Angkor Wat: Capstone of RUINED CITY WORLD TOUR 2016-17!!!

Jen at (I think) Banteay Srei

Angkor WHAT?!

Angkor Whatchutalkinbout Willis?

Okay, all right, it's the world's greatest tourist destination and a startling remnant of an empire which, as an American, I had never considered, been taught about or really (honestly) knew existed. It's a huge complex made entirely of fitted and piled stone (no mortar or grout) made over hundreds of years. It probably doesn't need a clever not clever pop-culture pun to justify it.

I think Angkor Wat in the morning looks like Hotel California

So here's some things about Angkor Wat:

1. It's right outside the city if Siem Reap, which seems to exist primarily as a tourist gateway for the ruins. Were it not for the ruins, you wouldn't go to Siem Reap, as nice as it is. You're not dying to go to Battambang, are you? (Lonely Planet Headline: "There's really not all that much to do.")
2. Jennifer was more excited to go to Angkor Wat than anywhere else on the planet.
3. Angkor Wat is a very specific place in the ruin complex, but people also refer to the entire complex as Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is one wat (a wat is a temple), but there are many other buildings.
4. The complex is very big and every surface has a bas relief on it. You could look at it forever.
5. No matter how early you woke up, everyone else woke up earlier than you and is already there.
6. You're probably to cheap to pay for a tour guide, rather than just a driver, so you will benefit from very little interpretation. Instead, you'll look at it and shake your head and be like "huh."

This is the road through Angkor Wat as the sun sets

So you've been reading our blog, wishing you had an RSS feed of it so you can read the next installment the minute it comes out! (True THRTW heads know if you read it right away you get the juicy typos and autocorrects that we don't find until the post is up a bit) So you know that your authors have visited many ancient ruined cities. There was Pompeii, Akrotiri, Knossos, Polonnawura, Dambulla, Sigiriya, Anuradhapura... probably more.  And so you're asking: "more? really? more ruined cities?"

I think this is Bayon from a distance

Believe me, Otis has asked this question many times before it ever occurred to you to ask.

I will admit that at some point the returns diminish. I am pretty done with ancient ruins at this point (I think Jen and Otis are too; we didn't see any in Thailand, and from what I hear, the Thais can ancient ruin with the best of them). I want to say that Angkor Wat was grander than anywhere else, but then I remember Sigariya; I want to say its bigger, but Anuradhapura was really big; it certainly isn't older, Knossos was destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed and lost before any of these other places had their first road. Angkor Wat was a good one to end on because what it had was the power to inspire joy and wonder and whimsy and exhaustion and more wonder (and more exhaustion) that extended well beyond the other stops on RUINED CITY WORLD TOUR 2016-17!!!

This is certainly Bayon up close

Maybe it's because the Angkor ruins are often in better shape, so you can see where they made columns so as to look like elephant trunks, or where they made the bridge's balustrade a series of charming Khmer warriors, or where serene faces rest atop pillars. Maybe it's because of the environment, because there's something relentlessly Indiana Jones about an ancient temple where a tree grew on a wall, was swallowed by a strangler fig, and then the fig grew into a gigantic tree whose roots reach down the wall and into the soil. Maybe it's because every surface seems to be covered with ornamentation that makes you think the artists were telling a story in stone - which they often were.

Of all the carved up temples, Banteay Srei is the most zadonga-zonga

I can't tell you what the various temples mean, or even in many cases which temples these were. The sites blend together and you can't easily recall whether you saw that amazing thing at the giant pyramid or at the temple. The whole, though, is remarkable.

Angkor Wat from the inside, off to the side, with miraculously few tourists to ruin the vista

I guess that in the mid 19th century, some French dude pulled a Captain Kirk (he boldly went where no one had gone before, and met a bunch of people who were already there) and "discovered" Angkor Wat. Going there now, with 2.1 million of your closest friends, it makes you think wonder what it was like for Monsieur Mouhot walking through the jungle and saying "Zut Alors! Sacré Bleu!" when you see this "lost" city rising out of the foliage. You get a very firm understanding of why the romance of the lost city in the jungle was the plot hook of so many pulp novels and cartoons and comic books and tv shows and movies. You wish you could have that sense of discovery to yourself. 

