Day 468: Shopping in Bangkok

Bangkok is a shopper's paradise. There are several huge malls that carry all the luxury brands. There are several more malls with slightly-less-luxurious goods and local designers. There is (at least) one entire mall only for gems and jewelry. There are huge outdoor markets with goods of varying quality. And, of course, the streets are lined with shops and stalls, too.

While this seems all nice and fancy on the first glance, it is just too much for me. I wonder how anybody ever finds something specific in these mazes of malls? There is just too much - and much too often it's more of the same, instead of some kind of variety.

I spent a fair amount of time looking around malls and markets - if only for the aircon and the huge English-language bookstores - but aside from the excellent food courts I haven't spent any money there. Maybe I don't belong to the typical target group of large shopping malls? ;-)

Day 465: Grand Palace

The Grand Palace is one of the major tourist attractions in Bangkok. I arrived by river ferry, since both my hostel and the palace were located conveniently close to ferry piers. When I walked towards the palace entrance, I quickly realized that the bulk of visitors arrives in another way: the road circling the palace was one big parking spot for tour buses.

After I had passed the ticket gate, I was already overwhelmed by the amount of gold and grandeur all around, as well as by the amount of people and the level of noise produced by tour guides trying to make themselves heard above the crowd.

Luckily, I discovered that a free guided tour of the palace was scheduled to start about twenty minutes after I arrived. So I sat down in a corner and passed the time reading the palace brochure. (It wasn't a quiet corner, unfortunately; I doubt that there are quiet corners in the palace during visiting hours.)

The first few buildings we visited were not strictly speaking palace buildings: they belonged to Wat Phra Kaew, the king's private temple on the palace grounds. This is the main temple hall where the famous Emerald Buddha (made from jade, despite the name) is enshrined:

Next to all the entrances to the palace compound were these giant statues that are said to guard the palace:

After the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, this palace was the second one to feature a model Angkor Wat in its courtyard. The area around Angkor Wat changed hands more than once between the Khmer and Siam kingdoms, and so both kings apparently wanted to send a message along the lines of "Angkor Wat is ours!"

The monkeys and demons that are present throughout the palace come from the Thai creation myth Ramakien. Supernatural monkeys were helping the hero of the story, while demons fought against him.

Many of the gold decorations in the palace are made from real gold. As a consequence, it is strictly forbidden to touch anything. Unfortunately, tourists seem to find posing with statues more appealing than following rules. Our guide was really annoyed with all the statue-touchers and told several of them off - no small wonder if you consider how the statues' hands look after a while:

Here are two more views of Grand Palace buildings:

My next stop was Wat Pho, right next door to the Grand Palace. The statues that stood guard next to some doorways in Wat Pho seemed a little out of place with their fancy Western hats:

Wat Pho is home to a huge reclining Buddha statue - look at how small the people are that are standing next to it! The statue takes up all the space in one big building.

Outside, Wat Pho has many, many stupas decorated with colored porcelain pieces. These are just five of them - there are many more on the temple grounds.

Another feature of Wat Pho are its many courtyards that are lined with hundreds of Buddha statues.

Day 464: Back to Bangkok

Before I left Ayutthaya for Bangkok in the afternoon, I made a small walk through the park directly opposite my hostel. The park being in Ayutthaya, it was filled with temple ruins, of course. Since it is out of the way for most tourists, it was very nice and quiet (apart from the usual noise coming from the busy road next to it). I really enjoyed wandering around for a bit without having to deal with the tourist bustle.

Later, on my way to the train station, I saw this vending machine:

Initially I thought it was a vending machine for cigarettes - but when I stopped to take a second look I noticed pretty quickly that what it was actually selling was gas for motorcycles. I found it quite surprising because I had never before seen a gas station without any kind of attendant. Even the rustic Cambodian "gas stations" that displayed their gas in old whisky bottles always had staff nearby. Not so at this one. Why do gas stations have attendants, anyway?

