We Went Back to Cambodia

We have been in Bangkok for a fairly long stretch this rainy season, but we broke it up by flying to Siem Reap last weekend. It is easy and cheap to fly to Cambodia and I don’t know why we don’t do it more often (except that on the Bangkok end one often spends more time getting from the airplane to home than one does on the airplane itself). This time we mostly hung out in Siem Reap, which is a pleasant town to do nothing in, not least riding remorks:

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Many things were closed because it was Pchum Ben, the two weeks when Cambodian ghosts return from hell to be fed rice-balls. But we managed to feed ourselves.

The first thing we did was something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, going to the newly built Angkor Panorama Museum. What is notable about this museum is that it was made (and appears to be run) by the North Koreans, who have a friendly relationship with Cambodia on account of Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian king, living in exile in Pyongyang in the 1970s. Siem Reap and Phnom Penh both have North Korean restaurants (as does Bangkok now!), which I have also been curious about, though they are meant to be extremely expensive and a little ethically dubious. But with the Angkor Panorama Museum, the North Koreans are trying to become a force in the painting business. So we went to see them.

Although it is difficult to tell from its website, which suggests the prices are $2.50 for Cambodian adults, $1.50 for Cambodian children, and/or 30% off (for everyone?), the Angkor Panorama Museum is extremely expensive: if you are not Cambodian, you’re paying $20 for an adult. Children under six are free; Cambodians are more than $2.50/$1.50; as far as we could tell (which was not very much), no one is getting 30% off anything. $20 actually gets you two tickets: one is for the panorama ($15) and the other is for the movie ($5) though the tickets cannot actually be bought separately. I did not want to go to the movie, having watched the preview online, but that turned out to be wrong thinking. The museum unfortunately allows no photography of any of the interesting things, but I did get a picture of the prices:

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Luckily they have put together a video that gives you a feeling of how it were be if you were a robot who had consumed too many sedatives and were trying to make your way through the museum:

The panorama is well-painted, particularly the bloody scenes where the Khmers are the Chams but $15 seems like a stretch. Various young people ask to take your picture, but we did not take them up on this, mostly because who knows how much a picture of your at the panorama would cost, but also because it seems a little foolhardy to give them a photographic record of your being there.

While the brochure announces that “The movie theater shows 3D movie reproduced high architectural technics and the building process of the mysterious Angkor Wat with fictions and historical data” this is not entirely true: the movie is 3D in so far as the screen is curved a little. It is worth noting that the seats in the theater are as hard as you might hope which makes it easier to stay awake for the movie. There is a preview for the movie online:

The whole thing is maybe fifteen minutes long and it describes the creation of Angkor Wat. The narration is confusing. Visually it seems to have been done as some kind of computer game; one might not expect quite so much focus on the manly thighs and buttocks of the ancient Khmer workers (this comes across a little in the preview) but I am not very familiar with North Korean film. The elephants particularly seemed mechanical. One was left with the impression that there weren’t any women at Angkor Wat. It was quite a film, and probably the best value of anything that is in the Angkor Panorama Museum.

After you leave the film you can go through the painting gallery where there are scenes of Cambodian scenes and dogs, presumably painted by North Korean artists, that you can buy. We did not buy any. Then we left. I am not sure that I would recommend the Angkor Panorama Museum to anyone. One is left with the impression that the primary purpose of the museum is to help the North Korean government assemble a collection of $20 bills.

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The next day we went to Preah Vihear, which is something that I would recommend. Preah Vihear is an Angkor-era temple on the border between Cambodia and Thailand in the Dangrek mountains. There is a long history of the Cambodians and Thais fighting over it, and as recently as 2011 the Thais and Cambodians were shooting each other over it. (You can read a short account of the conflict here; for a fuller account, John Burgess’s 2014 book Temple in the Clouds: Faith and Conflict at Preah Vihear goes over it in exhaustive detail.) Basically, the Siamese and the French (who were running Cambodia) agreed to demarcate the border in 1903; the French made a map showing the temple on the Cambodian side, and the Siamese seem not to have bothered to look at the map (a Thai trait familiar to any tourist who has attempted to show a map to a Bangkok taxi driver). The Thais are unhappy that they don’t have Preah Vihear; the Cambodians are extremely pleased that they have it. The Thai army, for reasons that are best known to itself, continues to make, guard, and possibly destroy scale models of Preah Vihear.

