Our last night in Hong Kong consisted of a reunion with some friends back in Waterloo: Eddie who will be graduating back with us this year, and Karen who we knew back in first year before she moved back to Hong Kong.

After finishing packing and deciding what to throw out because my suitcases were ridiculously overweight, we met up with Eddie and Karen at Causeway Bay. Irene, Brian, and Wei Png (a friend of mine from HKU) joined us for dinner at a hotpot restaurant, but Eddie unfortunately couldn’t make it to dinner.

After dinner I gave out some snacks from Taiwan, and we (minus Wei Png but plus Michelle) went to a bar for some drinks, after which we (minus Karen) went to a new karaoke club that recently opened up in Causeway Bay. We left at around 6am and decided to have some breakfast at the morning tea restaurant near HKU – the place which we usually went to at around 2:30 to 3:00 am, so having breakfast at a “normal” time was slightly unusual.

Brian and Michelle went with us to the Airport Express station, and Brian went with us to the airport before we had to part ways. It turned out that we managed to get an extra check-in bag for free, which alleviated some of the concerns with overweight luggage. And although our flight was late to depart, this simply gave us some time to have some snacks at the airport with Brian before taking off to return to Canada.

Thanks to everyone for the memories!

 

The next day, we were to meet up with one of Rick’s friends from Hong Kong who was born and raised in KL: Natalie. After welcoming us to the equator, Natalie took us to some real Malaysian food at the food court of a mall (Malaysian food courts are massive and are nothing like their Western or even Hong Kong counterparts). She recommended some good food to makan (eat), and took us to a desert shop afterwards. This desert shop was opened by a former Prime Minister of Malaysia: I’d like to see some Canadian Prime Ministers opening their own restaurants after they retire, like Harper Hamburgers, Trudeau Truffles, Martin Martinis or Chretien Croissants.

We spent lots of time indoors because it was far too hot to go outdoors. But we head off to Central Market, which is a great place to find Malaysian souvenirs and gifts. After some extensive bargaining, we did our fix of shopping without considering how we were going to take everything back to Hong Kong. After eating some more deserts at the Central Market, Natalie took us to a Pasar Malam (night market).

The Pasar Malam was full of exotic food, all of which was delicious. There was one item which we couldn’t identify – when Natalie asked, the man said that it was “babi” (pork). I started laughing for reasons that could only be described as an inside joke with some friends in Hong Kong- but because Malaysia is a majority-Muslim country, “babi” is more often used as an insult than to describe food.

At this point Rick became exhausted from all of the walking, so we decided to rest inside another mall. This mall had a large Lego display, including one character who appeared to be jumping off of London Bridge. They even had a Lego Santa Claus and Christmas tree.

After Rick had some time to digest his babi, Natalie took us to an Indian restaurant where they serve food on banana leaves. Natalie loves South Indian food and this restaurant especially, and wanted to eat the “traditional” way by using her hands: something which I was strongly against and Rick flatly refused to do, so we used cutlery instead.

After dinner, we went shopping for a bit before Natalie’s dad took us on a night tour of Kuala Lumpur, including spots where we got great views of the Petronas Twin Towers and KL Tower by night. Unfortunately its extremely difficult to take good night shots without a tripod, even with my new camera, so the pics below don’t do justice to how beautiful KL looks at night.

The next day we got up at the crack of dawn to take an extremely early flight to Macau. We didn’t spend much time in Macau, however (except for getting lost on the way to the ferry terminal from the airport), so head straight back to Hong Kong.

Malaysia markets itself as being a “truly Asian” country to visit. It is the first Muslim country I have ever been to, and I had heard a lot about it from my Singaporean friends at HKU as they discuss all the scams that they are subjected to when they cross the border into Malaysia. But it turns out that Kuala Lumpur (KL) is an extremely charming city which is very friendly to tourists, and made for a great short trip between Cambodia and our return to Hong Kong.

The main language of Malaysia is Malay, which uses the Latin alphabet (as does English). As a result, Malay is very easy to read, as most of the words just look like they were written by someone who doesn’t know how to spell English words very well: Central station is written as “Sentral” and Taxi is “Teksi”. Some are less obvious, like how Exit is “Keluar”. But regardless, everyone who we’ve met speaks English so we had no trouble getting around.

