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Knee deep in garbage,Kong Siehar, 14, combs through giant mounds of rubbish for tin cans, plastic bags and other recyclable goods. It is one of the saddest sights in Phnom Penh, a sprawling 100-acre garbage dump where trash fires burn and plumes of black smoke choke the air with toxic gases.

'I'm looking for something good, something I can sell,'' the boy said one day as he poked his stick in a small mound, strewn with crushed milk cartons, detergent and condoms. ''I know it's difficult work, but I want to help my family. I need to help my family.''



Children toil for about 50 cents a day here at the Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump. It is perilous work. The waste is soggy, and huge bulldozers rumble through here, dumping pile upon pile. The children show up at local health clinics with rashes, infections, cuts and bruises.









Trudging through Stung Meanchey I come to realize, ''This is the closest thing to hell on earth I've ever seen."

When a vehicle -- any vehicle -- crosses into the dump site, the children fling their bags of tin cans in front of the wheels, hoping to crush their cans to increase the bag space.

Many of the children here were born into impoverished families that moved to the area from the countryside after the end of Pol Pot's murderous rule. Instead of finding urban fortunes, many of them settled in a slum that was erected along the rim of Stung Meanchey, a dump infested with flies that gravitate to the leeching refuse, the dregs of a nation.

About 10,000 people live in the slum that borders Stung Meanchey. Their village, Preak Torl, a cluster of plywood shacks, clings to the dump's edge. Fumes from sewage and burning garbage fill the air. Pigs forage in the village's dirt lanes.

Rith Preun, a girl of 12 who still works at the dump, is trying to earn money to pay off her parents' debt.

She wears a stained white blouse and a pair of soiled long pants. Her sandals are too big, and her hair, which bobs down to her shoulders, is tucked under a dusty, purple knit hat that protects her eyes from the scorching sun.

She carries a metal pick to help her poke through the garbage, and a white burlap sack that she uses to collect her recyclable goods. ''I've been working here for three years,'' she said. Stitched to her pants waszap a Winnie-the-Pooh patch.

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[Buddhist monks walk past a giant portrait of the Queen at the Royal Palace, Phnom Penh]

Phnom Penh wakes up early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already 6 A.M and the people of Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in the black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers.Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beek teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalk as they begin to set up for another day of business.Children in colourful t-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls barefoot ignoring the angry grunts of food cart owners. The wide French boulevards sing with the he buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and small cars for those wealthy enough to afford them. By midday, as temperatures soar, the streets go quiet again. People rush home to seek the relief from the heat, have lunch, take cold showers and enjoy an afternoon siesta before returning to work at 2 p.m.


[Food-carts on the streets of Phnon Penh]


[Cyclos and other traffic outside Psar O Russei in Phnom Penh]




I'm staying on the first floor of the Hotel Renakse, a bright yellow neo-classical French building looking out at the Royal Palace. As you walk out you notice the streets of Phnom Penh do not have traffic signals; instead, uniformed policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the intersection directing the sometimes chaotic flow of traffic. I've found my favorite way to travel in Phnom Penh is by cyclos. They're the opposite of cycle-rickshaw in India as they pretty much resemble a wide wheel chair attached to a cycle. You just take a seat and pay the driver to wheel around the city as you bounce and laugh as the driver pedals you the congested city streets.

This morning like mornings in Cambodia I've walked to my favourite noodle soup shop about a block away from my hotel. The tiny confines of the shop come alive to the sound of the clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of their large bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble in anticipation. Across from me, a man uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into is mouth. Next to him, a girl dips chicken into a small saucer of housin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick.


[A man looks down at the crowded market scene below in Phnom Penh]

This is Phnom Penh in morning and it feels like home.

Also a big shout out to Tharum, Phatry, Geoff and Joe for making my stay in the city so much fun. Thanks guys !

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[Floating Shop on the Tonle Sap at the Phnom Krom village]

I fell in love with the elemental power and beauty of the waterways of Cambodia . An entrancing waterlogged world, a stream so abundant and all-providing, a true river of life for its millions. Crisscrossing its pale-brown waterways on flitting boats and ferries, I was moved by the grace and purpose of people absorbed in its amphibious rhythms: journeying, planting, harvesting and netting.


