Matthew Botos

If Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s brightest jewel, the history of the Khmer Rouge is its darkest stain. They came to power under Pol Pot in 1975, and shut down the country’s banks, schools, and cities, sending everyone into the fields to farm. This agricultural communism turned into genocide, killing millions of Cambodians before Vietnam chased out the regime in 1979. Intellectuals and the opposition were tortured in prisons like Toul Sleng before being executed in the mass graves of The Killing Fields and hundreds of other sites.

As a former complex of school buildings with palm trees in its sunny courtyard, the transformation of Toul Sleng in the capital Phnom Penh seems particularly sinister. Drawing close to the buildings, you see the barbed wire strung across to keep prisoners from jumping to their deaths and the cramped, crude holding cells. Amidst the leg irons and torture devices, black and white mug shots of the prisoners and guards stare back like ghosts.

The Killing Fields are almost tranquil by comparison. Just outside of the city, a beautiful stupa (tower) reaches into the sky, holding the skulls of the many victims found here. Behind it, the excavated graves slowly return to nature under shady trees as butterflies dodge in and out. Signs and piles of victim’s clothing provide a link to past events. Though Cambodians grieve that none of the victims were given a properm religious burial, one hopes that they’ve finally found their peace as the country moves forward with an impressive optimism.

Driving between Siem Reap and Phenom Penh in Cambodia is quite the visual feast. The road is almost completely paved, allowing buses, motorbikes, and trucks to overtake one another without too much drama. Except for the cows, or course, which like to wander in the road and even though you can count their ribs, are big enough to be trouble.

The open rice fields are dotted with palm trees, and occasionally interrupted by strings of houses and basic wood shacks with big stacks of hay. Each cluster also sports at least one political sign for the People’s Party; given the damage done by the Khmer Rouge, you can bet they take their politics seriously here.

The motorbikes carry a bit of everything: sticks, hay, food, 3-4 people, and about 3 dead pigs! The trucks carry a bit more; often with goods and people piled high on the roof.

Pulling off the road raises the stakes. At a silk farm, the resident cat (small and skinny like all of them here), joins us for lunch with her own catch: a still wrigling gecko. She meowed in protest at being told she couldn’t bring it into the kitchen

Our group finds their own snacks: boiled silk worms! I content myself with taking some pictures of the silk process, from worms to weaving. Our afternoon rest stop is for fried spiders. Decent size ones, too - no little poppers. A few braver souls do get them down and our local tour guide gets back on the bus with a bag full for his own munching.

The temples at Angkor Wat are Cambodia’s crown cutlural jewels, remants of ancient cities and civilizations. And they are impressive: huge complexes in and out of the jungle, with intricate carvings and a myriad of photo opportunities.

Equally myriad are the opportunties to buy things, generally from children bleating out “one dollar!”. They’re quite persistant, following hagured tourists from the door of the temple to the door of the bus. Somehow the same sense of respect that requires westerners to cover up at these sacred sites doesn’t apply to locals hawking trinkets.

That said, you can have some amusing conversations thanks to their selective sales English. This little boy says to me, “Buy my bracelets - ten for one dollar! Buy for your wife.” I showed him my hands and explained, not rings, no wife. “Buy for your girlfriend”, he replies. I made a show of looking around and told him I didn’t see and girls. Then he brought it home: “Buy my braclet and you get girls!”

Learning to cook some Thai dishes at Silom Thai Cooking School was a blast! The outdoor kitchen is tucked away down a side street across from a market that’s the first lesson. Owner and teacher Nusi explained the various ingredients and filled up our baskets with goodies. This would be the first of many effective uses of delegation…

Back at the school, we split into groups to prepare the ingredients. We washed vegatables, peeled ginger, and shelled & deveined shrimp. Next up was making coconut milk from freshly shredded cocounut mixed with water and hand-squeezed. While we got to know our classmates, Iron Chef Nusi provided motivation by good-naturedly cracking the whip, “chop faster - hurry, hurry!”; he’d be a great project manager!

