Now that I've been back for months and that Asia seems so far away and so long ago... I suppose it's time to write about the end of my trip!
Before I went to the orphanage, I had spent a few days in Siem Reap, Cambodia, exploring Angkor Wat. I met a new friend, ate bugs, gave blood at a children's hospital, was approached by hundreds of children asking for money or food, visited the landmine museum - sobering, and I've since been angry that the US is one of the only large countries who refuses to stop manufacturing and using landmines... I realize I'm no war strategist, but walking the streets of Siem Reap, where it seems that every fifth person you see is missing a limb that was blown off by a landmine that was set and forgotten about forty years ago... or reading about the child who died just a year or so ago on a farm where a mine had apparently been buried deep enough to have been missed for all these years... and finding out that there are an estimated ten million or more landmines still out there on the Thailand/Cambodia border alone... It seems ridiculous that a country who prides itself on being humane would be so willing to continue placing landmines that will still be killing children fifty years from now, even when current conflicts may have long since been resolved. *steps off soapbox*
As I mentioned, I spent several days wandering around Angkor on the back of a motorbike taxi I'd hired for three days. It was beautiful! The second wat (temple) I visited was one I wish I'd saved until the end. Every surface of Banteay Srei was so intricately carved - I didn't realize until later that this was not the norm, and that I should have spent much longer marveling at the incredible detail of every inch of the temple. It is believed to have been carved by women because of the delicate carvings. Absolutely gorgeous.
Bayon, in Angkor Thom, was fantastic - walking around, you're being looked at by dozens of giant Buddha faces. I spent a few hours here and were it not for the intense heat and the fact that I still had many more temples to see, I would likely have spent even more time.
Ta Prohm was pretty incredible, too. You may know it as the site of part of the Tomb Raider flicks... It's remarkable to see the massive fig trees that have grown into and become part of the temple.
I woke up early on my second day of touring to get to Angkor Wat before sunrise. I sat with hundreds (if not thousands) of other people at 5am, awaiting the sun, and it was well worth it. It was a gorgeous sunrise, and the early morning sun cast a light orange glow on the Apsaras that have been carved into the wall of the outer boundary to the temple.
Thankfully, the Heaven and Hell carvings were open to the public, as this wall was the other said to be one of the best in the world. There were three levels, essentially Heaven, daily life on earth, and Hell. There are the 37 levels of Heaven represented, as well as the 32 levels of Hell, which are believed to be sin-specific. Not far into the carving, there is a trap door through which sinners are dropped into Hell... then you see extremely graphic depictions of the tortures of Hell. The scenes were violent and gruesome (see the below picture of someone's tongue being ripped out with pliers), but the carvings were intricate and gorgeous.
I stopped touring Angkor Wat a bit early and instead starting working with the orphanage. (I miss those kids!!) Since you've all heard plenty about that, I'll fast forward to Phnom Penh... I was only in town for about a day before flying back to Chiang Mai, so I hired a driver and headed out. I started at Pol Pot's Killing Fields... nothing I can say here will be able to adequately describe how I felt as I took in the genocide that occurred here a mere 30 years ago. (Skip this part if the kids are around...) There were giant holes in the ground which took me some time to really grasp; hundreds of people had been thrown into each of these mass graves after suffering unspeakable torture. In one grave, 450 bodies; in another, almost 200 decapitated victims; yet another had the bodies of 100 women and children, most of whom were naked. There was a "magic tree," from which a loudspeaker played music to mask the moans and cries of the victims who were being tortured and dying... and - perhaps the hardest thing for me to imagine - the "killing tree": executioners would beat infants' and children's heads against the tree and then toss their lifeless bodies into one of the graves. I can't even begin to comprehend the horrors that occurred in this place.
After the mass graves were found, there was a lot of controversy over what to do with the remains. There were so many things to consider: religious and spiritual beliefs, victims' rights to privacy, and allowing the public to understand the history so it will (hopefully) never be repeated. In the end, a compromise was made: a stupa was constructed to protect the remains from the elements, there were windows that people could look through, and that would be left slightly ajar so the spirits of the dead could come and go as they pleased. The lowest level of the stupa contains clothing of the victims; above that, at eye level and many levels above, are thousands of skulls, many of which had been smashed or shattered. These were grouped and labeled; the section that sticks out in my mind is the one labeled "Juvenile Females; 15-20 years old."
Not to end on a COMPLETELY depressing note, after I left Phnom Penh (and yes, I fulfilled my obligation and ate a big disgusting spider), I headed back to Chiang Mai, Thailand for the Songkran festival. It was, without question, the coolest party I've ever attended. It was three days of dancing, food, and one big crazy city-wide waterfight. I hung out with people whose names I'll never know... laughed, splashed, danced... I squirted thousands of random strangers with my watergun (complete with a tank on the back, Ghostbusters style), had countless buckets of water dumped on my head (ladies, my mascara never ran. Let me know if you want details. *grin*), gorged on incredible food, shared kind, almost intimate moments with people I'd never seen before and would never see again, and had not a care in the world for three solid days. Making this the grand finale of my three months in Asia turned out to be perfect. The several weeks prior had been incredibly emotional, so it was fantastic to be able to cut loose and focus on only one thing: FUN.
And for the rest of the pics of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap:
http://picasaweb.google.com/MichelleSumner27/SiemReapToPost?authkey=Gv1sRgCI7M_dzA2_zYgQE&feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/MichelleSumner27/PhnomPenh?authkey=Gv1sRgCPrj2sHj7t3okgE&feat=directlink
