Last Saturday I went to visit Cambodia's main tourist attraction - the temples of Angkor Wat. Despite always being ambivalent about sunrises and a pretty awful cyclist to was persuaded to choose the Sunrise Bicycle Tour. Ten hour of cycling through villages and forest paths to see just some of the temples in what used to be a giant, ancient city.
Angkor Wat is just one of the temple complexes - the largest, and the one you'll see on the front of tourist brochures and in alongside the "I Heart Cambodia" T-shirts. And it's in front of here that all the tourists gather, huddled on rocks in the pitch dark, waiting for the sun to shed some light on the icon.
On the day we went, it was also the backdrop for a wedding shoot (Chinese I think, rather than Khmer).
Wedding stilettos/12th century Khmer sculpture
My favourite temple was the at Angkor Thom - famous for the huge Buddha faces made out of puzzle blocks of stone. Climbing up and walking among the wise faces of the buddhas was a pretty special experience. I wouldn't go as far as to say I felt enlightened, but certainly very awed and very lucky.
Of course these temples were very swarming with tour groups but some others were completely deserted apart from us.
Queen goofball
And as for the cycling... well it was a challenge. The paths were very narrow and bumpy and parts were sandy. I have never cycled through sand and never plan to again. It seems to just stop the wheels dead unless you peddle incredibly fast, which when you're going quickly down and then uphill was too much for me to handle. I fell off my bike twice, which was embarrassing but luckily I was with a very nice Australian couple who were very accommodating to my dyspraxic ways.,,,
Me and a fellow tour participant Jess on one of my rare upright moments
Our tour guide, Sam, was amazing. His mother had sent him to be a monk at the age of 11 and he had lived as one until 21. Having learnt about the histories of the temples, he decided to be a tour guide. He was immensely knowledgeable and had a jokey, kind and open demeanor which is shared by a lot of the Khmer people I have met. He also persuaded me to pull an extremely goofy pose in front of the "Tomb Raider" temple...
Here's a plug in case you want to have this delightful, sandy experience of Angkor Wat.
The main point of going to Sisophon this week was to lead a training session for teachers and social workers on "Writing Through", to help them support the workshop in the future. While they may be 30 or 40 years old with university degrees, the techniques of interactive learning, thinking creatively and simply answering back to a teacher were as foreign to them as they will be to the kids.
Being instructed to write and perform poetry would make a lot of British adults' blood run cold, but for these Khmer teachers it's an extra mental leap. Not only because their English is good but, even for the high school English teachers, far from fluent, but because Khmer poetry is such a technical challenge. Khmer poetry is governed by a strict set of rules that dictate meter and verse. A special vocabulary is even necessary. It's a practiced art, and certainly not friendly to the half hour bursts of imagination we allowed in this case.
Also essential to Khmer poetry and stories is a firm moral lesson. All around the Enfants du Mekong centre in Sisophon you can read Khmer to English translations of "NO PAIN NO GAIN" and "ESY WAY NOT RIGT WAY" which the teachers cover their classrooms with. The teachers' first efforts were full of these mantras, sometimes just a long list of morality catchphrases. Sue needed to explain that by making by "showing not telling" a poem's message, this moral lesson could be conveyed in a more entertaining and memorable way.
And who better really convey this than Miley Cyrus.
In "Writing Through", we get the children thinking about the theme by showing them a series of prompts. All of Sue's prompts are pictures - somebody leaping over a cavenous space (physical risk) a young woman crying on another's shoulder (emotional risk). I thought it would be nice to have a musical prompt too. At first I was set on "Climb Every Mountain", the ultimate song about taking worthwhile risks, and one of my all time faves. Of course I had visions of this song becoming a beloved classic for my students, me leading troops of adorable marching Cambodian children - springing down the pagoda, getting jollily soaked in the Mekong river, etc. Then of course I realised it's not Julie who sings that song at all, but the head nun. I've heard Cambodian teenagers are polite and enjoy sentimental music, but still, even I got a bit embarrassed listened to her warbly, closed-throated rendition.
So I've decided to be more down with the kids and go with Miley Cyrus, in her golden, pre-twerk Hannah Montana era. Here it is. If you can't bear to watch it once, think of me, who will be playing it twice a day for the next three months. Or think of the Cambodian children, who until now have been blissfully unaware of Miley Cyrus.
Of course I have a secret love for this song. It features on my "HMR" (Hear Me Roar) Spotify playlist. I remember listening to it on a night bus between Tooting and Wimbledon last month and feeling empowered and inspired about going to Cambodia. Anyway, the intense personal connection aside, the lyrics are pretty appropriate to the theme, and sticks to the "Taking Risks is Good" motto that I aim to wholeheartedly brainwash/inspire children with. (As all music aficionados will be wondering, I did consider going with Joe McElderey's cover. I might mix it up a bit. Goodness knows he needs the exposure.)
