for work and happened to be in Indonesia for the month of February. After work, she popped over to nearby Cambodia to check out the action!
I met her at the airport and we hit the ground running. We caught a tuk-tuk back to my village where she got to meet the family and they couldn’t say enough about how beautiful her white skin was. She quickly got along well with the children and I did my best to translate. When chatting with my host mom, she even refered to me as “goan” or child! This was the first time I had heard her refer to me as such, and I was tounge-tied for a moment. At 5:00pm, we jumped in the tuk-tuk with the kids and rode down to the school. I had my students prepare questions for her the day before. For the first half hour of class she fielded their questions. For the second half hour, she asked them questions about her answers to see if they were able to understand her. They did fantastic, and Mercedes took the class and ran with it and did an outstanding job. Back to my house, where my host momma cooked up some good eats for dinner before we headed back to Siem Reap for the night.
Mercedes teaching my English class.
A few other volunteers were in town for the weekend for a meeting, so we got together for a few meals and hung out. Jeff, Mercedes, and I checked out the Cambodian War Museum one day. Pretty interesting stories from our one-legged tour guide who claimed to have been mortally wounded 10 times, but always survived. The museum was a couple pictures, and lots of rusty war machines and munitions. Grenades, mines, tanks, armored personnel carries, massive turrets, mortars, an airplane, a helicopter, you name it, it was there…although they had been sitting out in the Cambodian weather for many years now.
Mmmmmmm…pancakes!
Cambodian War Museum
Mercedes and I decided to meet up with all the cousins at the massive water resivior for a swim since the weather is heating up. To make things happen, I had to bike an hour home to grab the kiddo’s, then turn around to lead the pack to the watering hole. Mercedes, on her own, secured a moto driver and directed him to the remote corner in which we swim. It’s nice when things go according to plan! We had a wonderful time swimming, the female cousins really appreciated having a girl to hang out with, especially learning how to swim with her. One of the coolest things that happened while I was there: the kids taught me how to make drippy castles! Of course, having the coolest biological father in the world, I already knew the tricks of the trade, but it was nice to know that drippy sand castles were also being built on the other side of the world!
Crossing the “bridge” to the Baray
Day at the beach
Law’s drippy castle
Sandcastles
“Law” spreading the love
Playing in the sand
I love these kids all the world.
Bo-rah catching some air time
The day finally came. I bit the bullet and threw down 20 dollars for a day pass to the Ankor Temples. We started out at the world famous Ankor Wat, the largest religious building in the world. It was cool, really cool, it was deceiving by the sheer of enormity of things and the insane detail and quantity of the carvings. At the back of the temple, we once again climbed the sketchy tree house.
Carvings at Ankor Wat
Ankor Wat
“tail of the peacock” flowers
Tree House
Ankor Wat
From there, it was onto Ta Prohm Temple. For me, it was the hands down winner, it was everything I thought an ancient temple should be. A heap of rocks, toppled over from years of weather, enormous trees strangling the walls both inside and out, the roots embedded into the very structure of the still standing spires. Every turn we took I had to snap multiple pictures, it was Disney world, big trees, big rocks, big history, big smiles!
Ta Prahm
Then we skipped over to Ankor Thom, the 10km x 10km walled and moated city from ancient Ankor, chock full of temples, carvings, trees and hiking. The famous Bayon Temple with some 200+ iconic face carvings is located at the hears of Ankor Thom. It was wildly eerie to walk around this ancient pile of rocks, watched as you walk along every corridor trying to decrypt the history of the ancient carvings.
Ankor Thom
Trying to make the face
Bayon Temple
Lastly, we hiked to the top of a hill to Phnom Bakheng Temple to watch the sunset. At a certain point they stop letting visitors up to the temple, so we had to go a little early and wait about an hour for the sun to set. Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy, so we didn’t get a spectacular viewing, but some nice colors painted the sky as I wished the sun off to warm the lives of my American family and friends. Back in town after a 11 hours of templing, a big pizza for dinner!
