Sunday Sunday.. a protected space in a busy life ..
Listened to the inspiring words of Helen Steven on BBC Scotland’s “Sunday morning with….” (not yet available on iplayer!)
An icy Sunday morning walk up Dumyat, ‘Stirling’s Hill’, into the face of a low winter sun. ( http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fife-stirling/dumyat.shtml ) ..
Looking down the Forth Valley
Looking across Stirling to the Gargunnock Hills
.. then off to Solsgirth House where Anna and Euan are to be married in July…
A beautiful Scottish winter’s day and we took the chance to go down to Culzean where we scattered Ara’s (Joan’s Mum) seven years ago and Bill’s (Joan’s Dad) ashes fifteen years ago.
Photos follow below.
This bench by the walled garden is named in their honour.
Swan Pond… lots of families getting their kids out for a spell of winter sunshine…. and not a few dogs too!
The beach at Culzean looking to Ailsa Craig and to Arran… stunning views. Peaceful. The calming sound of the sea.
At the Bench (photo by Tatora!)
Tatora and Beth take possession….
Joan and I had fabulous bracing walk from Seamill to Hunterston, with a cold East Wind swirling the windturbines on the hills behind West Kilbride and some fabulous views of Arran, which had so much trouble last week with heavy snow disrupting electricity supplies. On the way we sorted out a few things, drank some fab homemade soup to warm us up and rediscovered Portencross Castle, now renovated and open for visitors after local volunteer work (see Portencross Castle ).
Arran from Seam
Arran from Portencross
Cold rain has mushed the snow into slush but how clean the salt air, quickening the step along the strand.
Gullane bay panorama
Looking to Edinburgh from the 7th tee, Gullane Golf Course
A long weekend in Gullane (pronounced Gillan by locals until quite recently), but in January snow. We had some great walks by the sea, Gullane to Aberlady Nature Reserve, then North Berwick to Gullane. Both walks from East to West along the shore, chased by 30-40mph sub-zero wind and snow……
Surfers Gullane Bay
Bass Rock surf
Fidra across the rocks
Gullane Bay in the snow
London eye frames Big Ben from south end of Waterloo Bridge
Busy weekend in London.
I’m sitting on the delayed 12 noon service to Inverness, along with passengers from three other cancelled trains, as we make our way to Lincoln to avoid the damaged rail north of Newark (I’m all in favour of avoiding damaged rails, even if does delay my return to Stirling!).
Managed to hit lots of London experiences (including a severe hit on the wallet – a musical show (Singing In the Rain -don’t bother!), theatre (Hedda Gabbler – great staging, great acting), sport (Djokovic vs del Potro), foodie fun with friends (Tim’s suggestion of the Tokyo Diner Lisle Street – go if you ever get the chance), catching up with Beth, Matthew and friends in their Canonbury and Turnpike Lane flats, meeting up with an educational colleague in IofE and comparing the Scottish and English educational trajectories, sitting on buses without moving, dazzled by the Saturday evening view, east and west, from Waterloo Bridge, gawping at the platform announcement board of King’s Cross, then running to board the train and secure a seat.
View from the bridge
Back two weeks now from our fantastic holiday in the South of France, finishing up with a week on a barge (moored) facing the walls of the mediaeval city of Aigues-Mortes on the Western edge of the Camargue. During that week we had rain, wild wind, searing sun and many flamingos. The cultural highlight was the ‘pelerinage’ (pilgrimage) of the ‘les gens qui voyagent’ (travelling people) in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. I can’t begin to describe the sounds and the colours.. so there’s a few photos below. Highlight for me was sitting on the roof of the fortified Norman church which dominates the small town, listening to the priest (the service was broadcast on loudspeakers) and enjoying the thong and bustle above and below.. then after a chaotic procession that somehow worked (no health and safety police!), we joined the crowds taking the statue of the patron saint Saint Sarah into the water (you can read more about the festival with the link above). After our return, all the work of May plus some from June has been squeezed into these first three weeks back, so it’s been a bit more manic than I have become use to of late. Not complaining.
The church
Crowds gathering in the morning
Photo time after taking St Sarah to the water!
View of the tower at Aigues-Mortes from the barge
French language students taking time off from the course in Nice
In the middle of a fabulous French holiday – and just got back onto the internet after a break of a week and a half – privation!
