Intestines v Temples

Vines winning the battle against the Khymer

Following our new pattern, we left the Koh Ker region at sunrise, having snacked on bananas and roadside steamed pork buns. Although the landscape was rather desolate, with a faint haze of smoke laying over the ground from burning cropland, the cool temperatures and pink sunrise light made for pleasant riding until we arrived at Beng Meala - the next major temple complex leading to Angor Wat. Initially, we had worried that the 50km required to arrive there would put us in the heart of tourist arrival from Siem Reap, however only a bored looking guard greeted our arrival and took our tickets. A paved walkway, lined by an undulating, two hundred meter long stone serpent, led to the outer gates of the temple, and gave the impression that this complex had been more intensively restored than Koh Ker. 

The banisters are actually a very long snake

However, arriving at the end of the walkway, we found the main gate blocked by fallen stones, overgrown with large trees. Climbing up a wooden staircase to a break in the wall, the path directed us along a raised walkway into the temple grounds. Inside, it was clear that the entire center of the grounds had been covered in large stone blocks from collapsed buildings and walls. At times, design elements such as decorative wall carvings or elaborate doorway headstones could be discerned from the rocky mess, alluding to how orderly the site would have been almost a millennia ago. 

Unlike Koh Ker, trees had grown over these fallen buildings, boring through standing structures. The impression it creates is of stumbling across a lost civilization. As we picked our way through the rubble, immaculately restored buildings sprung up next to the walkway, giving the impression of only recent societal collapse. Amazingly, we were able to tour the entire central grounds while seeing only three other people. As we exited the inner grounds, we spotted, or rather heard, a rarity in this part of the world - Americans. A group of sixty something midwesterners were yelling at each other, each exhorting the other to take their picture, in stark contrast to the otherwise mysterious feel of our surroundings. Fortunately, solitude returned on the other side of the wall that we were crossing. Having seen our fill of the temple, we cut back into the center to find our bikes and continue our forward progression. 

What confronted us was the tourist version of a 2x4 to the head. The quiet boardwalk that had taken us over the rubble was now filled to bursting with Chinese tourists. Hundreds of meters of tourists pushed forward, three abreast, selfies firing mercilessly. We pushed against the crowd, until we suddenly burst through the tail of the herd into relative quiet. Apparently several tour buses had arrived and disgorged the entire volume of their innards onto the temple, which we had thankfully mostly managed to dodge. 

OMG

The naga bids us farewell

Having spent the morning exploring Beng Meala, the remainder of our ride necessarily placed us squarely in the middle of the day, but at this point our minds easily tolerated the two hours of tropical sun that it took to reach the fork in the road leading to Siem Reap. Because we had saved so much time with our initial dirt road diversion upon entering Cambodia, we could resist the draw of Cambdoia's tourist black hole. Instead we turned south towards Phnom Pen, and then quickly west towards southeast Asia's largest lake - Tonle Sap. Almost imperceptibly, the road slanted downwards, evident only by the emergence of encroaching water on both sides of the road. With five miles, we were riding on an isolated finger of dry land, with houses resting on thirty foot tall platforms lining the road. In January several months have passed since the last rain, but we've read that during the rainy season, the volume of the lake more than doubles obscuring the stilts that support the houses. With this dramatic seasonal variation, locals rely almost entirely on boats for transportation. Some villages are even built from houses on floating platforms, allowing them to move miles with changing water levels. 

View of our front porch (next to water tower) from across the water

Rush hour

A clever bamboo ladder into a coconut palm

We had actually managed to arrange housing at someone's house through booking .com. However, the veneer of western civilization would quickly be stripped away when we reached the point on the map where our homestay was theoretically located. Despite having written down "where is the homestay" in Cambodian, nobody seemed to have any idea where a hotel or homestay was in the area. Asking at the local temple left us no closer to the answer, but somebody at a local health clinic suggest we cross the bridge to a neighbouring island and ask there. Still, none of the people resting in hammocks under their house seemed to be able to help us. While we had plenty of time, the possibility of having to backtrack grew more likely. With nothing else to do, we arbitrarily turned left and slowly pedalled down the dirt road. Incredibly, I caught some Roman script  on a sign fifteen feet above the road, indicating our homestay!

She didn't know where the homestay was either

Water rises almost to the base of this building during the wet season

Frequent bursts of color springing out of the dirt and wood village

The man in the house didn't seem to have any idea we were coming, but understood that we hoped to stay in his house, and quickly set about making up a bed on the floor under a mosquito net. The house itself consisted of a single common room, about eighty feet long and twenty feet wide. At the far end, across a wooden floor polished by bare feet over the years, the family had placed their table overlooking the water. They had cordoned off a segment of the house for a shower (fed with luxurious filtered water instead of straight lake water) and squat toilets. At our end, closest to the road, a Cambodian woman and her Thai boyfriend had been set up on two beds suspended by ropes about a foot above the floor. Sadly, we were stuck sleeping on the floor, but the beds did look comfortable.