While it was until a few years ago easier to visit Preah Vihear from the Thai side, the border is now closed and you have to go through Cambodia. It’s a three-hour drive from Siem Reap; but the roads are good & it’s not a very complicated trip. When you get to the base of the mountain, you’re transferred to a pickup truck for the ride around the mountain, which is somewhat harrowing; the pickup truck takes you to a plaza at the north side of the complex, and from there it’s a short walk to the start of the temple.

Preah Vihear is set up differently from other Angkor temples: it’s essentially a straight line, going north to south. You climb the hill until you reach the southern-most part of the temple, which is on the edge of a cliff which looks out over Cambodia. UNESCO’s putting money into conservation, but not a huge amount has been done yet; while there were a lot of mostly Cambodian visitors while we were there, you’re still allowed to scramble over the fallen bricks. Here’s the entrance, which is being propped up:

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There’s a long processional path that goes uphill:

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You go through a series of doorways into courtyards:

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It is a fairly large complex:

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And some of it is still in pretty good shape:

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though not all of it:

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There was a central tower next to the central shrine, but that fell down a long time ago (you can see the remains on the left):

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And finally, when you exit the last courtyard, you come to the cliff’s edge.

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This is looking south, so what we’re seeing is Cambodia. I don’t think that rectangular pond is Angkorian, though there are others like it outside Siem Reap:

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More of Cambodia – this picture makes it clear that we were there during the rainy season, and the visibility probably wasn’t as good as it would be other times of year. Those hills are others of the Dangrek mountains.

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Also there was a little pond at the top that was full of tadpoles:

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It’s worth going to see! If possible, go when people aren’t shooting at each other.

Things Harriet Thought I Should Take a Picture Of in the Penang State Museum

So George Town is the capital of the state of Penang, which is mostly the island of Penang though it also includes a little bonus on the mainland, and as such it has the Penang State Museum which we marched through. It is not the most spectacular museum in the world, and you are not missing very much if you don’t go. But Harriet demanded that I take a lot of pictures of things, which I am now presenting here that you might get some kind of impression of the museum and what Harriet thought was important in it. Mostly jewels.

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There was a picture of a Thai lady in a description of the various people who settled in Penang and Harriet thought she was important.

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I think these are Malay wedding costumes, though I might be wrong.

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Here are some rings.

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Here are some anklets, poorly photographed. All of this was on my phone which doesn’t really do a good job in low light through plexiglass.

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More jewels.

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Why Harriet was interested in an official seal container I don’t know.

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There seemed to be a lot of displays of elaborately constructed shiny fake flowers in the museums of George Town. Maybe people used to be bored and consequently made them. Harriet liked them, though it is hard to imagine any other appreciative audience.

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Perhaps a suit worn by older Chinese women of Penang in historic times.

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More blouses. Perhaps if Harriet had instructed me to take pictures of the placards accompanying these objects I would be able to tell you something about them but no. Also there might not have been placards? It wasn’t the greatest museum.

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Another set of clothes.

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I suspect that what she was most interested in here was the jewels.

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A man’s suit with similar jewels.

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Here you can read the description! which is maybe not very helpful.

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I am not sure if that head goes with the body or not.

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Harriet reliably loves a sari.

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Small jeweled containers.

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A large photograph of the Chinese mansion that we stayed in. I am not sure what this was doing in the museum. The photo is basically from where we ate breakfast every morning in George Town.

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A lot of jewels.

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More jewels, less attractive.

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A lady with jewels.