Banteay Srei as it's just about to pour, making the light beautiful. Banteay Srei is a long drive from Siem Reap and our poor tuk tuk driver really had a tough go of it in the bad weather on the way home. SO SORRY MR. MAB!!!

Here's some more things about Angkor Wat:

1. We got a three day pass, which you have to have on you at all times, and lets you get a little sneak preview in if you go after 5pm the day before you really start. Going for that short period of time (they kick you out around 6) is really nice because the light starts to be in the golden hour. It makes everything look even more lovely.
2. We got up at four (or some similarly unpleasant hour) to go watch the sun rise. WE WERE NOT THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAD THIS IDEA. It was a zoo. The sun rose behind some trees with absolutely no fanfare. It simply changed slowly from dark to light. We got some nice time in the morning golden hour, but this was not inherently better than the evening golden hour, so, eh, sleep in.
3. We got caught in a rain storm and it killed my iPhone 5s. RIP iPhone 5s. 
4. My advice is don't over-do it. It's always hot in Cambodia; it's not a contest; trim your sails.
5. Look for some of the spots that are like the 9th most popular sites in Ankor Wat, they will still be incredible, but maybe there will be fewer people there to ruin the illusion of discovery. 

More Photos:

Angkor Wat sneak preview

Walking down a very steep and narrowly stepped pyramid, perhaps at Koh Ker?

Banteay Srei again

Jen looking fab

Jen and Otis posing for their folk music record cover

These places remain Buddhist holy sites (even where they were once Hindu or even Brahman holy sights), so they occasionally benefit from modern decoration

Otis takes in the culture (I think at Angkor Wat)

Another shot of Angkor Wat in the reflecting pools

Jen and Otis receive a blessing in Angkor Wat

I always keep my head on a swivel, you can't get complacent

Bayon is the number one place that would be more captivating if no one were there.

Stairway to heaven

This shrine was at the top of the pyramid

Jen keeps an eye out for booby traps at Ta Prohm

SIEM REAP Part 2: (backstreet academy) by Otis and Chris

Making a crossbow at Backstreet Academy

In Siem Reap, and many other places, they basically have all these different fun things you can do/learn and you can sign up to do them. These things are all part of something called Backstreet Academy. We signed up for a few different lessons.

The stuff we made: Some baskets, a crossbow, a knife, and some newfound bokator skills

Khmer Warrior Initiation

This was actually 4 classes on sort of a day trip (that unfortunately Jen didn't go on) that included:

1. A Cambodian marshall art-type lesson called Bokator. 
We learned some basic moves but nothing too complicated. Chris started bragging that he was a Bokator master, and I soon followed in his footsteps. We didn't take any pictures of Bokator, because we were too busy Bokatoring. Our teacher was the grandson of the man who rescued the art form after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

BOKATOR Q&A: CHRIS

Q: What was the best move you learned?A: My father taught me this already, but it was a good reminder of how to punch someone in the schnoot, then give them a great big knuckle sandwich.  (Ghostwritten by Otis).

Q: Why do you keep bragging to everyone that you are a Bokator master?A: I don't. I just think it's fun to talk about. I just brag more about the quality of my karate chops. 

Q: Besides punching people in the schnoot, what was the best move you learned?A: The...the best move was the one where you block and attack at the same time and move your forearm into their face. It seemed very effective. 

Q: How much water do you think you drank there (in tons)A: I don't think I drank that much. I was very sweaty, though. 

Q: How much do you think you sweat (in gallons)A: 3.

2. Khmer Cooking: The next thing we did was a cooking class. We thought this was just a lunch, but it turned out it was a cooking class taught by a chef at a restaurant in town (although we ate what we made). Since we thought it was just lunch, we asked that it be made vegetarian for us, but actually, the chef helped us to prepare two vegetarian dishes for our own lunch. 

The first was a Cambodian specialty called banana flower salad. The first thing to do was to quarter an actual banana flower, and then remove the baby bananas (which we were warned were very bitter) from the inside, and then slice the petals into small strips. We mixed the petals with other ingredients like peppers, cucumbers, a Cambodian green and Thai basil, and our instructor prepared a dressing. 

To go with the salad, we made a green curry. The best part of this was crushing the curry ingredients in a mortar with a pestle, and then cooking the spices in oil. We had vegetables, mostly a yam, that he cooked very fast over high heat with our curry paste and coconut milk. Both our salad and our curry were delicious.

