Back to Oz and Ready to Sail

These we clouds on the horizon that had me confused!

After a wonderful two week adventure in Vietnam and Cambodia, it was time to get back to the boat. Actually I was ready to slow down and rest up! The heat and humidity were very draining and the tour schedule kept us moving every day. It was a fabulous experience!

 

Upon returning to Sydney and catching a train to Newcastle, we were anxious to provision and prepare the boat for our sail north along the eastern coast of Australia. The coast does not have many bays in which to snuggle into in the event of bad weather. One must go into the rivers that meet the sea. Unfortunately, most of those rivers have bars that must be crossed. That made for interesting route planning.

Looking back at the shore along our route to Port Stephens.

Since we are cautious sailors, we spent time speaking with locals and the Volunteer Marine Rescue guys to learn more about the conditions we could meet and how to cross the bars. The light, wind and tide all need to be favorable before attempting a crossing. Needless to say, we were somewhat apprehensive!

Not exactly sailing weather! But beautiful.

We left the Newcastle Cruising Yacht Club, our home from many months, before sunrise and had a very peaceful motor trip out of the river into the sea. The sky was very interesting as there was a layer of fog sitting just above the surface and it gave an eerie effect. In fact, there was a bank of clouds sitting right on the surface to the south. At first I couldn’t get my bearings because it looked like land with hills and trees. It was like a mirage on the water.

We were planning to stop overnight since it was just the two of us. Unfortunately, our timing wasn’t right for the first two places we thought we would stop. We were advised not to cross the bars at the wrong time so we kept going. As usual, the wind was not our friend! It was from the wrong direction and not enough to give us great speed so we motor-sailed.

The beach at Coff's Harbour

We also had the southbound current against us as I think we went too far offshore. We later learned from the locals that closer to shore the current flows north at a much slower rate than the main south-bound current. In addition, we were having trouble getting any speed out of the engine. We have 110 hp Yanmar diesel engine that should have moved us right along. So between the current and the below par motoring, we were not making good progress.



Trillium at the Coff's Harbour dock

Our only choice was to keep going overnight and find a place to stop the next day. Since the engine was under performing, what was to have been an overnight trip to Coff’s Harbour became a three day trip. We did manage to make anchorage at Trial Bay and tied up to the Volunteer Marine Rescue’s emergency buoy having explained that we had engine trouble. When Dennis asked if it was safe to dive under the boat in this anchorage, the VMR person replied, “We haven’t seen any grey suits out there today!” We took that to mean that sharks are in the area at times, but none had been spotted that day!



Dennis, Beverly and Dean hiked up to the top of the hill.

After a good night’s sleep, we left early the next morning so we could make it to Coff’s Harbour marina before dark. Dennis suspected the engine problem was really a propeller problem and he wanted to dive to confirm that theory. He figured the propeller was covered with barnacles from sitting in the harbor so long while we traveled. It turned out that he was right and we had the prop cleaned when we reached our destination in Coff’s Harbour Marina.

Harbour view from the top.

Our niece, Beverly, and her husband, Dean, were meeting us at Coff’s Harbour to sail up to the Gold Coast. Dean is from Australia and they had a trip to visit his parents planned so our dates coincided perfectly. It is always fun to see family and friend out where we are! We had fun for a few days in Coff’s and then on the overnight trip up to Southport on the Gold Coast.
 

Nowhere to anchor overnight.

Actually, we did our first bar crossing with Beverly and Dean on board – and it was quite memorable! We reached the Gold Coast Seaway at the mouth of the Coomera River after a long sail with a little seasickness for one of our guests. Actually, I kept it under control with just a little queasiness! After calling the VMR to get instructions as to when we should cross over, they told us we could do it NOW! Yikes!

It was mid-tide and quite wild. I gave the wheel to Dennis because I didn’t think I was strong enough to hold the course in the churning water. I had fully expected to be told to wait outside for a couple of hours. Apparently, they VMR thought our boat was big and heavy enough to ride through it. Or maybe they just wanted to be entertained watching us! It was a wild ride.

 

Land Ho! The Gold Coast

Needless to say, we were all happy to be over the bar inside the Gold Coast Seaway and at anchor in what is called Bum’s Bay! A nice dinner and good night’s sleep was welcomed! Beverly and Dean were going to leave us for a few days to explore the area of South Stradbroke Island where Dean had spent time in his youth.

