Cambodia Photos are up!

just wanted to let you know,
you can do it 1 of 2 ways.

1. click on "travelling sherman's pictures"--> cambodia
2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/50539386@N00/sets/72157602202861701/

enjoy

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

9/28

The rain hasn't let up for a few hours. I'm eating my second slice of cake for dinner. Lipton Tea. I feel like I'm coming down a bit. Too much sugar in the vanilla cake. I shouldn't of had that second slice.

The name of the establishment is the Kiwi bakery. About 100 feet from the hotel, it was established by the locals a few years back after they returned from their sojourn abroad in New Zealand. We probably eat there at least once a day in our current four day stay in Phnom Penh. They have everything you would ever want. Fresh coffee, rolls, and eggs and bacon, although the later makes you run to the W.C. quite quickly.

We are staying in the nice part of town, nearby the river. It reminds me of a Cambodian Embarcadero as in San Francisco. Huge promenades, cool breezes, choppy waters, save the Tuk-Tuk hecklers and paraplegic vendors. We spend most of our evenings strolling the river, trying out different foods and drinking cheap Angkor Beer. I drink it more for the body cooling than the alcohol.

If you enter any Cambodian restaurant here, the first item you will most likely see is Amok. Amok can best be described as a coconut curry, egg-like dish with your choice of meat, served on a bed of rice and banana leaves. It's great going down, but they like to add their helpings of MSG.

If you turn the page on the menu, you're most likely going to find a dish called Luk-Luk. A tasty meat treat, it's usually a roasted stir-fry beef dish served with roasted tomatoes. Probably my favorite over the Amok, but still a bit greasy on the stomach.

The best item on the menu so far has been the Cambodian shakes. Coconut, Papaya, you name it just drink it. The two of us have drank down at least one a day, and by far it's been the most satisfying. Being in the tropics, Cambodian serves up some of the best fruits around. In addition to the above, street vendors crouch along the sidewalks serving everything from sliced pineapple to watermelon to banana halves. Don't worry about trying to look for it, as all you need to do is to walk on the main street before you get bombarded from the locals with offers.

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9/27

Phnom Penh is to Siem Reap as New York is to the Catskills, L.A. to its Disneyland, or Washington D.C. to its Colonial Williamsburg. Phnom Penh, being the country's capital brings an urban feel. The buildings are taller, the traffic is more dense, and the noise is louder. We take a walking tour on our first day. Here are some things that stood out in my mind:

• The first thing is that all the streets are numbered and are arranged in a gridlike fashion. The Odd Numbers running North-South, and the Even Numbers running east-west. The problem is that half of the street signs are missing, so you basically think in terms of landmarks, such as "Take a right after the Cambodian Post office, then take a left after the Fruit stand", either way it's not too hard to get where you need to go.
• There are two markets in town, an old market and a new market. Here are some comparisons:

Style/Decor
New Market: 6 tiered dome with air conditioning
Old Market: An Old wooden dome with no a/c

Customer Service
New Market: modern; Escalator trainees available
Old Market: Vendors and touts available on site on site even if you don't want them

What to buy
New Market: Obnoxious clothing at expensive
Old Market: Not as obnoxious clothing prices by Cambodian Standards at cheaper prices by all standards

What to eat
New Market: Swenson's Ice Cream; Organic meats, A/C inside the grocery store
Old Market: Fried rolls and stinky fish, no A/C for eating

-Both markets have their advantages. I successfully buy a polo shirt for $6. For some reason, I begin to wonder if I've bought the real thing, or if I've just contributed to sweatshop labor.

• We visit Cambodia's Royal Palace, which looks a lot like Thailand's Royal palace. There's lots of statues of Mr. Morodon, Cambodia's first king. Lots of Garudas and Snakes. The highlight is this place called the Silver Pagoda. Fair enough, Lisa and I walk through the complex looking for the Pagoda. We pass various beautiful temples, concert halls and the like. We see a beautiful temple with many buddhas, one of them Emerald, a few of them golden, one from Myanmar (or Burma, or whatever you call it right now), and a few from Thailand. We walk to the end of the palace confused, wondering where the silver pagoda was. At 10 minutes to close, we realize that we had just walked through it. The silver pagoda is not silver on the outside, but has 15 panels of silver flooring on the inside. So much for bait and switch advertising. All and All, a beautiful set of temples.

