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Scattering the ashes part 3

One of the reasons for going to Cambodia was to scatter some of Christopher’s ashes at or near Angkor Wat – somewhere that had very firmly been on our list of places to visit. All through the holiday I kept thinking about how much Christopher would have loved it – he would have so enjoyed exploring and taking photos of the temples.

I was a bit apprehensive about taking the ashes with me. I was flying via Bangkok, and both Thailand and Cambodia are very strict about hard drugs, so I felt uncomfortable taking a small jar of white powder with me! I took the cremation certificate with the ashes, so that I could try to explain them away if I got challenged, but in fact there wasn’t a problem at all.

An aside – at the Christmas Eve Gala Dinner I got talking to a couple from London who invited me to join them when they saw I was on my own. Over dinner, we got to discussing the state of the public toilets in the archaeological park, and how surprisingly clean they were. I said that I had been expecting much worse, and had taken the precaution of bringing a SheWee with me, in case the loos were totally disgusting. The man had never heard of one, and asked me what a SheWee was. I explained that it was an anatomically shaped funnel, designed to fix one of Nature’s major design flaws, and allow women to pee standing up without undressing. He looked fascinated, as well he might, and asked whether or not it worked. I had to confess that I hadn’t tried it – the loos on the trip had all been entirely adequate and I hadn’t needed it. So it was still unused in its case in my handbag, next to my husband’s ashes. They both looked at me in absolute horror at that, then burst out laughing!

I asked my guide for some advice on how to scatter the ashes in a culturally appropriate way. After all, I was a guest in a strange country and didn’t want to do anything that would greatly offend the locals. Somewhat to my surprise, he really entered into the spirit of the occasion, and gave me some very firm advice, nay instructions, on how to dispose of the ashes in accordance with local beliefs. They were to be scattered on the Monday (Boxing Day), as it was much more propitious to do so at the beginning of a week than the end. Furthermore, they needed to be scattered at the east side of a body of water, because east again was much more lucky than west. Finally, if at all possible they should be cast into water under a tree. I didn’t grasp why that was important, but having asked for his advice it would have been rude to question it.

Scattering the ashes at Angkor Wat

So on Monday we drove up to Angkor Wat, avoided the crowds of tourists entering the site from the south, and went to the much quieter east side of the moat surrounding the temple. There we found a suitable tree, and I cast Christopher’s ashes (or rather, just a few teaspoons of them) into the moat. I took the picture above just afterwards, and you can see what a lovely and tranquil spot it was.

31 12 2011 Gillian Day out
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Angkor Temples

I managed to see nine temples in the three days I was in Siem Reap – out of the thousand or so temples that are in the Angkor area. And, believe me, nine was enough – even I was getting all templed out by Boxing Day! They are all built on much the same plan, just with variations in scale and magnificence. They were built between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, approximately, so if you think of them as slightly older than a medieval cathedral you won’t be far out.

Most of them were originally built as Hindu temples, and have intricate carvings telling various Hindu myths. Then the Khmer kings converted to Buddhism, but saw no point in wasting perfectly good architecture, so they were re-purposed as Buddhist temples. So they are a rather odd syncretism of Hindu and Buddhist traditions – both of which were new to me.

Angkor Wat reflected in its moat - shame about the scaffolding!

This is what all the fuss is about – Angkor Wat, the biggest of all the temples, built around 1120AD. It is surrounded by a moat, with a causeway leading to the temple itself, which has five towers – apparently in homage to the five peaks of the mountain that is the home of the Hindu gods. It was absolutely magnificent – and also pretty crowded.

Angkor Thom - detail of Bayon temple towers

Next to Angkor Wat, and even larger, is Angkor Thom, which was a royal city with temples of its own. One of these, called Bayon, had carvings of the Buddha on each of its many towers. There is a school of thought that the faces are that of King Jayavarman VII who was the ruler at the time the temple was built – if so, he was surely a meglomaniac and looks rather smug don’t you think?

Ta Prohm temple through the trees

The picture above gives an overall view of one of the smaller temples, this one either didn’t have a moat or (more likely I think) it had dried up over the centuries. This particular temple was used as part of the set for the Tomb Raider film, and the locals aren’t going to let you forget that in a hurry!

Ta Prohm temple being devoured by tree roots

This temple, unlike some of the others, had not been heavily restored, and was still surrounded by jungle which was slowly devouring it. In the picture above you can see tree roots strangling a colonnade. The person I’ve got in the frame gives a sense of scale – those roots are thicker than my torso!