Sunset from Bokheng Mountain
The grand adventure of Mercedes visit was a hike up the famous Kulen Mountain. Believed to have been the first capital city of Cambodia dating back to the 6th century. This is also the location where all the sandstone for the temple complexes was quarried and transferred to the temple sites some 20km away by floating the stones down the river on rafts and using elephants as work animals. We met our guide and translator, Mombo, at the hotel in the morning and hopped in a tuk-tuk heading to the base of the mountain. At the base of the mountain we met up with a park ranger who would also be our guide around the mountain. I will borrow the descriptions of these two men from my journal: “Our ranger was a shy man with a curious grin and a quick gate as he soared over the mountain in $2.00 shower sandals. He reminded me of my host father, shy and gave simple one-word answers, but always looked out for us and is a good cook too! Our guide, Mombo, is quite the character, a tuk-tuk driver, hiking guide, model, and bodybuilder who took 2nd and 5th place at Cambodian National Competitions and does not enjoy wearing a shirt if possible. He’s a meat-head, but loves the outdoors and likes to have things his way, but is a great, knowledgeable guide and speaks good English.” At the start we trekked in the open rice fields under the heat of the day with the beautiful mountain in the distance. Some of the rice fields had been recently burned to prepare the fields for plowing and the upcoming planting season. Unfortunately, a few of the fires must have gotten out of hand, because we saw two little houses that were burned to the frame and Mombo informed us it was not that way last month when he was there. Did I mention it was hot? We each carried 4 liters of water and ripped through it quick as sweat saturated every article of clothing.
Hiking the rice fields
Burned house
We took a few breaks in the shade to stay hydrated. We climbed past massive rocks, through banana plantations and through the woods. Some areas had large areas of freshly cut trees where villagers cleared the mountain side in order to plan banana trees. At one point we lost the trail because so many trees were cut down and were impassable, we went off trail through the woods around the cut area to pick up the trail on the other side. Of course my mind wandered a little about the area being a Khmer Rouge hold out and having been defended by land mines…I let the guides go first and kept my distance! I was thrilled to be hiking in the woods, climbing mountains, something I have missed very strongly here in Cambodia, my heart was thumping with joy. We stopped at a small creek on top of the mountain with cold spring water and ate lunch. Cucumber, tomato, and spam sandwiches with canned tuna in tomato sauce…so delicious, I inhaled the caloric mass with impressive speed. A short distance away was a dilapidated temple with golden strands of grass growing from the top like hair in need of a trim. We continued to hike around trails on top of the mountains and I couldn’t help but think that within my lifetime these same trails we were walking, had been walked by the Khmer Rouge hiding out in the mountain forests.
hiking through banana plantation
Ranger and I
Our ranger in the slashed site
Briefly lost the trail due to slash and burn farming practices
Near one small temple was a natural spring flowing out of the water. Nearby, the rocks had been carved into animals and buddah’s during the 6th century…quite impressive and the trickle of water really added to the ambiance of the area. On the bank of the spring was a small tree with small round green fruits. I inquired if they were edible, they were! And sweet they told me! They lied…sour…very sour…and bitter…very bitter. To counter act the natural taste, we dipped the fruit in powdered soup mix, a common practice with fruit here in Cambodia, actually quite delicious.
Happy buddah
Rice fields on top of the mountain
Ancient pottery
Following old Khmer Rouge trails
6th century carvings near a natural spring
Eating jungle fruits
On top of the mountain were cashew farms, we hiked trails through many of them. And where there were not farms already, much of the forest had been cut down in preparation to clear the land and plant more cashew farms. The cashew tree has a bright red or yellow fruit and connected to the bottom of the fruit is a small nut, this nut is the cashew that we are familiar with eating. The fruit is edible and has a nice taste. Unfortunately, the fruit rots very quickly after picking so they are not sold in the market, instead, they farm the nuts and simply leave the fruits in a pile on the ground to rot away. Therefore, we picked and ate all the cashew fruits our hearts could desire, simply tear off the nut and leave it for the farmers! Our guide, Mombo, was especially obsessed with the cashew fruits. He would pull off the biggest and brightest fruit and take a big bite out of it, savoring the absurd quantity of juice in these fruits. Then he would spot another one, maybe slightly bigger or brighter than the previous, and pick that one and take a big bite, then toss that one over his shoulder for an even better one, and so on. I got a kick out of his lust for this fruit, at one point he even kissed his hand, then touched it to a fruit as we walked by.
Cashew fruits (the cashew nut is the little part on the bottom)
Cashew Trees
Slash and burn to plan cashew trees
We hiked about 15 miles the first day and finally settled down at a clearing in the woods. Watching over the clearing were 2 massive carved stone lions, a frog, an actual size cow, and an actual sized elephant, unbelievable. They were so cool, and I can’t believe how they have held up after fourteen centuries of existence. For dinner Mombo cooked up stir-fry vegetables, grilled chicken legs, crispy chicken skin, pork ribs, and of course rice…so tasty. At the clearing we met up with a villager from a mountain village who had brought over some gear (tent, sleeping pads, water, hammocks, etc). He slept with us and then drove our stuff out to the next site the following day. We were also accompanied that night by a soldier who came to protect us during the night, and also to collect a little payment for allowing us to stay on his turf, paid for by the guides of course. All in all, we had a slumber party of 6 people.