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9/28

Shooting it up at the Killing Fields

Today is going to be an interesting day, although I wouldn't say today will be fun.
Today we step back in time to roughly thirty years ago to the height of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. Officially started in 1975 by Pol Pot, Brother #1, The Khmer Rouge took the lives of roughly two million people. He started quite popular, to be a man of the people as he ousted the quite unpopular American Backed General Lon Nol. Like most dictators, paranoia and xenophobia give in, as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge begins to kill anyone even remotely skeptical of the establishment. Soon he turns on his own soldiers. It's not until the Vietnamese invade in 1978 until Pol Pot is ousted. Even so, another decade of turmoil and famine would follow until elections would take place and a sense of stability returned.

We have a tuk-tuk driver lined up through the hotel, who will take us to two places: The Tuol Sleng Museum (a high school that was converted to a maximum security Khmer Rouge prison), and Choeung Ek (the mass killing field graves of the Khmer Rouge victims).


The Tuol Sleng Museum

It's quite hard to describe this place with simple words. I would imagine that it would be similar to the Nazi camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. The best way to describe it would be to list some of the rules of the prison:

• Do nothing. Sit and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
• While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
• If you do not follow all of the rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire

You get an eerie feeling walking along the grounds of Tuol Sleng, knowing that it was once a high school. We see interrogation rooms with pointed rods and gallows, where prisoners would be tortured. The "sleeping establishments"are no more than 7 feet by 3 feet in dimension. We watch a movie about some of the people that live through it. One of the survivors was a painter who luckily was forced to paint, although shackled, and managed to survive the regime.

The killing fields of Choeung Ek

About 10 miles outside the city, we reach Choeung Ek, where thousands of people are said to be bludgeoned to death and buried. We walk in, and the fields are strangely quiet and serene, like nothing ever happened. Until you reach the stupa where some of the remains lay. One thing that strikes Lisa is the killing tree, where they would attach a radio loudspeaker to the branches to prevent excessive crying noises from permeating throughout the area.

After an hour's time, we've had enough. We hop back into the Tuk Tuk and get ready to drive back. He then turns to us with a serious question, and asks us if we'd like to go shooting now. I guess in Cambodia, some of the old rifle ranges are now tourist attractions where tourists can have their luck shooting up some of the old livestock. A surreal moment in the trip, Lisa and I turn to each other and respond with a firm "no". We've had enough death for one day.

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So the bus is rolling out of the station once again bright and early to Ho Chi Minh City. Stay tuned.

Travelling Sherman

PS. Cambodia pictures should be up by tomorrow or so. Check the "Travelling Sherman's pictures" link --> Cambodia by then.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

a kinder, gentler third world

9/21


The sun has intensified ten-fold as we walk off the plane out on the tarmac and into the airport. The mid-day sun clocks in at 93 degrees. A lean, dark haired Cambodian holds a sign curbside reading Eric Sherma . We hop in the back of his taxi, our bags in the trunk. We travel on fairly good roads mostly, with the occasioal potholes here and there. Giant stalks of grass overfilled with monsoon rain fill our view. The lush countryside seems endless. We reach Siem Reap, hop to nearby Angkor Wat, Cambodia's wonder of the world, the country's ticket out of poverty.

Sim, the driver described above, has surprisingly good English. Much better than any of his Thai counterparts. The usual questions come up. Sir, where you from? How long you stay? We answer truthfully, knowing in the back of our heads that there may be a sense of insincerity coming from his part. It doesn't matter. It's nice to have a bit of air conditioning at the moment.

He takes us to our guesthouse named the Red Piano. A nice place to stay but unfortunately there is no red piano. There are clean sheets, air conditioning and hot water. And for $20 a night, the piano becomes secondary. The Red Piano guesthouse was put on the map in 2001 when Angelina Jolie and her crew for the movie Tomb Raider came to stay. Their sister restaurant in town glorifies this with Plaques from the movie.

We settle into the room and walk into town. Immediately the tuk-tuk drivers come up to you and ask you for rides. Children run up to you and ask you to buy their post cards. I remember this now from before. Different country, same poverty. Although the Cambodians are much more gentle and much more humble about it. And when you get to read about their dark past of the Khmer Rouge it puts things in perspective. 2 million people died. About half of the children lost either their mother or father. Many have lost both. While the ngo's and the government have improved things quite a bit, you realize these guys don't have that much.