Day 463: Ayutthaya

For a period of several hundred years, Ayutthaya was the glamorous capital city of the Ayutthaya kingdom - until it was sacked and partly destroyed by the Burmese army in the 18th century. Today, temple ruins are dotting the city, and treasures excavated from the ruins are on display in Chao Sam Phraya National Museum. The amount of gold in the museum is very impressive - especially when you consider the involvement of looters. In the 1950s, the museum explained, excavations found a number of relics that had been enshrined inside one of the stupas. After these findings became public, looters started robbing some of the other stupas in Ayutthaya. When the government realized this, they quickly reacted and accelerated their excavation schedule, thus limiting the extent of damage the looters could do.

Unfortunately, the museum didn't allow photography, but the front page of the brochure they handed out to visitors had a lovely picture of the most stunning exhibit: a richly decorated golden elephant.

After visiting the museum, I went to explore some of the ruins. I first stopped at Wat Mahathat - or, in the words of the Japanese tour guide who happened to pass by me: Watto Mahathatto (Of course, I knew from my time in Japan that the Japanese language is no friend of consonants at word endings, but still, his pronunciation of the temple's name amused me to no end.)

The first thing I noticed on the temple grounds of Wat Mahatat was the leaning tower of... umm... Ayutthaya.

As I saw later, this tower isn't the only leaning one in Ayutthaya. Funnily enough, Wikipedia has an entire list of leaning towers (on which South-East Asia is grossly underrepresented, by the way).

Wat Mahatat also has another proof of the power of nature: a sandstone Buddha statue that has been completely dissolved inside a tree - except for the head which gazes at the visitors from its prison within the tangled roots.

The majority of the ruins in Ayutthaya are built from red bricks. However, I saw the remains of something like stucco covering the bricks on some of the buildings. I assume that back in the day, the buildings were either white or painted in some other way, and no bricks were visible at all. Must have been quite a different atmosphere! (The University of Melbourne has done a virtual reality reconstruction which shows white temple buildings.)

My next stop was Wat Ratchaburana. This temple has a row of stupas that are either very well-preserved or very well-restored. In contrast to all the other buildings, these stupas are made from a different white-ish material.

I then decided to cycle to a temple a little way out of town, Chedi Phu Khao Thong. In contrast to all the temples in the city, where it's strictly forbidden to climb on top of anything, you're free to climb up this one.

The top revealed a nice view of the surrounding landscape, but the coolest part was when I discovered that a little tunnel led to the inside of the spire at the top. At the end of the tunnel, there was a small opening where a lovely red glass Buddha statue was enshrined.

On the way back, I had a quick look at Chedi Suriyothai...

... and then I decided that I had seen my fair share of ruined temples for now ;-)

Day 462: To Ayutthaya

Traveling when sick is no fun, really. I had already booked accommodation in Ayutthaya for tonight, otherwise I would have stayed in my Bangkok bed all day. But instead, I dragged myself to the train station, onto the train to Ayutthaya (only two hours from Bangkok, luckily), and into my new hostel, where I promptly decided to spend the rest of the day... in bed.

This was one of the best moments of the day, actually - one of the best moments you get whenever you have a cold: after exerting yourself (in getting up to get a glass of water, if you're sensible, or in making a four-hour journey to a new city, if you're me), when you settle back down into a lying position - that feeling of relief, that's the best part of having a cold. 

Day 461: I have a job!

.. or should I say, I have a calling?

According to psychology researchers (I'm reading about it in Tal Ben-Shahar's Happier right now), how you look at your employment has a significant influence on how much satisfaction and happiness you derive from it. If you call it a derogatory 'job', you are likely to see it as a chore and do it only for the monetary benefits. Doing things only for the money doesn't make anybody happy. If you call it a 'career', you'll see it as a rat race: once I achieve this next promotion, I'll be happy. This, of course, never happens: when you get a promotion, you are happy for a while, but then your happiness level adjusts and you're right back in the rat race for the next promotion. However, looking at work as a 'calling' puts you in the position to actually enjoy the process - you enjoy the act of doing your job. Now THAT's a big step towards happiness, isn't it?

