Swimming with monks.

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Our last day in Cambodia was pretty bittersweet. We LOVED Cambodia but were excited to move on to Phuket and get some beach time in. Had to fit in as much as possible before we left! The Big Buddha in Phnom Kulen National Park is where a lot of locals come to pray and worship. Prayers are being spoken into the huge sound system reaching around the complex, and a stick of incense is burning in most everyone's hand. It is very crowded there, and you have to push your way up several sets of tall stairs to reach the top where the Buddha is lying withing a small building. You, of course, have to take your shoes up to walk to the top and, luckily, we had our buddy Kheung there to keep a close eye on them. Otherwise I am sure we would have all returned to the huge piles of shoes to find them missing or stolen. Kheung said that people come from all over to pray to this Buddha, and that they sometimes pray all day. When we got back down to the bottom, he had bought us all some waffles that were absolutely to die for. “Cambodian's eat waffles,” you say? Yes, yes they do. Rice + coconut + eggs + sugar into a cast iron waffle mold over an open flame = little piece of a heavenly cloud. I must learn the recipe! I finally found a gift for my bro, it's so hard to shop for guys.





After Buddha, Kheung kept asking us if we wanted to stop and see the “Linga's.” We had no idea what he was talking about, and when we asked to clarify, he would just repeat “male and female, you know? Male and female?” He drove us to this river where there have been linga's carved into the rock of the river bed for miles. There were 1,000 of them carved into this river by successive Cambodian Kings. It's an incredible sight to see this entire rived carved up, but we still had no idea what the symbolism was behind it. Googling it later that night, I learned that it is actually a phallic symbol worshiping an entity of creation and power. The water is said to be lucky and is sold in glass bottles at the markets, and we walked right through the river, so we'll see what luck comes about I suppose.





The Kulen waterfall was our real goal of the day, so after the “lucky Linga water” we were excited to jump in a refreshing, tropical waterfall. It was a bit of a drive, but so greatly anticipated after more humid hikes. Walking quite a ways through the parking lot and market street, we noticed that no one else was in swimming suits. They were either in soaking wet clothes, or had wet hair and fresh clothes on. This made us a little nervous, seeing as we were in our western swimwear. Facing imminent scrupulous looks, we also learned that we had to climb down this extremely tall, rickety wooden staircase to get down to the falls themselves. When I say rickety, I mean that there were 2ft+ gaps between planks at some points. Perfect-- I will fall through the planks in my scanty swimsuit and land in a poisonous plant or on one of the massive beetles I had seen earlier-- exactly how I saw myself dying. Luckily, we made it down and, sure enough, no one else was in any kind of swimsuit. We had come all that way, and didn't want to waste the opportunity to dive into a pool of “Holy Water,” so we just went for it. Kheung watched our clothes/shoes while we tried to run to the water through crowds and crowds of staring people. Nope, didn't go unnoticed, unfortunately. Instead, we got applauses from the men and a new fan club. Those Cambodians had their iphones out so fast! We are just making scrapbooks all over the place, I guess. The water is full of those little skin eating fish and you can feel them nipping at your dead skin. It feels really weird, but we had wanted to pay for one of those foot cleaning sessions by those fish anyways--might as well get a full body treatment! We got through the pool and to the rocks underneath the falls, and had some trouble climbing them. No fear, about 10 Cambodian men swam right over to give us a boost. Stacy made very good friends with one in particular who was ever so helpful haha. We were humiliated but the situation got even more comical when a handful of monks showed up and stripped down to swim. Can you say... awkward?





We escaped the swarms of people after a good long swim, and even made it back up the rickety stairs unharmed. Lunch, afterwards, was really good. Kheung wanted to take us to one more museum, but we were museumed out, so we headed back to the hotel to get some pool time before going out that night. The goal was karaoke, since they LOVE their karaoke here, but we chickened out and just had some good dinner. Best part was the banana pancakes (or crepes); they were divine. We took a tuk tuk back to the hotel to pack and now getting ready for bed. Tomorrow, early flight to Phuket!

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Comments

[Aries and Rinka]

I really enjoyed reading this blog post. We are booked to go to Siem Reap this December, and hoping we can visit this falls too. Nice!!!