Banteay Srei

Finally, this is a picture of part of one of the most beautifully carved temples, Banteay Srei. It was built from a reddish sandstone, which took deep bas-relief carving very well. It is about 40 minutes north of the main group of Angkor temples.  Three months ago, during the floods which affected Cambodia as well as neighbouring Thailand, the waters rose so quickly that the road leading back to Siem Reap became impassable very quickly, and a party of  tourists got stuck at Banteay Srei and had to be airlifted out in helicopters! I’m glad I wasn’t caught up in anything as dramatic as that – a near miss in a fire was quite bad enough!

30 12 2011 Gillian Day out
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Christmas Day – Fire!

On Christmas Day, I was one of the first guests down for breakfast. Most people were still sleeping off the Gala Dinner, but I had a full day of sightseeing planned and had agreed an early pick-up with my guide. So at about 07:30 I was finishing my third cup of tea, and just starting to think about going back to my room to put on suncream and insect repellent, and to change my sandals for some sturdy boots for scrambling over yet more temples.

Suddenly, there was a commotion outside – shouts and raised voices. I thought that there was an argument going on, and decided to keep out of it. Then a terrified-looking man ran into the restaurant from the street and dashed off in the direction of Reception. One of the very few other guests in the dining room wandered outside to see what all the fuss was about, and returned immediately, his face ashen, shouting “Fire!”. The building next door to the hotel was on fire. It wasn’t just smouldering, it was well alight, and the fire was threatening to spread to the adjacent buildings, including the hotel.

At that point, the electricity in the hotel went off. Clearly, it was time to get out. One is so conditioned by fire drills to get out and stay out, and not to collect any personal belongings. But my room was right next to the front entrance to the hotel and I had to pass it as I evacuated the building. So I decided that it was safe enough to just dash into my room to grab essentials. The room was of course in pitch darkness. It had heavy wooden shutters on the windows, which were closed, and all the lights were out. I located and opened the mini-safe by feel and grabbed my passport and spare money. I also grabbed my hand-luggage and suitcase, and dashed back outside.

By now the hotel was being evacuated. There was no fire alarm as such – I think the hotel staff went round hammering on doors. Many people had clearly just got out of bed and some were in dressing gowns. We all moved to the office building next door to the hotel, on the other side of it from the fire. My driver met me there, and put my bags in the boot of his car. Then I sat on the step and watched the commotion while I waited for my guide.

A fire engine turned up about half an hour after the alarm had first been raised – far too late to save the building, but hopefully in time to stop the blaze spreading to the adjacent properties. Another ten minutes later, a second fire engine arrived, simultaneously with my guide. So at that point, I went off sightseeing, not knowing whether the hotel would still be there again when I got back…….. At least I had my passport, money and a change of clothes with me, and everything else was covered by insurance. All round the temples that day I kept thinking of things I’d left in my room, and wondering whether I would see them again…..

I got back mid afternoon, to find the hotel thankfully intact, and a huge puddle of water on the road. The building next door (accounts varied as to whether it was a private house or an office building) was completely burnt down and the ruins were already being demolished by a gang of workmen. From what I understood from the other guests, the fire brigade had concentrated on stopping the fire from spreading, and had basically allowed the fire to burn itself out. No one was hurt, thankfully, though certainly livelihoods would have been ruined as there is very little buildings insurance there, so the owner will have lost a great deal of money. It was almost certainly an electrical fault which started the blaze, and according to my guide the town gets around two such fires a week on average. Scary!

When I went to Reception to pick up the key, the staff handed me a very apologetic note from the General Manager, sincerely apologising for the “shock and inconvenience” caused by the fire, which was after all completely outside the hotel’s control. He further “recognised the disturbance and bother that the incident had caused to the quality of your holiday experience” and offered me a choice of either a complementary massage at the attached spa, or a free three-course meal at the hotel restaurant, to “contribute to lifting your spirits and calming your senses after these troublesome events”. I thought that was very good of the hotel, and certainly in excess of what one might have expected. After the massage the previous day, I was in absolutely no hurry to repeat that particular experience, but I was very happy to accept the offered dinner instead.

30 12 2011 icyjumbo Day out Comments (2) Permalink

A Khmer massage and Gala Dinner

I had a quick look at my photos yesterday, and they are going to need a bit of tweaking (cropping, straightening etc) before they’re fit to post here, and I doubt I’ll have time to do that before the weekend. So I’ll leave the descriptions of the temples until I can illustrate them.

