Final Days In Singapore

Leaving Cambodia, we returned to Singapore to spend a day and a bit with Alex and Zeenit. Just us this time with the others all having departed.  It was really good to spend some time chatting and catching up and having a last look round Singapore, so different to Cambodia.

We went out to a local restaurant the night we flew in and had some great indigenous food.  We especially liked the chilli calamari.  Here's us toasting the occasion.

On our full day in Singapore, Claire and I went to the Botanical Gardens which were beautiful to look round.  They also had a large orchid garden with the national collection which was very beautiful.  Instead of a hot house, they had a cool house and instead of creating a rainforest area they left one intact.  Here are some pictures.

On our final evening we went posh again.  We went to the Fullerton Bay hotel for cocktails! with an unrivalled view across to the Marina bay sands complex and the light show at sundown.

Then round the corner for dinner at a Japanese restaurant and a mixture of sashimi, maki, teriyaki and tempura and rather a lot of wine.  A great way to end a great trip.  Now, where in the world to go next?...

Another Market and Departure

As promised/threatened, here are some pictures of the old market in Siem Reap that we explored on our last day in Cambodia. As well as looking at the food area we bought a carved elephant and Buddha.

After exploring and shopping in the morning, we spent a lazy afternoon by the pool, notable for a very strong cocktail called Sojourn Sunset and a visit from the guy behind See Cambodia Differently who dropped by to see how we were and chat about his expansion into Burma. It was good to meet him to be able to tell him how much we'd enjoyed the trip and how well it had met what we wanted.  For our last night we went to a restaurant he recommended which was very nice.  Apparently it too had featured on Gordon Ramsey's programme, but never mind it was still good and had the best Khmer curry of the trip, I think.  With mine a close second :-)  Here's a picture of the restaurant as we were leaving.

Next morning, a tuk-tuk to the airport and back to Singapore.

Reflections On Cambodia

As we finish in Cambodia, I wanted to summarise a few reflections on what has been fantastic adventure going round the country from Phnom Penh, up country in search of wildlife and then Siem Reap.

First and foremost, the people have been the most friendly, welcoming and helpful I've ever come across.  Everywhere felt safe, from the streets of Phnom Penh at night to the middle of the jungle.  All the guides and hotel staff made the trip the brilliant experience it was.

The food too was a revelation. I think we only had one dish that was a bit meh! And that was in a monopoly tourist trap.  All the other meals from roadside stalls to more upmarket restaurants were fresh and full of flavour.

The downsides that we saw and heard in Cambodia were the almost total decimation of the forest and jungle and the corruption at high levels that is asset stripping the country.  You could understand it if it were the people clearing the forests to grow crops and make a living, but it is corrupt government and cronies selling off the land to Chinese and Vietnamese companies for backhanders with no money going into the treasury to improve the country.  The Cambodian people don't even get work out of it as the foreign companies bring in their own people.  As more and more Cambodians are exposed to the outside world and realise what is going on, they are getting more and more unhappy.  It wouldn't surprise me if it takes another civil war to resolve it, hopefully less bloody than the last one.

It was sad while trekking through the jungle to come across time and time again the remains of hardwood trees that had been illegally felled and shipped out for a dodgy deal with the foreign agents. 

Finally, on a brighter note, I'd thoroughly recommend See Cambodia Differently (now See Asia Differently) to anyone who wants a tailored, more adventurous boutique type trip to Asia.  All the people were great and everything worked without a hitch while giving a comfortable but less sanitised experience of Cambodia than the big tours.

Temples

The main reason, of course, to be in Siem Reap is to visit Angkor Wat and the other temples.  There are apparently over 300 temples around Siem Reap, although not all have been recovered enough to be opened to tourists.  We had one day dedicated to temples where we visited the 3 big draws and then added another temple as part of a visit to the sacred Mt Kulen on the following day.  It was back to just me, Claire and a guide.  Our guide was very good at explaining the history of the temples and the myths depicted in the carvings etc.  it turns out he used to be a teacher, but gave it up 3 years ago to become a guide which is much better paid unfortunately.  Oh, we had a tuk-tuk driver to ferry us around as well.

This, you may or may not be pleased to hear, will be quite a short post.  I'm sure you'd finds lots of photos of stone temples pretty dull and the only thing really to tell you about would be the history and stories around the temples and I'm not sure I could remember them properly and those interested can easily look them up.

We started with Angkor Wat.  It was Angkor Wat that led to us selecting Cambodia as the country to visit in the first place and it was certainly spectacular, and popular.  This is the biggest individual temple and is a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu.  The carvings depicted various stories including the battle between Rama's monkey army and the king of the demons.

Here's the classic view of the temple.

And here's the same view ruined by a couple of tourists.