During the first week we were in Nice and staying at the home of a lovely French couple while brushing up our French language at Ecole Azurlingua. Socially very interesting to see ‘school’ from the other side. Teaching was strong but we were really just visitors – only there for one week, some of the students are on a six month course, including, for example, two Iraqui professors in our class, who are among 1000 Iraqui University teachers being sponsored to learn another language abroad. During the course of a week we ‘revised’ the past historic, conditional and subjunctive (what I could have told you about these before would barely have filled the back of the proverbial envelope).
Nice must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world – the sun, the old city, the port, the mountains behind the city and the ‘Bay of Angels’ in front with that azure sea – a photo would never do it justice but ……
Every sense is stimulated here by the sun (it rained on our first day and not once since, the smells of lavender / garlic / parsley / fresh vegetables from the market, the colours and the fluid musical French language. A familiar gospel in the Cathedral de Sainte Reparate, Old Nice, took on a new meaning, the Musee Chagall blew colour deep into my grey brain.
Chagall stained glass
It looks like it will be a holiday of painters. We are now in Aix-en-Provence. It is a self-consciously beautiful 2000+ year old city (much loved by Julius Caesar, who was supported by Aix in his struggles with Pompey) which is now one of the most Conservative – and richest – in France. That’s reflected in the prices in the trendy little boutiques which line the old town streets but also in the prices in the supermarché where the plebeians of the modern age seek their bargains. It’s also reflected in the voting patterns – a higher percentage of Aixeois (>60%) voted for Sarkosy, in the recent run-off for President, than in any other large French town. Aix’s most famous son is Paul Cézanne. We visited his workshop just out of town then walked up to the summit to the North of the city from which he painted and repainted Mont St Victoire, its limestone bulk dominating the surrounding plain.
Mont St Victoire
After this, we’ll be visiting Arles, where Vincent and Gaugin shared a house, where Vincent cut off his ear and where the sun and light inspired him to some of his most wonderful art. In the meantime, we visited the Musee Granet today. It hosts a marvellous collection of French art from the XVth century onwards – some fantastic pieces, including a few 20th Century works.. and as you probably guessed a few Cezanne works as well.
Just to keep the cultural theme going, and since I am trying to (re)learn French while only a short distance from Aubagne, I have bought copies of two novels of Marcel Pagnol, with their beautiful descriptions of the area and its people, bringing to life his tale of self-interest, treachery and revenge: Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. I am on page 36 of Jean de Florette and the dictionary is well thumbed: loads of subjunctives and past historics.
Just to complete the cultural theme, this evening Joan and I attended a local cinema to watch a performance, streamed live from the Opera Bastille in Paris, of a balletic performance of Berlioz’ ‘Romeo et Juliet’. It was quite something.
Our landlady has only recently bought this apartment which overlooks one of the squares of old Aix, with a morning market and evening night club (loud bass to help you get to sleep), where we are her first guests. She is tremendously solicitous and has offered to take us on a tour of the rural area on Thursday, her day off. Tomorrow it’s Marseilles, a city founded by the Phoenicians around 500+ BC.
I am drenched with olive oil and wine. I guess this is what people call a holiday.
Off early tomorrow to Nice, then Aix-en-Provence, then Aigues-Mortes. Three weeks in May. After a lifetime of school holiday holidays, it doesn’t feel right just now. Surely it will once we’re there! Might post a photo or may just chill.
The purpose of the visit was to catch up with Beth and Matthew, after Joan had already been in the London area for work. It was great to see them both doing well. We also spent a fair bit of time in the company of our good friend Tim, who is still really enjoying his studies in English Literature.
Like Dublin and Edinburgh, London is largely a capital city built on Empire, but so much bigger, so much grander. Every street brings new excitement – architectural, sociological, economic, political. Sometimes even artistic, as we did cram a year’s worth of cultural activity in a weekend:
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition at the Natural History Museum: what a treat. Some stunning photos if you follow the link. My favourite below:
Musk Ox charging
The sublime Mozart and his ‘Marriage of Figaro’ at Covent Garden – great fun, but only for an occasional visit! What a fantastic overture – it really gets the juices going:
A cold Sunday afternoon walk round the famous cemetery at Highgate, crammed with many dead who still live. What an irony that Marx in death should lie opposite Herbert Spencer, the man who applied Darwin’s ideas of evolution to society (social darwinism): a crude summary would be that ‘it’s natural that the fittest survive and get wealthier, while the incompetent go to the wall: it’s simply nature’s way of ensuring that the human race continues to thrive.’ Having said that, Marx is surrounded by some fine Communists of the recent past, such as Claudia Jones and Yusof Dadoo, so he may not be too uncomfortable with some of his neighbours.