After dropping of our bags at our hotel (which was conveniently located next to Plaza Rakyat metro station), we head out to Bukit Bintang, a commercial district. Bukit Bintang is comparable to Shibuya in Tokyo or Causeway Bay in Hong Kong: a destination frequented by youth for shopping. It is lively, busy, and full of popular brands, making it a shopping paradise. One of the malls we went to looked a lot like Shibuya 109 from Tokyo, except that the target seemed to be people far younger than us.

Unfortunately KL’s metro system does not impress, at least not compared to Hong Kong’s. The trains are not frequent enough and the monorail has only two cars, making it ridiculously crowded.

Malaysia is located very close to the equator, which makes it extremely hot. This was definitely the hottest Christmas I had experienced (I actually just realized while writing this that it was Christmas during our visit to KL) – I mean, Cambodia was extremely warm, but KL was as hot as Tokyo in August. As a result, we took frequent breaks while exploring KL to enjoy the air conditioned buildings and some refreshing beverages along the way.

The defining icon of the KL skyline is the Petronas Twin Towers. Although the photos don’t show it, one of the twins is actually a little bit taller than the other one: just like Rick and Robert. We took the metro system to a station near the towers, but still had to walk for a few minutes to get to them. The towers contain a large mall but are mostly office space. Unfortunately we could not go up the towers, as you have to go early in the morning and buy a ticket before returning the same day at a later time. We didn’t want to wake up early the next day, so decided simply to avoid going up the towers.

En route to Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, we passed by an Indian-style Hindu temple for a little bit (an interesting contrast to the 900-year-old Angkor Wat temple), and some idiot dropped my camera while taking a photo of us. KL’s Chinatown is extremely touristy: full of souvenirs and other stores. It is, however, located very near to our hotel and provides some unique snacks and streetfood.

That evening we decided to try some Malaysian food, although precisely what constitutes Malaysian food is unclear because Malaysia is a very multicultural society. We found one restaurant that seemed Malaysian enough, and decided to try it out.

This was actually the only time during the trip when we had even a little bit of language problems. In Hong Kong (or anywhere else I’ve been to in the past few months), anyone who sees me knows to provide an English-language menu if available. But me and Rick blend into the multiethnic Malaysian society, so nobody thinks to do that in KL: at various times during this trip, both me and Rick have been confused for Malaysians. Luckily, some of my Singaporean and an Indonesian friend (you know who you are) have spent the past few months teaching me some Malay words here and there, mostly food-related. So when we went to a Malaya restaurant, I could actually read most of what was on the menu: it turns out that if you know words like Rice, Vegetables, Pork, Chicken, etc then you can read pretty much any menu in the world.

That evening we returned to KL Chinatown to try some street food before calling it a night. The street outside our hotel also provides a great view of KL Tower (another iconic tower), so we got a few photos with it by night.

On our final day in Siem Reap, our hotel helped us to book a private tour. The tour guide took us on a tuktuk to various sights around Siem Reap: and although the tuktuk was nowhere near as comfortable as an air-conditioned van, it was significantly cheaper and let us get a glimpse of the lifestyle of less fortunate Cambodians.

After passing by much of Cambodia’s Makon River floodplanes, we got on to a boat which drove us to our first destination: the Floating Village of Siem Reap. The floating village consisted of only a few hundred people who lived literally on water: i.e. they all lived on boats along with their schools, shops, etc. Based on the season and the ride they would migrate up or down the river twice a year, which was a major undertaking for the whole village.

Along the cruise however there were several other villages that backed on to the water, which was kind of similar to the villages along the Li River in Guilin, China. During the cruise, a little boy boarded our boat with a cooler to try to sell us some beverages. It turned out that his father was controlling a motorboat which was faster than ours, and his kid was trying to sell drinks to tourists by boarding on to their boats like a little pirate. He also put a snake around his neck to attract photographs in hopes of getting a US Dollar.

One of the first buildings we saw in the Floating Village was actually a school, and it was remarkable to see children getting to school by boat. All of the village’s other institutional buildings were also meant to be waterborne. Further down the river, we saw a few other children sailing in what looked to be shallow pots or saucepans, who also tried to get US Dollars from us.

