Snake In

I swear Evil Twin Sister was not only Cambodian in her past life, but a Cambodian snake at that!  You should have seen her wriggly excitement inching her way into the labyrinthian ruins of Beng Melea!

"Sir, are there rats around here?  Because that's the only thing I can't stand in the world!", asked ETS from our ruins guide before she went in.  He is an old local guy who had the privilege to have seen Beng Melea's old glory.  If I understood it right, it was accidentally bombed to pieces during the American-Vietnam war.  But there are articles that say that it was the conflict during the Khmer Rouge that destroyed it.

"No, there are no rats here.  Or probably there are, but not much.", he said as translated by Sam.

"Oh no!  I'd rather see rats, lots of them, because it means there are no snakes!", I exclaimed.

Nagas

The fact that all Cambodian temples have images of Nagas, five-headed cobras, being used as rope in a tug-o-war between gods and demons, suggests that the people have an awareness of the scaly, scrawly creature.  And it is really bad to encounter one, even the singleheads, while you are yourself crawling your way in and out of the rubbles.

entrance to the temple

Wikipedia: Beng Mealea , its name means "lotus pond") is a temple in the Angkor Wat style located 40 km east of the main group of temples at Angkor, Cambodia, on the ancient royal highway to Preah Khan Kompong Svay.)

It is one of the larger temples and is around 40kms from Siem Reap by road.  In fact, you will have to spend an extra USD5 entrance fee to see it.  Nobody has ascertained when it was built and who commissioned it, but it is believed to have been erected in the 12th century.

Nonetheless, tourists still come especially those who like a little danger, like ETS and I, because unlike the temples in the Angkor Complex, this one requires a lot of sense of balance to explore.  And seeing that most of the beams and pillars are only supported by wooden reinforcements to prevent it from totally collapsing, tips the danger scale!

We were told that there were recent accidents there; one Korean guy broke his leg after falling for goofing around with his friends, and a Chinese girl who slipped and hit her head and went to a coma.  She was airlifted to HK.  I almost suffered the same fate; I was wearing the wrong shoes, thanks to ETS, and she couldn't be stopped from monkeying up and down, in and out and around.  Being each other's photographer, I had to be where she would be.  I was swarmed by giant red ants and almost vaulted off to a tragically unglamorous death.

We were suprised to find out that it was not as easy as it seemed.  It was a complex structure and you'd lose your way without a guide.  We were wondering how grand it was back in the day.

We would have known if it has not been lost courtesy of man's endless stupid conflicts.

Raining Heads

Trusting Evil Twin Sister fully with my life, I did not even bother to check on the list she gave of sites we were going to see in Siem Reap.

So after the etherial walk into the Banteay Srei, we proceeded to our next stop, Kbal Spean.

Going on a backpacking trip, I naturally decided to bring only two pairs of shoes, my slim sole Chuck Taylor, and my even slimmer sole Fila espadrilles.  Lightweight, easy to tuck in my bag.  That day, I had Chuck on.

We entered the protected area, I still unmindful of what was in store for me.  Probably borne by the fact that I always want to be surprised.  Or probably because I was mindset that this was going to be another ancient temple.  I let ETS talk to Sam, our guide, because I could feel blood coagulating in my sinus.  I was just clicking away indiscriminately.

We started to walk into the forest.

I see more and more rocks.

We were uphill all the way.

I decided to listen into the conversation.  It was then that I realized that it was going to be 1.5-km or so climb to a water reservoir.

There were tricky parts where I almost fell to certain death.  My shoes were designed for malls, and parks, and catwalks, not for mossy, slippery rocks!  And ETS was in her hiking shoes.

"It was an awful waste of time!", I heard a skinny snooty European girl say on her way back.  Her group's horrified tour guide could not do anything but take in all the rant.  At the back of my mind, if indeed it was just a water reservoir at the end of it all, maybe she's right.

After a few more slips and lung breaks, we finally got there.

And it was not an awful waste of time!  Yes, it would have been just another quiet stream if not for the series of carvings on the sandstone formations in the river bed and banks.  These are button-like carvings called Lingas.  Lingas, if you should know, are phallic symbols of Hindu god Shiva.  Phallus means an erect p_n_s!  The river is known as "The River of a Thousand Lingas".  Talk about sausage fest! Ahahahaha!

Seriously, though, the Hindus believe that water is sanctified by the lingas over which it flows.  The same water eventually flows into the Tonlé Sap Lake after passing through the plains and the Angkor temple complex  Aside from the lingas, other sculptures of Hindu mythology can be found everwhere.


After a much needed revitalization, thanks to a Cambodian delicacy similar to our local "suman", but this one with banana stuffing and a can of Carabao energy drink, I guess their version of Red Bull,

we headed back after freshening up first in a nearby water falls... 

where we met Yvonne and Gaeai, two travelers who were leisurely basking in the cool waters of the falls.  We learned that they had been in Siem Reap since November 2010 and no plans yet to leave.

Now, that's a vacation!