What I found most fascinating about this research is that it's all just a question of perception. Even if outside circumstances do not change, and you only change how you perceive your work, job satisfaction and happiness rise. How you look at things changes things! Isn't that amazing?

But now, back to what I wanted to write about in the first place: updates from my job hunt.

I put a lot of hard work into my attempt towards rejoining academia in the past two months: I wrote cover letters; I crafted a research statement detailing my past research and plans for the future; and I put my thoughts about what good teaching should incorporate into a teaching statement.

I used these documents to apply at some universities that had posted suitable job openings. I was quickly invited to a few interviews, and much to my surprise none of the universities insisted on seeing me personally, but instead agreed to do it via Skype. I did two interviews and, in the end, received much praise - and two offers. Last week I accepted one of them, which is for a position at the Lecturer/Assistant Professor level. It seems all my hard work has paid off and I have successfully rejoined academia!

I have to say, I would never have expected my applications to be such a big success. Especially with the huge gap in my publication history (results of my extended travels, of course). One of the interviewers even asked about it, and then almost apologized for not remembering that I had explained it in the cover letter. I had expected (and prepared for) a few very critical questions, asking for reasons and justifications of my trip - but apparently, a gap period spent traveling isn't an issue for anybody at all in academia.

Overall, I am especially pleased that my new strategy worked out: put hard work into all the tasks; keep at it even if it is difficult at times; and only worry about the task at hand - neither future nor past tasks are important.

So, I worried about cover letters when it was time to write cover letters. I worried about research and teaching statements when I needed them for the next application. With the help of many Internet resources and a trusted friend who gave me valuable comments, I slowly wrote and improved all my documents. At times, I was tempted to think ahead and worry about possible interviews - the presentation I would have to give, the questions I would be asked - but I am proud to say that I managed to see the temptation for the unproductive waste of time that it was, and stayed focused on the task at hand (most of the time, anyway ;-)).

When the first interview invitation came, I started worrying about interviews - good that I hadn't done it before! The preparation for the first interview was horrible. I was scared shitless and had trouble concentrating for fear of being taken apart by the interview panel. The interview came - and it wasn't half bad! The interviewers were really nice, asked perfectly polite and constructive questions, most of which I had even prepared for using lists of questions-to-expect I found on the Internet. Preparation for the second interview, then, was a lot less terrifying, even though I expected to be taken apart once again. Needless to say, this didn't happen and the interviewers once again were really nice and friendly.

Now, with the end of my trip in the near future and the beginning of my new job shortly after, I have a whole new host of things to worry about. There are so many things waiting for me that I've never done before, but that are now part of my job, that I would have plenty of reason to be terrified. Instead, I'll just do the same thing I've done throughout the application process: I'll take it one task at a time, put in hard work, enjoy the things I learn on the way, and everything will be fine.

Day 460: National Museum + Khaosan Road

Today I went to visit two sights of a very different nature: the National Museum, and the infamous tourist trap Khaosan Road.

The first part of the National Museum  provided me with a detailed overview of Thai history, with a special focus on the monarchy and its two predecessor kingdoms: Ayutthaya and Sukhothai. I learned a fascinating bit about Thai history that I wasn't aware of, but that perfectly explains why Thailand is more developed than many of its neighbors: they haven't had major disruptive events for more than 200 years - no civil wars, no colonization, no occupation during the world wars, and most certainly no genocide.

The newest really bad event seems to have been the invasion by the Burmese, leading to the fall of the Ayutthaya kingdom in the 18th century. But after retaking the city of Ayutthaya a few years later and founding a new royal dynasty (which is still ruling today, incidentally), things went rather smoothly for the Kingdom of Siam.

When the Europeans came to South-East Asia to colonize, Siam negotiated smartly and gave away parts of its territory in exchange for independence. Siam territory was a plentiful resource back then: it included much of what today is Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia. (Wikipedia has a map if you're interested in details of what was given away when.)