To prepare the dishes, we circled around a big pile of ingredients on a straw mat on the floor, and chopped up vegatables for soup. All that went into woks on burners on the balcony, where we fine-tuned the gas “more heat! less heat!” until it was ready to serve - and eat! (As my chemistry teacher Mr. Schwartz used to say, “the best part about cooking class is you get to eat your homework!”) The more forward thinking students had actually skipped breakfast in anticipation.

The rest of the menu included classic pad thai, curries, and jellied water chestnuts in coconut milk for dessert. Our diverse class found plenty to talk about as we were all at the start, middle, or end of some kind of travel oddessy. Everyone left full, with a new appreciation for making Thai food completely from scratch, and ready with a recipe book for future dinner parties!

Cheap massages are a definite plus for Bangkok; an hour of Thai massage is around $10. It was a nice treat after pounding airline seats and pavements for the last few days. You start with a foot wash, one of those simple things that’s totally luxurious when someone else does it for you. After that, change into a loose, pajama-type outfit and lay on a thin mattress on the floor.

The support is needed; much of the massage is stretches and good muscle pressure with body weight behind the elbow, foot, or forearm being pressed into you. Some of the stretches were like being walked though yoga, others were complicated body twists that really popped nicely. Overall, a very nice way to spend the morning!

Not being a city person, the main attraction to me of Bangkok are the sights and many historic temples or wats. Built by various rulers, they feature ornate and colorful tile and architecture on the outside, and contain richly painted interiours housing a variety of Buddha statues, including a massive reclining Buddha at Wat Pho.

Pre-trip Flickr-scouting confined a guidebook recommendation: hitting the upstairs bar at The Deck to watch the sunset behind Wat Arun. It was a spectular view well worth the wait; the sun glowed red through the hazy clouds and soon after it set Wat Arun’s dramatic night-time lighting kicked on. It’s obviously a popular spot; myself and other photographers lined the front row of tables, and another group was actually doing some modeling photos with a studio strobe.

One of the other shooters was Tony, orginally from California and now living in Bangkok. We had a nice chat and found common ground exchanging Flickr id’s. Nice to find some things are universal halfway around the world!

Hopping in a taxi during Bangkok’s morning rush gave me a first-hand glance at the traffic here. Cars, tuk tuk’s, and motorcycles give each other just millimeters of breathing space, the shoulder is a lane, roads detour around demonstrators and police barricades, and the elevated expressways duck in and out of ground-level ground. At least the taxis are air-conditioned and cheap, even if it always takes a bit of effort to explain where I want to go. (I even tried handing over the hotel’s bilingual card with map and got a confused look!)

Public transit seems to avoid the traffic jams; the river ferry provides a nice view from the water - including the many wats (temples) and car-packed bridges. The central pier connects with the Skytrain, a pleasant and popular air-conditioned elevated train through the more central parts of town. And yes, the air-conditioning does matter, since it’s a pretty streay 95 degrees here with a brain-melting heat index in the midday sun.

I’m in Bangkok, a journery that involved about 24 hours stuffed into 3 planes, and a 34-hour span between my body feeling the welcome embrace of a shower and a flat bed! (I’ll be spending the next three weeks in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, for those who think this is quite the non sequiter.)

Flying Asiana was a step up in service; hot towels before meals which come with instructions for confused foreigners like myself. And I was certainly the ethnic minority on the flight; one of those signs I was heading to a vastly different world.

Arriving at 1 am, Bangkok was still going strong - both the heat and the people! Street-side food and flea markets still glowed under flourescent lights as the brightly-colored tuk tuk’s (motorized rickshaws) buzzed by.

I’ve heard for years how beautiful Banff is, so I was thrilled to have a week snowboarding there in the Canadian Rockies this year. In addition to the usual photo opportunities, a number of people were already asking about a trip photo book like the Whistler one, and I picked up another “assignment” on the plane. Needless to say, it was a full week…

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It goes without saying that Colorado is full of photo opportunities; I took about 1300 shots during the week. Given the scenery, they were mostly landscape and nature, with a few portraits to remember the trip by.

The most useful piece of gear I took - and I took almost all of it - was actually a circular polarizing filter. It did wonders in making the sky bluer, taking the glare off lakes and streams, and cutting some of the haze off distant mountains. The runner up was a strap for my sunglasses, so I could just drop them from my face and replace them with the viewfinder.

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