Cambodia Bucket List

This week at work I've been working on the 3D Rhino model of Vann Molyvann's house. On Friday I checked some items off my Cambodia bucket list. I made the bucket list when I came back from Kep and it included:

1) Picking up custom-made shoes from Beautiful Shoes:
I ordered some custom-made shoes from a shoe place in Phnom Penh. They trace your foot and make some measurements and then make a leather shoe for you. All you have to do is bring them some pictures of the shoes you want and then they make pretty close to the same design.

2) Visiting the national museum:
Cambodia’s national museum in Phnom Penh focuses mainly on Angkorian and Pre-Angkorian art and artefacts housed in a well-designed and charming (yet small) museum near the Royal Palace. I went to the museum after having lunch with Ed and Nancy at Friends, an NGO-run restaurant that provides Cambodian street kids with training in the food service industry (partnered with Romdeng). The museum had a great little interior courtyard with fish ponds and a pavilion as well.

3) Visiting the national palace:
I enjoy visiting royal residences. When I went to the Cambodian Palace I was a little disappointed because you couldn't really go into parts of the royal residence, but could only see the royal pagodas and little temples on the grounds. There were also some exhibits of royal possessions such as the current king Sihamoni's collection of elephant bowls. There were also several monks on the palace grounds who seemed very eager to practice their english with passing tourists.

4) Going to Tol Sleng:
The Khmer Rouge torture camp in Phnom Penh was housed in a former secondary school. S-21, as it was referred to by the Khmer Rouge, is currently a genocide museum with frighteningly horrific photographs, paintings, testimonies, and an hour-long movie. I was especially shocked by the exhibition with photos from 1976 (I think) taken by a Swedish man traveling on a sort of cultural ambassadorship. He wrote that he was a Maoist at the time and believed that Democratic Kampuchea (what Cambodia was called during the Khmer Rouge) was an exemplary example of functioning Maoism. It was really creepy to walk in the torture chambers and holding cells that prisoners were kept in before being taken to Cheong Ek (?) or the Killing Fields.

5) See an Apsara Show:
Didn't actually work out because the Apsara (Khmer traditional dance) theater we were going to go to closed down the weekend we all went to Kep. They're supposedly opening again later this year.

6) Going to Louisiana Fried Chicken:
According to LP, before Cambodia joined the World Trade Organization it didn't have copyright laws and it apparently had a KFC, 7-11, and other popular establishments. Once it joined the WTO, these places changed and I think became Louisiana Fried Chicken (a.k.a. LFC) and 7-11 became "7 Elephants". I went to LFC with Nancy and Sokly before going to my last stop on my list, Wat Phnom.

7) Climb Wat Phnom to see the monkeys:
At lunch on my last day Sokly took Nancy and I on Chhoy's moto to Wat Phnom, one of the original Wats (or Buddhist Temples, NOT pagodas) in Phnom Penh. Phnom means "hill" in Khemai so the temple is set up on a little hill surrounded by a park. It's also home to several monkeys and we saw two of them. Nancy even got a great picture of a monkey mid-leap going from a lamp post to a tree.

So I finally finished writing this post after quite a long week of packing, trying to figure out my Rhino model, and working on the bucket list. It was a nice way to end my trip, but I really wasn't ready to leave yet.

On my last night, Darren was nice enough to drive Sokly, Nancy, and I to the airport. It was a dark and stormy night and the sky was crying because I was leaving. The streets of Phnom Penh flooded with water and traffic. Darren's Toyota Camry (pretty much the same model that I drove in high school, but nicer) was up to the doors at least in water while driving through the back streets of the city in an attempt to avoid the incredible traffic jam of cars, motos, and pedestrians in the now flooded city.


My friends at our last dinner together ;_;

After checking my luggage in at the airport and paying the $25 airport departure tax, I ate a quick dinner with Nancy, Chhoy, Sokly, and Darren. They all said goodbye and watched as I ascended the escalator up to the departure zone and onto the plane.

Modernism in Ruins

The Butterfly Villa

Monday was our last day in Kep as we caught the afternoon bus back to Phnom Penh. This morning I woke up early and ate a delicious breakfast at Veranda with Bill and Nancy before jumping on another tuk tuk to explore the French modernist villas that were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. The villas lay scattered about Kep with some along the seashore, others more inland, and even the king's old palace up on the hill is in ruins. My favorite was the "butterfly" villa so named because of its butterfly roof that seems to be derived from much of the vernacular architecture around here. Next door to it was the best-restored villa with its bright yellow hand railing.


