The Road to ISMRM Singapore 2016: Cambodia Part 1
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As part of the 2016 annual meeting, the ISMRM has worked with a local travel agency to define several fantastic excursions throughout Southeast Asia that can be booked in conjunction with your trip to Singapore. I personally had not paid too much attention to these arrangements, but when it came time to book our trips to the site visit in Singapore, Roberta Kravitz from the central office mentioned that she and her husband were going to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, the amazing temple complex near Siem Reap, Cambodia. The chance to see one of the true wonders of the world was too much to pass up. Current ISMRM president Jim Pipe and his wife Teri decided to come along on the trip as well. While the final prices are yet to be determined for the 2016 packages, this time of year (May/June) is the low season in Cambodia, so our rates were unbelievably affordable. For example, my trip from Singapore to Siem Reap, Cambodia was roughly US$1200, which included the flight, three nights in a 5-star hotel, gourmet lunch and dinner each day, and tours of some of the most amazing sites in Cambodia led by a truly amazing tour guide. It would have been even cheaper if I had shared a room. So I highly recommend booking this trip if you have any interest in seeing this corner of Southeast Asia! I still can’t believe everything that we saw! Just to be clear, the ISMRM sees no money from these trips, and we paid for everything on this excursion out of pocket ourselves.
I’m writing this as we leave Cambodia. Jim Pipe asked me “what’s the 2 sentence version of what you’re going to say about Cambodia?” and all I could answer was “I have no idea.” I have such complex thoughts after the visit. Every day we encountered both the staggering beauty of the people and country directly alongside the oppressive poverty left behind from a century of war. On the other hand, you also see a people rapidly working to make their future better. As an imager and not a writer, I’m going to do my best to highlight some of the places we visited and people we met, largely by showing you photos of our trip.
Because of the lack of a large scale transportation infrastructure, much of the nearby economic future of the region around Siem Reap relies on tourism, so I highly recommend that you visit, and buy some locally crafted art or clothing, even if you may not need it. It won’t cost you much, but it can clearly have an impact here. I also wanted to highlight that we traveled a little bit in a “tourism bubble”, but we always felt completely safe, and our hotel was truly a 5-star experience, with phenomenal food, drink, pools and spas. I had no issues with the water or ice at the hotel or at the restaurants that we visited. I would clearly be wary in general, but many places we visited have installed modern water treatment facilities.
One cannot fully grasp Cambodia without understanding a little bit of the history of the country, especially the history of the last century. I’m going to give a very fast overview, but I encourage you to read further about this on one of the other dedicated sites.
Among its several strategically important qualities, Cambodia sits at the delta of the Mekong river, which runs from China through to the sea in Cambodia. For many centuries, this advantageous geography kept the Khmer Empire of what we now know as Cambodia as a major center of trade throughout the region. This brought great wealth to the empire, and as you will see, allowed the rulers to construct great temples that once rivaled any human structure on the planet.
However, this wealth and strategic location also made it a continual center of war between armies from Thailand, Vietnam and China starting about 500 years ago, which left most of these temples to be swallowed up by the jungle and largely forgotten for many centuries.
In the 1960s through to the 1990s, Cambodia was one of the centers of the Cold War, and was ruled by one of the most inhumane regimes of the last century, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot. The entirety of the country’s infrastructure, including trains, airports, roads, bridges, power plants, etc was destroyed either by bombing or by the regime itself. Families were separated and removed from the city to the countryside to the rice fields. The regime decided who you could marry and where you would live. During this time, nearly two million (about a quarter of the population at the time) were killed in the so-called Killing Fields. It’s a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.
On our first day in Siem Reap, our tour guide, Beuk Ek (who is one year younger than me, and on the left of the photo) took us to the site of one of these Killing Fields, one of 5 within the region. There he told us his powerful story of growing up under the regime. As a child, he was forced to work in the rice fields every day from early morning until dinner. For most of the year, his entire daily food allowed by the government was 2 spoons of rice. Everything else they had to scavenge from the forest or rivers. If you couldn’t survive on this, you died. Most people with any advanced knowledge were killed, but Beuk’s English teacher somehow survived this period. (He is now also a tour guide. We ran into him by chance during our tour. He is on the right of the photo.) When Beuk asked him how he survived, he said “one had to be dumb like a water buffalo. When they said go left, you went left. When they said go right, you went right. Anything else, they would kill you.”
After the end of the civil war in the 1990s, the citizens made a Buddhist stupa to remember the nearly 20,000 people who died in this field alone. I knew much of this information from books, but hearing Beuk’s story, in this place, is something I will never forget.
The sky opened up with tropical rain as we left the stupa, which continued as we slept.
