Alone once, and lost in Angkor's eerie spell

Wed, April 16, 2008
Carleton Cole
The Nation (Thailand)

Just a dozen years ago the temple complex still offered visitors all the solitude they needed to dream Khmer dreamsPublished on April 16, 2008

If I had to pick my favourite photo of my 1996 trip to Cambodia, it would be a shot of the sunlight playing with shade on a stone carving of an apsara. But if I were asked what was my most remarkable photo, I would have to choose a picture of a long bas-relief cloister where there's nary a soul in sight.

Perhaps the pictures in themselves aren't worth a thousand words each, but they dramatically illustrate this fact: In 1996 Cambodia had 260,000 visitors, and last year there were more than two million.

In 1996, what has become a virtually risk-free trek from Bangkok to Siem Reap by land or river was still a few years away. The US government discouraged overland travel between Phnom Penh and the gateway to Angkor too, since there was still a chance of being ambushed by Khmer Rouge holdouts.

A dozen years ago there was no need to get up before dawn to make sure you could walk among the Angkor temples in splendid loneliness. There was no jostling for the best shots of the ruins at dusk.

The ancient complex was all but empty throughout the day, save for a few intrepid adventurers - and clusters of local people, mostly children, who tried to reel in riel from the visitors, or better, US dollars, in exchange for batik fabrics, T-shirts and all-purpose krama scarves.

Nowadays, thanks to the peace that came to Cambodia in 1998, visitors complain that the temples are despairingly overrun.

The Indochina War came to an end in early 1975, but 33 years ago tomorrow the even greater horrors that would paralyse Cambodia were just beginning as the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh.

In late 1978, after the worst of the so-called auto-genocide in which some 1.7 million Cambodians perished, Vietnamese forces liberated the country's east and south from the cruel Khmer Rouge overseers. The invaders backed the Maoist extremists into a squirreling crescent of land along the Thai border.

But even as late as 1996, the rulers-turned-rebels still controlled vast areas just several kilometres from the Angkor complex.

At the Tha Phrom temple that year I was the only visitor. Or so I thought - until I heard someone shout, "You!"

I looked back to see a lone soldier headed my way, and for a minute stood paralysed, thinking he was Khmer Rouge. As he came near, though, I saw with relief that he wore a government-flag patch on his shoulder, with its silhouette of Angkor Wat.

"I show you temple," he said, in what sounded part question but mostly statement. Wherever I wandered among the elegant old grounds, where centuries-old trees climbed over the even more ancient stones of the temple, he was close behind.

"This temple was built under King Jayavarman VII," he said, adding nothing to what I'd already read in Lonely Planet.

As we parted ways after the "tour", a few of his colleagues showed up. I half-smiled and nodded at my "guide" and, keeping my head down, walked back to my car and told the driver to go on to the next temple.

Instead of starting the engine, he asked, "Do you have a dollar? That's the usual fee they ask for."

Unsure of who had lost or gained face, I diplomatically went back to pay the soldier a dollar. He smiled and let me take his photo.

These days, with the broad stream of visitors pouring into Angkor, such extracurricular activity is barred by the government.

While I felt relatively safe throughout my trip, only about 13 kilometres away were the pinkish stones of the Bantery Srei temple - the Citadel of the Women. Two years earlier an American woman had been killed near there by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

It was still too close to the frontline to consider a visit in 1996, but my future wife went in '98 and proudly announced that I'd missed the most elegant temple in the area.

I imagine I'll make it there some day, and if there are too many people scrumming for photos, well, they can be Photoshopped out once I'm back home.

Aging German aviators visit Cambodia on single-engine world trip

Sun, 12 Aug 2007
DPA

Phnom Penh - Two German aviators of advancing years but with childhood dreams intact wrapped up a visit to Cambodia Sunday, after making humanitarian jaunts to help the country's children. Uwe Thomas Carstensen, 60, and co-pilot Hans Christian Albertsen, 59, first met as schoolboys in their native Schlesweig-Holstein state.

More than half a century later, the windmill engineer and the builder decided that they had put aside their childish dreams for long enough, and hatched a plan to fly around the world in just 80 days in a tiny Cessna 206, stopping at 30 destinations.

"We both enjoy life and love flying around Germany and Europe. We worked out that when you break this journey up into legs of 1,200 nautical miles, it is possible to fly around the entire world," Carstensen said in an interview shortly after arriving from Malaysia.

"We thought it was a fantastic idea. A great chance to taste all the different cultures and experiences the world has to offer."

