Angkor Awakening

What dreams did you have when you were a little boy?
This may be hard to believe but I've always wanted to go to Cambodia, even as a child. There was one thing that drew me to this country; this country that is war torn, developing, and far away. Angkor Wat. Everybody has either heard of this sacred place regardless of what background you come from. I've always wanted to travel to Cambodia to see this great site myself. I achieved this goal in the first quarter of my life. Being able to experience all this as a young person makes great marks in my life and I hope it will continue to do so.

We arrived in Siem Riep after a 5 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. There was definitely more leg room in this bus but it didn't compensate for the horrible road conditions and the numerous pot holes that kept us from falling asleep on the bus. After getting a sore but and a sore back we emerged from our cocoon of a bus and were bombarded by Tuktuk drivers. A young man with an honest faced asked us if we needed travel arrangements to our hotel and we said yes and we were able to get 4 tuktuks for the 12 of us as these were smaller tuktuks. We got to our hotel and we checked out the rooms. They werent the greatest but considering how much they cost they were reasonable. We didn't want to settle for something uncomfortable for a good 3 nights so we hunted down for the same company in Phnom Penh and found their location called The Pavillon Indochine and decided to switch hotels next morning. For the rest of the night we just went out for dinner, toured the Old market area and headed home for an early night as we had a long day ahead of us. For dinner we went to a Khmer BBQ buffet which was only 5.95 and we even ordered some special meat. What is special meat? Well we ordered crocodile, snake, ostrich, and Kangaroo. The dinner was excellent and amazingly cheap and we stuffed ourselves silly. We found out our Tuktul driver's name, Tola - which means october in Khmer, and agreed upon a price with him.

The next morning the drivers were there waiting for us at 5 in the morning and drove us to the Pavillon Indochine. We dropped off our things and raced to the Angkor park as we were hoping to watch the sunrise over Angkor Thom. A day pass at Angkor park cost us $20 which is less then a fee to get into an amusement park. Our tuktuk drivers drove to Angkor Thom, which is a city within the park and houses many temples. Our first stop was the temple of Bayon which Tola recommended to us because the sun would rise above the temple towers which were 4 faced buddha heads and each head would arise and face towards the viewer. It was a magnificent site and we spend a good hour and half exploring Bayon. We made our way to Baphuon which was one of the earlier temples on the Angkor Thom site. It was under heavy reconstruction and is also one of the larger temples though not as embellished as Bayon. Baphuon had the largest vertical laying down buddha. We decided that we were all going to go for an elephant ride. Vania and I got on a big one and we named it Flappy at first cause of it's ears. But it was soooo slow that all the other elephants were passing it so we decided to call it Carl cause that sounded like a slow name. Well the elephant ride was fun and after a good 20 minutes we were all knackered and wanted breakfast. We decided to head back to our hotel for a free breakfast and man was it ever a good decision. Though our Tuktuk drivers said that it would cost more fuel we told them that it would be no problem and would pay them more at the end of the day. The breakfast we had was just as amazing as the one on Phnom Penh but with more selections including croissants, omelletes and different juices. After breakfast we laid down for a few minutes to rest up. We headed back to the Angkor park in the afternoon to hit up Te Phrom and of course Angkor Wat. Te Phrom was our first stop and it was quite far away. Do you remember tomb raider? Well this is where they shot the 2nd movie. Te Phrom is one of the oldest temple complexes in the Angkor park and it is very evident by the growth of vegetation over the temples and the rubbles on the ground. Te Phrom was exciting and easy to get lost in and a thunder shower started to emerge halfway into our visit. We spent a good few hours there and went off to lunch at a restaurant in the park. During this time our Tuktuk driver was actually trying to fix his tuktuk and he finally returned after lunch. He took us to Angkor Wat and this was the moment most of us were waiting for.