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Another lady with jewels.

And now you know what it is like to wander the Penang State Museum with Harriet.

Harriet’s Malaysian Boyfriends: A Selection

Okay, I’ve been remiss in filling in what we did in Singapore and Malaysia over Christmas vacation in large part because most of the pictures I took were not very good. Malaysia is very pleasant! Singapore is very civilized! But! In the hopes of filling in gaps in documentation, here are some people that Harriet met while in Malaysia.

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So this is some Malaysia champion bodybuilder who had a gym in George Town with a number of large statues of himself. I don’t know if he looked like that. I think he’s dead.

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Going by the gym was exhausting so everyone got foot massages. Harriet thought this was basically the best thing ever.

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We spent approximately twenty-four hours in Kuala Lumpur and stumbled upon a weird Malaysian cultural introduction which involved food and a lot of dancing and this man who let you feed monkeys. Also there were chickens, not pictured.

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When one is traveling with small children eventually you just throw up your hands and go to the zoo, which we did, repeatedly. This is an elephant in Melaka who was still hungry.

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Here Harriet attempts to become one with a turtle sculpture in the same zoo.

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This guy was on a bench at a Chinese house museum in George Town. I don’t know if he was meant to be one of the deceased owners or if he was just there so that people could take pictures with him. Either one’s possible, I guess. Harriet liked him and I think we had to give him some money, which seems a little dumb honestly.

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This guy was selling something – maybe congee? I don’t know. Harriet liked him a lot.

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Despite being a Muslim country, Malaysia is full of robot Santa Clauses at Christmas time. Some of them play the saxophone, like this one.

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We had to go back and see this guy on another day. This is what happens.

We Went to Laos

So we went to Laos. More properly, we went to Luang Prabang, the old capital in the north, which is a place that makes you feel like you are a city slicker if you are from Bangkok. While it is chock full of tourists, of the sort that seem to avoid Bangkok entirely, it is still laid back and there’s not very much going on there, which is nice if you’re looking for a vacation. The center of the old town – which is a peninsula between two rivers, the larger of which is the Mekong – is under UNESCO control, which is probably why it seems more attractive than any other southeast Asian city I can think of – the closest comparison would be Siem Reap, but that feels insanely hectic compared to Luang Prabang, mostly because of all the package tours going to see Angkor Wat. There is not, strictly speaking, very much to see in Luang Prabang, but it is a very pleasant place. In the middle of town is a hill, Mt. Phousi, which gives you a nice view across the Nam Khan, the smaller of the two rivers:

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There’s not a lot of development, which is vaguely shocking coming from Bangkok, where such waterfront would be quickly lined with poorly constructed condos. Though it’s generally hard to tell, Laos is still officially a communist country, and they’re a little slow to catch up with the hypercapitalism of the region. Also, of course, the country was extremely thoroughly bombed by the CIA in the 1960s and 1970s, which didn’t help very much, though it did provide some nice flower pots:

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Luang Prabang is up in the Annamite mountains, which means there’s a lot of mist in the mountains. The Mekong is extremely wide and muddy:

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There are plenty of tuk-tuks which pleased Harriet:

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And a lot of Khmer-seeming nagas:

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There’s a festival coming up and everyone was busy making nagas out of paper and bamboo; these are floated down a river, I think. Here are some from last year, a bit weathered:

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The lions in the wats don’t often look very leonine, but they are reliably well-fed with sticky rice:

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Harriet was very pleased to discover a statue of Hanuman in front of Wat Aham:

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And I was very pleased to discover that Namkhong Beer is brewed with water that’s up to World Health Organization standards:

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There are restaurants where you can eat delicious food or look out over the river:

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And you can get paddled across the smaller of the two rivers, which Harriet enjoyed:

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After tromping around Luang Prabang and eating too many baguettes we went off to see the Kuang Si Falls, which are south of the city. There’s a bear sanctuary there for rescued bears – Laos, for all of its charms, has a pretty terrible record on wildlife preservation & there’s a thriving trade in bear bile – but somehow we forgot to take any pictures of the bears. They looked much like other bears we’ve seen, perhaps slightly more sleepy. One gets a bit apprehensive when you hear about a bear sanctuary in southeast Asia, but this seemed like a nice one. Anyway, we were not there to see bears, we were there to see the waterfalls, which cascade down a mountain, creating pools for swimming. The current is a little strong – I lost my second pair of flip-flops on the trip there – but it is extremely pleasant.