Unlike Carstensen, his wife Marie does not like flying, so to ease the separation he named his single-engine Cessna after her and painted the plane with red and green roses.

The pair's trip to Cambodia, which ended Sunday when they departed for Hong Kong and later Taiwan, was "a real eye opener," according to Carstensen. They traveled outside the capital to meet school children and talk with them about the dangers of drug use and HIV/AIDS.

Cambodia still has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infections in the region.

"When we dreamed this up, we knew we wanted to do something that was fun and challenging for us, but also helped other people and helped us to understand the places we were traveling through a little bit better," Carstensen explained.

Their landing at Phnom Penh International Airport last Friday created much merriment amongst locals, who watched in amazement as the pilots, both grandfathers, leapt from the tiny plane and effortlessly pushed it across the tarmac themselves.

Although exotic destinations such as Turkey, Dubai, Pakistan, Burma and Australia are behind them, countries including Japan, Alaska and Greenland still lie ahead before their scheduled return to Germany on September 13, and Carstensen will visit his 88-year-old father in Vancouver, Canada, on the way.

"This has been a wonderful experience, but it will also be very nice for both of us when we get home and we can be with our families again," Carstensen said.

Capturing Angkor Before Tourism Works Its Changes

The eerie calm near the moment of a total solar eclipse at Angkor in 1995. (Photo: John McDermott)

Monks in a window in 2001. (Photo: John McDermott)

The photographer John McDermott at work in Angkor. (Photo: Courtesy of John McDermott)

June 10, 2007
By MATT GROSS
New York Times (USA)

THERE is a moment at Angkor, the vast complex of ancient temples in the Cambodian jungle, that every visitor hopes for. Perhaps it comes while passing under a 60-foot-high gate carved a thousand years ago, or at sunrise when the lotus-like spires are reflected in a placid pool of water. Or maybe it comes when you encounter a centuries-old tree, growing straight from a sandstone slab and slowly devouring a temple.

These are the moments that John McDermott specializes in.

A 52-year-old photographer from Little Rock, Ark., Mr. McDermott may be the Ansel Adams of Angkor. In the last decade, his photographs have almost become the definitive images of the temples. His pictures — the silhouette of a stone lion at sunset, monks resting on a windowsill, apsara dancers primping before a performance — are not just beautiful but iconic.

Mr. McDermott didn’t deliberately set out to become the unofficial court photographer of Angkor. He first visited in 1995, when he was living in Bangkok. Back then, the only lodgings were tents and small guesthouses, and few if any tourists traipsed through. To capture the eerie calm, he had planned his trip to coincide with a total solar eclipse.

“The light does really funny things during an eclipse,” he said. “First of all, it’s devoid of color, becomes monochromatic, sort of platinum. And then it ripples and does unusual things, so the whole setting becomes quite surreal” — as if Angkor Wat, with its graciously decaying walls and bas-relief depictions of Buddhist hell, wasn’t surreal enough already.

Capturing that ambience, however, posed a problem; normal film couldn’t match what Mr. McDermott had experienced. Luckily, he had also tested infrared film, which he chose to reproduce a specific appearance. When he developed the infrared shots (which were taken after the eclipse had passed), he found what he had been hoping for: temples bathed in otherworldly light.

“It was a eureka moment, you know?” he said.

Another eureka moment came five years later, when he returned to Angkor for an exhibition of his photographs at the Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Siem Reap, the town that serves as a base for exploring the temples. The new luxury hotel was, to McDermott’s surprise, full of tourists. “I recognized two things,” he said. “One, that the tourism industry had just had the fuse lit for Angkor” and two, that the magical-looking temples were going to change from the tourist onslaught.

Sensing that time was of the essence, he returned on his own several months later to “get as comprehensive a portrait of Angkor as I could,” he said. “I wanted them to look as if they’d been taken 300 years ago, 500 years ago, or yesterday — or tomorrow.”

Over the next several years, Mr. McDermott trained his camera (and infrared film) on Angkor’s crumbling walls, gnarled roots and mystical light. The dreamlike photos, which look as though they were taken in an ancient, forgotten world, have been exhibited and published in magazines and newspapers around the world (including The New York Times) — becoming, in essence, defining images of Angkor.

In a way, his quest for the quintessential Angkor image puts him in a league with Ansel Adams, whose photographs of Yosemite shaped the public’s imagination of that vast and unknowable park. Mr. McDermott’s prints now grace the hallways of Cambodian hotels and are sold in stores as far away as Palm Beach, Fla. And this November, he plans to publish them in a book, “Angkor at the Turn of the Century.”