Karl Marx
The quotation in gold letters at the bottom of the monument comes from Marx’s 1845 Theses against Feuerbach, an early indication that he was turning his back on intellectual activity which did not attempt to change the world for the better. I found much of Marx’s later writing, in particular Das Kapital, difficult, irrelevant and wrong, but some of the earlier work (such as these Theses, not published at the time) and his journalism (in particular his fantastic accounts of the 1848 revolutions and the Paris Commune) is among the best political writing of the 19th Century.
We also saw George Clooney acting his socks off in ‘The Descendants’, heard Indonesian Gamelan as it should be played at the Union Chapel, Upper Street, visited the ancient history collections of the British Museum and in between times had some great meals and chat. Just going around the city is exciting in itself: always interesting everyday encounters on the London bus, with the tone and plurality of our complex world.
On the train back up, I enjoyed reading an old colleague’s affectionate memoir of growing up in 1940s / 1950s Glasgow, Pies Were for Thursdays. It’s not overly sentimental and, since it is set in Glasgow, it is often very amusing.
One of the classes in 1976!!
Regular readers will remember that last April I went back to Malaysia to visit the many old friends we have out there(see the holiday of a lifetime and Malaysia No More ). Fuziana told us ‘Malaysia is your second home’. While there, I decided to revisit my old school and to see if I would run into any of my former school pupils or teachers. I should have been better organised. After a fruitless wander to a couple of addresses with no-one home, I had a phone call with one former student and then managed to locate another (Sudin b Ismail) on our way to Kuala Terengganu to stay with our teacher friends there. While it was great to meet up with Sudin, I regretted that I had not been better organised earlier in my ‘search’. An earlier Facebook search might have helped. However I later made contact with Nik Kamisah through Facebook.
It turns out there was a TMS reunion this week, after which Nik Kamisah sent out the link to my Facebook page ( Danny Murphy ) and lots of my former students from the mid70s are now my Facebook friends! I can’t understand even a tenth of the chat in the ‘ex TMS’ Facebook group (I am now a member), but it’s great to reconnect after so many years. It’s also a remarkable tribute both to the power of Facebook and the power of VSO!! No doubt there are many more photos like the one above taking up shelf space somewhere on the East Coast of Malaysia!
Here’s the story of the reunion in the Malaysian press:
Tengku Mahmood Reunion
Just back from a great weekend in Dublin with Joan.. first time we’ve been there together since our honeymoon in 19xx. Great weekend – music and dancing at the Temple Bar Tradfest, two interesting walking tours (literary and historical), a number of pubs (!), the fantastic Trinity College library long room and the National Museum. It was particularly interesting to re-engage with the story of Ireland – I don’t remember being so impressed first time round with the architectural heritage of Empire which is all around Dublin, as it is Edinburgh (and of course London!). The complex story of Ireland’s relationship with Britain and its fight for its independence is particularly relevant at a time when this has become the major political issue in Scotland. Its very different political and religious make-up has kept Scotland on a much more unionist path for much longer, yet there are similar issues at play.
Highlights of the visit – meeting up with Bernard in his natural environment at TCD, his personal tour of the stunning Library and Book of Kells and the fantastic Bronze, Iron and Middle Age collections of the National Museum, including the Faddan More Psalter. I had not appreciated how rich early mediaeval Ireland was, nor how many English people (craftsmen, merchants, farmers – not just nobles and soldiers) settled in the South East after the initial Norman conquest of the 12th Century, nor how skilled the metalwork, particularly the early Bronze Age gold lunulae. Fascinating and beautiful in equal measure.