Angkor Wat is the largest temple in the park and the main attraction. It is the largest sacred religious complex in the world. It houses both hinduistic culture and buddhist culture as the Khmer continue to be buddhist but look to their indic origins. The bridges are adorned with Naga Balustrades. Nagas are snake like creatures with multiple heads who protect the pathway to sacred structures. We made our way through the initial stone path that leads from the mainland past the moat on to the island the temple rests on. We had to battle through many children vying for our sales of postcards and nicknacks. One of the kids knew everything about canada. She asked me where I'm from and told me the capital of Canada (Ottawa) our two languages and our Prime Minister (Stephen Harper). I was very impressed but not enough to buy postcards and I said I might buy some when I returned. We went through the gates of Angkor which was massive in itself. Through the gate we entered into another large area called the terrace where our stone path led to the main central complex. Once we were in the main complex we toured around the outside which were famous for the engravings of various hindu stories of Rama, Hanuman and other characters. We finally entered the center and made a steep climb up. The great topples of the temple loomed above us and it was an impressive sight to behold. We wanted to stay for the sunset but it was only 4 and the sun set would begin around 6. We were tired and dehydrated and though the temples were magnificent to behold we were barely the gods the resided in this sacred ground. We headed back out while two of our group decided to stay to take pictures of the sunset. We battled our way back to our Tuktuks. The girl gave me the poutiest look because I didn't want to buy postcards. We headed back to our hotel and let Tola go because it had been a long day. We gave him $25 for the day and he was very surprised and told us that it was too much! We told him to keep it and that he deserved it for the long day especially with the debacle of his motorbike. He was very thankful and said that it was his birthday and was thankful for the great tip we gave him. We told him that we wanted him to pick us up for dinner tomorrow night and show us to an Apsara Dance Buffet dinner. Little did he know we were intending to treat him out for his birthday.




The next morning we went out to the floating village near the canals of Tonle Sap. Our hotel arranged a mini bus for us to take us out there and included the boat for us as well. The floating village was an amazing site as people lived and earned the living in the water. There were fisheries, pig farms, a power plant of sorts, basketball court, and churches in the water. Most of the people were ethnically vietnamese but mixed in heavily with khmer. We went to a fish and crocodile farm and saw what we ate the night before. We were all very drained from the last few days and just headed back to the hotel for some good pool side relaxing. I booked a massage appointment at four but spent a good time tanning by the pool and swimming. The massage at our hotel was cheap and very good. I passed out every time I had a massage. I would stick my ipod earphones on and float away. It was a shame the massage could not last forever. At 6:30 Tola came to pick us up in his Tuktuk and took us to the buffet. We invited him and he was very surprised. He told us that he had never eaten in a place like this before because it was too expensive. We shared our stories with him and he shared his and he told us that we were very lucky to be in University. He was the provider for his family because his parents had passed away when he was 18. He had a brother and a sister to provide for. He said he wanted to be a bad boy when he was younger but he strove to work in a good hotel nowadays. He met a swedish guy who told him that he would support his schooling and also gave him 185 USD which helped him get into the Tuktuk business. We were very moved by his stories and switched contact information with him in order to keep in touch and hopefully help him with his dream. We watched the Apsari dance and finished dinner and made our way back to the hotel. He thanked us again and we gave him his pay. It was sad to have him as our driver for the last time but we knew that he would get places with his ambition. We stayed up watching movies and drinking so that we could stay up till 6 for our bus pick up the next morning to Saigon via Phnom Penh. However, the bus never came.

