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Angkor Watt and Sigiriya

Siem Reap

I remember, when I was a child, seeing a picture of Angkor Watt. It conveyed the intrigue of a lost civilisation capable of great achievement.
I have lived through, arguably, the greatest period of achievement in human history:-quantum leaps in science and medicine (antibiotics) global political and social upheaval and realignment, (the cold war, the deconstruction of the Berlin wall and re-unification), space flight and the moon landing. These were real and tangible, but it is the elusive past on which I have been hooked all my life. As well, the future has always been an obsession with me. The writings of Arthur C Clarke, the only true visionary, have astounded and entertained me with the idea of what may lie around the next corner. I hope I live to see his prediction of the Space Elevator come true, hopefully in Sri Lanka, his original location.

That image of Angkor Watt never left me, burnt into my brain for the rest of my life. It was not until many years later that I learnt about Cambodia and Siem Reap, the city near the ruined temples.

I knew I would have to see Angkor Watt one day.

That day is here.

--oOo--

I had flown to Sydney where I stayed overnight with my son Philip and Katrina, and caught the 10 hour flight next morning.  It had been nearly 10 years since I last took a long distance flight – I had forgotten how tiring it can be. But the hosties of Air Asia are up to the task of keeping the passengers spirits high, in more ways than one! When I asked from where does Air Asia get such lovely girls? one replied:  “From Angels-R-Us”. I can’t argue with that!

On the forward leg. the stay in KL is brief. I stay in an airport hotel, and barely have time to acquire a local sim card before I’m away again at 6:30 a.m. At least the sim will be one item I won’t have to worry about on my return.

 After crossing the coast, we pass over the largest lake in S.E. Asia, Tonle Sap, just a few kilometres from Siem Reap. More about it later, but the sight of the floating population intrigues me from the start.

On arrival, visas are provided complete with picture (if you don’t know to have one on you) for a couple of dollars, but they must be American.

I now have five days in Siem Reap organised through Intrepid, for a most reasonable fee. I am met at the airport by a representative and I take my first tuk-tuk ride, ever, to the hotel. Cars and taxis are almost non-existent here, apparently. I am told later there are 1.5 million people in Siem Reap and 1 million registered tuk-tuks and motor bikes. The first view of the city from the airport road is reassuring:-  a wide avenue with views of neat buildings in the French style, some new. As we get closer to the inner city this changes to a strange mix of older rundown buildings, and new construction in the French colonial style. I am reminded of Cairns in the 1970’s at the start of the tourist boom, when much new accommodation appeared seemingly overnight all over the city. But here, sometimes entire blocks of rubble seem to threaten, as if a squad of soldiers could appear at any moment and drag people off to the killing fields.

The Boutique Hotel I am registered at has seen better days. It serves mainly western food, basic fare, but with one advantage, I soon discover. It is within walking distance to nightlife and the markets.

The next morning I meet my guide, and we are off to Angkor Watt in a fancy Toyota, all six cylinders. Petrol is $1.60/l here. The average weekly wage is about $10.00.

My first sight of the temples is accompanied by awe and I am enthralled. However, the seemingly large ‘lake’ in front of the complex in the promotional photo is really a pond about half the size of a football field. As in other promotional photography, (real estate is a good example), lens focal lengths and other photographic tricks are often used to set up false impressions of the real thing.

My guide was knowledgeable and had good English. I have had little exposure to Hinduism and not much more to Buddhism, but she helped maintain my fascination with the culture that was responsible for the building of these centuries old structures, the entire day.

A favorite temple of mine and many others is Ta Prohm. It has been left as found with overgrown vegetation and strangler fig trees covering its ramparts. This is where a scene from Tomb Raider was filmed. I was told Lara Croft sometimes makes an appearance and mixes with the tourists visiting the temple. I didn’t believe a word of it, of course, until…there she was…and she is quite as beautiful as they say.

The next day we travel by tuk-tuk down to the embarkation point for a tour of the lake Tonle Lap.