Holding hands with Wolfe Tone in St Stephen's Green
The stunning Tara Brooch in the National Museum
Bronze Age golden unulae
I was particularly taken by this carved stone head from County Cavan (1st Century AD):
I also really surprised myself by enjoying a couple of hours of performances from young people at the Irish Dancing open air stage in Temple Bar:
What a contrast to when we were first there over 30 years ago when the word ‘tourism’ was apparently not yet in use in Ireland and we struggled, on arrival in the Central Hotel late on a Saturday evening, to find anywhere open for food or drink and ended up with a room service white bread sandwich!
This post should have gone up some time ago….
Here are some of the highlights:
Joan, Adam and Lisa in Witney
Regent Canal in the sun
St Pancras Lock
Sunday Newspapers – 3% worthwhile political / social comment, 97% evanescent features
Stardate 21.4.11. Our starship Enterprise (a rather clapped out but very serviceable Proton Wira) sits on the third floor of a nine storey car park, resting after the long journey down the East Coast. It’s early morning. I’m sitting in our hotel room on the 15th floor right in the heart of downtown Johor Bahru, looking out of a quarter circle window at high rise jostling with old shophouse streets, the Sultan’s palace, the Johor straits with Singapore island stretching away to the West, JB’s white elephant central station towering over the old colonial railway frontage. I still can’t really make sense of all that is going on in my brain. Analysis is well beyond my current level of competence. I’m just recording the experience. It’s been very hard to describe to Malaysian friends just how different, and how much poorer, Cambodia is. A lot of that seems to come down to public social and physical infrastructure: roads, education, health – even in the 1970s these were much more securely provided and structured than they are currently in Cambodia, with its dark destructive history. There is so much that could be quite similar..the wooden kampong housing – for example my friend Sudin’s house, which he inherited from his grandmother; the occasional cyclist heading the wrong way or family of four on a bike; the palm trees swaying above padi fields; the steamy blanket of wet heat that wrings sweat from every pore. Yet there’s so much that is different – so far I have not seen a single Lexus in Malaysia. That’s about the most significant observation I can make. It hints at so many layers of meaning regarding the peculiar hothouse culture of Phonm Penh and the way in which Cambodia is being developed, but it’s too difficult for me to draw a clear picture right now.
After visiting Sudin, we left Besut and ambled down the road to Kuala Terengganu, now a sprawling modern city, but with a nice laid back style, and many of the features I remember from the past, not least the warm generous hospitality of Spike and Khadijah in their family home, designed and built in the mid70s, but not dated. I remember the house when they built it, as the road wound its way out of town amid bright green padi fields; now they are surrounded by a mixture of wooden kampong houses and new shops, mosques and schools, not a field in sight! We sampled some of Khadijah’s beautiful cooking, ate roti canai and nasi dagang for breakfast; we lunched at a Malaysian lunch buffet stall with around 30 different dishes to accompany our rice, each dish more delicious than the last, for 5 Ringgit (£1) or so each; we walked along the beach, watching hundreds of young Malay families enjoy the twilight time after work, flying kites, playing in the sand, daring the crashing waves to wet their toes; we inspected Spike’s orchid collection, lovingly tended each day to ensure that there are always blooms outside the front door; we went down to the riverfront early morning, where Spike meets up with a small group who go through their slow morning Chi Kong stretches to the instructions of a gruff Chinese CD voice, echoed by the gruff diesel engines of the little fishing boats landing their catches from the night before at the jetty upstream, while the morning sun glints on the wide River Terengganu; we took a tour of Khadijah’s workshop where her ‘workers’ handstitch the placemats, bags and boxes which she sells round the world, chatting and laughing the whole time – they come back to work in the evening, as late as 11 or 12, to fill the order and to enjoy each other’s company. It was great to see them again in their home after all these years. I remember my first visit to their older wooden house, right in the heart of old KT next to the mosque, listening to the call to prayer early morning. The old mosque is still there, but all the houses were shifted to make way for new higher cost developments many years ago. KT has certainly ‘developed’ but it has kept some of its character in the process. With its big lazy river, its steeply shelving sandy front with views to Redang and Kapas and its laid back family ways of life, it could hardly be otherwise.
.. in front of the orchids!