One of the shops we went to in the village sold alligator meat. There was an alligator pen in the shop where tourists could pay to watch a chicken get torn to shreads.

The Floating Village is, however, incredibly poor, so there are many of beggars trying to get US currency from tourists, frequently using their small children to attract attention. One Chinese tourist group seemed to like to pretend that a Cambodian girl was actually their child and gave her candy to pose in pictures with them.

After taking the boat back to land and returning to our tuktuk, we then set off to our next destination for about half an hour past the Cambodian countryside. We once passed a massive bathing pool for an ancient King that looked like it was a lake the size of an olympic swimming pool. But you could tell it was artificial since no lake has such rectangular edges. We also passed by some other Angkor temples along the way, although these were smaller and less popular, although may have been even older than the ones that we saw on the previous day. I guess in retrospect, it would have been neat to visit them.

Our second destination was a shooting range. I had heard about this place a lot from my friends in Hong Kong, as they let tourists rent any gun they like and try their luck at a shooting range. They were out of AK47s, but me and Rick both tried our luck at firing M16s.
The actual shooting range is small, dark and dingy, but the people there definitely take safety seriously and ensure that you are positioned properly with protective earwear and everything before letting you pull the trigger. The firearms recoil back strongly when shot, making it rather difficult to hit the target. But we goth got to try some regular and automatic shots with our M16s.

Neither of us hit the target (kind of embarassing since we got 30 shots each and I had spend a ton of time in Hong Kong playing with BB-Guns), but I think Rick was closer since apparently too many of my shots were hitting the roof. It was king of amusing to see our tour guide playing with a rocket launcher while we were shooting. The range also apparently sold live cows for $200 in case you want to blow one up with a rocket launcher.

We had lunch at a Cambodian restaurant recommended by our tour guide, and spent some time sitting in the shade next to the King’s swimming pool from earlier as we backtracked along our route.

Our tour guide took us to a body of water which was crucial to the construction of Angkor Wat. Because the adequate stones were not available near the site of Angkor Wat, they had to be sailed down a river several kilometres. These were massive rocks which required a gargantuan effort to transport, but nowadays, that same body of water provides plumbing and drinking water to the temples through an ancient-looking water-collection apparatus. The water is collected and then loaded into a large container before being sent as required to the temples. This may be an example of 19th century engineering or something, but it was still comparably modern to much else that we had seen in Cambodia.

We were rather close to Angkor Wat at this point, and actually drove past its moat in our tuktuk. We were off to the Siem Reap War Museum, which is a downscale model of the one in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. The War Museum is now part of a Buddhist monestary and is meant to enlighten visitors as to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime. The events of the Pol Pot regime occured distinctly in living memory of Cambodia, and is thus much more vividly remembered than something like WWII in the West: and for that reason, its still rather chilling to hear stories about it or to see the human bones and skulls in the monetary, so it didn’t really feel appropriate to take too many photos. The monetary also had a lot of artwork depicting the life of The Buddha, which our tour guide detailed for us.

During our last night in Siem Reap, we tried some new food in the markets near our hotel, including some delicious banana pancakes. We called it an early night, however, as we had a very early flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia the next morning.

 

Our final stop was to the temple mountain Phnom Bakheng, a Hindu temple built in 889 AD under the rein of King Yasovarman. The temple is known as a popular tourist spot for beautiful sunset views and views of Angkor Wat, which is 1.5 km southeast amid the jungle. Phnom Bakheng was the state temple of the first city of Angjor, and is thus of special importance, even though many of its associated buildings are in poor condition.

Phnom Bakheng symbolizes Mount Meru, the home of Hindu gods, as this mountain lies up a steep hill atop a mountain. The mountain took 15-20 minutes to climb, and lazier tourists took an elephant ride to the top. We got views of the temple through the trees long before we actually got to the temple. The climb up the temple was a little treacherous, but there were many other tourists at the top. The view from the top of the temple was breathtaking, even when you don’t account for the sunset.

