Escaping the crowds - échapper à la foule!

In English below!

Aujourd'hui je suis partie pour un tour avec guide pour "échapper à la foule" - bonne idée car en semaine la ville est bruyante et bondée de monde.

D'abord un petit arret au bord de la route pour "sticky rice" - traduit comme "riz qui colle" qui est cuit sur un barbecue dans un bout de bamboo avec quelques morceaux de mangue et quelques lentilles de ??? et un peu de sucre.  Délicieux!

Sticky rice cooked in a bit of bamboo on a barbecue

Premier temple: Bakong Temple, construit à la fin du 9ème siècle, avec ses 2 crématorians, un pour les hommes et l'autre pour les femmes.

2 cremetorians

Bakong Temple

Le prochain temple était vraiment incroyable, il a éte repris par la jungle et étranglé par les racines des arbres!  Un endroit magique, pas possible de le restorer, mais avec un vrai sentiment d'age!  (presque mille ans!)

Beng Mealea - work in progress!

Beng Mealea

Beng Mealea

Beng Mealea

some roots are more organised!

2 beautiful children to add to the art of nature

Le troisième temple était  vraiment le bijou de la journée: Banteay Srei - qui veut dire en Khmer "citadelle des femmes" car ils croient que les reliefs sont tellement détaillés que seulement les femmes auraient pu les faire!

Banteay Srei

OK so the hat is ugly but it was 36°c!

Banteay Srei monkeys

This "Shiva" is 8cm high!!

OK, so here is the ENglish version, even though no one complained!  Perhaps no one is reading it!  I went on a guided tour called "escaping the crowds" which seemed a great idea as during the week the town is really busy and noisy and I needed to get away from it all!
First stop was a stall on the side of the road selling "sticky rice" which is a mixture of rice, mangoes and some sort of lentil cooked in a tube of bamboo on a barbecue.... it's really yummy!
First temple stop was Bakong Temple built at the end of the 9th Century with 2 crematorians, one for the men and one for the women.
The second temple was really incredible.  Beng Mealea temple has been completely taken over by the jungle and the tree roots that are gradually strangling the stones!

Quite an amazingly magical place, impossible to restore but it had a real feeling of age (!) almost a thousand years old!
The third temple  was really the "jewel of Khmer art" of the afternoon.  Banteay Srei which means in Khmer "Citadel of women" as they believed that the reliefs were so detailed that only women could have carved them!

Cambodian cooking class

I would thoroughly recommend this: www.beyonduniqueescapes.com !  I was picked up from my guesthouse by a tuk-tuk driver and driven 20 minutes out of town to a hotel. The cook then took us to a local house where we compared kitchens (!) and saw many vegetables and herbs growing in their garden.

Grinding soaked rice with turmeric

Khmer kitchen

Pumping water from their well (filter on right)

Pineapple

Typical Khmer house in a village

The cooking class was great!  We prepared the special Kroeung paste by chopping then grinding the ingredients in a mortar - then made the Fisk Amok dish with coconut milk.  Then we made a dessert with glutinous rice flour (sticky rice flour   balls) and palm sugar candy in it, and finally we made the Green Mango Khmer salad.

Fish Amok 

lovely girls!

Private dining room!

Prek Toal Floating Village and Bird Sanctuary

Another really interesting weekend.  On Saturday I went to the Khmer Ceramic Centre and had a go at turning a small pot on a foot-driven wheel!  Really hard work, so then I made a little elephant!

Foot driven wheel

Should have thought to cut my nails first!

Then I cycled back to town and visited the Angkor Museum - which was a little expensive at 12$ + 3$ for the audio headset BUT it was really good and I wished I'd been there before visiting the temples - oh well, I'll just have to have another trip to Angkor Wat to see what I missed the first time.

