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Siem Reap - Angkor
Sem reap
is the small gateway town to ruins of Angkor,
located 250 northwest of Phnom Penh and 15 km north
of Tonle Sap. Running through the centre of town is
the polluted Siem Reap river. Traces of French
presence have survived in a small quarter of
colonial buildings to the southwest side the rest of
Siem Reap was badly damaged by bombing and civil
war. In the early 1979-0, during the Pol Pot era,
people were fed to the crocodiles in Siem Reap.
There is a “killing fields” memorial to victims of
Khmer
 Rouge to the northwest of the town. In 1979the
province was the scene of heavy fighting between the
Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Army. Since 1990 the
Khmer Rouge have staged sporadic attacks on the
civilian population and Cambodian troops around Seam
Reap. In 1993 they massacred Vietnamese fishing
families at Lake Tonle Sap, precipitating an exodus
of the Vietnamese to the Mekong Delta. To safeguard
Angkor, the government has stationed troops, ringing
the entire zone of ruins.
Peace has not been easy
to come to Seam Reap, but there is normal life
around Angkor: farmers transporting goods in
oxcarts, village women clad in sarongs cycling to
market, Buddhist monks in the flowing orange robe
out morning strolls, kids lolling about on the backs
of water buffalo in green fields. For tourists this
is a chance to see rural life. For local, tourist
itself, however small in scale, is seen as return to
normalcy after years of savage war and upheaval. A
number of new hotels, guesthouses and restaurants
have appeared in Seam Reap in the 1990s, catering
first to visiting UNTAC troops and later to the
Angkor bound tourists who arrived in the wake.
ANGKOR
CONSERVANCY
Anything moveable at
Angkor has disappeared. Even the heads of the larger
stone statues have been hacked off by treasure
hunters. To guard against art theft, virtually all
smaller Angkor statuary, wood items, and artifacts
have been removed to museums, particularly to the
National Museum in Phnom Penh. Thousands of pieces
rest at the Angkor Conservancy, located several km
to the north of Seam Reap, and you will need special
permission from the Ministry of Culture in Phnom
Penh to visit. The Angkor Wat Conservancy was
established by French in 1907 when Seam Reap
province was restored to Cambodia by the Thais. From
1953 to 1970 the Angkor Conservancy was jointly
operated by the French and Cambodian governments.
With the exception of period during WW II, the
French at Angkor worked steadily, at times directing
more than a thousand employees. In 1972 the civil
war forced the French to leave. Angkor Conservancy
is a warehouse for some 7,000 sculpture fragments
and artifacts from the Angkor region. Fresh concrete
heads are stocked here, destined to replace ones
removed from the Angkor area by bandits or Khmer
Rouge. Museum staffs also removed heads before
bandits can get to them. There are two floors of
statuary at Angkor Conservancy. On the ground floor
are the larger Buddhas, Vishnus, and lintels; the
upper floor houses smaller Buddhas, hand fragments,
stone animals and large wooden Buddhas.
Unfortunately, the pieces are not safe even here the
place has been broken into several times. More
about Angkor
TIME OUT
IN SIEM REAP
If you spend a week or
so in Angkor, it’s best to pace yourself: one day at
the ruins, one day off. Otherwise you’ll suffer from
cultural overload and become “temple out”. Seam Reap
presents a great opportunity to get out into the
Cambodian countryside. You can witness facets of
rural life unchanged from those depicted on the
temple walls at the Angkor Wat 800 years ago. Roads
are rough in these area, some time just dirt tracks.
Taking a tourguide along is highly recommended, he
can show you around the villages and show you how
palm sugar and palm wine are brewed.
THE WEST
BARAY
To reach the West Baray,
head northwest from Siem Reap along Route 6. Pass
the airport road and take the next turnoff to the
right; this leads to a parking area at a dam at the
south side of the West Barray. The West Barray
reservoir was part of the elaborate Angkorian
irrigation system, although researchers are not sure
of its exact function. Originally, the West Barray
and East Barray were two gargantuan artificial
lakes. The West Barray is a two by eight km
rectangle enclosed by an earth dike. Though it may
have been used for irrigation, recent evidence
indicates it was more likely a mooring place for
royal barges, a fish-breeding site, or simply a
place for bathing.
The East Barray is now
dry. The West Barray, first constructed in the 11th
century, was partially restored in the 1950s with
foreign-aid funds. Today is about two-thirds full.