A Restored Villa

Exploring the villas was a great way to see the principles of modernism from the fifties, I think. On this trip I was also reading "The International Style" and with the ideas of modernism fresh in my mind, I had the chance to explore these buildings from that era that combined with some of the existing Khmer vernacular forms to create a somewhat regional modernism lost in the ravages of the Cambodian revolution. The ruins of these buildings reminded me of the impermanence of architecture and was strangely evocative of the ruins at Beng Mealea and Angkor that had been swallowed up by the forest. It's really sad to think of all the violence and trauma that happened in the walls of these villas, yet they remain beautiful reminders of Cambodia's architectural richness.


Great View from a Ruin

When the ruin romp was over and we checked out of the hotel, we waited for the bus at the bus stop and learned that it was going to be at least another half hour before the bus came. Bill and I took a quick trip to Knai Bang Chatt, the high end modernist resort in Kep. We spoke to the manager and he explained to us (in French) a bit about the buildings and told us about two of Vann Molyvann's buildings that he did in Kep. Bill didn't know about him, but the manager said that he learned about them when Vann Molyvann stayed with him about 3 months ago (I think). It could be really interesting to take another look into the history of these villas to learn more about their architectural value. It's really difficult because the land and the villas are increasingly getting sold to corrupt officials, destroyed, or encased behind high brick walls. I think the visits to these villas and the principles in "the International Style" really helped me to understand what the modern architecture movement was, something that I didn't get at Yale and that I wouldn't have gotten without this trip to Cambodia.


Another Villa

Kep Kaves and Kampot

On Sunday Steve, Yen, Ed, Nancy, and I took a tuk tuk to Kampong Trach about an hour and a half away to see some caves. The first cave we went to was in a large rock outcrop that jutted up from the rice field plains. Once the tuk tuk pulled up near the cave area and we each paid our $1 entry fee, two children with flashlights followed the tuk tuk until it stopped at the cave mouth. When we got off the tuk tuk they immediately guided us into the cave with their flashlights chattering off the names of various rock formations such as "the turtle", "head of the eel", "eagle", and perhaps the most easily identifiable formation, "policeman's foot". It was quite odd and I felt very hurried being herded along by the now 12 other children who had joined them. The cave opened up to a large central area or "open sky cave" where there was a small temple with a reclining Buddha statue (a garish replacement because the original was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge). There was also a narrow staircase leading up into an opening in the cave wall that we couldn't go into because it was according to our little guides "too sticky and too many mosquitoes".


Open Sky Cave

When we were finished at the Open Sky Cave, we hopped back in the tuk tuk and drove a little ways while three of our little guides followed us on their bicycles. We got off the tuk tuk and had to walk about 1 km to reach the next cave, the swimming cave. The tuk tuk couldn't get there because there were too many big holes in the dirt road and it was a bit too muddy for all 5 of us to fit in the tuk tuk. On the way to the swimming cave, we passed a pond at the foot of a large outcropping of rocks. I asked our guide, Dap (?), if we could go closer to that mountain and he said, "no. too many bombs." I suppose he meant land mines because this area was one of the last Khmer Rouge hideouts and is still riddled with landmines. The eight of us continued on past some goats, a quarry, and children shouting out enthusiastic "hello"s to us. The swimming cave was indeed a sort of subterranean lake filled with clear and clean water. There wasn't too much trash in the lake and there were even little fishes swimming about.


The Swimming Cave

At first I was a little apprehensive about jumping in to a random lake, but after Dap (?) leapt in and was splashing about, I was put at ease and Ed, Steve, Nancy, and I all jumped in in our swimming suits. The water was nice and cool, way cooler than the ocean had been the day before on Rabbit Island and it was also fairly shaded so it wasn't hot at all. Ed and I decided to explore the deeper parts of the cave and headed towards the back where we thought the lake might continue further, but it got too dark and it didn't look like it went much further. The water must have come from somewhere underneath and beyond the walls of the little cave. Apparently when Ed and I were heading towards the back of the cave, Dap told Nancy that there were ghosts back there and we shouldn't go there. I didn't hear him, but I didn't see any ghosts, only some garbage gathered near the back, probably where the current of the water drained into the other parts of the cave. Some swimming and splashing later, we walked back to the tuk tuk and our driver took us to the Kampot pepper plantations.