Sunday was a long day!  Picked up at 6am and driven for 45mins in a minibus to a man-made canal where we picked up a boat and were taken to the Prek Toal floating village.  About 5000 people live in this village and there are about 170 villages (smaller) on Tonle Sap lake!  We were then transferred to a smaller boat and continued along the winding waterways to the Bird Sanctuary to see all the pelicans, egrets, oriental darters, painted storks, cormorants....  so many and very impressive.  

Cormorants perched

Pelicans and egrets

No fishing or bird hunting is allowed here, so the birds are really thriving

Back to the village for lunch on a little floating restaurant (set up by OSMOSE - see website : http://osmosetonlesap.net/www/english/ecovisites.php) then into little boats paddled along by a few women and kids to visit their village!  I was very ill-at-ease to be taking photos of their houses and life-style as I felt like an intruder but the guide assured me that they didn't mind and were now getting used to making money from the tourists - nonetheless, as much as I love taking photos, this wasn't easy and I didn't feel good about it.

I wonder if she can swim yet?

All the little children waved at us!

This little girl even blew us a kiss.

View from the observation tower on the Environment building (which isn't floating!)

Little girl helping her mum by paddling at the rear.

Small fish paste industry, the women were cutting off the fish heads.

You learn to walk and then swim!  Little boy holding his little brother.

Fish traps.

Great day out.  We got back to the minibus by about 4pm and enjoyed the air conditioning for an hour as it had been really hot out on the water.  Once away from the lake flood zone, the coconut trees and paddy fields of rice once again dominate the horizon and we came across a farmer herding his ducks!

Lotus flowers, rice fields, coconuts!

Herding ducks.

The Temples around Angkor Wat

SO... what a day!  Up at 5 am for the tuk-tuk drive in the dark to see the sunrise.  We walked into Angkor Wat in the dark (again with thousands of other tourists) and sat down on a small stone temple to wait for the sun to come up.  It actually got light long before we spotted the giant red sun rising over the temple and then everyone starts clicking away!  (It was a little cloudy so it wasn't terribly impressive but it was definitely an event even though it is everyday!!!! we can say we saw it!)  

just a few people waiting to see the sunrise!

"here comes the sun..... da da da da!"

We dashed off to have breakfast at one of the stalls (pancake and honey) then found our tuk-tuk driver again (called Hab) who took us to Ta Prohm - yes, that's the famous temple in Tomb Raiders and also Lara Croft!  It was beautiful to see it as the sun shone through the leaves and the jungle awoke - birds singing, cicadas and crickets making a lot of typically tropical noises.

Ta Prohm

She gave us incense sticks and a bracelet for good health

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm

The temple area is vast - about 18km x 13km so the tuk-tuk drive sometimes took 15 mins between some of the temples.  Next stop was the Chao Say Teroda, then Thommanon then the Angkor Thom South Gate and next the Bayon Temple - of course, the infamous Bayon temple was a 'must' but it was extremely crowded with Japanese and Chinese visitors, so we didn't stay very long - but it is absolutely stunning with all of the 37 faces that are still standing.  By now, it was really hot, about 36°C and it was only about 10.30am! 

Bayon Temple

Bayon Temple

Bayon Temple

Then on to the Angkor Thom city - there are about 12 temples in this area and we decided to visit Baphuon Temple, the Terrace of the Elephants, Phimeanakas and the Leper King Terrace with a stop for a coconut juice (a straw stuck directly into the coconut) somewhere in the middle! Unfortunately everyone is hassled all the time by people trying to sell scarves, trousers, books and little kids trying to sell bracelets and postcards.  

"where you from?"  

"France" 

"I know capital France Paris!  You give money me I go school - my school charity - you give money charity - I go school speak English....." and on and on......

Without even haggling the price, we had one young girl start with 10$ for 1 silk scarf and she gradually dropped to finish at 5$ for 2 scarves - we hadn't said one word!

Baphuon - Now where do these bits go?

Leper King Terrace

Two final temples before we headed off home - the Preah Khan and a quick look at Neak Poan - but we were so tired we got back to the Guesthouse by about 3.30pm.  I think they call it "templed out!"

