Today was designated as our free day (one of our first!), so many of us attended different activities. Many members of the group seized the opportunity created by the free day to sleep in; even Professor Magnus mentioned that it was the first day he slept past 8 am in the morning! Around 9 to 10 am, there were a few students, including myself, enjoying the wonderful hotel breakfast. I didn’t take a picture of my breakfast, but the menu has been set for the past week, and many of my peers have posted pictures of the hotel food, so look for them in the previous blog posts!
After breakfast, there was a group of students went to the Banteay Srei temple, which was made of a special type of sandstone that cannot be found in the other temples that we’ve visited so far.
The sandstone at this temple causes the temple to appear pink, while the temples we’ve been to so far either have the traditional grayish stone look or have turned green due to the biomass that now grows there. It was raining, so the ponchos came out! This group then got lunch on a floating house, with the food delivered by boat!
There were a few other adventures undertaken by my peers this day, including Kaylee’s elephant tour! We learned a lot about the role of elephants in ancient Angkorian culture and in Hinduism, so I’m sure it must’ve been amazing to see these elephants in person!
I did not join the group at Banteay Srei or the elephant tour, however, since I wanted to take the free day to do some additional research that would synthesize the overload of information that we’ve received in the past week on the history of Cambodia. I went with three other students to the nearby SO 26 Cafe and we did some independent work (several of us worked on the remainder of the essays whose prompts were just given out a few days earlier!). Personally, I looked into the modern history of Cambodia through Wikipedia and other online articles, trying to familiarize myself with the chronology and context of the events that we’ve heard so much about. I learned more about French Indochina, the transition into the independent country of Cambodia, the neighboring Vietnam War, and then the disturbances that led to the Khmer Rouge. I also reviewed some of my world history by reading a little bit about the Cold War, which gave a broader context to the many proxy conflicts in the Indochina region. The four of us stayed for lunch, which was delicious, and the servers and chefs at the cafe were all super polite!
After lunch, I went to a local gym, the Angkor Muscle Gym. I wanted to get at least a bit of strength work in during this trip, in addition to all the cardio that we were doing by walking around. The gym fees were super cheap – just $1 per workout! The weights were all in kilograms, which differed from the weights in pounds that the gyms used in the USA. There was a good mix of people speaking Khmer and people speaking English, signaling to me that the gym attracted both natives and foreigners. I got a good full-body workout in!
We then all gathered together at CKS to watch two documentaries – one on the life of Norodom Sihanouk (The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk) and one on Classical Dance (The Tenth Dancer). The former described the fascinating life story of Sihanouk, who it seems was present and played an important role in almost every major regime in recent Cambodian history. The latter described the effects of the Khmer Rouge on the dancing community in Cambodia, focusing on the memories of the dancer Ea Theay and some of her pupils. The effects of the genocide were really terrible, including the destructive effect it had on Cambodian dance as an art form.
After the movies, a group of us picked up our laundry and then ate dinner at Tevy’s, which had great food and great portion sizes! We then went back to the hotel in anticipation of our journey to Phnom Penh the next day 🙂