angkor what? a story about trees and stones.

so now i was in cambodia and first on the list was angkor wat, the most majestic UNESCO heritage site there ever was. that is until i got to ha long bay, but personally i don't think it's fair to compare manmade buildings to natural sites. not fair to men or not fair to nature i am not sure about. luckily UNESCO differentiates between cultural – angkor wat – and natural – ha long bay, so they obviously also didn’t think it is fair to have to pick and decide who is better at making incredible rock formations.

our group had decided to do the proper thing and hire a private bus plus tour guide and get up at 5am for the almighty angkor wat in pond reflection at sunrise shot. we got to the entrance and were confronted with neon lights and insert - girls shrieking and fixing their hair – a camera. at angkor wat you get your very own customized entrance ticket. not that i cared much at this time of the morning, but i must proudly say i made a damn nice picture all disadvantaging factors considered.

what nobody told us was that in rainy season there is no guarantee for clear skies in the morning (the fact that monsoon rain comes only in short bursts and early evenings is an urban legend told to lure tourists to come in summer) and therefore no guarantee for a visible sunrise. we sat on old stones and waited and waited and all of a sudden it was light, but there were only clouds to now see and we all felt a bit cheated. no money back guarantee either and the pond view was actually much nicer a couple of hours later when almost everybody else had gone off for breakfast.

we went inside instead and in lieu of candles i lit some incense for my grandmother, a tradition i usually cherish, but after seeing a buddhist in front of the incense stand chanting and praying, my token of just lighting the stick felt a bit inadequate. so i went tourist all the way and got blessed by a monk with a little bracelet and some presumably wise words. for payment of course, but when in angkor wat you are a tourist no matter what you do.

i have already mentioned that my idea of quiet contemplation and meditation at angkor wat didn’t work out as planned and maybe it was a silly idea of mine to begin with (though my aunt swears she got to meditate at one of the temples!). in reality it was the complete opposite of peace and quiet. there were throngs of people everywhere: travel groups with matching hats and their respective leaders poking you with their umbrellas, families with screaming children (really you bring 4-year olds to look at stones and expect them to show interest? they are not lego!), and your usual assortment of south east asia hippies. mind you i was also wearing birkenstocks and lose cotton pants albeit without elephant print, but so i shouldn't judge. after hours and hours of looking at stones, stone faces, and pillars even the most architecturally enthusiastic person will get a bit temple tired, especially when you have to basically stand in line every single time you want to look at a new stone, stone face or pillar due to said throngs of people. so by the time lunch came around we were all exhausted.

after lunch however things were looking up – we were going to ta phrom, so in other words it was tomb raider time. honestly as much as i enjoy a female superhero/ game character/ whatever she is, i don't care much for lara croft. but i always cared for indiana jones and i have always cared for ta phrom itself. indiana jones well, because it's indiana jones and really if you don't care for indiana jones who are you and do you care for anything at all? and ta phrom, because to me that temple is just breathtaking. it has a soul. at least that’s what i felt when i first looked at one of my favourite steve mccurry pictures and i usually don’t think that a soul is a given for a stone temple.

again reality was different. any idea to pose as lara croft or indiana jones was quickly destroyed by a bunch of japanese kids and the korean police academy cadets because they were EVERYWHERE. look, i am not trying to sound mean and i am perfectly aware that they are probably writing blog posts right now about the masses of people in elephant print pants, yes, that was us!, that were destroying their view, but it was just so crowded. it could have ruined my mood, but then there were also the trees. trees you could touch. trees that were breathing and living and had made their ways through the stones over the centuries, claiming their territory and slowly returning it into jungle. trees that were gigantic and strong and by now pretty much part of the furniture. they are by now an essential part of this place, after all ta phrom is also called the jungle temple. seeing the trees became a reason for me that i want to come back one day. this time i will get up even earlier, ditch the pond reflection view, and try to catch a quiet sunrise amongst the trees.

we were almost on our way out when ash called me from somewhere and as per usual posed for a funny picture. i was unwilling, because really a picture of someone behind scaffold?  but then i obliged. i took some more after he left, thinking that it was a pretty picturesque corner after all. only when i came back to my hotel room and looked at a picture above my bed did i realize that  i had found the corner of my most beloved steve mccurry picture after all and only thanks to ash. thumbs up indeed.

all images by me and my new baby. except the this one above. thank you, steve mccurry for being amazing. if you are not tired yet of stone and tree pictures here are some more:

20 random things i recently learned about me and cambodia.

people travel for two reasons: to learn about the world and to learn about themselves. usually they end up getting a combination of both. i'm on a bus to ho chi minh, leaving beautiful cambodia. being stuck on a bus with chinese music playing for 7 hours gives you plenty of time for reflection. here is what i have learned about the world and myself in the past weeks:

1. pringles are a completely acceptable breakfast choice.