Preah Khan - Hall of Dancers

Peace

I will definitely go back to see more temples - Banteay Srei was supposedly made by women as the details are so intricate so I would love to see that one but it is 45km out of Siem Reap (1 hour drive) so I'll plan that for another weekend.

en français:  je suis vraiment désolée mais je n'ai pas fais de traduction cette fois... j'ai pris 6 jours pour correctement mettre ces photos car j'ai eu pas mal de problèmes! Mais je pense que les photos parlent pour eux mˆemes.

Tourist for the weekend.

en français ci-dessous!

Saturday - so no teaching for me!  Nice morning at the market, (I must confess to having a cinnamon roll and expresso coffee - as I really miss a good French coffee) mid morning and I bought some cheap trousers (of course they've got elephants on them) and some black, below-the-knee shorts.  I had my first ever pedicure (thought of you Jen Belony!!) and then I had a lovely chat with a handicapped man in a wheelchair who was selling his drawings (was it a scam? - will never know) and ended up buying 2 of his pencil drawings.  He promised me they were his.... but over here there are so many scams that you never really know what is true - but anyway I'm happy with my purchase!

so proud of his drawings... but were they really his?

Sophie and I then went to a nearby hotel with a pool and had lunch there (free pool if you eat lunch) and it was like a little oasis of pure pleasure.

Little oasis!

Next was the SUNSET trip to Angkor Wat (along with thousands of other tourists) and we hurried about trying to see as much as we could before it shut for the night.  You get the ticket from 5pm one night to the sunset the following night.

No - he wasn't posing for the photo, just walking through!

The monks see the sunset everyday but they still take pictures of it!

Twice a month there is a handicraft market with stalls from local producers/hand-made stuff, so we stopped off there on our way home and watched some street kids from the Green Gecko project (check out their website: http://www.greengeckoproject.org) put on a little show, drank some rice wine and then back to the Guest house where a party was going on!

Green Gecko project

 The 20$ Temples ticket also let us in on Sunday so then we got a tuk-tuk to pick us up at 5.30am and we did the SUNRISE at Angkor Wat!  (next post... I have to sort my photos out first!)


en français:
Samedi - donc pas de cours pour moi!  Matinée sympas car je suis allée au marché et j'ai acheté un pantalon par cher (bien sur avec des éléphants!!) et un pantacourt noir.  J'avoue que je suis allée dans un café français pour boire un vrai expresso et pour manger un bon pain aux raisins avec cannelle!!  J'ai eu ma première pedicure et puis j'ai parlé longtemps avec un homme handicappé qui vendait ses dessins aux crayon noir (est-ce que c'était un arnaque - je ne saurais jamais) mais j'ai aimé les dessins donc j'en ai achetés deux.  Il m'a promis que c'est lui qui dessinait... mais il y a tellement d'arnaque ici qu'on ne sais pas si c'est vrai ou pas.... mais ce n'est pas grave car je suis contente avec mon achat!

Sophie et moi sommes allées à un hotel avec piscine ou on pouvait utiliser la piscine si on mangait le déjeuner pour 6$ - c'était super, un vrai oasis de plaisir!

Après nous sommes parties pour le tour du coucher du soleil à Angkor Wat (avec milles d'autres tourists) et nous sommes précipitées de voir autant que possible avant la nuit.  On peut acheter le billet à 17h le soir jusqu'au soir prochain.

Deux fois par mois il y a un marché nocturne (pour les touristes) avec beaucoup d'objets fait à la main.... donc on s'est arretées là en rentrant et nous avons regardé un petit spectacle des enfants de la rue de l'association Green Gecko project (voir site web: http://www.greengeckoproject.org) nous avons bu du vin de riz et puis à la 'guesthouse' il y avait une fête pour un anniversaire.

Dimanche matin - le billet de 20$ nous laissait entrer le dimanche, donc rendez-vous pour le tuk-tuk à 05.30h et nous avons vu le lever du soleil à Angkor Wat!  (je dois trier mes photos avant de les mettre!)