A fellow bike tourist, we couldn't find the owner

Making fish jerky, apparently it isn't cooked any more than this

Brooke decided to stay out of the blistering sun, but I set out on foot to explore this  unusual spot. Some aspects of the village suggested it was quite poor - all of the kids were dirty, but also playing happily under their houses. I suppose it would be difficult to keep clean in this environment. In contrast, almost all of the houses looked to be in excellent repair, and many had been painted bright colors. Hundreds of pounds of tiny shrimp lay on nets, drying in the sun on the side of the road. Smells of cooking mixed with the smell of drying fish, with an occasional waft of rotting refuse. At one point, I came across a group of women literally climbing over each other to scale a ladder where an old man handed out tickets. The occasional woman who got a ticket and went inside was matched by a woman coming out with a crate of water or other item. I couldn't find what this odd interaction actually meant.

Random melee amongst middle aged women. The guy on the stairs is amused.

Local bike shop

Riding to work with a fishing net

Following my exploration, I rejoined Brooke and we hired a boat to take us outside of the village into the lake itself. On the way, we passed a truly floating village, which our driver said had moved out to the lake as the water fell. Next to this village, we saw acres of green peas planted on flat wetlands exposed only seasonally, but apparently these were owned by people from our stilted village, not the poorer residents of the floating village. 

Tonle Sap, southeast Asia's largest lake

Farm tools

A floating primary school

The night had been shaping up to be a relaxing early bedtime, following dinner on the family's porch. Unfortunately, some of the denizens of the town had another idea. A national beer company had decided to throw a party that night, a Tuesday, and had put huge speakers and a spotlight in the plaza next to the temple. Once, the music started going, it would combine with the warm night to make sleep impossible. Fortunately, they stopped around 10pm, but a bolus of revelers walked past the house for the next thirty minutes. Throughout the night, the harsh noise of motors pushing long boats through the thick weeds in the canal outside of the house further undermined our sleep. The nail in the coffin was when the local monks began chanting at 4am, took a break at 5am and then chanted into speakers starting at 6am. By this time, the sun was up, so we made the best of it and walked through the village before riding to Siem Reap. 

Seeing a fire under a wooden house seems like a good idea

Kids with knives...

Somehow, this device is used to clean fishing nets

On the way, we had two issues to contend with. First, Brooke started having some crampy upper stomach pain and low energy, portending the future. Second, the insanity we had seen briefly the day before, became concentrated as traffic thickened nearing Siem Reap. Their most concerning move consisted of pulling aggressively into oncoming traffic and then darting back into their appropriate lane at the very last second, seemingly without regard if anybody else occupied that spot. Every time this happened, we both worried that someone would be forced onto the shoulder where we were riding. Luckily, we didn't have far to ride in these conditions, or we might have hitched a hide or deviated around the main road. 

A hidden lion

Arriving in Siem Reap, our hotel welcomed us to a well made-up 3rd story room with a potent air conditioner. Unfortunately, Brooke's upper stomach pain had continued to worsen, to the point where she vomited, but with only minimal relief. All I could do was go downstairs to grab a coke for her, and hope it didn't strike me.

Thousand Buddha display in the national museum

While she slept, I perfunctorily explored the national museum, bought us tickets to enter Angkor Wat the next day, then followed the recommendation of my tuktuk driver to a temple for sunset. Unlike the Khymer temples we had visited thus far, this temple flopped. While the well preserved temples grounds would have been interesting in their own right, hundreds of tourists had been brought here to swarm the upper reaches of the main building to watch the sunset. Frustratingly, the temple did not particularly complement the sunset, basically just providing a elevated platform to look across the surrounding plains. I strolled the lower grounds, and left early to beat the crowds.

I joined the swarm

Offsetting this disappointing introduction to Siem Reap, Brooke felt a little bit better when I returned. Since we only had one night in Siem Reap, and couldn't expect high end food anywhere else in the country, we decided to go a nice restaurant attached to a hotel. The food ranged from tasty to weird, and all of my tasting menu was tiny. The highlights were fermented pork and papaya slaw rolls, which landed on the tasty end, and fish broth who pungent smoked fish brine landed in the weird end.

Suspended above the floor at our dinner table

Following our swaying dinner, we walked back to the hotel. With Brooke able to help out with half my meal, things were looking good from the intestinal perspective, and we went to sleep awaiting an early trip to Angkor Wat. Sadly, a distinct roil in my stomach woke me up before the alarm. The tiered structure of Koh Ker did look vaguely Aztec, but baring any resemblance, something had channeled Montezuma's revenge straight into my colon.

Lotus growing in the moat

A recurrent theme in Khymer art, this shows gods and demons using a naga to create immortal water

After meditating on the toilet through sunrise, I decided that Angkor Wat was ten thousand kilometres from home, I might never come back, and I should make the most of the day, despite my intestinal betrayal. It turns out that the delay didn't cost us that much, because the sunrise had largely been obscured by low clouds and smoke from farmers burning their fields. Instead, we arrived as the sunrise crowds were leaving, but before the day crowds reached full steam. Although there were still many people compared to our previous days, the sheer size of the Angkor Wat complex, as well as the fact that it is much better restored meant that it was a different experience from the other temples. 

