Apsara Archives - Asian Itinerary

Angkor Wat / Henri Mouhot

Pluto — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 04:18:49 +0000

I have always wondered what Henri Mouhot, the French explorer and naturalist who wandered for years in Southeast Asia, might have felt when, breaking his back to make his way through branches and vines in the Cambodian jungles, one fine day, as in fairy tales, he was faced with the monumental complex of Angkor Wat.

Mouhot the explorer

I deliberately started the article with plenty of inaccuracies: in the first place I would exclude that Monsieur Mouhot made his way alone in the intrigue of branches and roots of a forest that tends with a certain speed to regain the spaces that man insists on stealing from it.

Mind you, if I look at his face in the photos that have been handed down to us, it all makes sense. Mouhot had that wilful look of someone who would not have stopped in front of a few tufts of grass. I believe, however, that it was much more likely that he had a certain number of people, natives, who by shedding tears, sweat and blood, opened those gaps in that tropical vegetation that would have led him to what was undoubtedly his most important achievement.

I wrote achievement and not discovery, and here we come to the second inaccuracy of my initial paragraph: in all truth, Monsieur Mouhot did not discover anything, or almost anything, at all. The only thing he is credited for is the discovery of a shell found on the banks of a Cambodian river, which will be named after him.

Before our French naturalist, others had already written about the city of Angkor and its groups of temples, pools and ‘smiling faces’, including the inevitable priest, a French missionary who had visited the archaeological site a few years earlier.

The diffusion of Angkor historical discovery

If Monsieur Mouhot has a merit in this story, it is definitely not for the discovery but, at the most, for the diffusion. His travel diaries “Voyage dans les royaumes de Siam, de Cambodge, de Laos” have in fact been able to instill an interest around Angkor, both thanks to the charm created by his descriptions, and to his detailed illustrations. He did not even have the well-deserved success for these contributions, as his diaries were published after his death.

The latest inaccuracy is however the result of that sort of all-Italian provincialism that always leads us to see reality in a distorted way, tailor-made on the basis of our imagination. In fact, how could one think that while the French naturalist was collecting larvae or chasing some butterfly with his net, moving a branch he would have found himself facing, for instance, the Bayon temple with one of his faces observing him sternly.

I am perhaps talking too lightly about a topic which feels quite close to my heart, and I would like to clear it of any misunderstanding: Henri Mouhot deserves respect. He lost his life at the age of 35 struck by malaria, a disease that regularly killed a huge number of travellers, and he also helped expose the Angkor archaeological site, one of the most beautiful and evocative places I have seen in Asia. I have been to Siem Reap – the location where Angkor Wat temples are located – four times, one of these times negotiating a series of dirt and rather bad roads on my old orange Vespa 150cc!

Angkor complex

The Angkor complex is nothing short of breathtaking: the gigantic smiling stone faces of the Bayon temple; the pyramidal constructions with irregular steps on which to climb to the limits of the climbing; the low reliefs of the dancing Apsara; all sights that convinced (and I don’t think it took long) UNESCO officials to give Angkor Wat the title of World Heritage Site. Beautiful, enchanting images which contrasted, at least during my first two trips there, with the images of poverty hidden behind the smile-less faces of begging children, of disabled war-veterans’ improvised orchestras along the avenues or, even worse, by survivors of that collective drama represented by the infamous genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge against their own people, justifying the climate of terror behind the intention of wanting to create the new, pure peasant society. These scars are difficult to heal when you see a third of your fellow citizens die without a real reason and, without a doubt, in that third of the population you have a relative, a friend, an acquaintance.

It is for this reason that when I first visited Siem Reap, after having crossed a good portion of Cambodia and after having stopped in Phnom Penh, the epicentre of Khmer horror and madness, I could not help but feel a deep affection for these people who until then had had nothing but suffering.

In the long term, time is known to soothe the wounds, and so it was for Cambodians, who also thanks to tourism started to rebuild their lives. However, a place like Angkor can only attract masses of curious, sometimes ignorant, often disrespectful people. This is perhaps the price that Cambodia will have to pay to forget its unhappy past. Start over by selling a piece of its soul and culture in exchange.

Photos by Guglielmo Zanchi (Pluto)

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Apsara new rules for visitors to Angkor

Thomas Gennaro — Mon, 18 May 2015 20:50:38 +0000

Apsara logo

The Angkor Archeological Park, inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1992, is the kingdom’s largest tourist destination. It is located in Siem Reap province, some 315 km northwest of capital Phnom Penh. The Apsara is the Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap.