I was anything but laid back on the drive down to Mersing however, particularly the section north of Kuantan. I had been really looking forward to that part of the journey.. my memory was of sitting on buses looking out at the South China sea as it lapped against the pure white sands of the East Coast. There was a little bit of that, as Joan slept in the reclining front seat beside me, but it seemed there was a good deal more of obscured views and of traffic lights. Terengganu seems obsessed with traffic lights, lights at every junction, lights which run on a four-way cycle, so that you have a 75% chance of hitting red, or, in my case so it seemed, an almost 100% chance of hitting red. By the time we got to Kemaman, the heavy oil industry plant which has brought prosperity to the Terengganu and Malaysia was very much in evidence, while 8 or 10 large tankers sat well offshore, waiting to fill up with their expensive cargo. The journey through Pahang down to Mersing was as featureless as I remember it, mile after mile of oil palm plantations, but Mersing proved to be an interesting bustling little town, getting on with business and not showing much interest as might be expected in the (mainly Singaporean) tourists who pass through on their way to the beautiful collection of islands offshore.
All along we had thought we might go to an East Coast island, but the seas north of Kuala Terengganu were still quite fierce, while I was not looking forward to seeing how the deserted islands I had know in the mid70s had become the tourist honeypots of the 2000s. Once in Mersing, we decided, despite the wet weather, to head for Pulau Besar, partly because of the internet description, partly because of the Mirage resort, partly because of time (it is a 20 minute speedboat crossing). We took off our watches when we arrived and it might have been days rather than hours that we spent there. It gives a very good imitation of an island paradise, with its gentle tides, its clear water, its teeming underwater life (including some evil looking sea urchins that we steered our way round when snorkelling), its swaying coconut palms but, unfortunately, its mosquitoes and its sandflies! I am currently covered in a rash of horrible little highly itchy spots which are, I fear, the result of the sand flies’ depredations while I innocently sheltered from the hot sun under the shade of the casuarinas trees that line the beach.
Pulau Besar pier
All too soon we were back on the mainland and on to our penultimate destination of Johor Bahru, where Joan spent two years working in the mid70s, when I was in Besut. We have met: Jin Foo, as enthusiastic and positive as ever; some of Joan’s former students and friends still working at the Jaro workshop; Tai Meng and his nephew, Shen Juin, who took us for lunch to a very unique establishment, a Chinese vegetarian restaurant. We also followed a trail to find Hamzah, another friend of Joan’s from those days, who she had lost touch with quite recently. We traced him to flats well out in the sprawling outskirts of the city and left a message with a neighbour. Since Hamzah and his wife are both deaf, we were not sure that they would get back to us, but around 6.30 a text came in asking if we could go out to meet them at their house, so we boarded a taxi and within half an hour were back at their house. After lots of laughs and reminiscences and some imperfect signing, an exchange of accurate phone numbers and addresses and an exchange of gifts, we headed out to an upmarket eatery, really just the old fashioned stalls round some central seating, but gentrified and with prices to match. Of course they would not hear of us paying at all. I swear we could have done this entire journey without spending a penny if we had stayed with our friends every night, as they wanted – it is a mark of pride in Malaysia not to let your guests pay for anything, as we found out, despite our best efforts to get to the till first! All you can do is persuade them that if they come to Scotland, their generous hospitality will be returned. Unfortunately my camera began to act up at this point, so no more photos just now.. I may post again after we get back and dowload J’s photos.
Tomorrow we head north to KL airport and then from there, early Saturday morning, we fly via Stansted to Edinburgh, arriving late Saturday evening as the day travels ahead of us. I’m not sure what I’ll make of life in Stirling…. but I have some more thinking to do, to put the Cambodian experience into its proper perspective.
Update KL International Airport, 8.00am, Sat 23rd. Sitting enjoying a coffee while Joan is anxious we might miss the flight! Last night at Port Dickson. Joan phoned Ana to say ‘bye’ and ended up in tears when Ana said ‘Malaysia is your second home.’ I’ve not been back for 35 years but I also felt that… it is a special place to us and it’s been great to come back and visit so many great friends of our life. Now I feel I have a third home in Cambodia.
Phnom Penh no more, Cambodia no more, KL no more Malaysia no more…. I can feel a song coming on.
So many things have happened this last two weeks that I have difficulty processing them, so what follows is just a bit of narrative. I said to Joan when we met at KL Airport that this would be the ‘holiday of a lifetime’ and so far it has more than lived up to that billing. Here are some of the higlights so far:
Fuziana and Joan.....still great friends after all these years...
