As exhausting as it is to be around or professor Kyle for hours on end, he does take us to do some pretty amazing things! Last Saturday, he woke us up at 4:30am and we piled into a 12-passenger van in the wee hours of the morn. The city was completely deserted, except for the early-early morning food market where all the day's goods are distributed to each business owner -- right in the middle of the street. Waking up so early pays off sometimes!
We started driving south of Phnom Penh and about 10 km outside of the city the road gave out. There was a huge gap in the dirt road and a large truck was attempting to back-fill the hole with dirt and sand. Our ambitious driver attempted to get us across, but we got stuck and the big truck had to pull us out. We were trying to make it to Chisor by sunrise, but we missed it as we had to find a new and longer route. No worries though, because it was still amazing!
We arrived in the valley around 6:30am and hiked through miles of rice paddies. The air was cool and dry, and there was just a little mist floating over the fields. It was really a sight to behold. We stumbled upon a 10th century temple that is the 'gateway' to Wat Chisor on the mountain.
Along the paths, we saw thousands of pieces of ancient pottery. Soh-Cah, an archeology professor at RUFA and previous student of Kyle's, is an expert on ancient pottery and he was able to tell us all about the pieces we found. There were remnants of thousands of years of history scattered on the ground. It was amazing to pick up pieces of pottery that are so old. Some dated back to the pre-Angkor period, around the 8th-9th centuries. Amazing! I picked out a select number of pieces to bring home and share with some of you nerds :)
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| SohCah and Kyle's daughter, Mina, with a pre-Angkor pot base |
We mosey-ed along the paths and finally reached the steps up to Chisor. Quite the hike ahead of us!
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| Long way up! |
It only took about 20 minutes to get up, and we were greeted by many of the villagers and Wat-keepers. The view from the top was incredible. We could see all the way to Vietnam! Kyle explained to us that the landscape is mostly man-made as a way to manage the drastic ecological differences between the wet and dry seasons. The rice paddies are irrigated naturally via the floods, and there are numerous kinds of rice crops that adapt to changing water levels in the dry season. Flooding rarely happens due to the layout of the fields. The method was developed over 2,000 years ago and is still sustained in the same way -- talk about 'going green'!
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| WE DID IT! |
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| Panoramic from the top! |
We spent about 2 hours up on the mountain; Tim and I wandered around the whole complex and talked to different people and prayed with incense in front of many different Buddha images. One old man gave us hand-drawn prayer flags that are supposed to protect us from harm and evil. It was so cool on top of the mountain, and it started to rain just a little bit before we left. It was actually the perfect weather for a hike because we stayed nice and cool!
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| Here I am at the top! |
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| Tim making merit |
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| Ancient Khmer tablet and script |
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| Our old man, the protector |
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| Lotus garden |
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| 10th century temples |
We had a picnic lunch and some of the villagers gave us food; I watched them kill and de-feather our chicken (which was delicious, obviously!). After lunch, we hiked back down and took a different path into the village in the valley. We met some local villagers and stopped at a home where many women were weaving traditional fabrics. We piled back in the car and I passed out until we got to our next stop.
On the way back to Phnom Penh, we stopped at Choeung Ek, just one of the many infamous Killing Fields in and around the area. Choeung Ek was used as a dumping and torture site for thousands of people. Over 9,000 skeletons have been discovered in this one site. It was quite an emotional experience to walk around the fields and know that thousands of people were murdered under your very feet.
Choeung Ek was an emotional experience, but it was just preparation for Tuesday's visit to Tuol Sleung -- the Genocide museum in Phnom Penh and the site where 20,000 innocent people were detained, tortured, and killed. More in the next post.
Peace and Love to all :)
p.s. Here are some photos from Choeung Ek:
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| The Mausoleum holding 8,000 + skulls of the victims of Choeung Ek |
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| The Killing Fields |
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| The officers hung a loudspeaker from this tree that played noises to drown out sounds of victims' screaming |
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