Phnom Bakheng is also featured in the movie Tomb Raider, where Lara Croft gets a view of Angkor Wat from the top of the temple. The temple has the usual quincunx of towers as all Hindu temples do. The total number of towers in Phnom Bakheng is 108, which has special symbolism in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmology.

On the way down the mountain, I dropped my camera but didn’t notice it was lost due to the darkness. I ended up kicking it off the mountain and a cop had to help retrieve it. Good thing I got it back, because the photos taken during this trip are unbelievable.

That night we had some Khmer Barbecue and did another round of the night market.

After lunch was the highlight of our visit: Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. Suryavarman II strove to have the temple completed before his death, as this was seen as a necessary condition for his entry to Heaven. Unfortunately it appears that his death in 1150 occurred before the completion of Angkor Wat, as some of the carvings and decorations in the temple appear incomplete. Suryavarman II was cremated, and his ashes lie under the largest mount of the temple.

Angkor Wat t is the best preserved temple and was founded as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishu (hence the 5 mounts), but was later converted to Buddhism. It is now the world’s largest religious building, a symbol of Cambodia, its principle tourist attraction, and is even present on the Cambodian flag. Angkor Wat is frequently regarded as the 8th Wonder of the World.

Angkor Wat is brilliant for many reasons. The sheer effort, measured by time (in decades) and manpower (in thousands), to create such a massive structure is breathtaking. As a result, this is regarded as one of the most impressive engineering feats in all of history: far greater than that of any European building or cathedral. For those of you interested in learning more about Angkor Wat, check out this video from National Geographic.

The architecture of Angkor Wat combines Khmer designs with South Indian Hindu architecture. A 3.6km long moat runs outside the temple, but the moat did not prevent the temple from being sacked by the Chams (an enemy of the Khmers) in 1177. When we were walking along the moat of Angkor Wat to get to the gate, I fell into a hole and nearly lost my camera. Our tour guide joked that it was a trap set to prevent invasions: too bad it didn’t help the Khmers fend off the Chams.

Once Jayavarman VII restored the Khmer empire, he moved the capital to Angkor Thom and made Bayon its state temple. Angkor Wat is unusual because even though it was neglected since the 16th century, it was never actually abandoned, possibly because the moat protected it from encroachment by the Jungle.

Angkor Wat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has provided funding to support its restoration, although most of this effort has been conducted by foreign governments. Angkor Wat began extensive restoration in the 20th century (lead by the Indian government), but this was interrupted by dictator Pol Pot’s control of the county from the 1970s-80s, although little damage was done to the temple other than theft and destruction of post-Angkorian statues. Now Angkor Wat is a point of pride amongst Cambodians, and heavily affects its diplomatic relations with its neighbours and Western nations.  In 2003, riots erupted in Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) after rumours that a Thai soap opera actress claimed that Angkor Wat belonged to Thailand.

It was a very hot and sunny afternoon, which is why I am squinting or wearing sunglasses in all of the photos. Similar to Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat is far too long to let us wander off on our own, so our tour guide insisted that we follow him, and we got to hear some great stories as a as a result.

There are two main entrances to the temple: one for the King and one for elephants.  One quickly notices the bullet-holes in the walls, caused by the attempts of the Pol Pot regime to destroy the temple. Our tour guide pointed to early efforts to restore the temple: some of which included rebuilding walls and railings. Of course an authentic effort would involve using the same kind of stones and techniques as the original Khmers did, but our tour guide pointed to early efforts to use concrete for restoration, which completely detract from the mystique of the temple.

Angkor Wat is fascinating. It is massive, beautiful, and really puts you back to the time of the Khmer civilization. The temple consists of everything imaginable: there are also small lakes inside the walls of the temple, and our tour group got a great photo in front of a mirror-reflection of the temple. Most people spend days in this one temple alone, but we are busy people so had to settle for less. A guidebook which I bought at Angkor Wat calls it “Architectural masterpiece in fine proportions and rich in detail; a completely realised microcosm of the Hindu universe”

Angkor Wat contains two small libraries as well as a ton of other buildings inside. Most of the carvings include traditional Aspara dancers (dancers to the gods), although the carvings have been slightly distorted by tourists’ oily hands . Most of the carvings are thus blocked off by a queuing barrier. One of the most elaborate carvings depicts the ancient Sanskrit story Ramayana.