The West Barray is fed by the Tonle Sap River; a
small dam has enlarge the rice-growing potential of
the area with water carried through a network of
irrigation canal. The West Barray is also used for
fish breeding. You can go for a swim along southern
section. Situated in the West Barray is a small
island you can hire a boat and row out to a
sanctuary called the West Mebon. Much of the
stonework has collapsed, though several towers on
the east entrance to the temple have survived. It
was here that a large bronze statue of Vishnu was
discovered in 1936. It now sits in the National
Museum in Phnom Penh.
ROLOUS
GROUP
The ruins of Rolous are
13 km east of Siem Reap along Route 6. The ruins are
of mild interest compared with the splendors of
central Angkor, but the trip to Rolous gives you a
chance to experience village life. Stop at the
central market, a short distance east of Siem Reap,
on the way out or back. The market is always
engrossing, a great place for watching people.
Cambodian women are partial to sarongs with blinding
colors and patterns, which makes the place quite
right. This is the most likely a reaction to the Pol
Pot years, when everyone was forced to wear black.
Upcountry a common form of transportation is the
cycle-hauled wooden chariot. This workhorse can
carry several passengers, a few hand of bananas, a
score of chickens, or a mountain of
vegetables-sometime all at once.
The Rolous ruins are
among the oldest Khmer monuments in the Angkor area,
dating to 9th century reign of
Indravarman I. Two key temple sites remain, Bakong
and Preah Ko. The latter consists of six bricks
towers or prasats, arranged in two rows; the site is
bounded by walls, with sandstone lintel decoration.
Bakong is a five-step brick pyramid with a sandstone
doorways. At the corners of the first three levels
stand elephants hewn from single blocks of stone.
Next to the ruin is an active Buddhist monastery.
From here, you can continue south to the village of
Rolous, which lent its name to the ruins.
LAKE
TONLESAP
Head south on Route 29,
following the river by motor or rent bicycle. Just
south of the town on the left is a crocodile farm.
About 12km from Siem Reap is Phrom Krom, a hill with
an 11th century temple. From the ruins
are expensive views over Lake Tonle Sap, the Great
Lake. A glance with the map will show how it came by
this name - it’s an enormous fresh water sea.
Lake Tonle Sap fills
with water during the monsoon season, but by
February it shrinks to a fraction of its former
size, becoming one of the richest fishing grounds in
the world, yielding as much as 10 tons of fish per
square km. The main fishing season is February to
May. When the water recede, fish are preventing from
escaping with nets and bamboo traps. Some are caught
in the branches of trees, or in the mud, and simply
picked up. Fishing families live in temporary huts
that can be dismantled and moved forward as the
water recedes. When the fishing season is over,
fishing families return to their villages.
The flooding of the
Tonle Sap covers the area with a rich mud ideal for
growing rice. Farmers have developed unique
deepwater rice strains the grow with the rising lake
to keep the grain above the water. Under Pol Pot,
large part of the flooded forest around Tonle Sap
were sacrificed to expand the area for rice fields.
During the war much of the rice seed stock was lost,
and deepwater rice cultivation declined. Coming from
Siem Reap you reach a boat deck on the shores of
Lake Tonle Sap. It’s a scummy area, with boats
loading and unloading goods, fish drying in the sun,
and assorted video cafes. The lake itself is
peaceful and uneventful, but hidden dramas abound,
if you hire a boat for an hour, or row out yourself,
you can reach a floating house suspended overhung
bamboo-fishing holding pens. Families have fatten up
the fish in the pens; some house are rigged with
trapdoors that open so feed can be dropped. A fish
pens may be three meters deep and hold thousands of
fish. You don’t realise how many fish there are
until feeding time when you see them thrashing
around in the water. This kind of “fish farming” is
also practiced in Vietnam’s Mekong delta. Because
the lake keeps shrinking and expanding, a species of
fish has evolved here that can survive several hours
out of water, flopping overland in search of deeper
pools. This species , known as hock yue, or elephant
fish, is considered a delicacy in Asia. Another
highly prized delicacy is the sand goby, or soon
hock, a greenish-gray trout-like specimen. One
company ships the fish live to Phnom Penh, where
they held in tanks. For transportation to
restaurants in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, the first
are placed in tanks filled with ice and mild
sedative. In a semi-inert state they’re air
freighted in plastic bas pumped with oxygen. They
must reach their destination within 16 hours. In
Singapore restaurant, a single sand goby, cooked
with ginger, chili, tomato, and mushrooms, is worth
$40 - $60, depending on its size. |