Our Cave Guides

The pepper plantations were a bit of a ways off the main road and quite unobtrusive. Our driver showed us how the pepper grows on a vine and explained how they pick the pepper when it's green and after they dry it it becomes black. The white peppercorns come from peeling the pepper berries before drying them, but I don't think their flavor was as intense. We met a nice family that runs the pepper plantation and practiced our Khmei language skills with them. The plantation also grows sapodilla, durian, mango, and papayas too, but they weren't in season yet as the mango season is in May.


Legendary Kampot Pepper Plants

By the time we were done with the pepper plantation, it was about time for lunch so we headed back to Vanna Bungalows in Kep and ate at the nearby Veranda Resort restaurant. The food was really good there but fairly expensive as the Veranda is a really nice resort with moderately priced rooms. They really get you on the food, but it's worth it in my opinion. We were going to stay at the Veranda, but they were all booked up and I will definitely have to stay there the next time. The view there is also really amazing and the bungalows themselves are up in the trees and connected with elevated walkways. I had a delicious chicken club sandwich with fries on freshly baked bread.

After lunch we all had a food coma and took naps in the hammocks on our bungalows' lanais. Dinner was down at the crab shacks again, but in a different place this time. We ate in the shack all the way down at the end and the crabs were bigger than the ones from the shack from before. The crab was also really good and soft and came right out of the shell. We ordered two plates of crab (grilled and with spices) and it came with the excellent Kampot pepper sauce too, yum! Steve, Ed, and I were still hungry after sharing the crabs with the whole group, so we went to the Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant for round two. We ordered deep fried and battered prawns and crab with spices and some morning glory veggies. I'm sorry to say that I was pretty disappointed with the restaurant that LP recommended. LP said they gave a free dessert, but they didn't. There were termites in the table, at least two rats running around the dining area, and the crab was kind of tough and tasted a little overcooked. It seems that the restaurant got Lonely Planet syndrome and has slacked off since they got into the book because they get so much business that they don't even need to be up to the same standard that they used to.


A Kep Crab Dinner

Crabs, Snakes, and Sunsets

I just got back from our extended weekend trip in Kep this evening. Kep is a small town in the Kampot province where the French built seaside villas during the mid 20th century. When the Khmer Rouge came along in the 1970s they destroyed the bourgeois villa town and today it's slowly recovering as a popular vacation destination once more. Everyone in the house came on the trip including Steve Chen and Ed's friend, Yen, and even Bill. We left on Friday around lunchtime and after an arduous 5 hour bus ride on a bus with broken AC, the bus stopped and a man got on saying this was the stop for Kep.

We hauled our luggage onto the dusty sidewalk and looked for the guy from our guesthouse, Vanna Bungalows, who was supposed to be picking us up. He was nowhere in sight and a couple of tuk tuk drivers tried to coax us into their waiting coaches. I called Vanna Bungalows and spoke with the guy only to find out that we had gotten off at the wrong bus stop and fell for a scam to get tourists off the bus and charge them more for a 5km ride to the guesthouse area. Luckily, the guy from Vanna Bungalows arranged for his own tuk tuk guy to come pick us up and hot, sweaty, and dusty we finally made it to our lodgings.


On the Way to the Islands

The bungalows were nice private rooms in private buildings each with their own bathrooms, beds, and AC or a fan. The next morning we woke up for an early breakfast and departure for Koh Pos, a small island off the shore for some snorkeling. Down by the pier we walked out to a little green boat belonging to a fisherman and his nets. Our tuk tuk driver, Ly, also came with us as a guide toting a plastic bag with masks and snorkels. The boat pushed off and puttered towards the many surrounding islands. Apparently some of them belong to Vietnam and the area is right on the border line. We passed Mango Island, Chili Island, Rabbit Island, and others before arriving in a shallow bay off Koh Pos (not quite clear what the translation is for "Pos", but "Koh" means "island" in Khmei). Jumping off the boat and into the shallow water, we waded to the shore evading starfishes and sea urchins before arriving at a very very small village. Ly walked us around pointing out baskets full of small crabs that were too small to sell, but enough for the villagers to eat and he led us to the neighboring village through the forest. There we saw more little huts and what looked like the school, even though there wasn't really a school there. Ly spoke with some of the people and they dragged out a large crab trap with a 3 meter long python inside. He didn't look too happy but the village children were fascinated with their captured snake. One woman even squeezed a little bit of bread into its cage, which it promptly ignored and instead eyed the baby in her other arm.