We woke up next morning all packed and ready but our bus never came to pick us up. We called the company and found out that they were not willing to pick us up as we were too far away so we got a minivan to take us to the bus stop. We got to the bus stop and found that the bus had left. We were outraged and beyond belief. My roommate and another one of our group decided to go report this to the police and bring them to the companies' office. Half an hour later my roommate and our friend showed up in a camry with the manager of the Pavillon. The manager ran out apologizing to us saying it was his fault as one of his staff forgot to mention the phone call the bus company made to warn us. He arranged a minibus to take us all the way to Phnom Penh to meet our bus there. We got a large size mercedes people carrier with a speedster of a driver. We felt bad for the manager as we knew he did not make a profit from us during our stay but were very thankful and told him that we would recomment his hotel to anyone that came to cambodia. Our speed demon weaved us around traffic and got us to Phnom Penh an hour early while we were blasting music from our Ipods into a tape connector he had. We got on our bus at Phnom Penh but one of our friend's Visa was mistakenly given a one time entry and had to stay another night in Cambodia. We got on our bus and made our way to Saigon. This was suppose to be a 6 hour bus ride at most but it ended up being almost 8 hours as we arrived in Saigon nearly 10 at night and checked into our hotel. This last little bit of the trip was our only hiccup but I don't think it'd be quite an experience in SE Asia if you didn't have one of these mess ups. We were safe the whole time and though we were all quite fustrated we came out alive, well and in good spirits. The rest of our stay in Saigon is not worth highlighting as it involved alot of shopping, bargaining, and getting offended by sale bitches.

I'm glad you've stayed with me this long on my little journey. Cambodia and Vietnam have been both amazing experiences and the only regret I have is that I only had a glimpse of it. I will be back in Cambodia again for sure and the amazing hospitality of the people there will keep me going back for sure. Thank-you Cambodia for my little awakening and in however many years time may I come to see your country awake again to its former Khmer glory.

Violence gives way to hospitality and hope!

Some moments its better to just stare silently at your surrounding and take it all in. We left Saigon in the morning and headed to Phnom Penh last Sunday. It was a decent ride about 5 and half hours. We had to stop at the Vietnam/Cambodia border to get all our visas and passports settled. The border itself took an hour so in effect the ride wasn't exactly too long. All the time on the bus I had a craving for "insects"??? We were reading the lonely planet guide book and it said Cambodians eat pretty much anything that walked on the earth. They weren't wrong about that. We made our way to Phnom Penh and a guide of a group helped us out with getting a TukTuk driver. Our driver's name was Paulie and he took us to our hotel, "Le Pavillon". I booked a room for my group of four - Mads, Carrie, Vania, and I. The suite we had at the Pavillon was amazing! It had two rooms, a large bathroom and a huge patio overlooking the national palace. Our hotel also had a pool with a bar at the side and wifi connection everywhere. We were in heaven! My entire room went for a dip and relaxed a bit. We told Paulie to pick us up tomorrow morning and went off to dinner.



We walked to a restaurant near our hotel, which we were pretty sure catered to tourists but served up Khmere food only, which in my opinion is alot better than half the places that try to serve western food as well. Guess what was on the menu! "ANTS" I was so going to order that dish. It was Spicy fried beef with large red ants! Yes, ANTS! My gastronomic journey has reached the outlying borders and I was going to try it. The dish came and it looked like any other stir fried dish and I couldn't see the ants at first, but then I started spooning the stuff on the my plate and there they were. Bits of ant heads, abdomen and wings mixed in with the beef and veggies. The dish tasted fantastic though and I ended up eating most of it. We also had a bit of frog and quail. Cambodia is definitely a culinary adventure! After dinner we ventured out to town and went looking for a good bar. We found a large place that wasn't so cheap with a 2 man band that looked like they were war vets from the vietnam war. One had his shirt unbuttoned and wrinkley flesh all hanging out and the other had a crocodile dundee hat on. They were playing slow rock songs and we decided to interact with them a bit after getting inebriated on pitchers of the local ANgkor beer. We started requesting songs and they played a few. Though we ended up requesting outrageous things they could never play. We got pretty drunk and my group of four just ended up going back to the hotel. Carrie was DONE. She was passing out on my shoulder and demanded, like she usually does, for a Tuktuk home instead of walking. We dragged her into her bed and tucked her in while the rest of us went to the pool again. We met a guy from Ottawa while in the pool and was talking global issues with him. How we ended up doing this I have no idea, but we were too intoxicated for our own right to hold up any proper conversation. We headed back home and went to sleep in our deluxe suite.