Getting to know Fuziana and Ayub again after many years and meeting two of their lovely daughters, Fazlinah and Naziah (the third one, Azimah, is studying in Medan). Fuziana’s generosity was overwhelming, despite her poor health, and the food she prepared at home for us was second to none, especially the Nasi Lemak for breakfast!
Nasi Daun Pisang
roti canai
Wot.. no driver?
Yeng Keng
Is that a birthday cake.. why so few candles lah??
Central Teaching Block Tengku Mahmud School
Footprints in the sand, Ayer Tawar, Besut
Sudin bin Ismail and some of his large family
Kopi Tarikh
The next challenge is to drive down the 200 miles of East Coast soft sandy beach and turquoise seas between Besut and Kuantan, stopping off to stay with my friend Razali in Kuala Terengganu, wondering if we could ever get fed up with waking to a blue sun-kissed sky, eating nasi lemak and roti canai, drinking cendol and air batu campur or eating fruits such as mango, rambutan, watermelon and papaya in season.
… by the way, this is all my own work and VSO has no responsibility at all (see disclaimer above) …
This has been the most difficult post to write to date and it’s a lengthy one so put on your speed-reading glasses! Across the holiday the five of us took well over 2000 photos, most of them in the temples of Angkor. Here is a text summary with some taster photos. For those who want a further vicarious taste of the fantastic experience we have had touring this beautiful and interesting country, you’ll have to ask Joan round for a meal and she can bring the CD!
From Kampong Cham we headed to Siem Reap. Joan did not really recover fully from her tummy problems but was well enough to move around and enjoy her days, if not always the food. Our first excursion was to a lakeside stilted village, Kampong Pluk: over 2500 people live here making their living from fishing, and, increasingly, tourism as the houses are on stilts some 14 or more metres high to take account of the dramatic change in levels of the Sap Lake during wet and dry season. Our visit was about a month after the end of the wet season and the waters will go down still further before it starts again in May/June.
Houses Kampong Pluk
The next day, we headed from our comfortable guest house up to the World Heritage site at Angkor. We took what is called the ‘short tour’ on the first day. This involves a visit to the square walled city of Angkor Thom, built by the Khmer Emperor Jayavarman VII in the late 12th Century. It is massive in scale, with each wall of the square being 3km in length, with a central entrance gate approached over the surrounding moat. At the exact centre is the Bayon Temple, while other, older temples and historic buildings also remain. Most of the city, built of wood, has perished.
North Gate Angkor Thom
One of the most striking features of Angkor Thom is the face of Avalokitesvara ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayon ). Over 200 large stone faces look on from the towers of the Bayon temple. They can also be found at the gates into the walled city. These enigmatic faces catch the light at all times of day. Some scholars believe that Jayavarman VII had his stone carvers model the face from his own. Whatever, he certainly seemed to have absolute power, based on the military conquests which are detailed on the remarkeable Bayon stone friezes, running for hundreds of metres around the lower courtyards.
Avalokitesvara/Jayavarman VII on tower of Bayon Temple
The face of Avalokitesvara, North Gate, Angkor Thom
This was a stunning start to the tour and was already enough to justify the visit. However there was much more to come. Next visit was to Ta Phrom, the ‘Tomb Raider’ temple which sits just outside Angkor Thom.
Tree, Stone and Tourists, Ta Phrom Temple
It was a spectacular, if very busy, visit. It was now midday and we sheltered from the hot sun for a few minutes under the trees surrounding Sra Sang, the ‘bathing pool for the Emperor and his courtesans’ (about 800m x 400m!). Energies restored, we headed for Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religous site. AW was built by one of J VII’s Hindu predecessors, Suryavarman II, in the early 12th Century, as my first little video explains! The second video shows us walking over the causeway across the (oceans) towards the main entrance. The third one is taken within the highest point of the temple that the public can access, in among the five towers and looking up to the highest one (‘Mount Meru’). As a bonus you’ll also get some shots of Joan. Some photos also credit to Joan and Beth!
The conventional tourist guides inform you that Angkor Wat is best seen at sunup or sundown. Well, I reckon there can’t be a bad time to see it, and, yes, in the halflight it is stunning as well!