And you begin to realize that even after all of the violence and bad times of the last twenty years, the people are just as peaceful as ever. They come up to you, they smile, they laugh. And of course they wish you to buy something. A conversation may go like this:

Sir you want Tuk Tuk?
No thank you.
How about cold drink?
No, I'm sorry.
Maybe when you come back you buy from me, ok?
Ok. Thank you. Bye-bye.

I currently hold about 75 of these short conversations per day. But they don't bother me at all. I actually enjoy the dialogue. The first night in town we find the Siem Reap Night market. We talk to the vendors and find out they represent abused women's organizations and orphan organizations. All the merchandise they sell is made from orphans or abused women who have learned their new skills. All the proceeds go back to these people. A far better rate of return than Sally Strouthers or the United Way.

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9/22


Lisa is still bruised up from her night before yesterday's bout with the mosquitos in which she lost. Her eyes have some swelling and her temples have some bumps. I feel like I should dip her in a bowl of DEET. The rash I'm having starts to agravate quite a bit. Some misery kicks in with the both of us. The hot tropics brings a degree of uncomfort.

But two cold showers later gets us a little less negative. We meet Charlie, our tuk-tuk driver this morning. He stands roughly 5 foot, 5 in, dark wavy hair, with a wide, goofy grin. Charlie has one long strand of hair that comes out of a mole on his skin. My guess is 7 inches long. He enjoys swooping it away occasionally as he drives the tuk-tuk, like an ancient Chinese sage.

For those new to tuk-tuks, they can only be described as carriages run by second hand japanese motorbikes. The carriage has two wheels in the back, bucket seats, and a roof overhead for the elements. It seems to be the desired mode of travel in Siem Reap. You can rent bicycles, but they run twenty years old, and you have to fight the oncoming traffic in seven directions.

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Angkor Wat and The Temples

It would be ridiculous to try and describe every temple we visited over the last few days. The Angkor Wat complex covers about sixty square miles (more than the entire square mileage of San Francisco). Here's some of the ideas I've left with the Angkor Wat complex over the last few days.

-The majority of the temples focus around a few key characters.

1. Rama. Short for Ramachandra. The mythical King. An incarnate of Vishnu, he battles Ravanna...who seduced his wife. Ravanna and Rama battle it out. The good guys win, and Rama is forever the king.
2. Buddha. What more can be said except they have sculputures of him in every position. Lying down, standing up, sitting cross legged. The constant in Cambodia is that Buddha was a fan of pastel colors. According to the reliefs and sculptures, he enjoyed wearing orange with a yellow crown and purple earrings.
3. Naga. A Seven Headed Serpent who is the original ancestor to the Cambodian people. Serves as a bridge to the gods at Angkor Wat.
4. Garuda. A half man, half bird diety who usually gives the God Vishnu a ride to most places. Him and Naga don't get along too well.
5. Sita. Rama's wife. See #1.
6. Angels, nymphs, and wise men. For ornamental decoration.

95% chance that one of these six characters will be correct when describing the sculpture or statue.

A bit of History with the Angkor Complex

• Started in around 800 A.D.and went until the 1400s, the Angkor empire of cambodia was the largest in southeast asia.
• There were more than ten kings that ruled the Angkor Complex. Suryavarman II builds Angkor Wat in the mid 1100s, while Jayavarman came later and built Angkor Thom - A home within the Angkor wat complex. Inside Angkor Thom, Jayavarman VII (i'll call him J 7 ) builds a temple named Bayon, which sculpts 250 faces of in all around the place. J7 has a bit of an ego complex.

-Lisa and I spend three days with driver Charlie in the Tuk-Tuk visiting the temples. We marvel at the towers, the sculptures, and the steep steps. We spend roughly an hour at each temple (except for the mighty Angkor wat where we spend 4 hours over the course of two days). At the end of each temple visit, I walk back to the Tuk-Tuk with a bunch of notes, Lisa comes back with a bunch of pictures, and our driver is sleeping in the back seat all the while. For $12 a day and a free lunch, he's living on the Cambodian easy street, or bumpy ditch where the case may be.

Some of the temples that stick out in my mind

1. Angkor Wat. The original and the best. It is said to be a creation of the spiritual universe, and originally stored Shiva in the main central tower. You walk in through a hallway and see a 10-foot statue of vishnu. You walk through a promenade, through two pools to the main entrance. Its layout resembles the Taj Mahal as it was designed with a similar philosophy in mind. Each level can take hours to walk through. We walk around the first floor to look at the stone reliefs, trying to play "Where's Waldo" with the lonely planet descriptions. Heat fatigue sets in while we are here, as we both begin to resemble glue sticks. We come back two days later to climb the tower to see where the historic Shiva laid. We walk down the tower after waiting 20 minutes for the Korean tourists to waddle down as they hug the railing for dear life.

