Pictures: Lyle Such
Words: Thu Buu
Camera: Canon 5d Mk IV and Mavic Pro
Ro Lus Market
The following morning we took a stroll through a local market on our way to Tonlé Sap Lake.
We meandered through the alleys, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the morning market.
We watched a man delivering ice in giant blocks that needed to be cut down to the right size for each order.
The best find for us in the market was the old calculator watches for sale that we remembered from our childhood. I wonder what they would think of an iwatch!
During our exploration, I finally had my first street food. Bananas surrounded by sticky rice, wrapped in banana leaves and grilled over charcoal. Yum.
One of the things that really draws people to these markets, especially photographers, is the abundance of old technology and objects in a beautiful state of decay.
Freshly caught seafood, mainly fish and shrimp, can still be seen flopping and flapping in the tin basins. The vendors prepare their products right on the spot. Scaling, gutting, and cutting fish. Peeling jackfruit. Pouring batter into round molds for a local treat.
Lyle found it funny that so many people, especially the women, dressed in their “pajamas” while they were out in public. They wear what they have, and dress for comfort rather than style.
The market was such a lively place, every corner we turned there was a new surprise. You could be looking at a stall full of shoes or watches and next door would be a table full of slaughtered animals, ready to be taken home and cooked for dinner.
This lady runs a noodle shop in a hard to find area somewhere deep in the middle of the market.
Cambodia is full of rusty bikes, scooters, eighties watches and clothing, and machinery that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in decades. There is no sense of irony in these objects. It’s all that these people have available to them, and they make it work. We are continually shown how people can be resourceful and make due with what they have
Besides fresh produce and meats, there are stalls that sell food ready to eat. Sweet dessert can be ordered and scooped into plastic bags to take home.
Down another alley, we found household items, clothing, shoes and even books to learn English.
All those people loaded onto the back of that cart are actually paying customers. That is the local bus, pulled by a tractor.
Tonlé Sap Lake
Stilt homes are built high enough so floods cannot affect them. Empty plastic barrels are attached to the bottom of the platforms for storage areas so they will rise as the water rises. Each year, the dirt road along the river out to the lake must be rebuilt after the rainy season.
The people of this region are dependent upon Tonlé Sap Lake and its tributaries for their livelihood. Even though the rivers flood their banks yearly, covering the whole countryside, sometimes under as much as seven meters of water, people do not complain about the damage the floods create. They live their lives in harmony with the natural cycle.
We went for a boat ride under the canopy of trees growing in the water. Our little boat came with a solemn looking little girl whose mother was actually rowing the boat behind us. Most of the boats were steered by women. A long stick is used to push and guide the boat along. Near the end we found women selling an assortment of things, we bought school supplies knowing we would be visiting a school.
We docked our boat along the river and climbed the steps up to the village. I wanted to visit with students and see the school in this village. Unfortunately, it was lunchtime, and students had already been dismissed. The librarian was still in the building, and she was able to show me their little library. At least I was able to give her my sack of notebooks, pencils and stickers. A group of preschool and kindergarten-age kids saw us and followed us into the school. Yay, I had someone to give lollipops and scratch and sniff stickers to. They liked the banana smelling stickers better than the blueberry ones. I’m not sure if they even know what blueberries are. Hahahaha.
We saw a lot of tiny children riding adult-sized bikes. Again, we were reminded that people just use what is available to them, so if a family has a bike, the kids learn to ride it no matter what the size is.
The village was basically two rows of stilt homes built along the river separated by a wide dirt road.
On this particular day, shrimp was being left out to dry on a large tarp in the middle of the road. If you wanted to munch on a shrimp, you just pick one up and pop it in your mouth. No one cares.
Ta Prohm
The temple passes were quite expensive. A three-day pass was $40 USD per person, and that price was set to increase to $60 the following day. How could the locals afford to visit their own heritage? There are different entrance fees for foreigners than for citizens.
We only had enough time to explore one temple this evening, and we chose the Tomb Raider temple, Ta Prohm. Of all the temples we visited, this was my favorite.
Ta Prohm was built in the late 12th and early 13th century as a Buddhist monastery and university. At its peak of wealth and influence, Ta Prohm housed 18 high monks, 615 dancers, and over 12,500 people. The temple’s moat and outer wall enclosed an area of 650,000 sq. meters, which would have provided protection for as many of the hundreds of thousands of villagers whose services were required by the temple. Today, this area is mainly forested.
Ta Prohm is unique among the temples of Angkor because it has been left almost as it was found, entangled in a dance with nature. Gigantic silk-cotton trees grow out of the ruins stretching their leaves high into the sky as their marvelous roots flow downward in beautiful smooth waves. It’s as if the jungle decided to adopt this temple, slowly merging with it instead of completely destroying or covering it up.
Tastefully, reconstruction efforts at Ta Prohm have mainly focused on structural stabilization and work to maintain its natural state of neglect in the middle of the jungle.
This amazing strangler fig tree also claims a part of Ta Prohm. Its endless coils of roots weave themselves into a massive web that obscures the whole corner of this building.
We ducked through a small side door into this outdoor courtyard and were struck by the large amount of tourists squeezed into such a small space. A large Chinese group was monopolizing the space in front of this iconic tree. Once they finished, we quickly inserted ourselves and were able to snap a few quick pictures with no one else in the background. Within a minute, the space was completely filled with people and selfie-sticks.
Prasat Kravan
One last temple visit, Prasat Kravan, as the red sun set behind the trees. This small temple consisting of 5 towers symmetrically built from red bricks in the 10th century honored Vishnu. However, this structural style and artwork was more commonly seen in Cham temples.
This was one of the few moments while visiting temples in Cambodia that we felt removed from the crowds.