Climbing some stairs, one gets a great view of the surrounding jungle and of where the King used to bathe in the temple. We then left Angkor Wat through a side entrance and proceeded to our final stop.

Ta Prohm is a temple built by Jayavarman VII as  Buddhist monastery and university in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Ta Prohm has been left in a very good condition within its jungle surroundings, which makes it one of the most popular attractions in Angkor. Our tour guide spent some time walking us through the architecture of the temple and drew out the unique style of the roofing of the buildings.

Ta Prohm is very large: so much so that our tour guide insisted that we follow him rather than going off on our own as we had for the other temples. It was once home to over 12,500 people (including 18 high priests and 615 dancers), plus 80,000 villagers nearby to provide services and supplies.

When the Khmer empire fell in the 15th century, Ta Prohm was abandoned and neglected. However, it was one of the temples which was left best merged with the jungle, and much work has since been done to stabilize the ruins, although this effort has been accelerated in 2010 and the temple is currently being extensively restored by the Indian government as part of a UN initiative. Unfortunately, wooden walkways and platforms ruin some of the previously famous postcard photo ops.

The trees going out of the Ta Prohm ruins are probably one of the most distinctive aspects of this temple and add to the eeriness and mystique of the ruins. But one of the reasons that Ta Prohm is so popular is because it was a prominent location in the film Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie, who has since adopted a Cambodian child and opened a restaurant called Red Piano near our hotel. Tomb Raider used scenes from various Angkor temples, but its scenes from Ta Prohm were faithful to the temple’s actual appearance and made use of its eerie qualities.

We had a short lunch break after checking out a Cambodian antiques shop. We had some Vietnamese food for lunch (our tour was organized by a Vietnamese company), and spent some time walking down the neighbouring streets of the tourism agency, but we gave up since it was too hot and decided to enjoy their free wifi instead.

After lunch was the highlight of our trip to Cambodia: Angkor Wat.

Our next stop was to visit a Hindu temple, whose name I’m pretty is Ta Keo. Our tour guide taught us that you can distinguish Buddhist and Hindu temples because Hindu temples always have five “mounts” arranged in a quincunx to symbolize Mount Meru: and the five mounts are arranged such that from any one side of the temple, you can see three at a time (to represent the Hindu gods Bhrama, Vishnu and Shiva).

Ta Keo was to be the state temple of Jayavarman V, and construction started on it in 975 AD. However, the temple remains unfinished, as construction stopped soon after the carvings were just begun. This may be because lightning struck the unfinished building (a bad omen), or perhaps simply because of the death of Jayavarman V.

This temple had three different levels and to ascend it, there are three options ranked by order of difficulty: Easy, Medium or Hard, based on how much you are willing to climb up stairs. We went up the medium path, but an elderly Japanese man in our tour group had difficulty making the ascent up the temple.

Once you make it to the top of the temple, you can climb out of the windows through a ledge and enter through a different window. I think Rick was kidding when he told me to climb out of the window, but I did so anyways and got some awesome photos in return.

Angkor Thom was our first stop and was the last capital of the Khmer Empire, established by King Jayavarman VII. The temple in the middle of Angkor Thom is called Bayon which started construction at around the year 1200. Jayavarman VII was a Buddhist and built his temple accordingly as a Mahayana Buddhist shrine. There are 216 giant faces carved on the temple’s towers (although the precise number is in dispute). After Jayavarman VII died however, Bayon had been through numerous alterations and additions. Jayavarman VIII converted the Khmer empire to Hinduism, so Bayan, the state temple of the kingdom, was accordingly modified.

During this modification, a Buddha statue was removed from the sanctuary at the heart of the central tower and was smashed to pieces and stored in the bottom of a well. The kingdom was re-converted to Buddhism however before the temple was eventually abandoned to the jungle. Following a restoration effort, the statue was recovered in 1933 and has been pieced back together.

Our tour guide told us such stories about the temple and then gave us most of an hour to explore the ruins on our own. The ruins are small enough such that we couldn’t possibly get lost, so me and Rick explored Bayon together. After we were about to leave, however, we got swarmed by children trying to sell us souvenirs, and ended up buying some out of pity.