We were picking up Greg Smith from Everything Marine at The Boat Works to guide us up the river to the boat yard. The Coomera River is very winding and shallow so we appreciated Greg coming to point out the correct turns and branches of the river. The river is lined with homes, many with docks and boats in front of them. It is a very peaceful and pretty area.

The trip up the river took two hours.



Once at The Boat Works, we made arrangements for the new standing rigging and other work. Our goal was to have the boat updated and inspected for anything that needed to be serviced before we head up to Indonesia and across the Indian Ocean. We have a lot of challenging sailing ahead of us and we don’t want to have any failures. We left S/V Trillium in good hands and took off to explore the outback of Australia for nearly two weeks!

Exploring Siem Reap

There is every kind of street food imaginable!

After two weeks of experiencing so many different things in Vietnam and Cambodia, we needed a couple of days to unwind and explore Siem Reap before heading back to Australia. This has been a fascinating vacation. And one I never would have thought about taking except that our Australian visa dictated that we needed to leave the country at the end of 90 days. It seemed smarter to stay on this side of the world so here we are!

Pub Street is the heart of the restaurant district.

Once we left the luxury of the Mekong Princess, we moved to the Park Hyatt in Siem Reap. Love the Eggs Benedict for breakfast! It is located a few blocks from the action in Siem Reap. The main street for wining and dining is Pub Street. There are many different choices for the palate available here all day and well into the night.



Every establishment is "open air" so we could take in the sights, sounds and smells of the restaurant district. There were many choices for street food. I am a little shy about it as I don't know what it may do to our systems so we tend to stick with restaurants - although Dennis is often game to try things!

You can even have a "fish pedicure!"

There are shops selling clothes, crocodile skulls and things made from their skins, beautiful fabrics, spices and almost anything else you can imagine. There is a large bazaar market place as well. Like the others we have visited, they can be overwhelming to the senses. Too much stuff packed into tiny spaces - not for me! I like to quickly walk through, but not really take time to shop. I know I am missing out on really good prices, but I don't have room to store "stuff" on the boat.

So many choices for the palate!

You can get massages, have your nails done at really cheap prices and even have pedicures on the street. One type of pedicure is where you sit with your feet in a fish tank and let them nibble at your feet to remove calluses, etc. Not for me! My feet are too ticklish to let them do that.



As for food choices, there are so many. In most places you select something on display and they heat it up and bring it to the table. In others, you cook your own in a pot of broth. Of course, there are many places where you order from a menu. We have found the Cambodian cuisine to be very good. Some times I amaze myself at what I have tried and how well I like it. I am not a picky eater, but I am selective!

A typical street: motorcycles, few cars or trucks.

We spent a few hours visiting the students and craftsmen at the Siem Reap Artisans Angkor
Arts and Crafts Workshop. These workshop centers were developed to help young rural people find work near their home villages. By providing professional skills to provide educational opportunities, they are able to maintain their traditional Khmer arts and crafts.

Students creating Cambodian art.

Created near the end of the 1990's, Artisans Angkor provides training in good working conditions and social advantages to its employees. There are 42 workshops in Siem Reap employing over 1,300 people, including more than 900 artisans.

Only a two minute walk from the Old Market and Pub Street, you are welcomed to enter the world of traditional Khmer handicraft. Upon arrival at this charming place, a friendly Cambodian guide invites you to follow him for a free guided tour of the workshops in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Khmer.

I was pleased to see they wore masks and safety glasses
when working. The students are learning how to take
care of themselves while producing their artwork.

First our guide explained great story of Artisans Angkor, from its origins as an educational project to today’s thriving social business. Then, walking peacefully from one workshop to another, we had the opportunity to admire the knowledge and techniques of the artisans in stone and wood carving, lacquering, silver plating and silk painting.

And, of course, the tour ends with the main showroom for a look at the diversity of pieces made by hand by the artisans. The works were exquisite and not at all like handicrafts found in island markets. These products are high end and sell for high prices.

Handmade Buddhas

The coconut shell bowls are hand painted and lacquered.
These are not the cheap ones you find in Pier One or Dollar Stores.

Golden Buddhas are treasured

The first step in carving a stone statue.