Many of the objects on display in the history section are items used by one of the kings - such as this wheelbarrow:

It was used when the king opened construction of the first section of Thai railway. Apparently, you can't just use any old wheelbarrow when you're king; you have to have a properly ornamented one.

One of the other buildings on the National Museum grounds is a Buddhist temple - Buddhist temples in Asia may even be more prevalent than Catholic churches in Latin America, incredible as it may seem.

The remaining buildings were dedicated to the display of art objects from all periods of Thai history. Most were gathered at various archaeological sites, like this beautiful statue:

Leaving the ordered sanity of the National Museum behind, I then plunged into the tourist abyss of Bangkok that is Khaosan Road.

Khaosan Road itself is a rather short stretch of street, but it is filled with guesthouses, western food chains, bars, and street stalls - and with too many tourists who seemingly invested all their money in drinks instead of decent clothes. The crowd frequenting Khaosan Road, I'm sorry to say, seems to be exactly the type of crowd that gives tourism a bad name.

The locals adapt, of course, and offer exactly what the spoiled tourist brats seek - and what they seek seem to be fake documents:

There were at least five of these little stalls. They offered everything you can imagine: student cards, press cards, driving licenses, TEFL certificates, bachelor's and master's certificates. I have to say, I was a little shocked by two aspects of this: first, that there seems to be a fairly high demand for document fakers; and second, that they seem to be tolerated by the police - how else could they set up shop in broad daylight like this?

Day 459: Chatuchak Weekend Market

In the morning, one of the girls in my dorm asked if I would be going to the big weekend market today.  I was a little surprised by the question because I hadn't realized that it was Saturday - a common traveler's disease. And since it was my first real day in Bangkok, I hadn't heard about any markets either.

A quick consultation with my travel guide later, I found out that the market in question was the Chatuchak Weekend Market, and that it was conveniently located at the other end of the sky train line running right next to my hostel. So I hopped onto the sky train and had a daylight look at Bangkok.

Bangkok really comes closest to what I imagine as the metropolis of the future. There are hyper-modern skyscrapers in steel and glass, there's the elevated sky train complete with elevated pedestrian walkways above huge intersections, and there are big elevated highways to alleviate the daily traffic jams. There are only two or three more levels of elevation missing, and you'd think the city had come straight out of a science fiction movie. The downside of this kind of city? The time it takes to get from A to B. Regardless of how well-organized public transport is in a city of Bangkok's size, it easily ends up taking an hour or more to get to your destination. Despite all the things I love about big cities, this may actually be the one reason prohibiting me from moving to one.

When I got to the market, the view from the sky train gave me a first impression of its size - it looked gigantic. According to my travel guide, there are more than 15.000 stalls. Apparently, each dot on this map represents one stall:

Needless to say, I didn't count them.

The market had just about everything on offer that you can think of. Clothing, accessories, jewelry, home decoration, kitchen equipment, food, and so on. I wandered through the aisles for a few hours, had some lovely food and fresh orange juice for next to no money, and then escaped the shopping masses again to the modern tranquility of the sky train. Have I mentioned at all that I'm not much of a 'shopping' kind of person?

Day 458: To Bangkok

Today was a long day spent mostly in buses: 8 hours from Phnom Penh to the Poipet/Aranyaprathet border, an hour to get through the border formalities, and another five hours to Bangkok.

When we got into Thailand, I was amazed at how noticeable the difference between Cambodia and Thailand was. In Cambodia, the roads were rather bumpy and drivers were constantly honking their horns to make moto drivers move to the side. The roadsides were littered with plastic bags and other trash, and roadside settlements consisted of extremely simple wooden huts on stilts. In Thailand, then, the roads were a lot smoother and had more than one lane for much of the time. Nobody was honking horns, and the roadsides looked much cleaner. The houses also looked much more modern, and overall everything seemed much less dusty than in Cambodia. The same differences applied to the two border towns, Poipet and Aranyaprathet.

