Bumping Journey to the Border

6 June 2008 @ Cambodia Border to Thailand

It's our last day in Cambodia. Next destination, Pit Stop 2: Bangkok!


We woke very early to have breakfast, pack and wait for our driver to pick us up.

According to the driver, the condition of the road is very poor, so we have to pay a little more than what's negotiated with Sovoeun the day before.

Here we go!

Potholes everywhere

Halfway through, the driver stopped and said something to me. I couldn't hear what he said as his English isn't good.

Very quickly, he got down the the car and run to the bushes at the roadside. He wants to pee! Ha!


Continue on with our jouney, we saw some fresh meats. *roar*



Here's a recorded video inside the car after one hour drive.



Then we reached the town at the border. It's like a havoc there.


The road is worse than before...

to be continue...

Billy, out.

Previous post: Food, Food and Fruit Shakes
Next post: Pit Stop 2: Bangkok, The City of Life

Food, Food and Fruit Shakes

5 June 2008 @ Siem Reap, Cambodia

Continue from The Angkor Wat...

Our tuk-tuk driver took us to the old market of Siem Reap for lunch and walkabout. This is the little restaurant we went to.

Our lunch

Cheap and fresh fruit shakes! [coconut, banana, carrot, orange, mango]

The fruit shakes cost about US$0.50 each if I'm not wrong and they taste really good and refreshing.

After lunch, we walk around the town to hunt for souvenirs and more Cambodian street food. We found these.


The look of the paos in Cambodia are more attractive with decoratives on top of them. The taste is similar to the "char siu pao" in Malaysia.

Paoz!

Then we saw many people buying from this stall that sells fried noodles. Out of curiousity with the taste, we bought one plate too.


It tasted just like the maggi goreng from any mamak shop in Malaysia. The only difference is... it's very very spicy! We finished all our water because of it.

It's chopsticks licking good!

It's getting late and we decided to have a full body Cambodian massage after walking for so many days. Cost: US$6 per person for one hour.


We went in and we have to strip naked to our undies before the ladies start molesting massaging us.


Honestly, it's more like molesting than massaging, especially with so much skin contact involved. Ah, whatever, I'm just trying to relax.

Photo with the staffs

Right after coming out of the massage parlour, we saw the beautiful sunbeam coming right through the clouds.


We went for another round of fruit shake before we go for our dinner. The shakes are simply too good to be missed. Slurrpz...

Later in the evening, without a map, we walk around looking for the Star Mart we went on the second day in Siem Reap to buy cup noodles. Once again, we spent too much on food, so cheap dinner for the night.


It was our last dinner in Siem Reap. We will be crossing the border to Bangkok, Thailand early next morning. Billy, out.

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Bas Relief - Heaven and Hell

Bas Reliefs can be seen on all four sides of Angkor Wat. So what are they?

A bas-relief or low relief is a sculpture which is not free-standing or in the round, but has a background from which the main elements of the composition project. Bas-relief is very suitable for scenes with many figures and other elements such as a landscape or architectural background.

Reference: Wikipedia

In short, they're the carvings on the walls.

As you can see in the picture below, there're 8 walls with bas reliefs and were meant to view them in the counter-clockwise direction.



One of the most interesting reliefs is the Heaven and Hell gallery. The relief generally describes the life in heaven and punishments in hell.

The two videos below are narrated by Kuan about the gallery, in mandarin. The video is separated into 2 parts because we were interupted by other tourists over there. Enjoy.

Part 1



Part 2



You can also check out my previous post to view other videos on the magnificent Churning of the Ocean of Milk, Battle of Gods, Vishnu's Victory over Bana and Battle of Lanka.

For more details on the reliefs, you can visit this website. Billy, out.

The Angkor Wat

5 June 2008 @ Siem Reap, Cambodia

It's the third and final day of our visit to the Angkor Archaeological Park. Our destination is one of the world's most reknowned temples, The Angkor Wat!

Before we leave our guesthouse, we had Milo and bread for breakfast!


Since we'll be only spending half a day in Angkor Complex, we hired Sovoeun's brother, Sovet to drive us there with his tuk-tuk.


Here we are, ANGKOR WAT! If you see properly, it's actually the symbol on the Cambodia national flag.


Angkor Wat or "City Temple" in the modern name was built in the early 12th century as the state temple and capital city for King Suryavarman II.


The architecture of the temple is said to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu Mythology. Here's a short introduction by Kuan about Angkor Wat, in mandarin.

MinBee trying to be the head of the headless statue

JUMP!

Bas-reliefs - The carvings ont the walls

LeongKee studying hard on the book for this...

LeongKee



Kuan



Me



MinBee

So who did a better job? =P
*sorry non-chinese and bananas, the videos are in mandarin only

There're actually more videos on the bas-reliefs in Angkor Wat, you can check it out in my next post [Bas Relief - Heaven and Hell] Here're some still shots of the carvings.

One of the punishment in hell

After a long walk inside the temple and restricted to access the towers in the centre, we head on outside to take photos again.

Kuan, LeongKee, MinBee, Me

Like other temples, many restoration process are going on when we visited it. Nevertheless, it's still a beautiful place with marvelous architecture.

That's the end of our 3 days adventure in Angkor Archaelogical Park. Gotta go for a massage after walking miles and miles of endless road. Billy, out.

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Floating Village - Stuck in Mud

4 June 2008 @ Tonle Sap, Cambodia

After touring around the floating village in the Tonle Sap lake, we head back to the town.


The road is all muddy and slippery after the heavy rain. We're glad that we're on a car because all the tuk-tuks have to be pushed to get to the better side of the road and the passengers have to walk on the muddy road.


Not far from the jetty, we had a traffic jam. All because of an overweight lorry's wheels stuck inside the mud. The people have no choice but to take out all the weight it's carrying and start pushing.

While waiting, we listened to some Khmer songs. Gah! They all sounded like monks chanting lah!


After stucked there for about 15 minutes, the cars at the back took alternative way to get outta there. So, we followed.

Our car was just too heavy and can't get past the slope on the road. Sovoeun even banged into another person's tuk-tuk at the side of the road when he lost the grip.

Some people there were offering help to push the car but Sovoeun refused because they're charging him US$30 for one push! Gosh, why would they want to take advantage of their own people?

We suggested to get out of the car so the car can have more power to climb the bloody slope. He made it after a few attempts, and now our feet are on the mud. Great.


It's not easy to walk on the road. It's slippery and your shoes get heavier and heavier because the mud will keep sticking to the bottom of your shoes. Soon, we were all wearing high-mud-heels.


Sovoeun felt sorry for us and took us to his house for a clean up. That's his house [consider quite luxury for a Cambodian] and his papa and youngest sister.


We took off our sandals and his mom and brother helped to washed them. How kind of them.


While waiting, we walked around his house and discovered he reared some cows.


Then, his father asked us to climb onto the ladder to look over a 7-feet tall wall. Crocs! Wow, what a surprise.


We wasted a couple of hours in this muddy havoc and all our tummies were yelling for food. We stopped at Express, a fast food restaurant at a petrol kiosk.


The fast food wasn't that fast after all. I suspect they still use wood to start a fire before they start cooking.

Here's what we ordered. They don't even look a bit like the picture on their menu.





The taste was pretty good considering that they're quite cheap.

That's all for the day and we were all anticipating to see the grand Angkor Wat on the next day. Billy, out.

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