In this post I plan to cover just a single week of my experience because it was so full of activity and memorable experiences. The week of November 5 - November 12 was filled first with festivities for Water Festival, a National Holiday in Cambodia, and then by a retreat with the other YALTers in Phnom Penh where we traveled to the city of Siem Reap to visit the Angkor temples.
Water Festival
Water Festival is one of the three major national holidays in Cambodia alongside Pchum Ben which I celebrated in September soon after moving in with my host family and Khmer New Year which happens in April. In a country with such a deep connection with water as a gateway land for several major rivers, the dominance of water-intensive rice farming, and a rich history of water-dependent empires thriving here, it makes sense that there should be a time to celebrate such a necessary and life-giving resource. This festival is specifically a celebration of the annual reversal of the Tonle Sap river, which changes direction seasonally according to water levels in the Mekong River. As the only natural seasonal reverse flow river in the world, it creates a highly sensitive and diverse ecosystem that has been utilized by Cambodians for generations. Unfortunately, this natural phenomenon is at risk due to a number of factors including dam construction and sand dredging on the Mekong River, as well as the impacts of climate change.
Water Festival in my experience meant spending lots of time with my host family hanging out, eating, visiting relatives, and passing time through games and other activities. Two of my host siblings who live in Phnom Penh to attend school came home for the holiday, and I along with much of the rest of the country was off of work from Saturday through Wednesday. During this time I really stepped up my fishing frequency, sometimes several times a day with my host brother, cousin, and/or several other neighborhood kids. These experiences though were as varied as they were frequent, from long treks through waist deep water, to spear/hand fishing in the rice paddies at night, to picking my way through the mud and mosquitos to a small pond with my cousin and several other neighborhood kids. From the combination of all these escapades, we ate a lot of fish this week, fried, grilled, and souped.
Another highlight of Water Festival was the regularity of celebration dinners put on either at pagodas or the house of a willing community member. These dinners generally shared a few commonalities: music that was a bit too loud to have much of a conversation, way too many dishes of food to all fit on the same table, and me inevitably splashing some type of staining broth from the end of a slurped noodle onto my white collared shirt. I attended five such celebrations over the course of sixe days, including in one instance, two in the same day. Water Festival celebrations culminated with a final party at the pagoda near my house on Tuesday evening, the night of the full moon. This festival, called Auk Ambok, included a dance party followed by an offering of ambok (flattened rice) and bananas in the pagoda ending around midnight. I had the challenging and sweaty experience of pounding ambok for a little while, a fun and memorable way for me to participate in the evening’s festivities.
From left to right...a festival celebration dinner table, me with my host mom and siblings at a festival, offerings being given at Auk Ambok, another festival celebration dinner, and me taking a break from pounding ambok.
Siem Reap and Angkor Wat
Early Wednesday morning after the late night Auk Ambok festival, I hopped into a taxi bound for Phnom Penh to join the rest of the YALTers for a long weekend retreat to the famed Angkor temples in Siem Reap.
I am incapable of doing justice to the Angkor temples by describing their grandeur through words, such is their otherworldly scale and beauty. The most famous of which, Angkor Wat, graces the flag of Cambodia in brilliant white relief and is known around the world for its splendor. Angkor Wat defied my fears of being overhyped as its soaring spires came into view looming over the surrounding moat as we pulled up into the parking lot over half a mile from the temple itself. The five hours we spent walking through the temples of Angkor Wat, Bayon, and Ta Prohm, shuffling through tourists both Cambodian and foreign, filled me with silent awe and wonder. It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the temples and the heaviness of history in this place. In addition to being massive and structurally well-preserved (due in large part to the work of cultural heritage conservation work conducted here for the past several decades as well as the Cambodian reverence for the temples since their construction in the 12th century) the level of detail preserved in the stonework telling stories and paying homage to the the Hindu figures for which the temples were constructed is striking.
The main temple of Angkor Wat viewed from behind.
One of the most memorable experiences from this trip was getting up at 4:30 to go see the sunrise at the reflection pool in front of Angkor Wat. This is one of the things that every traveler’s guide to Cambodia lists as a must-do, and so with our short time in the city we wanted to see it too. It was an odd experience for the contradiction between the serenity of the sun rising behind the temple, casting a perfect reflection into the water, and the throngs of people and camera shutters (mine included) immediately beside and behind me. I have rarely seen a landscape so beautiful as this one at that moment, though I was both humbled and selfishly a little annoyed to have to battle the crowds for the view.
The reflection of Angkor Wat at sunrise, scroll right to get a better feel for this moment.
This was also a wonderful trip for other reasons too, being the first significant time I have spent with the other YALTers since our orientation time together in Phnom Penh 2 months ago. One of the highlights for me was our six hour trip together in a van to Siem Reap on Thursday morning, being surrounded by people I am so comfortable with and have missed so dearly since we all experienced our first taste of Cambodia together upon arrival here nearly three months ago. It was wonderful to share experiences from our own lives and have the opportunity to connect with each other face to face again.
As an attempt to share the beauty of the Angkor temples, here are some additional photos I took while exploring three of the more than 1000 structures remaining from this once great city.
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