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When you leave the waterfalls you can buy more flip-flops (this was maybe a little suspicious, but not very) and then we went off to see a butterfly sanctuary, which was full of butterflies. My feet were attacked first by fish:

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Then by butterflies:

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It is hard to take good pictures of butterflies with my telephone. One might also note what terrible taste in flip-flops Harriet has. They did have some fine butterflies though, you’ll have to imagine them. After admiring the butterflies, we took our songthaew back to town, which Harriet was pleased by:

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The next day we took a boat down the Mekong to see the Pak Ou caves. On the way we stopped at the village of Ban Xang Hai, where tourists are sold lao-lao, which is rice whiskey, almost insanely cheap. One is encouraged to buy bottles of it with snakes, scorpions, or both, but we bought it without, then forgot to drink it, and had it taken away by customs when leaving the country. Alas. Bang Xang Hai does have a lovely wat:

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And the nagas are well fed, though how a snake is supposed to get a ball of rice off its nose without any hands is not clear to me. Maybe they feed each other? I don’t know.

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The Pak Ou caves themselves are a set of caves along the Mekong where people have been setting up Buddhas for a long time:

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They are relatively nice, though most of the pleasure in going to see them is just taking a boat slowly down the Mekong:

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It was a bit like our trip up the river in Myanmar; and the caves with Buddhas were a bit like the caves with Buddhas we went and saw outside of Kampot in Cambodia. But still, pleasant. After getting back, we went to spend a couple of days up in the mountains outside of Luang Prabang, which you can see in the distance here:

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The mountains were nice! though there is not very much to do there. We went for a lot of walks and did a lot of swimming and I read a lot of Henry James (The Other House, not so good). Also we ate more baguettes. The roads around there are lined with the sensitive plant, Mimosa pudica:

There are a lot of these! You can’t see it in that video, but sometimes you’ll touch one leaf and other leaflets on the same plant will close up, making it seem like the plant has a nervous system. Also growing wild are what look an awful lot like poinsettias, though those aren’t native to the region:

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That concludes the botany portion of this blog post. It is very pretty in the mountains:

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Also Harriet found a dead snake:

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They have a lot of dead snakes in Laos – there was another one on the street in Luang Prabang as well as all the ones drowned in lao-lao – but we didn’t see any live ones. We took a very long walk around the local village, Ban Xiang Nouak, which almost ended in disaster. It started out very nicely:

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But as you can see from that photo it was already the golden hour, and we kept wandering on and on until it was dark and we found ourselves in a confusing banana plantation in the dark. So we turned around and went on an equally long walk back, this time in the dark, and just as we were about to get back to our hotel we were met by a search party. Success all around!

The next morning we met a very large praying mantis:

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And after a lot of nonsense involving telephones at the airport which I won’t dwell upon we came back to Bangkok. The end. Oh, somewhere in there we also went to the national ballet where they performed part of the Lao version of the Ramayana, which Harriet enjoyed, but we didn’t get any pictures of that. It was about what you’d expect the Lao ballet to look like? If you are a small child interested in the Ramayana you should go. If not, you might take a pass without missing too much. But that’s mostly what happened.

We Are in China

And we will have something to report about that soon. Please note that Gmail doesn’t really work here, which is maybe why you haven’t heard anything from us. Back in Bangkok tomorrow. In the interim, here is a picture of a fancy supermarket in Guangzhou where you can get slices of fresh crocodile tail:

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