Considering what Cambodia has been through just a few decades ago - US bombing, civil war, genocide - it is no small wonder that it is less developed than Thailand. Isn't it strange what effects a rather imaginary line can have once it is considered a "border"?

When I arrived in Bangkok, it was already dark and the city with all its skyscrapers was lit up brightly and looked incredibly friendly and welcoming. The bus stopped at the Victory Monument, just one elevated walkway away from the BTS sky train.

As luck would have it, the hostel I booked was just a few stations away on the same BTS line, and so I got to enjoy a nighttime view of central Bangkok from an elevated position. I love cities with rail-based public transport!

Day 457: Sights in Phnom Penh

After the somewhat depressing day yesterday, I moved my attention to happier periods of Cambodia's history today.

First, I visited the National Museum, a building in Khmer-style architecture.

The museum houses many artifacts from temples of the Khmer empire as well as some objects from the subsequent centuries, but unfortunately photography was not allowed.

Towards the end of the exhibition halls, the museum showed a long documentary about the Cambodia of 1965 - the period after having gained independence from France, but before the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. The documentary showed many aspects of life in Cambodia, and the impression it gave me was that of a relatively modern country, and a happy one.

One of the schools they showed in the film looked exactly like the Tuol Sleng high school - which was later turned into a torture prison by the Khmer Rouge. Even the athletic equipment they later used for torture was in the film. What an incredible development: from a happy place where children play sports to a place where innocents are tortured to unconsciousness.

The second sight I visited was the royal palace. About half of the royal palace is currently closed to visitors: the king-father Norodom Sihanouk died about three months ago, and every day people are coming in to pay their respects to him. That is why the grand entrance to the palace is decorated with a huge portrait of his, surrounded by black ribbons.

The part that is open includes the Silver Pagoda. The pagoda - again, no photography allowed inside - earned its name because the entire floor is made of silver tiles. Most of the floor is covered with carpets to prevent visitors from damaging it, but what is visible on the edges does indeed look rather grand.

The walls surrounding the huge courtyard were painted with lovely murals. Some are not very well preserved - this is one of the better parts:

The Silver Pagoda's terrace offered a nice view of this model of Angkor Wat. Amazing, isn't it?

The courtyard was decorated with hundreds of huge pots with plants and flowers, such as this lotus flower:

My overall impression of the palace is that it is an excellent example of Khmer architecture with its towers and multi-tiered roofs. It is conveniently embedded in an oasis of green in this otherwise rather dusty city. Only the best for the royals, right?

Day 456: Killing Fields and Genocide Museum

After two days in Phnom Penh preparing for a job interview, and doing the interview, today it was time to do some more sightseeing. Next to Angkor, the two places I visited today were on the top priority list for my visit to Cambodia - but unfortunately, they were no happy places. Instead, they told the history of one of Cambodia's darkest periods: the Pol Pot era.

Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for less than four years from 1975 to 1979. Within three days after they came to power in 1975, the Khmer Rouge drove all people out of the cities and forced them to work on collective farms in the countryside. This was motivated by a basic belief the Khmer Rouge held: farmers as the "base" people were the only worthy ones, while the "new people" - city dwellers, educated people and people with money - were all dangerous, potential traitors and enemies.

Consequently, the Khmer Rouge also banned personal possessions, money, and religion. In addition, they closed schools, and reduced the curricula to basic literacy and communist indoctrination.

During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, approximately 2 million people died - out of a population of 8 million. Many people were executed for political reasons. Pol Pot seemed to have been highly paranoid: the main target of his genocide were skilled people of all kinds: teachers, doctors, craftsmen, monks, intellectuals. Many others fell victim to starvation and illnesses. This also affected "new" people disproportionately because they were forced to do the hardest labor while their rice rations were the lowest. 

Just imagine what a devastating blow this is to a country's future when there is nobody left to educate the next generation!

Choeung Ek - also known as the Killing Fields - was a place outside of Phnom Penh where inmates from the Tuol Sleng prison (see further down for details) were brought to be executed.