2. Bayon. For the reason mentioned before. 250 plus faces of an egomaniac of J7 (see the abbreviation above). All in beautiful pink sandstone.

3. Banteay Srei. A temple a bit out of town, it's also known as the lady temple. The reason being that the carvings of the angels and nymphs were so amazing, no mortal man could ever do it. A bonus is that there is a lilly pond in the back where we take a break from the action and almost fall asleep.

A Trip to the Enchanted Water Forest

9/25

Today, Charlie has taken us into the country. We see half naked children fishing for frogs. Using only rope for fishing line, wooden sticks for a rod, and muscle and carcasses from who knows what for bait. Charlie stops and talks to the boy. He comes over and shows us his frog of the day. The children are nice enough to have Lisa take their picture and they wish us good luck, it's more like them who need the good luck.

Charlie parks the Tuk-Tuk as we make the transfer to the boat. It's a rusty wooden motor boat. Blue roof with red trim. Dining room chairs are the seats of the journey. We are also joined by an older orange-shirted Cambodian woman. Her two year old rocks on her lap. She smiles at us hello with her beautiful holed-teeth smile.

Charlie, our tuk-tuk driver

The boat driver engages the motor. We putter along a swampy pass that makes for a short river. The green lush trees have overgrown from either side to make a pleasant tunnel. The dragon flies encircle in and out of the boat, but keep their distance.

The driver asks for a Band-Aid. The black vinyl steering wheel has burned his hands to a first degree. You wouldn't see it on his face, as Cambodians seem to be trained by birth to hide any physical pain. I notice the steering wheel is connected to a single frayed steel wire that encircles the boat and attaches to the rear rotor. I'm sure he'll have to take it in to his nearest dealer to get it replaced soon enough.

We haven't seen a person in the last twenty minutes. We come around the bend. We see a town of stilted bungalows twenty feet high. This is the flooded forest of Kompong Phluk, created out of the overflow of the Mekong River during the monsoon season. Wooden beams, tined walls and straw roofs. Charlie tells us that over three-thousand people live out here. Each bungalow has piles of wood on a lower level for a week's worth of cooking. A woman in polka dots is washing the laundary. Little boats appear in the water. The kids come up to say hello. The little boats are the mopeds, the feet, the bicycles of this village. Every errand runs a risk of tipping over into muddy wetness.

We read that the best way to see this water is to take a little boat further into the thick forest nearby. We transfer over into a dingy boat. 6 feet long. One 12-year old kid on each side paddling. No problem.

The ride is incredible. We go deeper into the forest. The sun disappears completely. Viny tree branches weave their way to the top. Fish hatcheries are positioned throughout for the village food. I feel like a dream in Pan's Labyrynth.

We thank the little ones for the ride as we make our way to the lone Island in the vicinity. We take in some local lunch of fried fish and rice and fanta that taste like day old bubble gum. I begin to chat with a local at the restaurant who is practicing his english. He keeps asking me "What is your language?", like he can't believe my first language would be English. So much for humility.

We finish lunch, and make our way back to whence we came. Back through the swamps, back through the country side, and back to Siem Reap. Tonight we rest. We leave tomorrow for the capital city of Phnom Penh. I'm sure there's something around the bend.

-Travelling Sherman

Fight Club in the Land of Smiles

9/20

I think the blue trunked guy is gonna kick the red trunk guy's ass, Lisa says to me as we watch the twelve-year olds battle things out. And to think she we paid $20 each to see this. And to think we actually like it. Lisa's prediction does come true as the blue trunked kid lands a roundhouse to the right temple. The other guy gets carried out on a stretcher.

This is the sport of Muay Thai boxing. It seems to be Thailand's national sport. We decide to take in a fight to get some true thai culture. We take our second class seats as we follow the "Foreigners" sign upward. We sit on the concrete bleachers with Tiger beer and roasted peanuts no more than 20 yards from the ring.