First, the view across the hundred meter long moat, with the iconic towers in the background impresses even the most intestinally stricken individual. Our hired guide shepherded us past the aggressive monkeys patrolling the grounds, and explained various features of the carvings on walls, doorways and columns. He also pointed out various photo opportunities, some of which were neat, most of which were kind of goofy shots that Brooke and I would never have done if left to our own devices. Still, we had fun strolling the grounds, occasionally being forced into dorky tourist pictures. By the time we reached the towers, in the innermost reaches of Angkor Wat, a 45 minute line had appeared to climb the towers. Given the state of my intestines, and the rising heat, we decided to bypass this for the sake of mental health.

Our least dorky picture

The most dorky picture

Angry monkey!

 Our original plan involved visiting two other temples before leaving town. However, we had to check out of the hotel at noon and begin the final leg of the bike ride towards the Thai border. We decided to bypass the Bayon, a temple known for having faces carved on many of its buildings, and instead stop briefly at Ta Prohm, another well known temple. To our pleasure, our tuk tuk driver drove straight past the Bayon, so we got an excellent view of the faces, as well as the hundreds of tourists swarming over the small temple grounds. While it would be great to stroll through the temple, I would only want to do it early in the morning before the crowds materialized. 

Faces of the Bayon

Random Russian lady doing her best supermodel impression. She say like this for minutes while her boyfriend took pictures

Surprisingly, when we reached Ta Prohm, we found relatively few tourists. Ta Prohm is known for the massive trees growing out of the various temple buildings, and indeed the air of decay given to the experience by the jungle displacing temple walls was quite striking. We happily walked the inner walls, running into tourists here and there, but never feeling overly crowded ... that is until we arrived at Ta Prohm's most famous tree. This nameless, photogenic tree grows on top of a large doorway, sending roots down the walls and partially through the door opening. At least one hundred people sat looking at the scene through their phones and camera viewfinders, taking pictures of other people's heads with a beautiful site barely discernible in the background. It looks like that is where everyone else had sequestered themselves. We bypassed the crowd as quickly as possible, and somehow found our tuktuk driver, who took us back to our hotel.

Characteristic vine growth

At this point, I felt rather piqued, but we had obligated ourselves to make it halfway to the Thai border that afternoon, both to split up the 100 mile ride and to see another remote temple tomorrow morning. While I would have much rather fallen asleep, we packed up, got separated from each other looking for lunch, found each other, ate, and finally left during peak sun intensity. Leaving Siem Reap was less unpleasant than entering the city, but still not something I would want to repeat. As per our usual routine, I started out in front to give Brooke a draft on the pancake flat Cambodian roads. However, I could only maintain about 14mph, I thought due to crosswinds. After stopping to use the toilet at the house of a woman selling random goods from her porch, Brooke briefly took to the front. Suddenly we were going 18mph. Apparently it wasn't the crosswinds, but just weakness from diarrhea that had turned me into a wet noodle of a bike rider. Luckily for us, Brooke had the strength to pull us along for the next 40 miles, before I was able to help out around sunset. We calculated that she saved us about an hour, making the difference between arriving at night and arriving at sunset. 

Regardless, we reached Sophon and passed through town to an "official" hotel instead of our usual guesthouse. Our thoughts were that they could arrange transport to the next temple early in the morning, but the price we paid was being 2 miles away from town. Not wanting to ride at night, we set off walking towards town for dinner. Luckily, we found a shop selling banana smoothies and bread. Brooke's stomach was not quite ready for the usual Cambodian fare, so she called a halt here. I also did not relish the idea of walking an hour into town, and found that the owner's mom sold grilled meat next door. While she didn't have any dog, she had a variety of organs, some boney chicken skewers, and what I thought were cow testicles, but were actually just circular sausages. Somehow my GI distress did not affect my stomach at all, so I thought I'd continue pushing the limits of normal food consumption. In addition to the skinny chicken, the pseudo-cow testicles and an unknown organ, I asked for some grilled eggs and a larger greenish egg. In broken English, her daughter told me that this egg contained "dead baby chicken," a delicacy that I had heard of but had not seen up to this point. While the idea actually seemed kind of disgusting, the actual result was only marginally unappealing. The yolk had definitely differentiated into something that was not a yolk, but had no discernible chicken parts such as feathers, and really tasted just like a meatier egg. Her other egg dish was more appealing, where the contents had been removed through a small hole, blended with salt and pepper, placed back in the egg, steamed, then grilled. What came out approximated an omelette, but looked like a hard boiled egg. In the meantime, Brooke had eaten several loaves of bread, so we were able to abort the walk into town and get to bed almost in time to catch eight hours of sleep.

Banana milkshake and assorted meats

Our ebullient doorman had arranged for another tuktuk to pick us up at 530am to take us to an infrequently visited temple, Bantay Chamar, about 60km north of our hotel. Hopefully we'd both be feeling up to the task ...