Number Three: Biking Through the Ruins

Xin Chào, Xin Chào,

Actually, such a greeting is somewhat ironic as this post is about the one time since I’ve been out of the U.S. that Vietnamese was not at all useful to me!

We've come to the third item on the list of things done/seen/learned since December:
3. Biked Through the Angkor War Ruins--- enjoy:

While for all official state business Vietnam follows the Gregorian calendar, the lunar calendar, as also followed in China, is extremely important in the social and cultural lives of the people of Vietnam. Therefore, the lunar, or Chinese, New Year is much more widely celebrated than the January 1st turn of the year. In the weeks leading up to the New Year, I probably said and heard chúc mừng năm mới (happy new year!) over 200 times and heard Abba’s “Happy New Year” played even more. [As a side note, Abba is spectacularly popular over here in Vietnam—not a karaoke night goes by without at least one Abba song being played and at one point when I was being filmed by the Thanh Hoa television for a game show—that’s a whole other story--- I had to sing “Dancing Queen” in the middle of the very busy campus at the top of my lungs--- oh, memories.] The new year, called “Tết,” is a time devoted to celebrating the arrival of spring with family and there are many traditions associated with the holiday such as preparing special foods, praying to the ancestors, cleaning one’s home, giving “lucky money” in small red envelopes to children, among other things. Additionally, everyone in Vietnam considers themselves a year older on the day of Tet. Interestingly enough, my birthday, February 14, happened to be New Year’s Day this year, so I suppose I just got a double-whammy of aging. I was particularly excited for Tet over here because with it came my first official break from teaching since I arrived in Vietnam. For the week prior to, and the week after Tet, schools are closed in Vietnam, and I was free to get some much needed traveling done! When I arrived in Vietnam in August, I was told that everything closes down for the holiday, so if I was going to take some time out of the country (we were allotted 10 days total out of Vietnam during the course of our grants) the Tet break would be the time to do it since finding food and lodging might be dodgy during the few days surrounding Tet itself and I decided to take the advice and head down to Cambodia.
Again, I found myself really lucky to have a visitor over here when Tyler flew in the day after I began my break from school. Learning from my mom’s luggage troubles, Tyler arrived with only carry-on baggage (all accounted for) and despite having the slight hiccup of accidentally entering China without a visa for a short time (don’t ask me how he did it…) he, too, looked pretty great for having just spent 48 hours traveling. After a couple of days in Hanoi, and 3 phenomenal days on Phu Quoc Island in the south of Vietnam staying at a place called “Freedomland,” where we met incredible people, ate the best food I’ve had in years, played lots of cards, took cold showers, and killed some of the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen, we began our journey to Cambodia.
The bus ride to Cambodia from Ho Chi Minh City could be a post in and of itself, but I’ll try to keep it short because my work day started at 7am today and finished at 7 pm, and I’m quickly fading! We bought tickets on a bus service called Mai Linh in advance and were on our way in a comfortable, air conditioned bus at 6:30am on the day we had scheduled. Our trip through customs in Cambodia was remarkably easy (and resulted in a gorgeous Cambodian visa sticker in our passport books) and we felt as though we were in great shape for the rest of the trip through Cambodia and into Siem Reap…. And then we arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. There, we had a scheduled change of bus, and so we arrived at the bus station, loaded our things off of our bus, and waited for the loading time of the 2nd bus. As we waited and ate some bread and cheese that we had brought with us to eat for lunch, Tyler and I talked about how easy the bus ride had been, and how we had really lucked out…. But then it came time to get on the 2nd bus. Our seats were located at the very back of a completely full bus whose air conditioner had probably died sometime in the late ‘90s. Because we were in the back, there was no overhead space for our luggage, so we had to put our feet on top of our bags, which actually turned out to be a blessing because we were located on top of the engine which eventually got so hot as to partially melt the bottoms of our Chacos. The traffic was also horrible and it took about an hour just to get out of Phnom Penh, by which time we had run out of water and sweated everything we had to drink that day out. And so began the 7 hour trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap…
