siem reap, cambodia, march 12-14

The bus ride to Siem Reap took a relatively easy six hours. We arrived at our very beautiful guesthouse with its small cabins set amongst a tropical garden well rested and ready to start our visit. Our first trip was to the Artisans D'Angkor Silk Farm about 30 minutes by tuk-tuk from the center of town. We heard rave reviews and so were incredibly excited to go-- we weren't disappointed. Artisans is an organization dedicated to training young people in traditional Khmer crafts while creating a sustainable and fair work environment including a living wage and medical coverage. One of their workshops is a silk farm and loom weaving project. They walk you through the process of raising and feeding silk worms, obtaining raw and fine silk threads (400 meters from each cocoon!!!), using natural dyes, and then weaving. It can take more than 24 hours for a handloom artist to weave a meter of silk cloth. The textures and colors were spectacular. If you are ever in Siem Reap, it is definitely worth the visit.

Like ın Phnom Penh we ate famously. The Foreign Correspondents Club, the Blue Pumpkin, Le Borann-- all served up tasty dıshes from tofu salads and fresh spring rolls to lobster pumpkin soup and fısh amok. We delighted in the tastes even though we could barely beat the heat even in the darkness of night. At almost every meal in Siem Reap we cooled ourselves with magnificently chilled coconuts which seemed bottomless. They were so sweet we almost wondered if sugar was added.

We spent our first full day in town at the famous temples of Angkor - Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. Anticipating the mid-day break from the scorching sun and hoping to catch the sunrise we started our day very early. Though there are dozens of beautiful temples, in various states of preservation, spread over more than 60 km, we only had a chance to visit a few. Built at the height of the Khmer empire about 1000 years ago, the massive temples are dedicated to Hindu gods and later to Buddha. The intricate bas-reliefs at Angkor Wat extend for hundreds of meters and depict stories from the Hindu epic The Ramayana. The central temple pyramids represent the mythical mountain home of the gods and tower high above with views of the surrounding forest. Perhaps one of our favorite temples was Ta Prohm where the forest and the temple have melded together with massive tree trunks and temple walls coexisting almost without borders. Of all of the carvings, the most interesting were those depicting daily life - from war to alcoholism and gambling to eating at restaurants to playing chess to getting eaten by tigers.

Barely hidden behind the veneer of the grand beauty of Angkor, the devastation of Cambodia continues to be prominent ın Siem Reap. Sadly, even Angkor has not spread its current prosperity to the Cambodian people. Due to loans and corruption in the government, a foreign oıl company basically owns the lease to the temples and only 10% of the proceeds goes to temple preservation. The rest makes into oil company and ministers' pockets.

Even sadder still is the legacy of almost a half century of war - landmines. Though it is estimated that 3 million landmines have already been cleared, more than six million remain. Planted by the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, and the Americans the mines lurk in rice fields and villages throughout the country. We visited the small Siem Reap Landmine Museum. It was founded by Aki Ra, a man who as a 5 year old boy had his entire family murdered before being abducted and (like many children at the time) trained to become a killing machine for the Khmer Rouge. The museum is a collection of small wooden huts off a pothole-ridden dirt road where he and his family live. Covering the walls of the huts are articles, manuals, pictures, and a wealth of other information about landmines. Hundreds and hundreds of deactivated mines and unexploded munitions lay piled on the ground. Ra and a cadre of former soldiers and villagers have tried to start the process of removing some of the very mines they placed years ago.

The reality of the violence of landmines hit hardest in the stories of the children living at his home. He and his wife have adopted more than 30 children, most of whom have survived landmine blasts, often losing their families and limbs in the process. The fact that mines continue to be created and planted throughout the world makes me less hopeful about the future. But Aki Ra and hıs family's dedication add a little light to that bleakness.