Cambodia Trip
Day 6 (28/9) - Museum (Part 1)

Since the night before had been our last night, we engaged in a night of raucous conviviality (and got cheated by the bar, as we always did, since it seemed to be in the culture to cheat tourists and we had no choice but to accept this to avoid being spoiled brats).






Sign on hotel room wall. It took me a while to figure out that it meant that you were allowed to smoke and burn things in the room.

The others were going to go back to the same place for breakfast, but I decided to scour the streets in search of rat meat. I'd actually intended to eat street food on previous occasions, but the most the others had tried was balut (so I had been told), and I had also been advised to wait till the last day so I would get typhoid only after returning to Singapore. So I woke up earlier and walked around.



The cloudy effect is very artistic and has nothing to do with the fact that the hotel room was cool and I walked out into a hot, humid environment.




Cyclos, a form of transport unique to Phnom Penh


A market street

Eventually I settled on a baguette filled with rat meat pate, since it was portable and unique (we'd been told there was Chinese La Mian in the area also, and I also saw a place with what looked like beef pho).

I was quite sure I was cheated: I asked the price, and the woman said 1000 at first but later changed it to 2000, but what the heck.


Rat meat pate baguette. Besides what you see there was also spring onion.


Dog and tripod

After breakfast we headed out to the National Museum.


Building on the way to the museum


Museum building


Garuda. Koh Ker. 2nd quarter of 10th century.

I wasn't really in the mood to take pictures because it was hot and I was sleepy, tired and dehydrated (ie feeling under the weather - this is the main reason why I'm not a Southeast Asia person) and I went to sit down a few times so I wouldn't faint on a statue. However, since we got a special tour from a staff member, some others took pictures here and there.

Although we were privileged enough to be given a tour, we had more than 35 people in the group and the maximum size for an effective tour is 10 due to communication issues.

I found Khmer art in general aesthetically unpleasing. This was me being ethnocentric, just like how non-Britons who say British food is bad are being ethnocentric.

Interestingly, it's better to keep the sandstone (from which all the rock carvings were made) in a moist environment continually since if you aircondition the place it has to be dry 24/7 otherwise the dry/wet/dry/wet cycles will damage it. All you have to do is clean the dust and make sure no one touches the stuff.

We then got to peek in the workshop.


2 monkeys from the Ramayana fighting from Koh Ker.

Quite a bit of derestoration goes on, sometimes because restoration has been badly done and sometimes in a quest for authenticity.


Seated Buddha. Abhayamudia. Angor Borel.
This statue used to belong to a village, and it had modern layers of paint and recent restoration removed. History was not living but frozen at a certain time in the past.






Storeroom


Knick knacks on top of drawers

We were then let loose on the collection. Freed from a big group, I regained my enthusiasm for photographs. It didn't hurt that it was lunch time and half the staff seemed to have either run off or into corners to eat, and half of the remainder didn't care about photography.


Ganesha, 6-7th century.


Rama, no date.


2nd half of the 10th century: Seated Sinha, Yasha, Seated guardian with lion head. All from Banteay Srei.


Pediment from Banteay Srei


Seated statue, maybe of Jayavarman VII. Angkor Thom. Late 12th/Early 13th century.


Cannon with Chinese words on it. No information.


Pediment: Buddha calling the earth to witness. Angkor Thom. Late 12th-Early 13th century. And Stadir, Lokesvara. Early 13th century. Neak Pean, Angkor.


Guardian's Head. Gate, Angkor Thom. Late 12th-Early 13th century.


"Sit down, please! Let your friend compare about my facial expression and yours! Ask him, which one is the beautiful"
I vote for my friends anyday.


Standing Vishnu, Lakshmi (consort). Roluos. 12th-13th century.


Stele with 4 lokapala and Buddha. Angkor Thom. 13th century.


Pediment from Royal Palace. 19th century.


Besides the toilets, the museum window frames were also sponsored. Wth.


Ramakerti. 19th (?) century


Post-Angkorian Buddha representations. This was opened by the former Minister of Culture and Fine Arts. I have no idea.


Ganesha and friends, mostly from Angkorian times.


Standing Buddha. Wat Romlok. Beginning of 6th century.


Lokesvara. Sisophon. 6th century.


Vishnu. Prei Venay. 2nd half of 6th century.


Lintel, Kompong Thom. 7th century.


Some Buddhist saying in the pond in the courtyard which I suspected was meant to encourage you to donate money.


Above pond: Buddhist figure holding text of worship. Kompong Thom. 13th-14th century.


Vishnu body, 6th century. The sandstone strata are visible after erosion (presumably of the original polished surface).


Shiva, Ganesa, Shanda. Kompong Thom. 12th century.


Bas-relief with lokesvara. Banteay Mean Chey. 12th-13th century.

"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it." - Laurence J. Peter

***

Comments on the anti-evolution nonsense talk from Law VCF:


A: Fairly big science community came down. Man it was such a lousy presentation. Full of quote mines and non sequitor. And massively evasive to boot. Wow...

He was so evasive that those who were rooting for him will be assured that nothing happened. Heh, he was expecting a friendly crowd but oh well...