[Typical House in the Phnom Krom village which rise and wall with the tides of Tonle Sap river]

Thursday morning I watched life on , sampans, cone-hatted passengers, boat-dwellers steaming and frying their supper to the sound of tinny music.Numerous floating fish farms hug the river's edge, with cages reaching 18 feet into the water filled with fish destined for the factory 40 miles away. My boat wandered among the waterways lined with timber houses perched on stilts others floating on tires.


[Tourist Boat on the Tonle Sap river]

As we slowly move forward past quaint fishing villages, the world floats by in shades of blue and the Tonle Sap seems like a long, wide, lazy, paradise. A pair of brown cheeked Kingfishers perch themselves elegantly on a pole, ignoring us as we slip slowly through endless beds of floating weeds.


[Women at Phnom Krom buys her groceries from a floating vendor]

As I travel through Cambodia I realize that much of the nation's psyche is connected to water – the waterways of the Tonle Sap and the Mekong river.


"Thanks to the water, and thanks to the moon," my guide tells me.

"The water provides many things -- water gives us life."

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Today I learnt that Thai boxing isn't Thai. It is Cambodian.

"You like Pradal Serey (Khmer Boxing)?" my driver,a young enthusiastic man,asked me.

"Yes," [I lied, well I didn't quiet know what it was] I said. "Do you?"

"Yes very much", he beamed

I seemed to have hit a chord here - for my usually quiet moto driver started to spurt out large continuous sentences in broken English about the sport - it was was as if I had asked an Indian if he/she liked cricket. He went on to tell me how he once housed dreams of becoming a boxer himself but he had to stop when his girl friend frowned upon it (a very sad story indeed).

The gym, was a converted open-air garage with all the sweat, dedication, and poor-boy desperation of classic boxing gyms of yore. It had no ring, some punching bags, and padded equipment strewn across the floor. As I was changing in the back, I noticed three students taking a siesta on hammocks tied to a pillar at one end and what looked like a broken down military truck at the other. It was 2 p.m. Given the muscle-sapping heat of Cambodia, Khmer boxers practice early in the morning and late in the afternoon, sleeping the humid midday hours away.


I was lucky to find my instructor - Sang Kim Sean, a Grand Master of Khmer Bokator. Though more than sixty years old, he looked as if he was in his forties, and moved like a man much younger. I was scared.

We started with the basics, which are always the hardest to learn. Khmer fighters start with their hands high and their elbows out to create a cage around their head. When elbow strikes are an option, you would much rather create an impenetrable defense around your skull and leave your rib cage open than the other way around.

It took all of 10 minutes—OK, it was more like 3 — before I was gasping for breath and Sang was sitting me down and handing me a bottle of water.

"Siem Reap is hot," he said, trying to look sympathetic towards this barang [foreigner].

Khmer Boxing Training







The key to Khmer Boxing is shin kicks, delivered in roundhouses to the legs, ribs, and head. Khmer fighters start training in year-round camps at the age of 10 or 11. Many start their professional careers at 13. If they are lucky, they will make it and continue to fight till 25. To turn their shins into weapons, they spend hours beating them with wooden staffs to calcify the bone. Sang's shins looked like they had barnacles beneath the skin.

"Pradal Serey is not karate. Drive through the body," Sang said, as we practiced the full commitment of a Khmer roundhouse.

When I was a boy, we used to have a game where two of us would exchange punches to the arm until one of us quit. This is Khmer Boxing, only with kicks, punches, knees, and elbows.

The Fight







I had had enough by this point and I turned from fighter to spectator. The training was pretty brutal, each fighter had locked his arms around the other's head, and they exchanged brutal knees to each other's chests. Back and forth it went until one gasped for air and then they stopped. I assumed that was it, and they would return to fighting strategically, looking for an advantage to win decisively. Again they ran toward each other, locked up, and spent the next three minutes exchanging knees, one-for-one. Again, they did the same routine. I've never seen anything like it. Their chests were pulped like raw meat, but they didn't seem to care. It was a test of fortitude to see who could remain standing. The fight over, they exchanged smiles and shook hands, the gloves were off and we went on a series of warm-up exercises.

