Chinese New Year - Part FOUR - Beng Melea

A Castle Amidst the Jungle - The set of Indiana Jones!

It seems like we went to Cambodia for a long time, but it was only a few days that we spent there! Two days before we left Cambodia, we went with a tour from the Villa Siem Reap (which is a cute little hotel, by the way), to another set of ruins - about 55 km from Siem Reap. A stop at a local Cambodian market, Dom Dek, is a usual part of the trip down to Beng Melea, and was worth it! Another stop was Banteay Srei II, which has only been recently cleared of the jungle so that you can see the ruins. This tiny temple (or what's left of it) is set across a pond from a local monastery. Even better was that we had a Cambodian guide who could tell us what some of the stranger items were - scroll through the photos to see what I mean! The ruins were probably even almost more amazing than Angkor Wat, probably because we were expecting something like Ta Prohm. It would have been had it not been for our guide. I'll tell more of the story beneath the photos:

First Cambodian treat: bamboo sticky rice - our guide is showing

us how to unwrap the "packaging" - sticky rice, coconut,

and raisins are stuffed into this bamboo tube and steamed.

First, you have to take out the straw that's holding in the food,

then you peel back the REALLY tough bamboo shell,

and use the ripped off pieces as spoons to eat the sticky rice inside!

SCENES FROM DOM DEK MARKET:

Meat Market

Anyone know how to serve this?

Eating a Traditional Breakfast - Soup Noodles

Lots of sundries - the white bag on the left is salt.

Making sweet snacks - probably coconut. The stick

with the blue bag is her makeshift fly swatter.

A busy morning

A spicy snack...

of crickets and cockroaches!

Fresh, handmade noodles

Papyrus-like dried banana. It was so beautiful - I wanted

to frame it and hang it up. It looked much better than

it tasted, although the lady who sold it said I should grill it first!

Grandma and her little salespeople

Lots of fish for sale - including the famous

snake fish (dark ones on the left)

Probably my favourite photo - this man

was so smiley, and so calm as the frenzy

bustled around him.

The road outside the market

Another favourite photo of a popular Cambodian

snack - these clams are cooked a little to clean out thesand, covered in salt and chili,

then are placed on some aluminum siding out in the

sun to bake! Mmm... good and warm!

Banteay Srei II

We finally got to the area around Beng Melea, but stopped first at the reservoir where the Angkor regime cut out their stones to build all their temples. My favourite part were the kids that were around - for some of them, it was the first time they'd met white people! The next few photos are of them - the little girl you see is holding up what looks like a "1", but she was trying to copy her older brother and sister in making the "Victory sign." She just couldn't get her other finger up!

You can see the stone cutouts behind this boy,

where the stones for the temples were "harvested."

BENG MELEA

The area around the new entrance of Beng Melea was finally cleared of mines about 2 years ago. The north side is still being cleared now. It's a bit frightening to think that where we walked could have had landmines! I don't know how people lived in what must be a constant state of fear, even decades after the war. Beng Melea was also much more intact before the Polpot regime. The Khmer Rouge hid out in here, and much of it was destroyed because of the war.

While the hike through the ruins was fun, it was also steep - there was falling rubble, dark tunnels, and really long falls if you mis-stepped. A female guide who worked for the ruins helped us a lot, providing support and a helping hand. She looked like she was in her late 50s. At the end of the tour, we found out some sombering news about her. While she walked better than me, it turned out that she had one prosthetic leg. Our guide asked her about it, and she told us how she and her husband and one son were out farming with the ox cart one day and ended up on a landmine. Her son died immediately, while she lost her leg. Her husband survived unscathed, and decided he didn't want his wife anymore, so he divorced her. She became a single mom with two kids, and the government is technically helping her out by giving her this job. It's amazing how some people survive and are still incredibly kind. Our guide has known her for years through his job of taking tours to Beng Melea, but this was the first time he had noticed her leg. She never ever talked about it - that's one awesome woman.

The Main Entrance:

We had to climb over piles of rubble like this.

More fun piles to climb over!

A view from after the clambering over piles of rock.

Atop the ruins

Enjoying the view

Kids are just everywhere! These kids

were just hanging about, enjoying life amidst the jungle and rock.

These ladies were part of the cleaning crew - and their kids.

They were in charge of burning up the garbage, as the kids

played happily.

Last stop: The Ruolos Group

We ended our tour at the Ruolos group of ruins - at Bakong, to be exact. It was beautiful, and my photos just could not capture the setting sun against this glorious structure guarded by lions and elephants.