2. i'm more easy going than i thought i was. i know when to take my time out, but usually and when not hungry i'm quite happy to go with the flow. i have met some real princesses on this trip and i wasn't one of them *pads own shoulder*.

3. the content of my backpack seems to be growing though i haven't bought anything. i am wondering if there is a traveller's secret to this that i don't know about?

(the above was a lie. i have bought three kromas for myself and one silkscarf in pink for my mother and a whole bag of spices that i have no idea if i'm allowed to import them.)

4. monks go commando i was told my multiple sources. not sure why i needed to know that, but our tour guides apparently deemed it important so i'm passing on the wisdom to you.

5. the one luxury i don't want to live without is face spritz. i lost my rosewater in bangkok and have been unhappy ever since about it. yesterday i shrieked in delight when i found evian spray at a pharmacy and promptly spent a little fortune on it to make it mine.

6. things don't make people happy. doing things that you love makes people happy. smiling makes people happy. i was told planting rice with your family during the rainy season makes people happy.

7. if you have ever spend a night in the cambodian countryside you will learn that crickets can be bloody loud and not very romantic and you will not go out and buy yourself a sound machine with jungle noises because you miss that sound so much. at least i won't.

8. sometimes doing really touristy things can be loads of fun. like doing a group cyclo race in really hectic traffic. especially when the locals around you don't mind.

9. traffic in cambodia is manic. i didn't see a single accident and still don't know how that is even possible. it seems to be an intricate system of organized chaos an outsider cannot understand.

10. i can live without wine. well, spider wine doesn't count and there is always beer, but still...who would have guessed?

11. i'm completely mesmerized by rice paddies and the harvesting of them.

12. kids are kids anywhere in the world: some are cheeky, some are shy, there is always a leader, one with pigtails, a big sister bossing a little brother. i like that certain dynamics are the same wherever you go. same goes for men and watching sports.

13. i need to spend more time by the beach. i become a different person when there is sun and salt on my skin (and yes, minus the sunburn obviously!).

14. i still need to find the balance between when to take pictures and when to put my camera down and just absorb. i think i miss out experiencing when i see through a lens too much.

15. i'm a hair tier upper. always. sorry. even with my new short hair the tropical whether just calls for it.

16. i am really really afraid of snakes. i won't eat one (and mind you i have eaten a spider leg) and when we were on the tonle sap lake and a boy in a small boat with a snake around his neck came close to ours i almost jumped into the water.

17. travelling puts me in a bubble. while that can be a great thing of living in the moment at times, i also need this trip to spend some time thinking about where i'm going and what i want out of my life. i haven't done that at all. then again, i tend to overthink everything so maybe it's a good thing to just be for a bit.

18. food! i get ridiculously excited by the local menus. i usually want to order everything. the best part about any town for me are the food markets and thai basil is the bestest of all herbs. 

19. i love lotus flowers. i almost bought some to put in my hotel room, but then sanity prevailed. lotus flowers don't like 7 hour bus rides very much.

20. i do like going away and coming home equally.  

stuff i like in cambodia.

today was my last day in cambodia. tomorrow i will be on a 7 hour bus ride *grrrr* to vietnam. so i thought i should do a little recap of my favorite things here in accordance with my stuff i like series (yes, i know two posts don't make a series, but i'm working on it!). so here is my favorite stuff that i liked in cambodia:

beach day.
spending a day on bamboo island reminded me that i am a total beach baby, but also that i still have light, sensitive german skin. you would assume after 6 years in south africa i know how to put on sunscreen, but my back and the top of my feet tell a different story. but still i loved it, being on the sand and in the water is my best and i must make an effort to do more beach days when i get back home.

however boat rides are a whole other story. due to it being rainy season we had such a bumpy ride that a few people get sick and all of us where scared for our lives. well, i was mainly scared for my camera. apparently you are a bad traveller if you haven't gotten a dry bag. we also learned not to drink beer in a pool till late the night before a boat ride.

fresh coconut juice.

i have written extensively about my love for coconut water or juice as they call it here. however in cambodia they serve it straight up in a coconut, even in fancy restaurants.

sticky rice.

take a mini banana, plaster it with sticky rice, sprinkle with coconut, wrap in a banana leaf, and grill on an open fire. unwrap and eat it straight out of the leaf. best roadside breakfast ever!