First site of 'inner' Angkor Wat through the Entrance Gate
Late afternoon sun on the temple complex
late sun strikes the inner wall of the entrance gate
Sunsetting behind one of the library buildings, Angkor Wat, 2.1.11
Beth, Matthew and Jo had another couple of days scouting the more remote and less touristy temples. Joan and I hired bicycles on day two and revisited the sites of the first day and taking our time to go where we wanted and get off the beaten track inside Angkor Thom itself. This included time for Joan’s power nap, in a beautiful butterfly-filled meadow, overshadowed by the ‘towers of the acrobats’ – among Angkor Thom’s many other stone remains is a series of towers which are believed, among other things, to have acted as mooring points for high-wire acts performing across the massive imperial ceremonial square, to be seen from the opposing ‘Terrace of the Elephants’, in front of the royal palace.
This last picture is a bit of fun from the Bayon Temple.
Three contemporary apsaras ("heavenly nymphs" to you and me) copy their dance!
Jo, Beth and Matthew joined Joan and I in Phnom Penh a couple of days later and we went on a joint excursion to the ‘Killing Fields’ site. This is one of many mass graves around the country, but its proximity to PP and its association with S21 prison (those who had confessed under torture were brought here in batches to be killed) have made it both a place of remembrance and a tourist site. It was a sobering visit. The central memorial contains many skeletons and skulls, but even more harrowing are the many ‘pits’ on the site, in some of which can be seen items of clothing and teeth which have worked their way up to the surface. There are still many bodies in there. Altogether over 20,000 met horrible ends, usually by being hit with a club on the back of the skull and heaved into a mass pit grave, on the site. Immediately adjacent to the site is a primary school, and although at first I was surprised at this, later my heart warmed to hear the happy sounds of young children playing, growing up in a Cambodia which is investing in their education and hoping for a peaceful and prosperous future. Let the past remain in the past, but let us never forget it.
There are no photos to show of this, but for those of you who are interested in following up on Cambodian History, I did a brief summary here on my blog in September some time. The best general history is by David Chandler (there is a fourth edition 2007) and the best autobiographical account of surviving through Khmer Rouge times that I have read is Someth May’s Cambodian Witness ( second hand copies available on Amazon cheaply ). The film Killing Fields is based around an inspiring but harrowing true story and there is considerable corroboration of its authenticity in various other accounts e.g Francois Bizot The Gate (beautifully written – evocative precise descriptions and strong emotions – he is the only European captured and interrogated by Khmer Rouge to have been released as innocent of the charges of spying) and Jon Swain River of Time (also in the French embassy in 1975, Swain writes about his life as a newspaper correspondent in the Vietnam war and in Cambodia). It is a fascinating and unique country and we all have things to learn from its experience. Although there are some parallels with Rwanda, there are many differences, not least that the civil war in Cambodia which began in the 1960s did not really end until Pol Pot’s death in 1998. That is the main reason, I believe, why so many Cambodians are happy with the present government, for all the kleptocratic tendencies of the powerful elite: during the recent period of peace, people have been able to put their heads down, mind their own business, try to keep out of the way of the powerful elite and make a better living for themselves and their families.
I had planned the end of the holiday as a relaxing few days at the beautiful former French resort of Kep (now increasingly popular as a tourist destination). Unfortunately Joan’s tummy bug decided that she was beginning to have too nice a time and she had a rather difficult couple of days, but, being a real trooper she carried on and tried to enjoy herself, lying by the pool in the delightful Verandah hotel ( http://tinyurl.com/5u8fhba ). It was a great experience and when Joan felt a little better, we took a trip on a hire motorbike (great fun) to neighbouring Kampot and a boat trip to the lovely tropical ‘Rabbit Island’.
'It's hard work but someone has to do it'
warm water and wet sand
Matthew had had to go back earlier than the rest of us. Meantime, Jo and Beth had had a few days chilling out at the beach at Sihanoukville. They joined us back in PP and treated Joan and I to a really nice closing meal (thanks to you guys). |The next morning was the last, long tuk tuk ride to the airport to see them off. I don’t know who felt worse, Joan who wanted to stay, or me, who wanted to go. Anyway life’s roller coaster takes us on..and now I have shuffled off my tourist identity and am back into working mode. So much to do now before I finish!!
PS Joan has added her comment on the holiday in the ‘comments’ section below!!
Please note the disclaimer re VSO at the top of this blog.
Please also credit Matthew and Beth with some of the (better) photographs!