During a lunch break Sue and I were very kindly invited to the house of one of the teachers, a 27-year-old woman who lives with her husband in a room behind their stationary shop, just across from the centre. We ate delicious food, prepared by her mother who had come especially from her village to cook lunch, and stayed in the kitchen as we ate. (Model mothers, these Cambodians). After lunch, they brought out their wedding album for us to admire. Most of the huge album was devoted to bride and groom posing in a succession of different outfits (they change up to 20 times over a two day wedding!) against different studio-generated technicoloured backgrounds of jungle and forest scenes which Sue was astonished to learn were not real. It was great.
Traditional Khmer wedding photography
As you can tell from these photos Khmer bride makeup is not understated. It's hard to be completely sure that you're speaking to the same woman before you compliment her on how beautiful she looks.
Dina and her husband posing with albums
Anyway, the workshop was a success. In the last session, the teachers had to write individual stories and there was an air of complete concentration as they scribbled. Some really interesting and arresting stories came out of it. It was interesting to note that, rather than bungee jumping or swimming with sharks, most dealt with the "risk" of studying rather than working when you're from a poor family.
One of the students/teachers, interrupted mid creative flow.
Afterwards all the teachers wanted photographs of the group, and a group of students gathered nearby were recruited for the task. Cute.
Hopefully next time they feature I will know their names, as I will be returning to Sisophon to lead a workshop for children, all by myself, on 23rd March.
Yesterday we arrived in Sisophon, which is also catchily known as Svay, Svay Sisophon, Srei Sophon or Banteay Meanchey, and on Google maps it comes under Serie Saophoan.... It's north west of the country, about an hour from the Thai border. Most Cambodians have spent some dead time here changing buses, as it sits on the main junction between motorways. So maybe it's a bit like the Preston of Cambodia. (Which I have recently discovered has the second largest bus station in Western Europe! Who would have thought??!)
Anyway, a big change from Phomn Pehn - for starters you can cross the road easily, without relying on the blind faith that a million tuktuks, motos and SUVs will part for you. In fact there seem to be only two tuktuk drivers in town, both of whom we have now met. One has the most pimped out tuktuk seen to date, with neon lights, a speaker and even a TV. Wowz.
Another different is we didn't we didn't see a single barang (white person) in a two hour walk. So we probably made quite a sight for the locals - too sweaty white people of drastically different heights wandering the dusty, shadeless roads under the very strong heat.
(I should explain here to say that by 'we', I mean me and Sue Guiney, who started up the Writing Through Cambodia programme that I'll be working on here.)
We passed a quite eerie deserted fairground
which was surrounded by dozens of these beautiful guys in a godly tug-of-war
In the evening we went to an amazing Cambodian barbeque restaurant. You barbequed your own meat (pork in our case) on the top of the grill and then in the rim below you cooked noodles, green beans, lemon grass and spinach in a stock. It was DELICIOUS.
Here's Sue giving it a stir:
So, overall my first impressions of Sisophon is that it's slightly run down, but quite peaceful and compact. I think I could grow to like it - or at least I will try to do as I'll be returning three times! It's as close to a home as I'll have here.
Next time, they'll be more teaching, less Trip Advisor, promise. Now off for some noodles.
So, my first blog entry comes ten days after I arrived in Cambodia. Although I'd told a few people I'd write a blog, for the first few days it felt that my experiences weren't noteworthy enough, and that it would be presumptuous to start writing down my analysis of a country I had barely scratched the surface of (or even the packaging around the surface). And, you know, people who write travel blogs are kind of annoying.
Plus I suffered a number of minor and banal disasters in the first week. My rucksack didn't follow me off the plane (it turned up four days later, a bit dirty and mysteriously wet but complete with all the inappropriately short skirts and nice dresses I will never ever where); I had $60 stolen from my guest house room by the cleaner, and my stomach immediately broke.
Well my stomach is still pretty broken, and I'm very far from knowing Cambodia. But I feel more settled, that 'just got here' unease is lifting, and I think I would regret not writing.
So, for the next two months and three weeks I'll be travelling around north west Cambodia running writing workshops for teenagers sponsored by NGO Enfants du Mekong. It's a new country, a new skill and a pretty all-round new experience for me. I'd like to capture what I observe and what I learn and all the possessions I misplace as I make the journey.
My favourite temple was the at Angkor Thom - famous for the huge Buddha faces made out of puzzle blocks of stone. Climbing up and walking among the wise faces of the buddhas was a pretty special experience. I wouldn't go as far as to say I felt enlightened, but certainly very awed and very lucky.