The riverboats and the scenery evoke memories of ‘Apocalypse Now’. It’s not quite the Mekong, but for one mad moment I feel like Marlon Brando.

 

Every nation has its own xenophobic traits, I guess, and I had been warned about certain non-Cambodians who the locals did not want encouraged. When we reach our destination on the lake, a boy suddenly appears above the gunwale of our boat. Complete with snake I am so startled I have to take his picture, for which I volunteer an American dollar. True to the advice I had been given, the family hounds us for the entire visit…he, his Mom and his sisters.

I have to tell about a unique feature of the lake. It drains into the Mekong delta, but is not fed, itself, by any large watercourse directly. When the Mekong floods during the monsoon, Tonle Lap’s water level rises many meters, flooding the surrounding plain. The trick is, the lake is higher than the sea level at the delta. The hydraulic principals causing this phenomenon are still not fully understood.

Although the daily activities are sometimes intense, I keep up pretty well, still having enough energy for a couple of late nights in ‘Pub street’. Here the food is more interesting and a Margarita costs $1.50. I meet fellow travellers from Europe, America, and many MANY Australians. Aussies always seem to proliferate where the beer is cheapest.

Some of the Australians are older, here for the young Cambodians (I call them the ugly Australians), some are young couples (honeymooners?), the wife seemingly clinging to her man as if he might disappear at any moment. Single girls wander the streets, safely, albeit looking a little confused, and the single Aussie males are laughing all the way….but the Cambodians, both male and female, many with good English, just smile the smiles their beautiful faces seem to be made for. They are friendly, but, with a quiet dignity, stay at arm’s length.                                                                                       

 I take my hat off to them.

WTF?

What do you call three monks on a motorbike?

Finally I am off, back to KL. The city seems stressed and tired, its people mostly without smiles. The Petronas Towers both intimidates and beckons. I join the queue to take the lift to the top and I’m offered a concessional admission price without even asking for it. The young man behind the desk says, “You look old enough to qualify as a senior citizen”.                                                    

 And he smiles.

The overnight train to Singapore is cheap, but basic. The food consists of sandwiches or vegetables and rice. The food is cold and looks unhygienic:- “I’m sorry Sir, we have no microwave…because we have no electricity” !                                                                                                                              

 I go to sleep hungry.

In Singapore I have booked one night in a hostel before catching a Tiger Air flight to Sri Lanka. I am tired and challenged with the need for rest and quiet, to wash clothes and sort out the backpack. I can’t stand the thought of a dormitory, so I upgrade to a private room. My first challenge as a backpacker of the world and I am found wanting.

The next day I have time before a late departure to find some music stores. The first one I enter has the usual stuff, but I ask the attendant, ‘have you heard of the Eastman guitar?’ to which he replies ‘I don’t stock them, but come with me’. I follow him along corridors and around corners to enter another shop, in which I can already see a couple of Eastmans.  I try them all out and eventually put a deposit on one of them. I tell the guy there, ‘I will be back in one week’.

--oOo--

Sri Lanka

The island of Serendip (the old name for Sri Lanka) is a lot bigger than first it seems, especially when you are trying to see it all in just a few days. Touring by car is your only hope of accomplishing anything, though the roads are good, but not up to Tasmanian standards. Though Tassy is half as big again as Sri Lanka, touring Tassy is twice as easy, but Sri Lanka is infinitely more beautiful, (sorry non-mainlanders). Serendip has not gained its fabled status as the original Garden of Eden for nothing.