Who else [but Law people] would come down when it's raining? Some from lky school though. Not sure about that [Cock's claim that half of NUS Law is fundie] but more evangelical than fundy i think. Anyway, in the endthe presentation was the argument from design using intelligent design.

I wouldn't have been so pissed off if he weren't so deceitful. Saying darwin wasn't religious. And then when I caught him out quotemining darwin, he dismissed it as a small matter. But yeah, part of it was the vcf's fault for portraying it as why evolution is wrong while id is right.


B: oh I went to the talk today. A was apoplectic throughout
thankfully there were some nus profs who took the guy apart more calmly

there were about 3-4 rows of ang mohs from the lky sch

well in the end I didn't ask any questions, mostly out of laziness, since there were so many other people who wanted to tear him apart anyway

certainly the VCF people seemed quite fundie


K. P. Mohanan: I was present at the talk yesterday. The problem, as I see it, is that neither Geisler nor his supporters understand -- let alone practice -- the norms of academic inquiry (with regard to what constitutes reliable evidence, what constitutes good reasoning, etc.). I am not a biologist, but I have an understanding of academic inquiry in relations to other traditions of knowledge, so I have been wondering if it would be useful for me give a talk in the Christian Law Society of NUS on this topic, with specific reference to intelligent design. Would you happen to know who to contact in the society? Please send me an email.

Mohanan (ellkpmoh@nus.edu.sg)


If anyone knows anyone in the Christian Law Society of NUS, please email KP Mohanan at the above email address.

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." - Edith Wharton

***



My brother in law's VBL - he wore boxers under cycling shorts.

Duh.

Cambodia Trip
Day 5 (27/9) - Genocide Day - Cheong Ek Killing Fields (Part 2)

Although I didn't see any McDonalds or such, I did glimpse one Marybrown in the shopping centre we'd visited the previous day. If they want to get fast food, they should at least get good fast food!


For dinner we went to a New Age cafe where half the menu was vegetarian. The Viennese Iced Coffee there was more expensive than wine, but it's the first coffee beverage that I've ever liked (probably because it had vanilla ice cream, cinammon and little coffee inside).

Someone ordered a health club smoothie, but unfortunately it tasted exactly like it sounded, so it was the only drink at our table that was unfinished.

We then went to the Cheong Ek Killing Fields.


Strange rules; "No drugs use and distribution within the premises" - presumably drug use and distribution outside the premises is alright.


This monument was built in 1988. There're 8900+ (almost 9000) skulls inside (but for some reason there're no farmers' skulls inside).


Someone: Why're you taking a photo of the roosters?
Me: I like cocks.


My group got the bad tour guide, who was slightly unbalanced. Besides recounting his tales in a distanced manner, he kept asking us "do you understand?" after recounting some particularly gruesome detail (one choice bit was when he took skulls from the monument and described how each person had been killed). He also pointed out the victims' clothing - AFTER some of us had stepped on them.


Burial pit


More clothes

43 graves by the lake are not opened.


Tree from which a loudspeaker was hung to drown out victims' cries


Bones


They took babies by the legs and smashed them against this tree.


Mass grave


Monument


Rough tree which the disturbed guide asked us to feel. If the rough parts were pressed against flesh quickly and firmly enough, they could cut.

The site was very simple and bare in presentation. All the Khmer Rouge-era buildings had been knocked down and none reconstructed; there weren't even photographs or models to show us what the place used to look like. There were also few facts in writing.


Their extremely emotive and dramatised story. "They have the human form but their hearts are demon's hearts" - they seem unwilling and/or unable to accept that humans are capable of really nasty things.


Women are categorised separately from peasants, workers, intellectuals etc. How problematic.


Skulls back at the monument


Clothes


Incense and flowers





People like to ask in response to each disaster: why didn't the West do anything? One reason is that anything the West does is problematised.

The 1992 intervention in Somalia was supposedly only undertaken because there was oil there. Iraq and Bosnia? Anti-Muslim. East Timor? They didn't come quickly enough (since they went through the UN). Kosovo? Illegal under International Law (since they didn't).

Even if you want to say that no one condones genocide and thus we can agree that it's wrong, problematisers can reply that the people who order the genocide are in favour of it, so opposition to genocide is not universal (I'm not making this up, someone did actually argue this to me - this is why academics should be read, not heard).


Seen: "Happy Beer Singapore". Funny, I'd never seen it in Singapore. Also seen in Phnom Penh: "Players Club". Uhh.

Banner: "Tourism: a leading agency for job creation and environmental protection". I get the former, but the latter?!

There was a "Visit Malaysia" billboard in Phnom Penh. Wth.

They had a "Ministry of Cult and Religions". Wth.

In Siem Reap I'd seen only 2 ang moh men with local 'girlfriends', but by this day I'd seen 5.


Various royal buildings


Sexy, sunburnt legs


More playing with the doggie


More sexy legs

We went to a NGO community project restaurant ("Romdeng") for dinner. It was one of the places valuing frills over practicality, with the lighting being so dim and the menu so hard to read that we were given torchlights, but the food was good. There, we experienced the highlight of our trip:


Tarantulas. They tasted like soft shell crab. Now that I've had them I want to try other strange foods too!