Snake in a Cage

After the snake spectacle we walked around and Ed and I played a bit of volleyball with the locals. There are volleyball nets EVERYWHERE here built out of fishing net or loose weave or whatever they can find. Walking around on the island we didn't find any nice beaches to snorkel on so we waded back out to the boat and departed for our next destination, Rabbit Island.

According to Lonely Planet, Rabbit Island is so named because the locals think it looks like a rabbit, but I couldn't find the rabbit from any angle. The boat parked in another shallow bay, this time near some seaweed farms and we hopped out following Ly to a beach a short walk away. The beach is supposed to be one of Cambodia's best, but it was hardly anything worthy of note. The only good thing about it was that it was pretty sparsely populated because it's quite remote. There were also chairs and hammocks provided and mats from the locals who ran a little bungalow guesthouse and restaurant. It was very relaxing to just chill on the beach, read, and suntan with the occasional dip in the warm water every once in a while. We tried to go snorkeling, but the masks we borrowed from our guide were so old and scratched that you really couldn't see anything at all through them. We all ate lunch on the island and had our first experience with Kep's prime seafood. Nancy and I ordered a fried rice with fish and a squid with black pepper and it was very tasty considering that they prepared it right on the beach. The water started to get choppy around 3 so we trekked back to the boat through a little bit of forest and cow pies and left back to Kep.


Beach at Rabbit Island

Finally making it back to Vanna Bungalows, everyone freshened up with a shower and changed clothes for dinner down at the crab shacks. The crab shacks are a series of shacks on the water full of seafood restaurants. With all the choices we settled on the shack with the longest lanai over the water. I can't remember what the name of the place we went to was, but we ordered fried crab, "gary crab", fried prawns, and "crab in the hot oil". Watching the sunset from the lanai I could see a woman wade out into the tide and retrieve a crab cage from the water. I'm couldn't see because of the glare, but I'm pretty sure she grabbed the crabs that we were going to eat straight from the ocean. The sunset in Kep was one of the most beautiful sunset's I've ever seen (and that's saying something coming from Hawaii). The colors and clouds were totally surreal looking more like a photoshopped portrait background than an actual place. That dinner was the best crab that I've ever had and one of the messiest dinners ever because of all the sauce and work involved in cracking the crab. One of the dishes was prepared with legendary green Kampot peppers. Kampot is known around the world for its potent black pepper plantations and rightly so as it is the best pepper I've ever had and I'm not sure if I can go back to normal pepper. There's a lime-sugar-salt-pepper sauce that is served with pretty much every seafood dish here and it makes everything taste infinitely better. I'll have to make some when I start cooking.


The Sunset View at Dinner

Culinary Capers

So today was the grad students' last day with us. Kurt left early in the morning and Terri, Kevin, and Juenan left after lunch. We had a farewell lunch for them at Romdeng (all thanks to Bill!) and didn't hold back on ordering every delicious dish they had. One of the highlights was the fried tarantulas. I had a leg and then sampled the head, fangs and all. It tasted fine, more texture than taste with the same texture as soft-shell crab, which is pretty much what it is. I also had a set meal for $6.50, a lot of food for such a great deal, including soup, a main dish, and a dessert (banana crepes with coconut gelato!).


Tarantulas, yummmm!

After lunch we all went back home for a final farewell to the grad students. Once they and Toon (?), our driver, left the compound everyone headed back inside and we spent the next hour and a half or so rearranging the office. The current arrangement is much less cluttered and more organized. In the afternoon Nancy and I went to Beautiful Shoes to get some custom shoes made. They only cost $30 for custom-made leather shoes in any design and color/pattern you want. All you have to do is take a picture of the shoes to them and they'll be ready in a week or so.


The VM Project Team minus Kurt, Yaro, and Yasemin

Sokly took Nancy, Steve, Ed, and I to the National Stadium where we took a brief tour of the complex in the fading twilight. Rows of Cambodians lined the top area of around the stadium track doing various forms of aerobic exercises. It was amazing to see the stadium and the huge concrete cantilevers that Vann Molyvann employed in the prodigiously throughout the complex. After watching the National Swimming Team practice in the Olympic pool, we watched the national basketball team scrimmage in the almost abandoned stadium and walked around to some fruit stands on the street. We stopped at one because Sokly said it had the best fruit and bought dragonfruit, longan, and oranges. The longan are from Takaman (?) where Leakhena's (finally learned how to spell her name) house is and they are some of the best longan I've had, despite their extremely large seeds. If it weren't for the size of the seed, the longan might be comparable to a lychee.