We had to queue for some time to ascend to the highest level representing heaven. The steps are very steep so that people arrive suitably prostrate.  It's times like this that you remember how annoying swarming parties of Chinese tourists are, squawking like the seagulls the Cambodians call them.  Here they are climbing the steps.

The next temple was Pra Thom, whose defining feature is how nature has reclaimed it with trees growing over and through the stonework.  It also appears in a tomb raider movie.

Finally, on the first day of temples we went to Angkor Thom.  This means big city and is a huge complex with a temple at the centre.  This is a Buddhist temple and characterised by being covered in big carved faces of the Buddha.  In many ways it was the most spectacular of the lot. 

On the following day, we added Bantreay Srei.  This is another Hindu temple, this time dedicated to the god Shiva.  This one is made from pink sandstone rather than the grey/black of the others and has the most intricate and deep carvings, as hopefully you can see below.

That's it for temples and pretty much completes our time in Cambodia.  We just had one day left at this point which was a free day that we used to explore Siem Reap and pick up some souvenirs at the market.  I'll put up a short post with some market pictures because I'm a sucker for them.

Cookery Class

We got back from the lake a bit late, but fortunately the cooking class turned out to be just next to our hotel and run by the hotel with their chef and staff. We missed the visit to a local house but were walked round to the cooking area for the start of the course proper.  This was another highlight of the trip and a great way to spend an afternoon.

The setting was lovely.  The cooking area was in a bamboo grove and open to the sides but with a roof to keep the sun off.  It had a chef's station facing a horseshoe counter with student stations set up and a sink and further preparation area.  There was a walkway out over the duck pond to an island eating area where we would have a meal of the result of our labours.  This would all be lit up at night with citronella type torches.

There were five of us on the class.  As well as the two of us, there was an Australian retired couple who were touring Asia and seemed to be doing a class in each country, this was their third. And there was a Hungarian girl who lives in Brussels and works for the European Commission.  She was over for an Asian development conference and had a spare afternoon. We were looked after by Sophie and a chef from the hotel.

Here's Sophie sorting us out.

Here's the walkway to the dining area.

The first dish we made was a Khmer chicken curry.  They explained the ingredients to us and then we followed the chef in making the curry paste.  Lots of fine chopping and then mashing into a paste in a large pestle and mortar.  Very therapeutic. We then learnt how to chop vegetables into Cambodian shapes by cutting at an angle and rolling. Finally, frying and boiling in a pan on a nifty gas burner.

We then made a peanut dipping sauce for spring rolls and then the spring rolls themselves.  The dessert course was a traditional Combodian cake that was like making pancakes but that went crispy. The only bit I really struggled with was rolling these into a nice cornet shape before they went hard.  Claire, of course, was excellent at all this.

We then sat down with a beer to a very convivial meal eating our own food.  And, even if I say so myself, it was gorgeous food.

Here we are getting ready to eat.

Here are my finished articles.  The spring rolls with cakes behind.

And the curry.  I don't think it was until our last day in Siem Reap that I tasted a better one in a restaurant.

We got a nice recipe book at the end of the course including the recipes we'd cooked and those they do on other courses. Claire is now planning some Cambodian dishes as part of our regular staples.

Tonlé Sap

As I mentioned in the market post, our first excursion from Siem Reap was to the Tonlé Sap lake.  This is the largest freshwater lake in Asia and covers an area twice the size of Singapore. We were now back in more usual tourist mode after our wildlife adventures.

It was a bit of a shock to not just be meeting up with Ra after breakfast and heading off somewhere.  When we turned up at the hotel reception, we weren't quite sure what to expect.  As it was, we were ushered into a tuk-tuk which set off with just the two of us.  It turned out that the lake tour, and the afternoon cookery course were both organised through the hotel and its associated tour arm.  The tuk-tuk dropped us at their town office where we got into a mini-bus with a guide and 3 other participants.

They were an interesting group.  There was an, apparently famous, Bulgarian actor, a French girl living in Cambodia who was helping the film crew from Bulgaria and an Aussie man who had become disenchanted with Perth, left his job and was travelling around looking for somewhere he might want to live.

After stopping at the market, as covered earlier, we moved on to a fishing village on the shore of the lake.  The main thing you noticed about the village, was how high the stilts were on which the houses were built.  This is because of the huge change in water level that happens between the dry and wet seasons, when the local rainfall is augmented by melting ice from the Himalayas.  Hopefully, you can get a sense of this from the pictures below.

After a tour of the village we embarked on one of the boats below to head out to the floating villages.

On the way, we saw many young men fishing.

Everyone also seems to be growing a bit of morning glory, very nice in a soup with beef.

 There was lots of other water traffic.

Many doing business.

Eventually, the lake opened up and there were the floating villages.

After a motor round, it was back to the village and return to the hotel for the cooking course, which I'll describe in the next post.