It seems to me that it is an honor to be a Thai boxer. They are given offerings of flowers. They get to wear head pieces which look like elongated Christmas wreaths. Not to mention the flowery upright horn in the back. They are the center of attention in the ring as the Thai National Anthem starts. Before the match begins, each of the boxers will do a ritual folk dance as the band begins to play alongside. One fighter strikes up a gallop, while another strides across the ring like he is Michael Jackson in his golden years. Two drummers, a bell player and a woodwind player strike up a tune that crosses middle eastern music with Kenny G. Both fighters pray to their God of choice as the opening bell opens.

There are ten fights tonight. Each fight can go a maximum of five rounds. Three minutes each round, two minutes between the rounds. Unless there is a knockout, in which case the stretchers come out as described above.

Among all of this, a pack of locals in the stands next to us begin to murmur to each other, flashing their hands back and forth. One of the boxers lands a side kick to the stomach and these locals erupt in cheer. More hands and fingers beginning to flash back and forth. A few people at the bottom of the bleachers have a pen and notepad in hand. Reminiscent of the New York Stock Exchange, bets from all sides seem to be pouring in. Somehow the system emerges within the chaos.

To add to the fun, there is a Cheech Marin Look-a-like who is a coach for some of the fighters. He shakes his arms wildly with his dilated eyes and stained blue shirt. He begins to yell and scream profusely at his boxers.

With all of the fanfare, it's hard to concentrate on the fight, itself. We focus our attention back to the main event for a bit. We watch seven fights in total before jet lag kicks in. Three hours of Muay Thai boxing is enough for a lifetime. We walk through the iron gate out the doors, hop in a tuk-tuk and sleep off the festivities.

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This was the first time I've ever seen the Thai people violent or emotional. Usually it is the land of smiles. A Wat-dee krap, hello to you too sir. Even the 7-11 workers across the street are happy to see you in the morning.

So Thailand has served as a nice resting point as our trip officially begins. The other biggest accomplishment of the 48 hours in this city is viewing the Grand Palace, where the Royal Monastary and the Emerald Buddha Bust resides. We learn that the Thais dress up Buddha bust according to the seasons. The summer Buddha is scantily clad with almost nothing on. The rainy buddha has a big diagonal god stripe across his chest. And the winter Buddha has a light preforated gold blanket to get him through those cold 75 degree nights. It's not a bad life for the Buddha in this part of the world. He gets offerings of fruits, nuts, cheeses, lotus flowers, eggs. The Buddha eats better than I do, for sure.

The other highlights of the Grand Palace are the Golden Garudas (half man-half bird mythical creatures) throughout the place. He has this amazing hand over head posture move that I can't replicate even in my most precarious of states. It is also noted that the Thai Rama IX, the ruler of Thailand, has some amazing rooms throughout the palace. He conducts his state ceremonies in the Grand palace as well as the Coronation Ceremony every December 5, which basically is a day where all the people tell him how great he is in public. And word on the street is that he truly is a great man who has helped make a good life for his people.

Tomorrow we fly to Cambodia, our first stop being the town of Siem Reap, the home of Angkor Wat. But that's another story for another journal entry.


-Travelling Sherman

The Second Half

Tonight, Travelling Sherman begins again.

I am struggling to put pen to paper at this very moment. Everything seems a bit blurry. I faintly remember doing this roughly nine months ago. Things were a bit different then. There was so much anticipation, so much excitement, and so much wonder.

So we had landed from Hong Kong just in time the New Year, our trip shortened, ourselves confused. Our home of mesh bags and clothespins had been dragged from underneath our feet.

We woke up to fog over the next few days back in San Francisco. The weather was our metaphor. Jet lag set in. 3 AM seemed like the perfect time to go to the grocery store.

The months passed. We visited Lisa's family quite a bit. We helped her Dad back to better health. It seemed like that would be our job for the short while: to take care of our family.

And so I thought I would take care of things and marry Lisa. I'm glad she said yes right away. A beautiful wedding happened in April, followed by two beautiful parties throughout the spring and summer.

We were married and happy and it was August. It was still foggy, but a bit warmer here in San Francisco. The idea came up to go back out to Asia and to finish our trip. It seemed like the best idea we had all day.

So another trip to the travel agent, four trips to REI, and two lonely planet books later, we sit here again in San Francisco, ready to jump back into our Van Winkle like dream that seems so foreign to us now.
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So we go by air back to Thailand, and head eastbound to Cambodia shortly after to reach the temples of Angkor. The idea is to spend time in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and back into Thailand.





But who knows what will happen.
Keep your trusty browser on this web page to find out.

-Travelling Sherman