Fruit stall streetside

For dinner, Sokly and Darren (Sokly's best friend) took us to a Chinese place for some local Chinese food. I already wrote about the large population of Chinese here, so this was some pretty authentic stuff. I ordered "Black Chicken Soup" while the others had bitter-melon soup and duck soup. I figured the black chicken soup would be basic broth with pieces of chicken and veggies in it, or perhaps like congee porridge with chicken in it. When the food arrived to my great surprise I found a bowl of black soup with an ENTIRE CHICKEN in it. All they did was strip its feathers and plop it into a bowl of soup seasoned with various strange ingredients such as ginseng, longan, some fungus, roots, black lumpy things, livers, and pig intestines among other unidentifiable things. Luckily Ed ordered the same thing as I did, so we shared the experience of "Black Chicken Soup" together. Also, the chicken was ACTUALLY BLACK. Darren explained that the chicken is a particular type that is black, even the meat was black in some places.


Black Chicken Soup

As of now, we're planning the trip to Kep this weekend and I'm really excited!

The model's done!

Here's a picture of the finished model

The director of the FCC (French Cultural Center) came today to check out our operation before locking in a deal for an exhibition in their main gallery. I'm not quite sure when the show is going to be, but I'm pretty sure I won't be here for it. Tonight is Bill's talk at Meta House, one of the local art galleries here, so we're all going to that. It's also the grad students' last night as they depart tomorrow to get ready to start school again.

Working through the Weekend

The Facade of IFL Building E including the area that we're making a detail model of

So this weekend wasn't too exciting because we had to work on Saturday and Sunday to make up for the long weekend we took when we went to Siem Reap last week. I was working on the south elevations of the VM house but am waiting for the plans to finish them. We've also started work on a small detailed section model of the IFL (Institute for Foreign Languages) Building E. We're making it out of basswood and it's pretty challenging to cut everything by hand (oh laser cutter how I miss thee!) and I had to remake a piece like 4 times. It's good for my craft skills and nice to be able to concentrate on producing a well-crafted model without feeling a lot of pressure to finish like I did back in studio at school.


Another shot of IFL Building E with the pond to collect runoff rainwater and to help keep the area cooler

On Saturday Nancy and I went with Sokly to two of his friends' birthday parties. While waiting for him to get ready at his house, his mom showed us the photo album from Sokly's sister's wedding. It was really thick and kind of funny to look at all the pictures of the bride and groom in at least 5 different outfits. The groom never smiled in any of the pictures, but the bride always did. There were also pictures of some kind of ritual involving passing fruit between the two families. Another popular memento seemed to be portraits of the bride and groom in prom-like poses in front of various backgrounds including in front of a Little Mermaid-esque underwater castle, in an ideal home complete with a portrait of another of their wedding pictures on the shelf with a portrait of the bride in the background of that portrait, and in many of the shots the happy couple was standing on a 101 Dalmatians rug. The wedding was right when the grad students arrived earlier in July so they had the chance to experience that cultural extravaganza complete with Cambodian party dancing.

I also met Sokly's little nephew who is adorable and about 2 years old, I think. He was studying Chinese for his Chinese school, which is apparently very popular for the large population of Chinese living in Phnom Penh. We even drove through the area of town where the Chinese live (a kind of China Town) complete with a Chinese temple. I'm not sure, but it seems like there is some tension between the ethnic Chinese and Khmer but it isn't really something that is talked about much. The Chinese were apparently harshly oppressed under the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese rule. According to Wikipedia, Chinese New Year was only celebrated again for the first time in 1991 since before the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

Last night after work in the office, Lekina and her brother took Nancy and I to a "Suki Soup" place. Suki Soup is basically the Cambodian version of Hot Pot and derives apparently from the Japanese "sukiyaki". The place we went to was called City Suki Soup and it was really really delicious. Unlike traditional sukiyaki, a common suki soup ingredient are various types of meatballs with fish, shellfish, chicken, and combination. They even had a special type called "millionaire balls" with mushroom, shrimp, and either chicken or fish. They also cook the beef slices by placing them in a ladle with holes in it and letting it boil in the water. I guess it's to stop the meat from getting lost and over cooked in the hot pot. Hopefully we'll get to go there again because it was a really nice place and the whole meal was only $22 to feed 4 people a huge and filling meal!