Citadel of the Woman

"Are you Cambodian?", I overhead the Cambodian tourism lady asking Evil Twin Sister while in line for our 3-day Angkor pass.

"Oh no, I'm not.  I'm Filipino.", ETS replied.

"Oh, sorry! I asked because Cambodians can go and see the temples for free!"

"You should have told me before I bought the tickets (laughs)!"

That was the first of the bazillion times ETS was mistaken for a Cambodian.  She must have been, at least in her past life, because you could see the sparkle in her eyes the entire time we were in Cambodia, like a child's in a candy store.

"You know, you are lucky that we have a good weather.  It was raining a lot the past days.", said our first day tour guide Sam, that cuddly bald Cambodian "cousin" of ours.

"You are lucky Sam because we brought the sunshine here!" our immediate reply.

Based on experience, every single trip that ETS and I had in recent memory was blessed with very good weather.  Even despite a typhoon forecast.  The sun would be at its brightest, allowing us to take the most spectacular pictures.

"Our first stop would be Banteay Srei.", said Sam, which officially started what would be a three-day ancient temples overload.

(Wikipedia: Banteay Srei or Banteay Srey (Citadel of the Woman or Citadel of Beauty) is a 10th century Cambodian temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva.  Located in the area of Angkor. It lies near the hill of Phnom Dei, 25 km (15 miles) north-east of the main group of temples that once belonged to the medieval capitals of Yasodharapura and Angkor Thom. The buildings themselves are miniature in scale, unusually so when measured by the standards of Angkorian construction. These factors have made the temple extremely popular with tourists, and have led to its being widely praised as a "precious gem", or the "jewel of Khmer art.")

What striked me most about this temple are the intricate carvings everywhere.  Because the temple was built largely with hard red sandstone, it could be carved like wood, making it a lot easier for smaller, more elaborate details.  Although not much stands of the main structure, the smaller structures, the libraries, are largely intact.  Like in the case of most Cambodian temples, Banteay Srei was eaten up by the forest into oblivion until accidently discovered in 1914.

I don't know with other people, but being in a place as old as this 1oth century wonder gives me and ETS a certain high.  A sense of awe that we were actually walking on the very same paths royals past threaded,  seeing and touching millenium old artifacts.  It is making love with history itself.

Impressed!

I am a city boy.  I do not like the outdoors.  I am adventurous but I am averse to life-threatening danger.  At the very least, there should be a clean toilet with steady supply of clean water before I can consider going to a place.  So it took quite a while for Evil Twin Sister to convince me to go to Cambodia with her.  Before the trip, the only things I know about the country are the landmines, Khmer Rouge and Angkor Wat.


In August 2010, I called her up to tell her that there was a massive AirAsia sale.

She asked me to come over her place to help her book.  But because no one could ever tell how spontaneous we both can be, what was supposed to be just her trip to Cambodia ended up a four-country-ten-day backpacking adventure... with me.

So there, after an overnight sleep in Malaysia, we boarded our plane to Siem Reap, Cambodia in the early morning of July  2.

Up to that time, my entire fate in the next three days was wholly in the hands of ETS.  She did all the research and necessary arrangements, all I need to do was to accompany her.  I knew what we were supposed to do as she gave me an itinerary beforehand but it never really sank in.  I still feared for dear life.


But the sight alone of Siem Reap International Airport from 50-feet in the sky slowly dissipated whatever stupid misconceptions I had of the country.  I was in awe the more when we were finally standing before it.

Its quaint Khmer architecture evokes the elegance of an exclusive resort.  As soon as you enter, a white stone elephant greets every visitor and balik-bayan alike.

It was refreshing, classy, and spic and span.

You wouldn't mind at all that it is relatively small and pretty straight-forward too, literally.  After the white dumbo, is the immigration (which I won't post any picture of, why?, read on!), then the baggage carousel,

then the dufry shops (duty free),

then finally the exit.

No fuss, no frills.  While I was excited to be there, I was also saddened that we couldn't make ours as beautiful as theirs.  I bet it didn't cost as much to build as the PAL terminal in Manila. Whatever happened to us?


Anyway, an unusual thing happened to me though at the immigration.  While in line, I was recklessly clicking away because I was loving what I was seeing.  Until an immigration officer raised his voice on an elderly Muslim woman who took a picture of the immigration area.  The officer even had to get the camera and delete the pictures himself.  Did he not see me take pictures? I had my flash on the entire time!  And when it was my turn, I handed him my passport and waited for him to take my picture.  But he just handed my passport back.  "Aren't you going to take my picture?".  "No need, you can proceed."  What!?!  The only logical explanations I could think of are, that they have "past-life" scanner there that told them I was some royalty in my Cambodian past life, or that they were just racial-profiling the poor elderly Muslim woman.  But hey, they took ETS' picture, too!  Well, maybe I was just too cute to be evil, LOL!


The saying that "first impression lasts" could never be truer in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  The good vibe I got the moment I set foot on the tarmac rippled to the entire time we were in this marvelously beautiful place, which I hope to be able to write about really soon, because every minute deserves its own space in my humble blog.