Cambodia – Phnom Penh’s Central Market

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Ginger

The market’s Khmer name, Phsar Thmei, literally means “New Market.” But we call it “Central Market” in English. I don’t know, but I imagine I know, why: Unlike any other market we’ve visited, this one has a clear and unmistakeable center.

Built in 1935 in an art-deco style, the market comprises four wings around a central domed area. Around the market and its wings, ancillary vendors have set up additional stalls, as such vendors will.

The high-value merchandise is located under the central dome, attractively displayed in brightly lit cases.

We exited through the “food court,” an area of fast-food merchants, all busy preparing for the lunchtime rush.

Yes, that’s a durian that the man is cutting up, the fruit that is famous for a flavor that people who like it adore and for an odor that everyone else can’t stand. It turns out that *fresh* durians like this one don’t smell. I regret not having tasted it.

My favorite part of the market was the part we saw last. Flowers!

Views near Golden Grove

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Ginger

With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain…

The storm moved onto the island a little before noon today. It’s blowing and pouring, battering at windows and roof. The US Weather Service is predicting sixty-mile-per-hour gusts. All the ferries today are canceled. We are snug inside and enjoying the show. But it does seem appropriate to post last night’s breathtaking sunset, unsettled and intimating a change in the weather.

5:40 pm

5:50pm

Views near Golden Grove

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Ginger

October 16, 2011. Sometime between when we left the house and when we lined up at the ferry terminal, this unlikely cloud formation appeared in the sky, lit from below by the setting sun. It seemed to forebode a serious change in the weather, but instead vanished within minutes, leaving no trace.

Cambodia – Phnom Penh’s Russian Market

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Ginger

Dan and I are market junkies. We don’t buy very much. Well, maybe a few silk scarves and wooden cow bells, that sort of thing, only a small smattering of the goods available. Mostly we’re there to absorb the patterns and rhythms of the place. The visual candy. And to experience each market’s unique character.

And so…allow me to present the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, so named in the 1980s when the Russians were the only tourists in town, and this is where they went to find cheap local goods to ship home. And it’s still probably the best place for that kind of thing today, as well as every other kind of merchandise under the sun. And as rich in visual candy as they come.

Here is a somewhat random walk through the market, in one side, through the food court in the middle, and out the other side.

Views near Golden Grove

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Ginger

These days the sun is setting pretty far toward the south end of Sachem Pond. Last night the sun ducked behind some clouds just before setting. No sharp red sun against the dunes, but it lit up the sky.

Cambodia – Siem Reap, silk farming and weaving

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Ginger

In the town of Siem Reap, an organization called Artisans d’Angkor provides employment for rural people by teaching them ancient handicrafts. This organization also runs a silk farm in a more remote area. It was a bit off the beaten tourist trail, and we had to ask our guide to bring us there. Thank heavens, no crowds!

The silk farm grows its own mulberry trees and raises its own silkworms. Not nearly enough to supply the large quantities of silk they need for their weaving operations (the rest comes from China), but the worm-growing part of the business still seemed young, as were the trees. It was a beginning.

Silk worms are entirely domesticated animals, no longer found in the wild. They grow fast and are voracious eaters that must be fed frequently. They live only about four weeks before beginning to spin their cocoons. When the cocoons are completed, all but a few (kept for breeding) are harvested and boiled to remove the sericin coating that holds the cocoon together and also, alas, to kill the forming moth within, which would otherwise secrete an acid that would damage the silk thread.

Each cocoon is made of a single silk filament more than half a mile long. The worker finds the ends of several cocoons (if you look hard you may be able to see the fine filaments leading to the tool in the worker’s hand above) and inserts them into a machine that unwinds them from the cocoon. It winds several filaments together into a thread on a reel. The threads are then wound onto bobbins.

Some of the thread is bleached into “fine” silk, and some is left its natural color as “raw” silk. The silk is then colored using dyes made from a variety of natural ingredients.

More detailed descriptions of the life of the silkworm (Bombyx mori) can be found here and here.

The finished, dyed silk is then woven using hand-operated looms.

Cambodia – Seen (scene) along the road in Siem Reap

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Ginger

In Cambodia, the population is mostly Buddhist (94%), with a small admixture of Moslems (mostly Chan people) and Christians (mostly Chan and Vietnamese). But the old pre-Buddhist animistic religions still persist in a few practices. The most notable of these are the spirit houses that are found everywhere–on the properties of homes and shops and government buildings alike. Spirit houses are built for the resident spirits of the place, especially the dangerous ones, so that they will not move into the people’s houses or shops. Often, these spirit houses contain images or offerings of some kind for the spirits.