Tarantulas' description (US$2.50 for 3). I'm skeptical of Cambodian pork being renowned for its taste and quality though.


"Stir Fried Frogs Legs with Holy Basil. A dish that is known even in Europe."
And I'm a monkey's uncle.


Cambodia's most famous Muslim dish?! Wth.


Definitely not Cambodia's most famous Muslim dish. This was well cooked and the best dish I had in Cambodia. At $2.50 for this plate (supposedly 3 pieces) it wasn't a bad deal (but then again we didn't pay, so).

Someone had 3.5 shots of honey-flavoured rice wine for US$1. I was told that it tasted like crap, but for US$1 you couldn't argue.


Geckos on ceiling - Cambodia is gecko land. At least that beats being cockroach land like bolehland (oddly enough I don't recall seeing any roaches in Cambodia).

Someone said I should braid my hair so when I hit people with it it's like a rope, instead of a broom when I just use a simple hairtie. Unfortunately braiding's too troublesome, so.


Free condoms in the toilet. One person almost used one as a facewipe.


Contestations, negotiations and renegotiations over whether it's acceptable to expect your food to come within 2 hours. Supposedly in some countries, if you asked the chef where your food was after 2 hours, he'd say "wait 2 more", but I found this very unlikely.


Flashy altar
There're a lot of establishments with Chinese altars and/or Chinese words in Cambodia, especially in Phnom Penh.

For some reason, most Cambodian toilets had sanitary water jets (bidets only refer to getups with the bowls). Must be a cultural thing.


Quotes:

I heard you are a famous blogger. [Me: Evidently not famous enough for you to have heard {of me}, so no.]

Why're you taking a photo of the roosters? [Me: I like cocks.]

[Me on the Amazon Penis Fish and women: I've never seen a woman pee, so I can't say.] Oh my gosh, you've never seen a woman pee? [Me: Should I have?... I see you pee lah.] No, then I'll be Psychotic Girl 5 and sue you for sexual harassment.

[On how a guy invited her to smoke] 'Do it with me'

[On a pool game] It's Whites vs Asians.

"There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause." - P. J. O'Rourke

***

Someone: you could always cut bangs

they make you look younger
with that long hair

that's what girly magazines say


Me: haha
research where you need to deal with people sucks

lit review lit review lit review!

Someone else: i know
that's why i avoid research involving ppl


Someone: literature is so ideologically-uncritical

i hate relativism
like the idea that everything goes

but NOT everything goes
there exist power relations in our laiiiiivvvess

lit is like cda [Ed: Critical Discourse Analysis]
so i dont like cda

in cda everything goes u know
like this intepretation goes and that too etc
such a waste of time


Someone else: ***'s prettier than the average indian girl in singapore.
most of them have bad skin frm the curry


Frigid Girl: i don't think you angst much
that's the problem

you angst so little, people like PG4 think you're just callous


Someone: i realised that the chioer the girl is
the less she will work

but of coz
in some cases
the girl is not chio
and she work very less also

trust me.. i had such encounters before

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." - Charles Bukowski

***

From Frigid Girl:


Wife’s Diary
Sunday night.
I thought he was acting weird.
We had made plans to meet at a cafe to have coffee.
I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset that I was a bit late, but he made no comment.
I asked him what was wrong.
He said, “Nothing.”
On the way home I told him that I loved him. He simply smiled and kept driving.
When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
He just sat there and watched TV; he seemed distant, absent.
Finally, I went to bed.
I cried until I fell asleep.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else.
My life is a disaster.

Husband’s Diary
Today, Man U lost the match. DAMN IT!


Not from Frigid Girl:

At the retreat, Jill and John were told to individually write a sentence using the words 'sex' and 'love.'

Jill wrote: 'When two mature people are passionately and deeply in love with one another to a high degree and that they respect each other very much, just like John and I, it is spiritually and morally acceptable for them to engage in the act physical sex with one another.'

And John wrote: 'I love sex.'

[My Little Bird: uhh...is this a real story?

after finding out that a girl is actually madly in love with jiekai, i am willing to believe almost everything.]


At a party a guy cornered a girl and whispered something in her ear.

"You filthy pervert!" she shrieked. "What makes you think I'd let you do a thing like that to me?"

Then her eyes narrowed and she said, "Unless you're the s.o.b. that stole my diary..."


A mother and her very young son were flying Southwest Airlines from Kansas City to Chicago. The little boy (who had been looking out the window) turned to his mother and asked, "If big dogs have baby dogs, and big cats have baby cats, why don't big airplanes have baby airplanes?"

The mother (who couldn't think of an answer) told her son to ask the flight attendant, so the boy went down the aisle and asked the flight attendant.

The flight attendant, who was very busy at the time, smiled and said, "Did your Mom tell you to ask me?"

The boy said, "Yes she did."

"Well, then, you go and tell your mother that there are no baby airplanes because Southwest always pulls out on time. Have your Mom explain that to you."