Meanwhile, change has come to Siem Reap, where Mr. McDermott and his wife, Narisara Murray, settled in 2003. Hundreds of hotels have gone up, a million foreign tourists visit annually, the temples are cluttered with wooden walkways, and Siem Reap is now an arts hub, thanks in part to the two galleries Mr. McDermott opened there.

But Mr. McDermott is no one-trick infrared pony. He has turned his camera to the temples and tribal areas of Myanmar. “Burma’s just a really fantastic destination,” he said, using Myanmar’s former name, “and I think it’s probably going to change pretty quickly.”

In other words: Come 2012 or so, expect Mr. McDermott’s vision of Myanmar to be yours as well.

Travelling down the Mekong in Vietnam and Cambodia

The mighty Mekong river runs nearly 5,000 km through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and while it may not be the longest river in Asia, it is certainly the most beautiful.

18 Apr 2007
From correspondents in Asia Pacific
www.indiaenews.com

The mighty Mekong river runs nearly 5,000 km through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and while it may not be the longest river in Asia, it is certainly the most beautiful.

The river flows into the South China Sea just south of Saigon, known today as Ho Chi Minh City, and its delta is the starting point for many cruises.

It is not possible to navigate the entire length of the Mekong since the Sambor rapids prevent further passage. Luckily, the confluence with the Tonle Sap, the river's main tributary, is just above Phnom Penh and ships can use it to reach the celebrated temple complex of Angkor Wat.

Gliding along the lower reaches of the Mekong offers the visitor broad tableaux of local everyday life. Only two cruise vessels ply this section, the Tonle Pandaw and the Mekong Pandaw, which can carry 66 or 64 passengers. Those who have booked a trip upriver, board their ship in My Tho in Vietnam, some 60 km south of Saigon.

The journey unfolds past mangrove forests and green rice paddies, offering glimpses of many villages and cottage industries along the way. Now and then, the ships pass a bathing spot where children enjoy a dip while their mothers wash clothes and crockery in the water. There are hardly any roads here, the river is the main transport artery and that explains why it is so busy. Motorboats dart past canoes being paddled from bank to bank while the traditional sampan wooden cargo boat is a common sight.

When it runs close to larger towns and cities the Mekong becomes even livelier. Take the bustling town of Cai Be, where the big river cruisers tie up at the dockside. A maze of canals, it boasts many gardens, some temples and a church but no streets to speak of.

The floating market is the main attraction here and it lures farmers from the outlying districts who trade their wares straight from the deck of a sampan.

Chau Doc is another hive of activity. A huge dockside market selling local produce and commodities dominates the town on the border with Cambodia. The fresh food booths offer anything from dried fish to peeled grapefruit or even frog's legs for the gourmet.

Beyond the border there are fewer settlements and houses alongside the river compared with the stretch inside Vietnam. The Cambodian riverside is less busy until shortly before Phnom Penh. This energetic city is the largest settlement along the river. The waterside is dominated by relics of the past; pagodas and palaces attract the eye alongside handsome villas built in the French colonial style.

The best place to muse over artefacts of the Khmer culture is the National Museum, whose riches were fortunately not plundered during the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. It is best to set aside a whole day to admire the many statues and bas-reliefs. The huge central market erected in the art deco style is also well worth a visit along with the Royal Palace.

The horrors of Cambodia's recent past can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. After a tour of the former Pol Pot torture chambers, the proverbial gentleness and friendliness of the Cambodians seems all the more astonishing.

Beyond Phnom Penh, the cruise ship leaves the Mekong to chug up the Tonle Sap. This river is unique since for half of the year, starting from the rainy season in June, it reverses its flow. From November onwards, the normal flow to the river mouth is resumed.

On the northern shore of Tonle Sap lake is the booming provincial town of Siem Reap. The most compelling reason to come here is to visit Angkor Wat, one of the world's most spectacular ancient temples. The complex has been on UNESCO's list of world cultural monuments since 1992.

Around 1,000 relics lie strewn across this vast site stretching across some 200 square km. Visitors can book individual tours or explore on their own. Those with only a few days to spare should concentrate on Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious structure, and plan trips to the overgrown city of Angkor Thom and the Ta Phrom temple district.

Both world culture and subculture are catered for in Siem Reap, which offers a wide range of bars and clubs in the centre, one street is even called Bar Street. One of the establishments is the Red Piano Bar where actress Angelina Jolie was a guest when she filmed the movie 'Tomb Raider' in Angkor in 2001. It comes, as no surprise that the most popular drink here is Tomb Raider Cocktail.

By Thomas Gross (Staff Writer, IANS)