The next day we woke up for the sunny trip to the Angkor Temple Area, including the old main city Angkor Thom, with its stunning main temple, Bayon, the great temple Angkor Wat, as well as the Ta Prohm temple, which has been left almost as it was found in the 1990s, nearly swallowed by the jungle. The dress code in the temples requires shirts with sleeves and long pants. This day it was over 37 degrees Celsius with something over 80% humidity. It was hot, but being in the temples was magical. I will largely leave the history and descriptions of the buildings to other, more educated individuals, but I hope that you can get an idea of the staggering scale and beauty of these temples from the photos below. I have more photos than I can show you… every corner of these buildings has something beautiful to see!
Before visiting, I hadn’t realized that the only structures that survive today are the temples made out of stone. Most of the every-day living structures were actually made of wood, and thus are gone today. You can only see some remnants of foundations of these structures, some of which were quite large. Many of these structures were documented by Chinese travelers to the region around 1000 years ago.
One of the most amazing parts of Bayon Temple is the relief on the outer walls showing both the history of wars in the region as well as a depiction of daily life. This relief was originally covered in plaster, which likely fell away several hundred years ago. The structure itself is largely intact, but is strewn with fallen stones from the walls and roofs of the temple. Our tour took us around the outside, through the center of the temple and out the other side.
The most famous aspect to Bayon is the huge number of Buddha faces that cover every side of the upper levels of the temple. I had seen photos of these faces before, but had no idea how large they are in reality. If you go back to the image at the very top of this post, you can see that each face is at least 3–4 meters tall.
After leaving Bayon, we walked past the Elephant Terrace and the temple Bauphon to the temple Phimeanakas, which sits on the grounds that used to be accessible only by the king and other royalty. This temple is in such bad shape that people are not allowed to enter. Outside of the temple, are two former swimming pools, one small one for the few men who were allowed into the royal area, and a huge one for all of the king’s women. In 1995 Beuk and his friends had gotten word that a tree had fallen in this area, and so he went to collect firewood. He swam in the pools to cool off. The jungle was so thick that he didn’t even know that this huge temple was around 50 meters away! The jungle has since been cleared and some restoration work has begun on this temple.
After finishing our walk past Phimeanakas we went to a local restaurant for lunch. After lunch, we walked down the grand stone bridge into Angkor Wat.
I had seen many photos of Angkor Wat but the sheer scale of the facility is amazing. It is believed that this and the surrounding complexes supported a population of up to 1 million people (with up to 150,000 just inside the walls of Angkor Thom near Bayon.) Just to put this in perspective, this is roughly the population of the city where I live now. But Ankgor Wat and Angkor Thom were in use nearly a thousand years ago! It’s an unbelievable place! You will find many (likely better) photos of Angkor Wat on the internet. I tried to take just a few to give you a feel for what it was like standing there.
While walking in we ran into Beuk’s teacher again, reading on his iPad mini while his tour group shopped at some of the stalls next to Angkor Wat.
The upper areas show more wear from the weather, but this highlights some of the amazing artwork.
While we were just coming down the steep stairs, a huge storm moved into the area. We waited inside for about 30 mins to have a gap in the rain to move to the lower levels of the temple again. But this rain highlighted the structure of the temple (as well as demonstrating that the drainage system still worked as designed!)
Our last stop of the day was the amazing Ta Prohm temple. This temple has been kept nearly in the shape that it was rediscovered in the 1990s, supporting 400–500 year old trees on its walls. I can’t describe how amazing this experience was. The continuing rain made the contrast between the nearly silver trees and the dark stone of the temple.
I should note that many of the other temples, including parts of Angkor Wat and much of Bayon, were nearly in this kind of shape before restoration work began in the last century. Beuk had amazing stories of riding his bike into the area during the 1990s (when it was completely quiet without any tourists) and seeing the temples in this form. It’s a time that is forever gone, but we all felt so fortunate to have heard every last detail of Beuk’s recounting of the state of the temples when they were rediscovered.
You might notice the tree above (and the temple in general) from the famous Tomb Raider film that starred Angelina Jolie. Beuk was there when they filmed the movie and happened to be there when Angelina came for the first time. He said she just came in, and laid down on the ground for 30 mins just looking up at the tree above. None of the local people knew who she was… he thought she was just some girl taking a break. He didn’t figure it out until he saw the DVD at a store one day!
This incredible day ended with a dinner at a local tourist restaurant where dancers performed traditional Apsara dance, which recreated some of the stories depicted on the walls of Angkor Wat. It was a great end to one of the most memorable days of my life.
The plan for the next day was to visit the floating villages on lake Tonle Sap. To be honest, I thought that it would be so much more boring than the temples, but as you will see in the next part, it was an absolutely astounding day by itself. You will see these photos in part 2, which can be found here. Please check back for that and other updates to this series. And don’t forget to check the ISMRM homepage for the most up to date information about the conference in Singapore. I can’t wait to see you all there!
— Mark