One other local visit was to a school. We have had the good fortune to visit a number of schools in both Vietnam and Cambodia. It is delightful to talk with the children and listen to their English. They are working very hard to improve their English language skills. They often performed songs for us. Again, the schools are consciously working to teach traditional arts, crafts, music and dance to retain their cultural heritage as well as English.
The last school we visited also had some vocational training programs. One class was sewing and the students made a number of items for sale. We purchased two of their cotton waffle-weave bathrobes. They will be perfect summer robes once we are back on land. And they were willing to make them to order, adding length and pockets! The robes were delivered to our hotel within 48 hours.

The children everywhere love to sing for us.

The children do gardening on the wall using plastic bottles!

The Sad Sights in Cambodia

Unbelievable! Unless you see it.

We have found the Cambodian people to be as friendly and open as any we have met in the world. Our guides freely discussed the political and cultural ways of their world and shared much history with us.

I found it very sad to realize how many decades of war have torn this country apart, killing millions of people. In fact, something like fifty percent of the population is under age 25 because there has been so much killing over the years.

One of the many dig sites.

In preparation for one of our onshore tours, we watched the movie, "The Killing Fields" on the Mekong Princess and had a discussion with our guide. The actual visit to the Killing Fields was every bit as moving as the War Museum in Vietnam. Maybe more so.




I found this information about the political motivation at the time:

Fabric and bones are still surfacing from the earth.

"In 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a communist group led by a man named Pol Pot, took over the capital city of Phnom Penh. The Cambodians rejoiced as the civil war had come to an end. However, three hours after the Khmer Rouge victory, all civilians living in the cities were forcibly evacuated to the countryside, signaling the reign of terror. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge planned to bring the country back to “Year Zero” creating an equal society comprised of one agricultural class. Every intellectual Cambodian became an enemy. If a Cambodian had on glasses, knew another language, had foreign friends, or held a job other than farming, he or she would be tortured in prison. Those that refused to cooperate were executed. Those that did cooperate were sent to the fields to work 12 to 15 hours a day with only watery porridge to eat. Many workers in the field died of starvation, exhaustion or were murdered."

A tower of skulls!

The Khmer Rouge ruled under the motto, “To have you is no benefit, to lose you is no loss.” An estimated one to three million people died in what became known as the “Killing Fields.” We only visited one of the 343 Killing Fields in Cambodia. You can see why the population is so young; everyone older was killed by their own government!

Graves of victims at S-21

The genocide under the Pol Pot regime ended in 1979 when the Vietnamese invaded the country, liberating the Cambodian people. Every Cambodian knows exactly how long they endured the horror: 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days. Many families were separate and have not been reunited. It is commonly accepted that the missing members are probably in one of the "killing fields."

One of the S-21 buildings

As we walked through the field, we saw the areas of excavation from which they have removed hundreds of bodies that filled these mass graves. There were displays of shreds of fabric that were from the victims clothing. We saw bones in the ground as in display cases.

Interrogation and torture room.

There were signs indicating how many children were discovered in some of the graves. It was quite unnerving. However, children weren’t just victims, many of them were the executioners. The Khmer Rouge brainwashed children into becoming Khmer Rouge soldiers. They taught them to hate their parents and many of the child soldiers’ first victims were their own parents.

The most disturbing of all for me was the monument structure that housed hundreds of skulls, all looking out on four sides of the glass structure. It was unbearable to think of the torture they had endured before their deaths. Even though it sounds gruesome - and it was, it is important to have these reminders of the atrocities of war to remember the victims and avoid a repeat of such dreadful history.

Two of the cells.

We were all quite sullen when we left the Killing Fields. Everyone had been moved emotionally. Our next stop wasn't much more uplifting either. We went to S-21 Prison, the place where prisoners were held prior to being sent to the Killing Fields. Such torture! Death may have been a welcome escape. And this was just one of many of these prisons.


The building complex was originally the Tuol Svay Pray High School, but was renamed S-21 in 1976 when the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture, interrogation and execution center. There were only seven survivors from the known 14,000 prisoners who entered there!

There were hundreds of portrats on display.

