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SEA 2014

South East Asia again!

We were there for 2 months, with Burma and Cambodia as our main destinations.

This was our first time in Burma where we spent 4 weeks and of course, being so near to Cambodia, we could not resist a visit to Angkor.

Read on to learn what we saw and experienced!

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Thinking of our next trip: what about Iceland, Kyrgyzstan or Nepal (again) ? So much to chose from...

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Path: Photos > Seen in Cambodia
Tags: SEA14  2014  Cambodia

Seen in Cambodia

 

(vero;2016-May-17)

Four times Cambodia, four times Angkor… as you can imagine, we are not short of pictures about Cambodia. For this gallery however, we have decided to forget the temples and the monuments, and preferred to share street scenes, situations and everyday moments.

Essential when we are in Cambodia: a typical noodle soup stand on the street. That's where we get our food from.
Inside the bus, en route from Phnom Penh to Kampot. This bus was nearly empty and had only 4 passengers left inside when we arrived at destination. As usual, there is a karaoke-video playing on the front with Khmer folklore songs and dances, often set in rural settings, involving love struck young men suffering under the charms of beautiful girls. The little man on this traffic light in Phnom Penh will run faster as the time remaining decreases. We loved this. Khmer script; a snack seller reading her time away while waiting for customers on Phnom Penh's river promenade. As often seen in South East Asia, people always enjoy a good nap, Cambodia is no exception. Wat Phnom is THE temple in Phnom Penh, situated on the only "hill" of the city. Many people come here for prayers and blessings. The main temple is on top of the hill, but there are shrines and lesser pagodas around its base with many beggars and peddlers trying their luck with visitors. Following a Buddhist ritual, those little birds are about to be set free: this is a way to earn merit by paying the person who keeps them caged, so that they can be released. Those birds are trained and will come back to their captor very soon after. Psar Thmei, Phnom Penh's central market. We like this Art-Déco building, built in 1937 and beautifully restored by the French in 2011. Every day on Phnom Penh's promenade, you can see people playing a game of "shuttlecock kicking", in which players aim to keep a shuttlecock in the air by kicking it or letting it bounce on their bodies, but without touching it with the hands. The guys are really skilled and fun to watch, sometimes even performing acrobatic figures. Remnant of a communist past. Psar Tuol Tom Pong, known as the Russian Market, THE place for souvenir and clothes shopping. Beware of fake articles though! Like here, those engraved zippos, probably all fake but still bought by many as souvenir from the Vietnam war … Alain Delon, the embodiment of French masculine charm. Those ads are slowly disappearing from the Cambodian landscape: there were plenty of them around the first time we visited in 2006, they are much more seldom nowadays. Many Western tourists are not always considerate of Cambodia's traditions or sensitivities, in particular when it comes to the "chaos from the boys, girl … etc." Technology on the move; thanks to all offerings from the faithfuls, monks are often rich enough to afford a tablet. We saw many of them in pagodas. In Phnom Penh, many families live in their shops. When they close their business, they drive their car into their shop then turned living room. Imagine yourself watching TV or having your meal with your car next to the sofa! 2014: this irritating guy drinking whisky was everywhere on billboards throughout the country. There was no way escaping him. Market ladies relaxing after closing their shop with some gymnastic exercises. Appetising and colourful. Looks really good, but we did not dare taking the risk of eating them. Don't ask … Vero simply loves this photo taken in Phnom Penh and showing a rubbish cart parked in front of a decorated building fence. Seen in Angkor's public toilets: no smoking, no squatting on toilet seat, no cleaning of feet with the water hose provided to wash one's private parts, no showering (probably using the same water hose as well, as no shower in that sense was provided). The beat goes on for the Kantha Bopha hospitals in Cambodia: these are mainly the work of Beat Richner, a doctor from Switzerland. We've known the Siem Reap hospital (called Jayavarman VII) for quite a while now and have seen for ourselves the good work the people there are doing day in, day out. Dr Richner and his team need two things more than anything else: blood and money. If you can, please consider a donation. Most temples in Cambodia are in a poor state of repair and decoration. No comparison to Thailand or even Laos. Beware of iced drinks or food: young man sawing ice blocks in front of a restaurant in Siem Reap. Silk worm cocoons in Siem Reap, where we visited the silk farm of the "Chantiers Écoles", a school specialising in reviving Khmer traditional crafts and teaching old wood- and stone-carving art to young people as well as reintroducing production and design of silk garments. A great place for high quality souvenirs. Cambodia was part of French Indochina, as this bas-relief near Wat Phnom in Phnom Penh reminds us. It shows the retro-cession to colonial French Cambodia by Thailand of the provinces of Battambang, Siem Reap and Sisophon in 1907. The three figures on the right represent Thailand bearing a symbolic representation of each province in their hands, returning them to the Khmer king Sisowath, with a French colonial soldier on the left of the monument unveiling the treaty.

Go on to Prasat Preah Vihear or go up to Photos

$updated from: Photos.htxt Mon 04 Mar 2024 16:04:42 trvl2 (By Vero and Thomas Lauer)$