Cambodian Cooking Class Q&A: OTIS

Q: Did you think Banana flowers salad would taste like bananas?A: No, that's whats good about banana flower salad is that it didn't. I thought the ingredients went together very well and I thought the dressing was really good even if it was a little spicy. 

Q: Do you remember what spices we put in the curry paste we made?A: Lemon grass, the stuff that turns your skin yellow (turmeric), curry leaf, kefir lime leaf and Kefir lime peel, coconut milk, galangal, and ginger. 

Q: Which was your favorite dish to prepare?A: I personally liked cooking the banana flower salad more because preparing the banana flowers was interesting and it was more of my kind of thing because I didn't get to do that much with the cooking of the curry (other than chopping). 

Q: Which was your favorite dish to eat?A: I liked the curry and the banana flower salad about equally, but I think if you take the yam out I liked the curry better, but with the yam in I preferred the salad.

preparing ingredients for banana flower salad

the finished vegetable curry

the finished banana flower salad

3. Make your own crossbow. 
After cooking, we went to a crossbow making station-type thing. We just got one little board, and the instructor gave us directions as best he could, although he didn't have very good English. We used a wide variety of tools, but most of the time was spent sanding. Otis had a breathing-too-much-sawdust-type injury, and didn't enjoy the full thing, but otherwise it would have been very fun. After we shot the crossbows in a junkyard area, and they turned out to be much faster than we thought. Than we headed on to our next activity.

CROSSBOW MAKING Q&A CHRIS:

Q: What was your favorite part of making or shooting the crossbows?A: Well, I enjoyed the work of making them, but the best part was the surprise at how well they worked. 

Q: How fast do you think the bolts wentA: Mmmmmmmmmm it's very hard to tell because of the short distance they travelled, but maybe 30 MPH (I think more like 170). 

Q: What kind of wood did you use:A: IDK it was some kind of jungle wood we don't use in America, but it was pretty hard, very straight, and it had no knots. 

Q: What was it like working with the wood?A: It was good to work with and it wasn't easy to split like pine would be. Long Pause (Otis just didn't hear what I said and I had to repeat myself). I think the tools were very sharp, which helped, but you had to put a lot of force into it and watch out for blisters.

Otis chisels the trigger opening

Chris tests out his aim

4. Forge a Knife With The Blacksmith

The last part of the Khmer Warrior Initiation was to make your own knife with a blacksmith. You probably know that Cambodia is hot, but what about at a forge in Cambodia? It was HOT and LOUD. I went first as it's one at a time on the anvil, and Otis was to go next. I chose to make a kitchen knife; Otis chose to make a machete. 

In this class, the blacksmith really had you do most of the work, though he did the fine work and directed my labor. The upshot is, you get a bar of iron and put it in the forge, then, when it's red hot, you put it on the anvil and whack the crap out if it with your hammer. The way you turn the bar into a knife is you and the apprentice whack it until it gets very thin on one edge. The knife won't be even at this point, but that's okay because the blacksmith will make it more knife shaped by using a chisel to lop off the uneven edge. To make the handle, we whacked the back side flat, and then beat it around a rod until it rolled over into a cylinder. Once your knife is looking done, the apprentice will sharpen it with his angle grinder. 

The forge was so hot and the angle grinder so loud that Otis was more than ready to go home when I was done, so we didn't end up with the machete, just the kitchen knife. Still, the kitchen knife was so Friday-the-13th style gnarly, that the Cambodian postal worker guy said I couldn't mail it to the United States.

KNIFE MAKING Q&A OTIS:

Q: Did you like the knife making class?A: No, but I would have if I was feeling better and had more water. 

Q: Why not?A: Because I was hot and I wasn't feeling well and I was very thirsty. I think other people would have liked it though, if the conditions were better for them. 

Q: Do you wish you had made your machete in retrospect?A: No. 

Q: Do you think you're entitled to say you're a Khmer Warrior even though you didn't finish the initiation?A: I don't think anyone is entitled to say they're a Khmer Warrior except for all the actual Khmer Warriors (Like Chris, actual Khmer Warrior [-Chris]).