The prisoners were told that they would be relocated to a new house to keep them quiet during the transport. When they arrived at Choeung Ek, they were perched in a dark house with a single room and then taken away one by one to be executed. People were not shot to death - bullets, as the audio guide explained, were expensive. No, they were forced to kneel in front of their graves and were then hacked to death with whatever agricultural tools were available.

From the prisoners' arrival at Choeung Ek to the execution of the last one, a diesel generator was roaring and loudspeakers blasted communist propaganda. This was done to make sure the prisoners didn't hear the others scream during their executions. Roaring generators and communist propaganda was the last thing the victims ever heard...

More than 100 mass graves have been found at Choeung Ek. The one in this picture was a particularly gruesome one: it contained the bodies of more than 100 women and children.

Right next to this mass grave stood a tree - the killing tree. When this tree was found in 1979, it was covered with blood, human hair, and bits of bone. As it turned out, the executioners used to grab babies by their feet and bash their heads and upper bodies against the tree until they were dead.

All of this was in perfect agreement with two of Pol Pot's proverbs: The first stated that it was better to kill an innocent by mistake than to leave an enemy alive by mistake. The second one said that in order to prevent future revenge, a traitor's entire family had to be eliminated.

Just from these two statements, you can see immediately what a sick regime the Khmer Rouge were. I think that many regimes - especially the ones that end up committing genocide - act upon the same principles, even if they don't state them as explicitly. Wikipedia has a long list of genocides in history - I had not realized that there were so many!

To commemorate the nearly 9.000 bodies exhumed from about 80 of the mass graves, a stupa was erected at Choeung Ek.

Inside the stupa, seven levels of glass cabinets display the skulls of the exhumed. On many of the skulls, you can see holes and cracks where they have been smashed by mostly blunt instruments.

The second site I visited was the former Tuol Sleng prison which has been turned into a genocide museum. The prison was housed in a former high school in Phnom Penh. Prisoners would be held here and interrogated here for a few months, and then, after having given full confessions of their "crimes", be transported to Choeung Ek for execution.

The open parts of the buildings were covered with barbed wire to keep the prisoners from committing suicide.

The Khmer Rouge were obsessed with documentation - gotta keep track of  all the enemies successfully eliminated - and so they took pictures of all the prisoners being brought to Tuol Sleng. Many of these pictures are now displayed in the museum. There are thousands of faces looking out at the visitors - men, women, and children alike, scared, angry, and confused. They all died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge - out of several thousand prisoners, only a handful survived Tuol Sleng.

The confessions that the Khmer Rouge wanted to obtain from the prisoners included details of their connections to various secret services such as the CIA or the KGB, and the names of other traitorous people that the prisoners knew about. Since the vast majority of the prisoners was innocent and didn't know any traitors, they were tortured - often to the point of unconsciousness. After weeks and months of torture, prisoners would finally start to invent all the details that the interrogators wanted to know, including lengthy lists of names (who probably ended up being the next set of inmates in Tuol Sleng).

When the Vietnamese came in 1979 to put an end to the Khmer Rouge, they found the bodies of bound and tortured prisoners, killed when the Khmer Rouge hastily abandoned the prison a few hours prior. This is what they found in one of the cells:

This cell was one of the bigger ones - reserved for Khmer Rouge cadre who became suspect. The other prisoners had tiny 1x2 meter cells without beds, toilets, or access to drinking water. This is one of the classrooms, outfitted with about 20 poorly constructed prison cells:

Unfortunately, nobody seems to have a really great idea as to how to prevent future atrocities of this kind. There is some research on genocide prevention - for example, have a look at Ervin Staub's website - but this same research also lists how the different ideas for prevention are often undermined by the economic and political interests of bystanders. Will humanity ever learn from their past mistakes?