Before leaving Angkor Thom, our tour guide showed us the ruins of one of the original gates of the city. The gate is now rumoured to be haunted by ghosts, so our tour guide warned us to make sure not to follow a ghost pretending to be himself. However, we were all able to leave Angkor Thom safely and were soon off to visit the next temple.

After crossing the Thailand-Cambodia border into the city of Poi Pet, one quickly notices that there are many casinos and hotels in the vicinity, which actually reminded me a little bit of Macau. After going through the ridiculously long lines at customs, we decided to exchange the remainder of our Thai Bhat as well as some US Dollars into Cambodian Real. This turned out to be a mistake, but more on that later.

Cambodia was my favourite part of this End-of-Term trip, and probably of this entire four-month trip. As a result this writeup is incredibly detailed and is thus split into several other pages.

Our hotel had arranged for a taxi to drive us to the hotel in the city of Siem Reap free of charge, and the trip took 2-3 hours. Cambodia was clearly less developed than Thailand: the roads are dirtier and less paved, and the average Cambodian has 1/4 the income of the average Thai. Of course, this means that our money goes extremely far in Cambodia: meals cost only a few dollars at extravagant restaurants, and our hotel room was incredible and helped us to setup tours, etc. The only problem with the hotel was is that the nearby roads are unpaved.

Introduction
All of Siem Reap seems extremely touristy and we met a ton of English-speakers as a result. Cambodia also appears to draw in a lot of tourists from Korea and Japan too, so some of the locals working in tourism speak these languages as well: when we got to the hotel someone tried to speak to Rick in Japanese, so I ended up chatting with a Cambodian and a Japanese tourist in Japanese for a bit. 4000 Cambodian Real are worth US$1, but nobody in Cambodia quotes prices in Real: everyone prefers USD and is surprised when we ask to pay in Real instead. As a result, we actually had some trouble trying to spend all of the Real that we converted at the border.

Our first night in Cambodia, we walked to the “main” part of Siem Reap which was full of restaurants and markets that catered to foreigners. It’s a little frightening to walk out at night because there are no lights, the streets near the hotel are unpaved, and there are some wild dogs. But our hotel is right next to dozens of internet cafes, restaurants, and the famous Siem Reap night market. And I dont know what any of it is, but Cambodian food is delicious. I also had a fish-foot massage where fish eat the dead skin off your feet to refresh them: but unfortunately my feet are ridiculously ticklish so the experience was more torturous than refreshing.

The next day, we got picked up early morning for a tour of some of the ancient temples and ruins that make Siem Reap famous. The tour was something which I had pre-paid for and was actually significantly higher than the one that the hotel offered, but at least we got an air-conditioned bus instead of a tuktuk and got to meet some other tourists from the Philippines, Korea and Japan. The tour was to make 5 stops (not including a few minor stops). I’ll outline them all here one by one, but first, an introduction to the ruins.

About Ancient Angkor
“Angkor” is derived from the Sanskrit word meaning “city”, and refers to the region of Cambodia that served as the home and capital of the Khmer Empire ever since AD802 when the Khmer Hindu monarch Jayavarman II declared himself to a be a “universal monarch”, up until 1431 when the Ayutthaya Kingdom (from Thailand) overthrew the Khmers and forced them to flee to Phnom Penh (currently the capital of Cambodia).

Cambodia has been through many foreign sieges (notably Thailand/Siam: in fact Siem Reap literally means “the defeat of Siam”) which nearly destroyed many of the temples and is still recovering from the horrendous rein of dictator Pol Pot. Although Pol Pot didn’t destroy the temples, his failure to maintain them means that the UN is now working with many national governments (notably Japan and India) to restore many of them. Pol Pot died recently (in 1998) and as such it was only recently that many of the locations that we visited had actually become safe to visit: our tour guide showed us sites in Angkor Thom which were riddled with landmines not too long ago. Pol Pot was eventually vanquished with assistance from neighbouring Vietnam, but many Cambodians see the Vietnamese effort as being more “liberating” than as an “invasion”.

Our tour of the ruins was rather extensive and there’s a ton to write about, so I’ll include it in a separate post.