Hopefully I'll get to see a real fight when I get to Phnom Penn - I've been told take plenty of pictures and bet 5 dollars on a Khmer box in a blue shorts whose name I can't quite remember.

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[Khmer Girl cleans the glass front of her restaurent in Psar Chas (Old Market), Siem Reap.]

Khmer food is not usually spicy but what it lacks in spice it adds in fragrance. Dishes are usually dozed with peppers, lemon grass and coriander. Khmer cuisine borrows from many neighboring Asian cuisines and like most things in Indo-china the cuisine is the explosive result of two cultures - Indian and Chinese meeting in a cooking pot or a wok.



[Cambodian Soup being served - straight out of the the pots it was being served in to hungry customers]

The streets in Cambodia are littered with street hawkers selling their particular dish – from fried noodles to baguettes to charcoal-grilled meats and fresh fruit and ice-cream - from hand-carts or from baskets dangling from a shoulder pole. My next snack is never far. When in search for a cheap meal I find myself a market – which I find comes with an entire coterie of food stalls each selling their own specialty dishes – noodles soups, rice dumplings and rice porridge. Turn a corner and I'll find meat being grilled on charcoal, to be served with a spicy raw papaya salad and herbs, best downed with an Angkor Beer. Then there is the Cambodian equivalent of an Indian Dhabha, usually recognized by a row of pots on a slow burner on a table out in front. Who needs a menu when you can choose your next meal by lifting the lids and peering into the various simmering pots of food, pointing out what you like, smiling and then waiting for the meal to arrive at a nearby table and then proceeding to dig in.



[Bananas at Psar Chas Market]

Here is a list of stuff I’ve sunk my teeth into till now.

Amok




I'm told this is Cambodia's national dish, which I understand is Baked fish wrapped in a coconut leaf and cooked with green chillis and lemon grass - served in a green coconut curry. It reminded me of something in between a Thai Curry and something you would eat in Kerela.



Cambodian Rice Noodle Soup – Kyteow



This was my breakfast today which I acquired at a food stall in Psar Chas. The Soup, was basically thin rice noodles in a clear broth with chunks of boned chicken swimming in with bean sprouts, potatoes and bell peppers. The soup's other ingredients I couldn't make out initially but later found out to be sliced gizzards and congealed blood – they made the soup appear sinister in hindsight but ignorance being bliss I quite enjoyed my soup.

Well I'll add stuff to this list as and when I do eat something new and interesting - Fried crickets anybody ?

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[Apsaras at Bayon at Angkor Thom]

Just before dawn, the towers of Angkor Wat are ink shadows etched under the paling indigo of blue of the tropical night. The first hint of dawn washes the sky with pink and reveals the mist wreathing the stones. The sun rises behind the temple’s luxuriant forest, and the first rays gild the pinnacle of the central sanctuary. Gradually the light slides down the towers, bathing the walls and galleries, and strengthens from apricot to gold as the sun enriches the spectrum until the great monument glows from within. It is a transcendental experience.


[No photographers visit to Angkor Wat will be finished without this shot. Come on reflection, giant temple do the math]


[A french tour group climbs the inner pyramid of the temple.]

Even without the romance of sunshine, or the most frequently watched sunset, when the towers are reflected in the ceremonial pool in the front of the monument. Angkor Wat is overwhelming. We are awed by vast achievements like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, and by the inspired blend of iconography, form and spirituality of Java’s Borobudur or the symmetry of the Taj Mahal. But none surpasses the Angkor Wat, with its perfect fusion of symbolism, structure and scale.



This astonishing architectural masterpiece in Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Kingdom from the ninth century, was built in the first half of the twelfth century by Suryavarman 2, who reigned from 1113 until the mid century. It is hard to believe that this enormous marvel was built to appease the religious fervor of just one person. It is believed that only Suryavarman itself used the temples to worship devraja during his lifetime and the inner sanctums of which were inaccessible to anybody but him and the high priest. Oh well he was a god king.



The sunrise as I described in the first paragraph was magnificent - going early coupled by the fact that it is low season let me escape the day-tripping hordes. I walked around the temples in Angkor Thom but more about that later. As for Angkor Wat I think I'll go see it again tomorrow.


Tomorrow my post on Khmer Food - Yum !

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