The evening flight to Colombo leaves late due to mechanical problems with the aircraft. (I have heard this before, haven’t I Tiger!)  We arrive at 1.00 a.m. I half expect the Sri Lankan connection to have given up and gone to bed, but I am met in the arrivals by a driver for the tour company. His name is Madu. Over the next few days I come to like and respect this young man greatly. His girlfriend is at university studying accounting. She has exams this week. They talk incessantly on the car phone, all day long as we drive out of the city to Sigiriya, up to the highlands covered in tea, down to the most southern tip of Sri Lanka, and back to Colombo. Madu seems compelled to ask me, over and over again “Are you happy Sir?’.  I threaten him with the sack if he keeps calling me ‘Sir’, but the most he will compromise is to call me ‘Mr John’. He earns $7.00 a day for all of this.                                     

  Petrol in Sri Lanka costs, you guessed it, $1.60 /l.

The next day we leave early, travelling non-stop to Sigiriya. I negotiate a fee for the local guide, and we commence our climb up the Lion rock. The climb is unrelenting, the guide very knowledgeable with good English. He is about my own age and slightly emphysematous, but he negotiates the stairs in leaps and bounds. Eventually he pulls up, breathing somewhat heavier, and takes a rest. Whether this is a result of the emphysema or he is just trying to make me feel better for my exertions, I couldn’t tell. One thing about the climb, (and I was warned), on one landing I was joined by an ordinary looking fellow who offered to assist me up the next flight of steps. .He made a great show of it, seemingly concerned for my health, as if I was in danger of an imminent coronary. The thing is, if you accept their help, though unsolicited, you are liable to pay them a fee, and this apparently, is legitimate. I fobbed him off more than once, till he got so annoying I had to get nasty. I was becoming educated in foreign ways, in no uncertain terms.                                                                                  

 Eventually we reach the top. The plateau seems smaller than I expected, but, for me, being there is equal to standing on Everest.

I am on top of the world.

An unexpected (Serendipitous) experience at the Lion rock.

Sigiriya is in the background

Returning to ground level I am greeted by… the elephant - and her mahout.                           

 Though this item is on the agenda, I have to negotiate yet another fee, and I loose, terribly. Not on the price, (I reduce the ride from $30.00 down to $15.00) – unknowingly I have agreed to the ‘long’ ride, i.e. 40- bloody- minutes on this rolling ponderous pachyderm. My pelvis feels like it has split in two.

We arrive in Dambulla by mid-afternoon, where there is more climbing to see the cave temple. I will never be this fit again. Overnight we stay in a very posh resort in Dambulla. Unfortunately it is wasted on me. That night I collapse, dead to the world.

 Next morning we have another early departure, for a very long day through the mountains and Tea plantations of Sri Lanka to the southernmost part of paradise, the Yala National park . This is home to the biggest concentration of leopards in the world, including Africa.

By mid-morning we reach Kandy, and as the day progresses we ascend into the high country where the air is noticeably cooler, the mountains poking into the lower floating clouds. This is where I leave all previous experience behind. There is nowhere else in the world that I have visited that is anything like this. The snowy peaks of temperate Europe are dear to me, as is the rolling Alpine regions of Australia…even north Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands in winter, but this country gets the prize, the cigar and the whole shooting match. That evening we stay in a B and B, overlooking Yala but still high in the mountains. 

Next day, a quick decent brings us to Yala and our Safari driver at the entrance to the national park. This day there are about a dozen 4WDs in the park and I make sure Mardu understands there is a reward for finding a leopard. Our driver  is older and more experienced than any of the other drivers, He is consulted several times throughout the day for advice and the benefit of experience by the younger ones. Through the morning I have a good feeling about the days outcome, but as the search continues I start to become uncertain. We sight abundant wildlife and birds of every size and colour. There are water buffalo, deer, monkeys, you name it, but no leopards. Late afternoon sees the rest of the drivers heading home. One by one they leave until only three hardy souls, Myself,  Mardu and our driver remain inside the park. The sun, dying in the west, is in our eyes, now, as we head back to the park entrance. This driver, however, seems never to have learnt to say the word ‘die’. Still we take small excursions along tracks in the bush seemingly bypassed earlier in the day.