*sorry, no picture because that thing was gone in under a minute.*

the smell of jasmine.
in massage oil, incense, and in fresh garlands for decorations or as an offering at the home shrines - i want my entire home to smell like jasmine from now on and can you imagine how excited i was to find out that my face balm is fragranced with it?!

trees taking over.

i have seen lots of nurseries all over cambodia and apparently there are quite a few reforestation programmes in place. i like this a lot. and then of course there are the trees at ta prohm, better known as the tomb raider temple these days, who have taken reign over the stones. it reminded me of the power of nature.

and though this is obviously not stuff, but what i enjoyed most about cambodia are its people. despite a recent gruelling history are they incredibly friendly and optimistic, very hardworking and hospitable and they don't seem to dislike tourists yet. i have never seen a nation of so many smiles. that made me happy and i think i smiled quite a lot here too. no more annoyka in cambodia, no more worries about wrinkly eyes!

eating asia: crickets, pancakes and coconuts.

i apologize in advance, but none of my travel stories are going to be in any chronological order. i just had some really amazing pancakes for breakfast and because there is internet, i feel the need to tell you about the food here right now.

i guess it was kind of a given that the food was going to be good, but really i had no idea. i am eating all the food and so far i had:

three plates of pad thai. after the first one i was wondering what it was they call pad thai in south africa, because it definitely isn't pad thai. basically i have been to heaven and back with each plate (okay, maybe not the one we had at the restaurant at the petrol station, but it was still really good for petrol station food).

lots of sugared peanuts as a pre-dinner snack. yup, they are sugared here and i like it.

sticky rice topped with coconut for breakfast and blue sticky rice as a topping on coconut icecream.

THE best coconut balls. it must have ranked up there was one of the best sweets experiences of my life.

sour mango with spices.

two crickets. which very actually quite nice. one guy said they tasted a bit like bacon and they actually do. i just feel a bit bad now whenever i hear the sound of crickets in the evenings.

i have sampled four local beers: singha and chang in thailand, ankor and cambodia in cambodia. and of course sampled is a bit of an understatement.

i have had original long island ice tea in a bucket on khaosan road and the head to match the next morning.

lemongrass icetea! that deserves a special mention because it come very close to the thyme tea in the atlas mountains in goodness.

two of two breakfasts consisting of pancakes. america, go away! -your pancakes have nothing on cambodia's. they are doubly as thick, doubly as fluffly, and they are usually served with sweet milk, butter, and fresh fruit.

of course i had lots of coconut juice, most of it served straight up from a coconut which you can get in most restaurants and from the street stalls. but even the one they sell in cans here is not bad at all, because it is unsweetened and has little bits of coconut floating in it.

khmer food in general must be one of the most underrated cuisines ever. it is absolutely fantastic and has its own set of spices, herbs, and flavours. so far i had beef with starfruit salad, fresh springrolls, chicken amok served in a coconut, flat white noodles with vegetable, and have successfully declined to eat a dried snake snack.

to my demise i have realized that i have no problem with eating three full meals per day, even with the constant heat and humidity of a bikram studio all around. i also have not unrolled my yoga mat once. and i have no idea how i will ever go back to eating simply asia or chef pon's. however for now i don't care, because i'm on holiday and there is some more pancakes waiting for me – with fresh fruit, which surely counts for something!

p.s. i have since added the following: the hottest, most delicious green papaya salad, more fresh spring rolls, one with bacon which was a bit odd, a platter full of fresh fish, a home cooked meal with deep fried mushrooms and morning glory with lotus seeds, a shot of spider wine, and this morning i actually ate a spider leg (probably tarantula, it just looked like beef jerky). okay, it was actually more the quarter of a leg, but still, i felt quite heroic and wouldn't be surprised to meet tobey maguire any moment now.