Ancient carvings
Dinner
Frog got planked!
Leap Frog
Breakfast was another sensational meal of toast and scrambled eggs before we packed up and got to walking. Thirty minutes down the trail we got to a large bat cave where some Buddhists would come for prayer, with some devotees spending up to 15+ days in the cave for worship. We had a cloudy sky which was a nice reprieve from the sun as we trekked upon open rock that reminded me of the New York section of the Appalachian Trail…so happy to be hiking again! We came to a remote mountain top pagoda with many beautiful golden statues and spend nearly an hour exploring the ornate decorations.
Bat cave
Baby buddah disco dancing
At a remote wat on top of Kulane mountain
Mombo the warrior
Further down the trail we came to the famous Kulen Mountain waterfall, about 10 feet tall and with a strong volume of water despite it being the dry season. Impressive, I was excited to take a shower and play in the water. Instead we descended a long staircase around a cliff and what we saw took my breath away…the rest of the water fall! The second tier was streaming water some 75 feet high, book ended by lush green jungle and black boulders shining in the afternoon sun. We dropped our gear and got to swimming! Quite chilly and refreshing despite the small fish biting our dead skin…the same little fish from the fish massage parlors in Siem Reap!
Reclining Buddah on top of the mountain.
Temple near the waterfall
Mombo at the top of the waterfall
Swing
Kulen Waterfall
Before dinner we hung out at a sellers house for a few moments. I saw a girl walk by with a platter with massive honeycombs! Having never eaten honeycomb and also loving honey, I inquired how much there were because I think honey is fairly expensive here. When she said one square foot was $1.25, I was sold, Mombo bought us a section. I was psyched for the sticky sweet nectar to stimulate my taste buds. But a weird thing happened. Mombo smothered both sides of the honeycomb in powdered soup mix and fried both sides! OK, he knows some trick, this was going to be extra delicious. After five minutes of anticipation it was ready, he plopped the honeycomb down in the middle of the circle and everyone began to pick off sections to eat. I got right in there, took a pinch, then it hit me…wait a second…this isn’t honey in these hexagonal chambers…i’ve eaten this before…this is wasp larva! Now the price and the cooking method made sense! So we munched a little bit, but as the small squishy bodies would pop in my mouth, I couldn’t help be a little disappointed that it wasn’t gooey sweet honey adhering to my teeth!
Wasp larva
After dinner we headed to our campsite near the waterfall and took baths in the stream. The nearby village was blasting music and we decided to head over for a few minutes and check out the commotion. It turns out, they were building a new commune center and were having a party at the site to celebrate the ground breaking. So there were lots of people and huge speakers blasting music. After a couple invitations from villagers, I jumped into the dance circle with a troup of young boys, and the women took in Mercedes. We danced our hearts out, i’m not sure I have ever sweat that much before in my entire life, I was dripping from every inch of my skin. We ended up staying for two hours! Walked back to the tent, took another bath in the stream and tucked ourselves in to the trickle of water and the protection of a soldier. In the morning we headed over to the village to grab breakfast before continuing with our hike. I couldn’t believe the amount of people who asked us about dancing the night before, if we had fun, we had made instant friends and everyone threw us a smile of recognition.
A car full of inscence
Jackfruits
Before making our way down the mountain we checked out the river of 1,000 lingas. This river has carvings in the rock of the stream bed! In particular a square with a circle inside of it which was repeated over and over (1,000 times?) which is supposed to represent fertility and reproduction. Very interesting, I have never seen underwater carvings before! One the way down the mountain, descending a loooooooong staircase, we stopped at one more pagoda where a natural spring fed a swimming area. The spring water is believed to cleanse one’s soul of wrong doings much like confession in Christianity. We took a swim in the chilly waters and felt restored, a great finish to a great journey.
River of 1,000 lingas
Dog taking a dip
dog sleeping in the ashes
Village chief meeting us with sleeping gear
The final descent down the staircase
Mombo and I on the descent
On Mercedes final night we went to “Phare, the Cambodian Circus”. One of the most incredible things I have ever seen. An acrobatic preformance such as “cirque de sole”. The performers are Cambodian nationals from tough backgrounds who were able to escape some of the difficulties of their lives through the power of performance and teamwork thanks to this wonderful school and project. I can’t say enough how incredible the performance was. The live music was catchy and perfectly in tune with the action and the action was beyond belief…I had to stop taking pictures and videos because I had to see it with my own eyes. Powerful.
Cambodian Circus
Cambodian Circus
Joely the Goalie 