Monday morning, we wake up and paulie picks us up to show us around town. We show him all the spots we wanted to hit and he did an amazing job taking us around. Our group of 12 first headed to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This museum was the former prison and torture sight of the Khmer Rouge regime. It was designated S21 and is still known by the infamous name nowadays. The museum sits in its former state, run down and eerie looking. We watched a movie on the massacres that happened in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. It is amazing that these attrocitie ended only in 1979 and the leaders of the regime were not arrested until 2007 though Sarath Sar aka Pol Pot died in 1997. We walked through the museums witnessing rooms with rusted tortue devices and pictures of people of perished in the prison or were sent to the killing fields. It was a depressing tour but it was necessary in my opinion to truly understand the identity of this culture by witnessing their horrid history. We were on a roll with this depressing mood and decided to go to the killing fields at cheong ek. The rain started to pour as we were heading there and it seemed complimentary to the whole visit. The killing fields is an area just outside of central phnom penh where they took the prisoners from S21 or any other prison to be executed. In the middle of the fields near a tree where they use to let out the prisoners now stands a large monument with hundreds of skulls housed in it and the clothing of the executed on the bottom. It was a gruesome but surreal moment to realize that this green patch of land with holes in it use to be mass graves. We walked through the fields and we realized that the rain was washing some of the dirt from the ground and pieces of bones started to appear. Although there was excavation done in this area, the sheer amount of bodies made it impossible to excavate every single one out. People to this day just as we did continue to find bones and lay it on shrines out of respect.





We were getting hungry and decided to head back to town for lunch. We wanted to invite Paulie for lunch as well. We went to a place called Khmer Saravan which was quite well known within the backpacker community and had a delicious Khmer meal without bugs. We made conversations with Paulie and the other Tuktuk drivers and got to know their family stories. They all had children and one barely ever got to see them. They slept a maximum of 3 hours a day working to the wee mornings. One Tuktuk driver lost his wife and rarely ever got to see his daughter. Getting to know them as humans over a proper lunch that they would never consider spending on was very heartwarming.

After lunch we decided to go to the National Palace and see the glamour of being a Khmer King. And let me tell you, Buckingham palace or any other palace in this world has nothing on what the King of Cambodia has. His complex is HUGE! There are areas we are not even allowed on as they continue to be used by the King and his family. Most interestingly is a decent sized french mansion which was a pallisade from Africa somewhere given by Napoleon III. We visited pagodas, gardens, elephant stables and various ceremonial structures. This place was definitely impressive and beautiful. One thing that I found most striking in Cambodia is the architecture. All the roofs are elaborately adorned and they embellish every bits of columns and walls with engravings.





We headed to Wat Phnom after the palace and had a nice stroll around the park of the Wat and walked up to the Wat itself. It still functions as a buddhist pagoda and the monkeys in the area gave us a bit of a scare when they decided to pee down from the trees. Our final destination for the day was the central market where we bought some Krama scarves and other Cambodian crafts. We also bought some street food to try. The food we bought were little gluttonous cakes fried in a pan with divets. Its almost like the Japanese Takoyaki but a little bit different in texture and taste.
After the market, we told Paulie to take us home and gave him the pay for our day.

The next morning we headed out to Siem Riep on another coach bus. This part of the story I'll leave for another time.

My pictures will be up soon and maybe you'll get to glimpse a bit of all I experienced here.

The Migrant's Revival!

Hopefully to stay! I haven't been dutifully writing in my blog as of late. After my last blog when I first arrived in Hong Kong I dissappeared suddenly. I didn't die, I didn't get into accident, nor did I lose any interest in writing. The main reason I haven't been updating is that I've been adapting to life in Hong Kong and keeping myself busy with the activities over there. Ok, I won't lie there have been times I've been dead bored sitting at home and doing of all things watching old dragonball movies! YES DRAGONBALL MOVIES! Talk about naturalizing!