The torture chambers were gruesome! The prison cells were about 4'x5'. And the nearly 6,000 photographic portraits of the prisoners illustrate the horror of their situation. They actually pinned the identification numbers to the prisoners muscles! This place is very disturbing. It serves as another reminder of what should never be allowed to happen again.

Cells on both sides.

 

Shackles!

Cambodian Temple: Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom, which means “Great City” in Khmer, was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer Empire. Established in the late twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII, it covers an area of 9 km², within which are located several monuments from earlier eras as well as those established by Jayavarman and his successors.

At the center of the city is Jayavarman's state temple, the Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around the Victory Square immediately to the north. There were several other earlier cities in the region that were known as the capital, but the name of Angkor Thom—great city—was in use from the 16th century.

Angkor Thom was established as the capital of Jayavarman VII's empire, and was the centre of his massive building program. One inscription found in the city refers to Jayavarman as the groom and the city as his bride.

The complex was abandoned some time prior to 1609, when an early western visitor wrote of an uninhabited city, "as fantastic as the Atlantis of Plato." It is believed to have sustained a population of 80,000–150,000 people. The city was abandoned when the Khmers were driven out. Wars have been ongoing in Cambodia for centuries and they are taken a toll on the architecture and the people.

 

Angkor Thom is in the Bayon style. This manifests itself in the large scale of the construction, in the widespread use of laterite, in the face-towers at each of the entrances to the city and in the Naga-carrying giant figures which accompany each of the towers. A number of the heads of the figures are missing or have been restored.

The city lies on the west bank of the Siem Reap River, a tributary of Tonle Sap, about a quarter of a mile from the river. The south gate of Angkor Thom is 7.2 km north of Siem Reap, and 1.7 km north of the entrance to Angkor Wat. The walls, 8 m high and flanked by a moat, are each 3 km long, enclosing an area of 9 km². The walls are of laterite buttressed by earth, with a parapet on the top.

There are gates at each of the cardinal points, from which roads lead to the Bayon at the centre of the city. Another gate—the Victory Gate—is 500 m north of the east gate; the Victory Way runs parallel to the east road to the Victory Square and the Royal Palace north of the Bayon. This gives you an idea of just how large this complex is which makes it even more amazing considering when it was built!

The faces on the 23 m towers at the city gates, which are later additions to the main structure, take after those of the Bayon and pose the same problems of interpretation. They may represent the king himself, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, guardians of the empire's cardinal points, or some combination of these.

A causeway spans the moat in front of each tower: these have a row of devas on the left and asuras on the right, each row holding a naga in the attitude of a tug-of-war.

This appears to be a reference to the myth, popular in Angkor, of the “Churning of the Sea of Milk.” The temple-mountain of the Bayon, or perhaps the gate itself, would then be the pivot around which the churning takes place. The nagas may also represent the transition from the world of men to the world of the gods (the Bayon), or be guardian figures.

At each corner of the city is a Prasat Chrung—corner shrine—built of sandstone and dedicated to Avalokiteshvara. These are cruciform with a central tower, and orientated towards the east.

Before entering the South gate by car, we stopped to take in the view of the complex from a distance. Several elephants were coming down the causeway and our guide explained that the elephants come here every morning. Nowdays it is for the purpose of giving visitors a chance to sit on an elephant, but in the time when this was an active community, the elephants were part of everyday life and lived inside the walls.

  
Overall, this temple development was very sophisticated in both size and engineering. Angkor Thom is considered “an expression of the highest genius” by archeologists. It is said to be “in three dimensions and on a scale worthy of entire nation, the materialization of Buddhist cosmology, representing ideas that only great painters would dare to portray.”

Angkor Thom is the last capital of the Khmer Empire. It was a fortified city enclosing the residences of priests, officials of the palace and military as well as buildings for administrative operations of kingdom.
 

The bulk of the land enclosed by the walls would have been occupied by the secular buildings of the city, of which nothing remains. This area is now covered by forest. It is thought that many of these buildings were made of woods and perished many years ago.

Symbolically, Angkor Thom is a microcosm of the universe, divided into four parts by the main axes. The temple of the Bayon is situated at the exact center of the axes and stands as the symbolical link between heaven and earth. The wall enclosing the city of Angkor Thom represents the stone wall around the universe and the mountain ranges around Meru. The surrounding moat (now dry) symbolizes the cosmic ocean.