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Expat Family Vactation to Cambodia!
April. Spring break and a mom’s thoughts turn to vacation. It seemed obvious that we explore Asia while living in it, as it were, and so I pulled up a map to decide where to head for our family spring break. With a little help from my friends at BBC weather I figured out that most of Asia was, in April, HOT! Almost every place was marked as hot and humid with temperatures in the 100s. Wilting at the idea of sightseeing in 100 degree heat, I set my sights as far as Mongolia (don’t ask, but my 9 year old tells me that there are some awesome dinosaur fossils there) but it was too cold and and that seemed as unappealing as being too hot. Angkor Wat has been on my list of places to see since I first read about it in a dusty social studies book in school. It seemed like it was the dry season in Cambodia and though the weather was hot, it was too exciting an opportunity to pass up. Getting there involves going to either Thailand or Malaysia, and we decided to fly into Kuala Lumpur, spend a weekend there and then go to Siem Reap. Kuala Lumpur was disappointing. It seemed like a fine place to live, but a second best vacation spot. Sure, there were malls aplenty, and the city is a glittering, modern metropolis, but it was too much of a big city to be exciting on vacation. It’s a great shopping jaunt, but for one used to the seasonal sales in California, it seemed blasphemous to pay full MSRP in KL. Cambodia more than made up though. Maybe it was the misty, unearthly quality of light there, maybe it is the awareness of the recent horrors they have lived through, but Cambodia strikes a chord in your heart that echoes even weeks after you leave. As it turns out, the hot season is the best season to go to Cambodia. At many of the wats, we were the only people around. We wandered at will, got to see details in the friezes like a man cooking for his reclining, smug wife, and hunt for the only toothed apsara in the whole temple. The kids wandered through, climbing up and down the temples, and stopping to throw little whirligig seeds in the air and watch them twirl down to the ground. Our guide told us that during the cooler months, people shuffle in single file along the corridors, often unable to step back and look at the whole structure because of the throngs. Angkor Wat was impressive. The kids loved exploring Ta Prohm, the jungle temple best, for with the giant figs growing over and around the temples, you do feel like a modern day tomb raider or Indiana Jones. My own favorite was the surreally beautiful temple at Bayon where 50 foot faces smile serenely from each tower. The photographs don’t do justice to the dramatic effect of granite face against jungle greenery, but it felt as untouched and mystical as it must have seemed to the French explorer who stumbled upon it years ago. We were charmed by the houses on stilts, each with a spirit house outside. Hammocks hung on almost every stationary object, and the drive up the hills to the river of a 1000 lingas was a gentle unhurried journey. Since Shiva lingams are considered so holy that they purify the water poured over them, a king had the brilliant notion of carving a 1000 lingas (although there are several thousand, a thousand seemed a nice round number to report) at the head of a river, so the water to all the fields below was sanctified. We had heard about Tonle Sap, the largest fresh water lake in Asia, and touristy they were and all the pros and cons of a community living a life unchanged over the centuries. It had to be seen however, and we were stunned by the size of the lake at its driest. We could see no horizon other than the shore we had just left, and were taken to one of the nearest floating villages. While the politically correct part of me realized that these people had no civic amenities, the same source for both water and sewage disposal, the observer in me gawked at the floating basketball field for when there is no dry land for miles and children need a place to run around in. Floating vegetable beds, a floating school and library, this was literally a floating village. It annoys me excessively when people go on and on about the spirituality of India and the mysticism of the orient, but Cambodia was a land where all of that felt true and right. From the surreal temples to the amazing beauty of the land, this is a country that will steal your heart. Details, details: The cheapest and most frequent flights to Siem Reap are from Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. Both take about an hour, so if you add the flying time from India and transit time, you need to schedule half a day to get there. We took the night flight to KL and a morning flight to Siem Reap, so we were there by noon. Hotels are available for every budget, and except at the fanciest restaurants food was cheap, with many vegetarian options. We heard horror stories about the local water and medicines, so we drank only bottled water and carried a mini pharmacy with us, and are happy to report no health issues. US dollars are the most commonly used currency, and almost every one spoke English. An air conditioned car with driver and a tour guide cost about $50.00 for a nearly 12 hour day. It was well worth the money to get into a cool car after a hot sticky jaunt around the temples, and I think may even have wound up cheaper than taking numerous local cabs which were quoting $10.00 a ride.
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