I briefly considered getting one for our home in Massachusetts, but it was hard to know how the neighbors would feel about it. Also, Dan and I figured the mailmen would persist in putting the mail there, which might be offensive to the spirits. And–the real deal-killer: the things are made of concrete, probably driving us way over the checked-luggage weight limit.

Shops of all sorts line the roads. Here are a basket store, a variety store, a cell phone store, and a gas station. Yes, gas by the liter, and probably illegal, too. Judging from the repose of the attendant, the gas station is not very busy.

This roadside gate leads to an ancient monastery compound.

The town of Siem Reap itself is very tourist-oriented, with some strip development. But the older part of town retains a certain charm.

Cambodia – Tonle Sap Lake

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Ginger

The Tonle Sap, or Great Lake, is one of the largest and most important fresh-water systems in southeast Asia. It’s also one of the most interesting. The lake is connected via the Siem Reap River to the Mekong River and is home to a number of communities of ethnic Cham and Vietnamese people who live on houseboats. During the dry season the Siem Reap River flows from the lake, which at that time of year is only about a meter deep, and drains into the Mekong River. During the monsoon season, however, the Siem Reap River reverses direction and flows from the Mekong River into Tonle Sap Lake. The lake grows much larger (by a factor of four or five) and deeper (by a factor of eight or nine), and the people move seasonally from lake to the mouth of one of its feeder rivers and back again, wherever the fishing is best.

We visited during the start of monsoon season, and the river leading to the mouth of the lake was lined with houseboats. (The brown color of the water is due to a high rate of sedimentation, a normal phenomenon of this ecosystem.)

“People here live pretty close to their neighbors,” our guide pointed out. “So do you know what they do if it turns out they and their neighbors don’t get along?”

“What?” we asked.

His eyes gleaming, he said, “They move! Home and all!”

And we were, in fact, lucky enough to see someone in the process of doing just that.

And there weren’t just houseboats. There were also shop-boats of all sorts, and cafe-boats and basketball-court-boats and church-boats. All of these migrate up and down the lake with the people.

There’s even a grocery delivery service.

Since many of the people are fishermen, they work in the evenings and at night, and they rest during the day. And so we saw a lot of people at home, many of whom were sleeping in their hammocks.

At the mouth of the river,we reached the end of the settlement and the open expanse of the lake.

Cambodia – Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Ginger

Perhaps because this part of the trip was arranged through a travel agency through a travel agency (yes, that’s a chain of two travel agencies, as it turned out), there were several places where we were booked into a class of luxury hotel that was well above our normal standard. It’s quite possible that in some cases the amenities that we require (air conditioning during monsoon season, for example) were not available in lesser classes of hotel, especially since we also expressed a preference for older, historic buildings with some charm.

In any case, the Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor is the kind of hotel where a uniformed man opens the door for us, and the ladies at the front desk greet us as we walk by, there are cool towels to wipe our faces after braving the outdoors, and a butler is available to assist us at any hour of the day or night. In short, when we enter the front door we have walked back in time to the best that the French colonial period had to offer.

Here is what I wrote in my journal the evening before we departed:

I am in a continual struggle with the staff here at the Raffles Hotel regarding how to serve me best.

Now–you’d think that perhaps I am the one of us who would be the expert on the subject. But apparently not.

Two or three times a day I move the TV remote control and entertainment guide off my night table (where I need the room for my stuff) and put them next to the TV (where they won’t get in my way). And two or three times a day I return to the room to find that they have moved them back to my night table.

They put a bottle of water and an extra glass on my night table. I am grateful for the water, and I move it to the bathroom where I need it. I move the glass to the table where the fruit is. Where I can ignore it.

They rearrange all my belongings on my night table to make room for the glass, the water, the remote control, and the entertainment guide. I move all these things back into my familiar arrangement, where I can find what I might need in the middle of the night in the dark.

They arrange all my items on the counter in the bathroom in order by size. And they put the soap dish prominently in the middle. I move them back into groups by use, and I put the soap dish out of the way.

I am going to win this silent dispute. Tomorrow, I leave. Bwah-ha-ha!

They are going to win this silent dispute. Tomorrow, I will be gone. Bwah-ha-ha indeed!

Cambodia – Everyday life a thousand years ago

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Ginger

Besides for its astonishing collection of heads, Angkor Thom’s Bayon temple also contains a marvelous bas-relief depicting scenes from everyday life. I’m sure that someone, somewhere, has an idea of what all these people are doing. Some of them, I can identify. As for the rest, the pictures are charming, but I don’t know. Respond with a comment if you think you have a clue!

Also, please don’t ask me what all those fish and crocodiles and so on are doing up in the sky. Maybe that’s what they get during monsoon season instead of “raining cats and dogs.” Or maybe the bas-relief works its way downwards and there’s some naval scene up above.

I think the next couple of pictures depict people in houses.