I got back to the hotel mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve pretty shattered after visiting several of the Angkor temples and walking miles. I was pleased to see that the hotel had a small spa attached to it, offering massages at what I considered to be a bargain price of $15 for an hour. I have regular back, neck and shoulder massages at home, usually fortnightly, to keep the stress-induced knots in my back under control, but I’ve been so busy at work lately that I’ve not even had time for one. So I decided to take the opportunity. There was a choice between a standard aromatherapy massage, and a “traditional Khmer” massage, and (perhaps foolhardily) I went for the traditional option.

I was asked to change into effectively a pair of cotton pyjamas, and was massaged through them, which felt a bit odd. The woman doing it was tiny, no more than seven stone, but she had thumbs of steel and was absolutely ruthless on any knots she came across. The massage also made use of “deep pressure treatment” which turned out to mean her practically doing a handstand on me whenever she came across a particularly stubborn knot. She also made full use of her forearms, elbows, knees and feet! I was massaged from my toes to my eyebrows, and can’t say that it was particularly relaxing or enjoyable. In fact I had to ask her to tone it down a bit when it got too painful. It wasn’t just me either, there was a man having a massage in an adjoining booth at the same time and I could hear him whimpering too! But I have to say that afterwards I felt a great deal better.

That evening the hotel had arranged a traditional Khmer Gala Dinner for Christmas Eve. That was news to me, as according to my itinerary I had only paid for bed and breakfast. But when I checked in they were adamant that the dinner was included in the room rate, and I’m not one to turn down a free meal! It started with an open bar, which several of the guests were taking full advantage of. Then we had deep fried spring rolls, some sort of mildly spicy chicken casserole with rice and completely unrecognisable vegetables, a rather delicious dish of steamed fish in lime juice, served in a banana leaf, and stir-fried vegetables with lots of garlic and ginger. Finally, there was banana cooked in coconut milk with what looked like tapioca – unexpectedly tasty.

During the meal, entertainment was laid on. It started with a children’s choir from the local church singing Christmas carols, in English – including Joy to the World and Silent Night. Since Cambodia is over 95% Buddhist, I was rather impressed that the hotel had been able to rustle up any Christians at all. That was then followed by dancers, who performed a set of three traditional dances, in rather beautiful costumes. So I got my folkloric dance evening after all – without even having to pay extra for it!

29 12 2011 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on A Khmer massage and Gala Dinner Permalink

Escaping Christmas

I really couldn’t face spending Christmas on my own here in the UK. Last year I went to Venice for the duration, which worked extremely well, but did have the major drawback that Italy is a Catholic country, so everything was closed on Christmas Day. I spent the day pottering up and down the Grand Canal on a vaporetto, which was enjoyable but rather limiting. Christopher and I used to go away most years, and avoided Christmas completely by going somewhere Muslim, where they were most definitely not celebrating and everything was open all holiday. But this year the fall-out from the Arab Spring means I’m not keen on going anywhere in North Africa or the Middle East. Escaping Christmas is one thing, but getting caught up in a civil war is another matter entirely!
So I had to look further afield for a safe, interesting and non-Christian country in which to spend Christmas.

Christopher and I had wanted to visit the splendid temples of Angkor Wat for many years, and in fact had it tentatively pencilled in for our twentieth wedding anniversary in 2013. Obviously, that’s never going to happen now. And it always seemed such a stupidly long way away. But it is never going to get any closer, and I decided that if I continued to think like that I’d never get there. So I determined to go away for a long weekend over Christmas. To Angkor Wat. In Cambodia. I flew out on the Thursday morning before Christmas, arrived the Friday afternoon, spent Christmas Eve to Boxing Day sightseeing, and flew back on Tuesday 27th arriving home in the late evening. It’s now the middle of the night and I’m jet lagged out of my tiny mind and blogging cos I can’t sleep!

The pretty much universal response among those people I told where I was going was “You must be mad!” followed swiftly by “You’re not going on your own are you?”. Well, I may well be slightly unhinged – bereavement does that to you – and yes of course I went on my own. That’s rather the issue, that I haven’t got anyone to go with. But I didn’t go to the other side of the world for three days completely unsupported. I booked with Explore Worldwide, a company who came highly recommended by several friends. I initially looked into one of their group tours, but decided that wouldn’t suit my current needs or mood. I didn’t want enforced jollity with a large group, nor did I want to have to do things at someone else’s pace. So I decided to pay a little bit more and go fully tailor-made. So I had a private car, driver and guide for just me for my entire time in Cambodia. They picked me up at the airport, took me to my hotel, and collected me each morning for a full day of sightseeing tailored to exactly what I wanted to do, at my pace.