Hong Kong has been an amazing place to live in! I can be as frugal as I want and as big of a spender as I want, though I've tended to be the former lately. Every week I buy myself some "ding ding". Do you know what "ding ding" is? It's the microwavable meals. They have all kinds here, from curry chicken to pork chop cutlet to shanghainese noodles. They call is ding ding because thats the sound a microwave makes when its ready. I've also bought some udon noodles and yakisoba. I've never really lived "on my own" before but I think this is a good start to it all. My room mate is awesome and we get along real well. I live in a residence called Hall Swire which is known for their hall pride. Though I don't share the same "hall pride" as most non-locals don't I do share a pride for being part of the 8th floor. This is attributed to a great bunch of guys that have a great time together. The locals integrate us in everything we do and I've become a sort of ombuds person for them, communicating and translating between the locals and non-locals. We have a considerable amount of non-locals on our floor and we all get along real well. I've also got a great group of friends I've made here and am currently on a trip with them.

SO WHERE IN THE WORLD AM I WRITING FROM!?

I'm in Saigon, Vietnam with a bunch of my friends I've made in HKU. We are on a tour of Indochina and are having a blast. We left Hong Kong early on friday morning to Macau by ferry at 730am. We flew from Macau to Saigon by Viva Macau Airline. The flight cost me $80 US! That is a freakin amazing amount! We landed in Saigon and were picked up by our hotel. Our hotel is in the heart of the backpacker district and there are loads of shops and restaurants here. Most of them try to gyp you but we're a group of scheming bargainers. On our first day we booked our bus to Phnom Penh and went for lunch at a restaurant that served Pho and iced coffee. Ice coffee in Vietnam is like drinking liquid coke! I love that shit! We explored the Ben Thanh market and bargained our ass off for some cargo shorts. I got 2 pairs for $14! My room mate is an amazing bargainer and I talked the salespeople down with him. We went for dinner at a Hue Bun noodle place and that was a bit of a chaotic situation. The service was kinda poor and the food was not bad - in my opinion. But many of the people I were travelling were complaining and tried to fight for a %20 discount that was apparently promised to us. I ended up paying the difference because I didn't want to cause any problems. I think we just all have to understand that this is an asian country and things work very differently here. I'm use to the lack of service but owing 150 000 Viet Dong was like $10 in total for all 11 of us which is nothing! We went back home to drink a whole bunch of cheap beers we got here for less then 50 cents a can.

Saturday, today, we woke up early and had breakfast at a Pho place where we chose the ingredient we wanted. It was 15 000 Dongs which is less than a dollar canadian. It was one of the most satisfying meal I've had so far, not because it's cheap but because the broth and noodles were so good! We went to a tailor shop as some of my friends wanted to get suits. I helped them choose some material out and they were measured. We went to get a buffet lunch at a five star hotel after that and it was only $15! They have smoked salmon, vietnamese spring rolls and many other local cuisine plus alot of western dishes and a huge dessert section! It was an amazing lunch and took alot out of me trying to keep thing IN MY STOMACH! We went to the reunification palace after by taxi and were totally gyped by the cabbie as we agreed to a $3 USD ride but the other half of our group only paid $1 for their ride!

The reunification palace is one of the most interesting attractions here in Saigon. It recounts the events that led to Vietnam war and the role the Americans play. To be exact the criminal role in international affairs they played. Not that this museum is a subtle propaganda to the Vietnam government regime but there were slants in the quotes and captions. To be honest I tended to agree with the vietnamese sides after reading the attrocities brought upon them by American warfare.
We made our way to a cafe to grab a drink and re-energize ourselves. We went for a shady massage parlour for a full body massage, but the massage was actually very good and they cracked every joint in my body for only $6. I headed back to the hotel and took a nap. We went to a BBQ restaurant near our hotel tonight and the marinated meats were soo amazing. It was almost like Korean BBQ where we bbq'd our own food. We had alot of beers as they were offering buy one get one free beers. Now I sit here recounting this amazing trip so far.

I will post pictures up soon and stay tuned! SE Asia is an amazing region of this world and I hope I can depict all my experiences to you as descriptively possible. For now, "chào từ biệt ai, chia tay ai"