Day 453: To Phnom Penh

A few days ago, I had done a calculation of the sights I wanted to see in Phnom Penh, the time required to get a Thai visa, and the time left on my Cambodian visa. The conclusion was that I had to continue on to Phnom Penh today, and leave the lovely Angkor Bodhi Tree Retreat and Meditation Center behind in Siem Reap. I had stayed there for more than three weeks, filling my days with stretching, yoga, meditation, and a fair share of relaxing. The progress I made with regard to my flexibility was absolutely astonishing - which confirms something I had learned earlier in my trip: it is all just a matter of hard work and (growth) mindset.

The bus ride was rather uneventful - almost all of the road to Phnom Penh is paved and in a fairly good condition. On the small stretch of unsealed road that we had to pass, I saw a scene that seemed almost surreal. The white dust from the street covered everything - plants, houses, etc. In addition, white fog caused by a vehicle in front of us obscured everything that was more than a few meters away. In the middle of all this whiteness, the only thing that was clearly visible was a young boy walking along the street. What an amazing sight!

A little later, we overtook a few trucks that sprayed the dusty road with water - very necessary in the dry season! Since I've been in Cambodia, I've seen about five drops of rain fall, so all the unsealed roads are extremely dusty by now. I shudder to think what condition they will be in in the rainy season...

In Phnom Penh, I was astounded by the contrast between rich and poor. On one side, there are people living in dusty bamboo hovels with neither running water nor any furniture except a few hammocks, and on the other side, there are super-modern, super-big, walled-in villas with big shiny SUVs and guards in front of the gate. I think I've never seen this stark a contrast in all of my travels.

Day 446: The Real Cambodia™

Today the owner of my guesthouse took me on a "motorbike mystery tour" to the countryside surrounding Siem Reap. The tour is designed to give an insight into the real Cambodia - how people outside of the tourist madness in Siem Reap really live.

Our first stop after about 45 minutes on dusty dirt roads was a Buddhist temple. The monks, having heard our motorbike approach, all went into hiding - according to my guide, this is what they always do. They don't seem to be of the talkative sort at this temple. Which really didn't surprise my all that much once the motorbike's engine had been turned off: there was such a profound silence around the pagoda, broken only by insects and the occasional rooster, that I can't condemn the monks for wanting to keep it.

One of the temple's buildings had bullet holes all over - remains from the Pol Pot era, without doubt. Another had this lovely carved lintel which I found was quite similar to the lintels on display in the Angkor National Museum.

A third of the buildings was covered with extremely bright paintings - there must have been a surplus of neon colors somewhere ;-)

The temple was surrounded by the typical landscape in this part of Cambodia: rice fields as far as the eye can see...

... water-filled fields with lotus flowers (the stems of which are a popular vegetable), and water buffaloes grazing in recently harvested fields:

We also passed several villages, all with different building styles and levels of wealth and cleanliness. The inhabitants of this village, for example, seem to be very afraid of evil spirits. As a result, every house has at least one scarecrow standing in front of it to keep the spirits away. The scarecrows are all quite realistic: they have the correct height, wear human clothes and shoes, and even have faces of some sort. This picture shows a pair of these scarecrows:

From a small hill, we had a good view of villages in the area. Many of the villages are built on stilts, like in this picture:

Since it is dry season right now, the stilts seem to be there for no purpose at all. A closer look, however, reveals that the water marks left by previous floods reach well up the stilts, four meters or more above the ground.

Dry season also has another effect: many of the roads in the countryside are not paved, but dirt roads in various states of repair. The roads reveal the color of the earth, which is a yellowish-brown in most cases. Some of the roads are bright red, however, and this red dust settles on everything - coloring even the roadside plants:

Being in the vicinity of Angkor Wat, we also came upon some temple ruins. This one was allegedly built as a trial run for Angkor Wat:

On the way back, I managed this shot of a gas station:

Can't see the gas station? Well, have a closer look. In the middle of the picture, below the right umbrella, you can see a display of bottles. These bottles are filled with petrol, each holding one liter. Gas stations of this kind are everywhere in and around Siem Reap, to the extent that it is rather rare to see someone use the western-style gas stations on the national road in and out of Siem Reap. That's Cambodia!