After awhile, we were able to find the humor in our ridiculous situation and took to finding unique ways to try and get comfortable while also enjoying the beautiful Cambodian countryside through which we were traveling. Our real triumph of the day, however, came at one of the “rest stops” when we were trying to find something to drink, but felt a little nervous about the water bottles being sold that had clearly been used and then had their tops glued back on… we began digging through the coolers set up in the stop area and came across a strange black can labeled as “Black Panther.” Intrigued, we looked at the can a little more closely and realized that Black Panther was a Cambodian extra stout beer, which we decided we had to try for hilarity’s sake. As it turned out, Black Panther tasted like chocolate milk--- absolutely phenomenal! --and we looked for it everywhere we went in Cambodia from then on! Around 8:30 that night when we were just about at our wit’s end, we finally arrived in Siem Reap and were picked up in a “tuk-tuk” (a motorbike-drawn carriage of sorts) by our hotel. After a delicious dinner in town, we went to bed excited to see the ruins the next morning.
After a great breakfast the next morning, we rented bicycles for $1 each and started biking toward the ruins. Both of our bikes—zero gear cruiser style bikes, mind you—looked as though they were about 24 years old and had seats way too low for our tall American builds—but we were excited to be on them! We had looked at a guidebook for suggestions of places to see in the ruins, and a few key spots stood out, including, obviously, Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and then this place called Banteay Srei, located a little ways (I thought) away from the other ruins and we set off in search of Banteay Srei. I, unfortunately, had misread the map and thought that the trip would be about 37km roundtrip, which was a good deal of biking, but not too much. In reality, the map said that Banteay Srei 37km one way from Angkor Wat (which was another 10km or so from Siem Reap, where we were staying)... so yes, we biked a total of 94km (roughly 60 miles) through the scorching Cambodian heat on cruiser bikes not well suited for a 2 mile bike around the neighborhood in one day… whoops! The biking was absolutely exhausting, physically, mentally, and yes, at times, emotionally, but we survived and didn’t kill each other, and if I do say so myself, seeing Banteay Srei was well worth bonking 12 miles from home (luckily we found some fruit and an oatmeal cookie we had brought with us at that moment).
All of the ruins, really, were positively breathtaking—so much so, that I am really finding it hard to write about them. For three days, Tyler and I biked through these architectural masterpieces and usually found ourselves speechless standing at the foot of the statues, temples, and staircases to the ancient hallways, all of which were adorned with the most intricate and exquisite stonework that one could possibly imagine. I hope you will take a look at some of the pictures we took at and in the ruins on facebook for a better idea of what I’m talking about---here’s the stable link—you don’t need a facebook account to access these-- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037655&id=44701566&l=39a89097b1
While our rear ends ached from our first day’s mistakes (Tyler had to lift me off of my bike at points), we pedaled through the pain and along some wonderful wooded trails to see the big and small remnants (all spectacular) of the ancient Khmer kingdom and felt as though we could have spent days more exploring without even seeing all that Angkor has to offer.
In addition to enjoying the ruins themselves, we also really loved spending time in the town of Siem Reap. Outrageously touristy and western-oriented, Siem Reap still retained an intrinsic charm that, combined with phenomenal food and a fun-loving atmosphere of different restaurants located on the streets, made it a wonderful place to spend a vacation. (So... if you’re keeping up, you’ve got Sapa and Siem Reap on your SE Asia “places to go” list). We also celebrated my 23rd birthday while in Siem Reap--- seeing the Angkor Wat temples themselves was just about the best birthday present a girl could ask for—and I really enjoyed the time away from lesson planning and 10-12 hour work days that are a part of life in here in Vietnam. After three full, and wonderful, days in Cambodia, we hopped back on the bus (thankfully air conditioned the entire way this time) back “home” to Vietnam….. and here I am still!

Well, that’s all for now—I’m off to bed (way past my bedtime!) Tomorrow, I’ll write about the joys of (singing at) Vietnamese weddings—because yes, it has been done roughly 12-13 times….

Lots of love to you all,

Hayley