We had an extra day in Kampong Cham to allow Joan to recover from her tummy bug. She settled enough to take the bus to Siem Reap on Thursday 30th, arriving in the evening. We must have had the best bus driver in Cambodia.. not a single dangerous overtaking, never over 80km/h and only one emergency brake in 6 hours. The delay allowed us to see a bit more around Kg Cham, after a lazy breakfast. In the morning we headed North to Phnom Hanchey (by the way, ‘phnom’ means ‘hill’), a peculiar collection of the ancient and modern, with the remains of 6th Century temples vying for attention with the monastic living quarters and refectories of the modern pagoda and a collection of (person-sized) concrete sculptures of fruit and vegetables. The local wildlife, namely a number of scurvy dogs and unwashed orphan kids, took a great interest in us! The pagodas provide a kind of social safety net for some of those without families.
6th century temple remains at Phnom Hanchey
It's a papaya!
The mighty Mekong from Phnom Hanchey
they were only here for the sweeties....
In the afternoon, we went south again. We saw handloom weaving underneath the house in the shade (didn’t the British handloom weavers of the late 18th / early 19th Century used to put their working room at the top of the house, with extra windows for light?) on a traditional loom. When we arrived the weaver was on her own, but we attracted a lot of local interest so half the village came round. Beth and Jo bought a few scarfs. Later we saw some mechanised weaving in a ‘factory’ that the early factory masters would have recognised, except for the electrical power and unsafe working environment (yes the working environment of the early factories would be slightly safer than the one we saw, with several small machines under the house on uneven flooring with no guards, kids and animals all around… ).
Later we saw a performance of traditional Apsara dancing from some of the orphans being looked after by the Buddhist charity in Kg Cham (see: http://www.bsda-cambodia.org/ ), thus ending the day with the colourful costumes and disciplined dancing of the youngsters, in the atmospheric Wokor Not temple. First was the ‘blessing dance’ followed by the ‘knocking dance’ (with coconut shells!). The mp4 extract which follows is a little jerky and the movements seem to be slowed down relative to the music, but it still gives you an idea of what was a fabulous end to our day.
the blessing dance
The next morning Joan was feeling better so we took her out to the Lotus Field (see yesterday’s post) and she had a little bit more of the KC experience!
Now touring Cambodia with Joan, Beth, Matthew and Beth’s friend Jo. It’s great to see the country through different eyes and we’ve done some fun things! After a rather tired Christmas Day (they arrived at 4pm after 29 hours travel!), we took a Boxing Day tour of Phnom Penh, meeting volunteer friends and colleagues en route. A very easy journey to Kampong Cham and a few relaxing beers on the river, then a tuk tuk tour of the surrounding area with Gideon, a driver whom I had made friends with when here before – we kept pretty close to the hotel, so that we could check on Joan during the day. Unfortunately Joan had gone down with an awful 24 hour sickness bug so she saw more of the inside of the wee room than she did of Kampong Cham.
En route, we saw one monk having a fag, two monks under umbrellas, three on a moto (with the driver) and four in a tuk tuk. If we see five today, we are definitely going to work up an alternative ‘twelve days of Christmas’! We picked lotus flowers and harvested the seeds from the dried flower heads, chatted to a woman and her daughter as we tasted tamarind from her trees, visited a fishing village on stilts (all faithfully recorded by Matthew in his sketchbook, much to the amusement of the local kids). In the afternoon, we visited Wat Nokor (see my Sept post for photos!!) and ‘Man and Woman Mountain’, really just small hills but with a great view of the surrounding flat countryside. We finished off our tour with a visit to the bamboo bridge, built each year by the people of a large island in the Mekong when the river goes down at the end of the rainy season, then washed away when the rains come the following year.
Fields of Lotus Flowers
While Matthew was sketching, Gideon was explaining his take on Cambodian politics, and the fishermen were raising their nets to check on the morning catch.. it was a good moment.
Puppy Love
They may look cute but they parted Matthew from his chocolate money.. not an easy feat
Gideon doesn't convince us to eat grilled snake
The Buddhist Text library at Man/Woman Mountain
View from Woman Mountain
Beth and Jo enjoy the sunset at the 'bamboo bridge', Kampong Cham
Today we are planning to head off to Siem Reap, if Joan is up to it, and then to the temples of Angkor Wat.
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