I spent quite a lot of time organising the holiday up front, and negotiating with the agent about the itinerary. The original draft they sent me gave me a free afternoon to relax at the hotel, followed by a cultural evening of dancing and folklore. Well, I wasn’t having that! I told them to take out the folkloric evening and leave me in peace to sleep, but to cram in another few temples into the afternoon. It all worked extremely well. The guide soon got the measure of me, and marched me round temples at a pace at least twice as fast as Christopher would have considered the maximum acceptable, and about four times as fast as he would have considered optimal. But it suited me just fine. Photos and a more detailed account of the trip will follow in the next few days as I get over the jet lag and sort myself out.

28 12 2011 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Escaping Christmas Permalink

Kitchen looked like an abattoir

After completely abdicating on the cooking front on Friday, and having left-over Chinese takeaway for Saturday lunch, I thought I’d better make an effort for Saturday dinner. That always used to be our big meal of the week, when Christopher cooked something special which required more effort than mId-week. It’s a tradition I’ve tried to keep up, and has really required me to sharpen up my cooking skills.

So on Saturday evening I decided to cook myself pomegranate lamb, from a Moroccan recipe. It’s basically a casserole of lamb, onions, garlic, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, all cooked slowly in pomegranate juice, then finished with Greek yoghurt to make a creamy sauce, and topped with fresh pomegranate seeds. It was absolutely delicious. But the difficult bit was the pomegranate. I couldn’t find any straight pomegranate juice in the supermarket, it was all adulterated with something else. So I picked a really heavy pomegranate fruit and decided to make it from fresh. Well, it was exceptionally difficult! When I squeezed it, the juice went absolutely everywhere! All over the worktop, onto the splash-back tiles on the wall (very well named in this case), over the floor (thank goodness we replaced the carpet tiles with wipe-clean vinyl) and even all over the toaster! And the juice is bright red, so it looked like there was blood everywhere. I thought I’d done a good job cleaning it up while the casserole was cooking, but kept finding more splashes even at breakfast the next day…….

21 12 2011 icyjumbo recipe Comments (5) Permalink

Staggering to a halt

Yesterday was my last day at work this year, as I’m taking two full weeks off on leave over Christmas and the New Year to recharge my batteries. I’ve had an extremely busy week, with several long days traveling to and from customer sites, all topped off by a report which was due yesterday. And that’s on top of about six weeks of an increasingly hectic work schedule. So I’m really looking forward to the time off.

It should also have been my last day in work, as opposed to at work, but when I woke up yesterday morning, it was still snowing heavily and had clearly been doing so for most of the night. The roads were clear, but my drive wasn’t. There is a short but very steep section of drive between my garage and the main road which is lethal when it gets covered in snow and ice. So I decided that, rather than spending my limited energy on digging out the car and shoveling the drive, it would make much more sense to work on the report from home. Thankfully broadband makes that feasible.

By the time I’d spent all morning and half the afternoon wrangling with M$ Word and sent the report off to the customer I was pretty much drained. I know I’ve been overdoing it somewhat recently – that’s been a deliberate decision taken with my eyes open – and I was aiming to pace  myself to get to the end of the year.  I did so, with about an hour to spare it felt like, but then the cumulative efforts of the last few months hit me and I felt absolutely shattered.

The snow was still on the car and drive, as it hadn’t thawed as quickly as I had expected. I had virtually no food in the house, as I’d been away on business much of the week and hadn’t had time to go shopping. And I really couldn’t face going out.  So I decided that the best thing to do was to phone out for a Chinese takeaway to be delivered.  That’s actually the first time since before Christopher died that I’ve totally abdicated on the cooking front, and phoned out for food. It really does feel like giving in, but it’s good to know that it’s there as an option.

There was more snow over night, though apparently very localised. I made the effort to go out shopping this afternoon, and there was no snow at all on the other side of the hill. My car was very obvious in Waitrose car park – the only one with an inch and a half of snow on the roof! It’s good to have some supplies in again in case the snow persists.

17 12 2011 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

Counting the Calories

I have spent the last two nights away on business, staying at a Holiday Inn at a service area a few miles away from a customer’s site. That was slightly more salubrious than it sounds, as it was quite a nice service area, off an A-road not a motorway, but chosen by the company on the basis of price and convenience, rather than its ambience.