Then the cry from Mardu:- “Mr. John! Leopard! Leopard!”.  There it is, just ahead but walking nonchalantly towards us, twisting and turning through the thickets by the roadside. His coat is a burnished orange, flaring in the setting sun like flames from a blacksmith’s forge. We take twenty minutes quietly observing the animal which seems to be, I think, ‘cautiously relaxed’ is a good description. He passes us with just the merest of glances in our direction and the driver puts the Landrover into reverse, following from a distance.  Mardu encourages me to ‘move down to the back, sit near the tailgate, Mr John!’. After a particularly baleful glare from the beast, I decide against it, telling Mardu:- “Its ok for you sitting in the front, but if he comes over the back, I’m the first one to get the" Kiss of the Leopard!”.

 If I HAD died then I would have done so in a state of ecstasy. But tomorrow we had the longest drive of all:- back to Colombo via Bundalla lakes, host to one of the most prolific bird congregations in the world.

 

Bundalla. 

Not being terribly knowledgeable about birds, I found lots of time to contemplate the quietness and solitude, as well as observe herons, eagles and crocodiles. Kingfishers, kites and crocodiles. Even some wild flamingos in the distance…and PLENTY of crocodile. They crossed the road in front of us, they lay in roadside gullies, (“perhaps not a good place to go weewee, Mr John!”).

And I thought northern Australia was bad!

Southernmost tip of Sri Lanka

On the way back to Colombo I buy some sapphires for the girls at home. In Sri Lanka a certificate of quality attesting to their genuineness is a legal requirement. Back in Cambodia I inspected what looked like some very nice gems, even a perfectly beautiful blue star sapphire, nearly one whole carat, for only $170.00. In a way, I almost regret not buying it even though it was probably fake. All the star sapphires in Sri Lanka paled in comparison but cost three times the price.

We got to Colombo right on rush hour. Mardu desperately tried to get out of going through the city at this nightmare time for traffic, but I insisted, there was one more place we had to go. He tried his hardest to talk me out of it, but then I pulled out the big gun…I pleaded. He gave in.

The stop was a famous address in the city:- Barnes Place. 
It was a special house for me and many others even though it’s resident had departed this earth some years ago. With the afternoon traffic to contend with, we had a bit of trouble even getting close to the street, but finding the house itself seemed almost impossible. Mardu  said “we will find it, Mr John”. I should call him, ‘the bloodhound’, for Madu spies a door chime which I hadn’t even noticed, which he pushes. A voice answers in Sri Lankan. Mardu speeks briefly and then gestures to me.                                                    

 

 I had thought to simply find the famous man’s house, take my picture in front of it and leave; that was all I had planned. But now I was talking to an anonymous voice, trying to explain my decidedly odd mission. The answer was in English: “Oh that’s no trouble, there is another gate to your left, I will unlock it, come inside and I will meet you”.

We did so, and all four of us climbed the stairs to the most famous room on earth…well, to ME it was, more important than entering Buckingham Palace and meeting royalty. I only wish this particular VIP was still alive to greet us.

It was explained to us that it had been decided to keep the room exactly as its owner had left it. I commented that as a shrine, it was more important than St. Peters. Perhaps I got carried away a bit.

Mardu gets me back to my lodgings on sunset. I had been looking forward to seeing a fine sunset over the Indian Ocean, but a cloudy horizon put an end to that. This hotel had been recommended to me by two Aussie girls in Siem Reap. The building had been designed by a monk, and was very like a monastery. The rooms were cheap ($40.00), a bit dilapidated some would say, but I think  ‘value added ambiance’…depends on whether you see the glass half full or half empty.

Next day Mardu picks me up for the short ride to the airport. We say genuine goodbyes, I am going to remember him.

And so on to Singapore for a four day stop over, and home. The last time I was in Singapore was in 1983. Thirty years has made a difference I admit, but expensive  cities are not for me, and it will not be included in this first installment of my travel blog

Once I have topped up the coffers, god willing, I still have a lot to see. 

The Bucket List is alive and well.