The Cambodian postal worker who was very good at creative box making, but not willing to let me ship my knife

OTHER CLASSES CLASSES AND ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY

1. Playing Soccer with Local School Kids
So, we went to drive to the field, where actually many people were playing a wide variety of sports. There were about 12 people who played with us including our guide. They were about 16, though both adults were on the same team, so it was a little unfair. Both Chris and Otis scored 2 goals, and though nobody was keeping score, I'd say we were about even. The game lasted for about an hour, although it had some differences to a normal game, and the field was smaller. After, we got some Ice Cream, then headed home.

SOCCER Q&A CHRIS

Q:Tell us about the goal you scored at the beginning?
A:Well they had a rule that after1 team scored a goal, the other team would kick the ball off from midfield and take a shot, but mostly the local students did it, and they often missed. So, I took a turn, and kicked it more at the goal, and it went in. 

Q: On a scale of 1-10, how sore were you after the game?
A: Um....                                    I'm gonna go with 5. It was more sweaty than sore, but I had a slide tackle at the beginning of the game and skinned my knee. That was the worst part. 

Q:Would you ever go back again if you lived in Siem Reap
A: Yeah, it was good exercise and fun. 

Q: Was it worth your money?
A: YES (very definitively) although I don't remember how much it costs.

At the field house

Otis takes a shot on goal

2. Rattan Basket Weaving
Jen also did a basket weaving class. We just interviewed her about it instead of having her write her own entry.

Q: Describe more about your basket weaving experience.
A: Well, I was taken by the hotel's tuktuk driver to a remote area of Siem Reap, where I met the coordinator of the basket weaving program. Then he took me on his motorbike along with his daughter and dropped me off at a traditional home. There were 7 women and girls waiting to welcome me. Um... they did not speak much English, but one of the schoolgirls acted as a translator. At first they had me start with a small basket using bamboo so I could get the feeling of weaving it around. As I wove my basket, other women were weaving their baskets and other people we're coming and going in and out of the compound.
After I finished my small basket one of the women helped me by finishing it off and I started on my bigger basket which was made of rattan, R-A-T-T-A-N. As I weaved, the older girls left for school, some preschool children arrived and they were adorable and smiley.
The man who coordinated my class sat for a while and explained that he founded a school across the way to help local children.

Q: What was your favorite part of your class?A: My favorite part of the experience was getting to sit with local women, getting to learn about the rhythms of their days, and being warmly welcomed. 

Q: How many baskets did you make?A: I only made my two baskets but they gave me two more. They wanted me to take them home to my family. 

Q: Do you think it was worth your money, and if you lived in Siem Reap, would you come again?A: It was definitely worth my money and I wish that I stayed longer. I would definitely recommend doing it or do it again. 

Q: Do you think you will ever start your OWN backstreet academy classA: No.

Jen and her basket friends

Jen gets some in-depth tutoring

The finished product

3. Phare Cambodian Circus

Jen went to Phare, the Cambodian Circus while Otis and Chris were playing soccer. Coincidentally, this was the same day we learned that Ringling Bros. Circus was shuttering. Jen found Phare very entertaining and dynamic. The performers were young acrobats who were bringing to life a mythological tale using tricks, song, fire, and feats of daring do.

Q: What was the experience like?
A: The experience was entertaining and fun and a great evening out in Siem Reap. 

Q: I thought you didn't like circuses, why do you support this one?
A: I don't support circuses that use animals, but I enjoy watching acrobatic performances by humans. This circus has no non-human animals. 

Q: Give me an example of the performances.
A: In one part, the performers were jump-roping with a rope that had been set on fire. Another amazing part was when they catapulted very high up in the air doing tricks to land on a tarp held by fellow performers.

Some Video Catch-Up

Hello Blog Readers!

It's been a minute, hasn't it? I (Chris) write this from the Morning Minihouse in Aonang, Thailand, a nice enough little hotel on the Thai coast in a not super city, near some spectacular and not spectacular beaches.

This is the "not nice" beach

This is the nice beach to the north

This is the nice beach to the south

Here's the seashells we found at the nice beach to the north

We've fallen behind our blogging duties a bit, so Otis and I have done some video work to catch you up. I think Jen would say these videos are more flavorful than narrative, but you can't knock the artistic vision.

First up is Otis with a video trailer he made from our time at the Elephant Nature Park near Chiang Mai back in December 14-15, 2016

Next up is the video I made of our time in Siem Reap, my attempt to capture the joys of travel by tuktuk!

Here's Otis' take on Siem Reap

And here's Otis' longer video update on the trip up until now. Enjoy!