There were four of us travelling together, and we arrived at the hotel on Tuesday evening tired and hungry after a two hour drive. But the hotel restaurant couldn’t even give us a table for at least half an hour, let alone feed us in that time, as they had a number of large parties in. Who would have thought that so many people would want to go to a service station for their Christmas party? We weren’t prepared to wait, so walked to the other side of the large petrol station to the Harvester that was also part of the same services area. They were also quite busy, but were able to seat us all straight away.

The food was what you would expect from a Harvester grill. Nothing special, but mostly acceptable – though I did have to send my chicken back as it was under-cooked. But what really shocked us all was that every single item on the menu had its calorie count printed next to it. My potato skins starter was 300 calories. The main courses ranged from 290 calories for the grilled chicken up to a whopping 1280 calories for the rack of ribs. Plus you had to choose a type of potato (chips, mashed, or boiled, each with their calorie count labelled) and help yourself to a bowl of salad. Typical calorific values of a salad bowl were given, together with the contribution from each of the dressings. They even gave the calorie count of the drinks,though I deliberately didn’t look to see whether my glass of wine was more or less sinful than my colleague’s beer.

I’m sure that this approach has been taken by the Harvester to try to give the customers information to make healthy choices. But it seriously back-fired on all of us. We were out for a meal at the end of a long day and before a particularly challenging meeting the next day. We wanted to relax. None of us was on a diet, nor needed to be,and we were not interested in the calorie count of our meals. We asked for a dessert menu, and I think that at least three of us would probably have had a dessert. Except that each of them was labelled with their calorie count, ranging from 290 for a skewer of fruit, up to 720 or more for a sundae. And it was extremely off- putting! I went so far as to ask the waitress for a menu that didn’t have the calories on it, but she didn’t have one. So all four of us turned down a dessert, as we felt we couldn’t justify 720 empty calories! I think that if I was a shareholder in the Harvester chain I would demand a rethink on this policy, as it is clearly eroding profits…….

15 12 2011 icyjumbo invective Comments (1) Permalink

Sometimes it’s the little things

On the whole I think I’m doing OK. I’m finding this time of year hard, because it was just before Christmas two years ago that we discovered that Christopher had oesophageal cancer and our lives turned upside down. So Christmas brings with it some tough memories, which I’m in general facing up to. I’m working very hard, which keeps my days occupied, and I’m making sure that I’ve got things to look forward to – such as lunch yesterday at my favourite pub, the Plough and Harrow, with a friend of ours who was made redundant at the same time as Christopher.  It was good to catch up with what Graham is doing, and I always enjoy the food at the Plough.

But sometimes, despite me thinking that I’m coping, something comes along and knocks me for six. And it’s often something little that takes me by surprise and shows me that I’m not as tough as I try to make out. Today, for example, I decided to make a start writing my Christmas cards. But when I went through my address book to write the envelopes, I kept coming across names and addresses in Christopher’s handwriting. Ouch! That really hurt. So I’m afraid I’ve abandoned writing my Christmas cards for now. I’ll try again tomorrow, but it might have to be a much curtailed list this year.

11 12 2011 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

Secret Santa Christmas Lunch

I missed my team’s Christmas lunch today, as I was at a project meeting at our Hampshire site all day so had to send my apologies. However, yesterday I had my first (and almost certainly last) Christmas lunch of the year, with a group of about 20 colleagues from work. I nearly called this post “The Girls’ Christmas Lunch”, but that wouldn’t have been entirely accurate as there were in fact two men who had the honour of being invited.

It was a reasonably decent Christmas meal at a local pub, and I had the full works turkey meal and Christmas pudding & brandy sauce. I took the opportunity to eat this year’s  boiled sprout. I do loathe them so, but they are part of Christmas so I make sure I eat one – but only one – each year. Funnily enough, I rather like sprouts stir-fried with bacon, but ones boiled until they are flaccid I find horrible.

We did a Secret Santa where we each chose a name at random and bought that person a present worth up to £10. That was rather fun as we all opened our gifts. I was given a book of politically correct fairy tales, including “The duckling that was judged on its personal merits and not its physical appearance”! I am not sure what that says about what my colleagues think of me, and perhaps it’s better not to enquire too deeply!

08 12 2011 Gillian Day out Comments Off on Secret Santa Christmas Lunch Permalink