After several recent incidents of tourists behaving badly or dressing inappropriately at the Angkor Archaeological Park, the Apsara Authority yesterday said that a code of conduct for tourists visiting the temples, a work two years in the making, is nearly complete. Sok Sangvar, head of tourism management planning for Apsara, said yesterday that by early June, Apsara should be ready to send the draft to experts at the International Criminal Court to review the code’s legality. He also mentioned that much of it is common sense:

“Basically the code looks at where we need to indicate what not to do when visiting Angkor,” Sangvar said. “Things such as not dressing inappropriately, and not touching things.”

While the final touches are being put on the draft conduct code on the heels of several high-profile cases of tourists running into legal problems after taking nude photos inside temples, listing rules for behaviour at Angkor temples was not inspired by them.

Nude Chinese woman at Angkor

The fanfare around the topless Apsara images started when in 2013, self-proclaimed “World’s #1 Art Nude” magazine Volo featured a scantily or in some cases not-at-all-clad Russian Playboy model draped over the Angkorian temples. Then in January 2015, three foreign tourists who were producing pornographic photographs at the complex of the Angkor Archeological Park, and precisely at Banteay Kdei temple, were detained by the Apsara National Authority, in close cooperation with the Tourism Police Unit and the Heritage Protection Police Unit. Soon after that, half nude photos of likely Chinese woman were circulated online. This act was strongly condemned by the Apsara Authority and management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap province, saying that those naked photos completely opposed Cambodian moral and culture, and seriously downgraded heritage and dignity of women.

When completed, the code of conduct book will likely be distributed to people in the tourism industry, said Long Kosal, another Apsara Authority spokesman:

“We will widely circulate this code of conduct to relevant authorities and private sectors that are involved with tourism such as tour guides, tour agencies, hotels, etc. We need their cooperation to get a good result in practice,” Kosal said

This code of conduct could be applied to other sites in the Kingdom of Cambodia, but right now it is pretty Angkor-specific, Sangvar said:

“We’re exploring all these ways for tourists to understand what not to do,” he said. “The rules are mainly about the sustainable development of Angkor.”

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Cambodian Living Arts

Thomas Gennaro — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 08:15:17 +0000

My days in Phnom Penh were busy enough and the activities undertaken quite varied: historical places, a cooking class, a couple of hotel reviews, a treatment at a spa and more. I was determined to miss out on the attractions heavy on Cambodia’s brutal history, which give little impression of the country’s rich heritage. What I needed to complete this adventure was… art. And art I found in the form of a leaflet at the hotel desk that read “Phnom Penh’s top ranked cultural performance”. That was it, I thought: I searched for their website, found it and emailed the booking department asking for a ticket to see the play “Children of Bassac” by Cambodian Living Arts. I was lucky to be in town on a Friday, the only day this play is on at the National Museum, and it was also the first representation of the season.

THE LOCATION

The group presentation

The location and stage of the show were simple but stunning, an open air concept that added to the feeling and aura of the performances. The moon was shining brightly when I reached the stage following a lantern-lit path. The small and magic outdoor amphitheater in the grounds of the National Museum was the immediate highlight of the show to come. I accommodated myself in the first row and took advantage for a chat with Cambodian Living Arts (CLA) communications manager, whom informed me that the audience numbers, formed predominantly by tourists, have been growing from year to year. So how did people mainly get to know about these shows, I wondered? Like me, some see the advertising on tuk-tuks or from street press, others are approached by enthusiastic young people out the front of the museum itself. Marketing has been an important part of Cambodian Living Arts success, and it is a meaningful success: in the absence of a national opera company, the only job opportunities open for young traditional arts performers is right here!

CAMBODIAN LIVING ART

One of the dances

Initiatives like Children of Bassac are sponsored by non-profit organization Cambodian Living Arts, an organization dedicated to the transformation of Cambodia through the arts. Cambodian Living Arts productions cover folk and classical dance, village rituals and harvest celebrations. Each performance showcases a wide range of traditional performing arts.

It is so important that these art forms are being preserved and saved for posterity through the employment of over 120 performers, most coming from financially difficult suburbs of the city. These young artists are being taught by surviving master artists who are willing to pass on their skills to young students, skills including Apsara dancing, difficult-to-master musical instruments, costume crafting and choreography. These emerging artists are being empowered through their development and through a viable income achieved after years of studying to perfect their crafts. What a great and noble cause.

THE DANCES

Great choreographic dances

If I had thought Children of Bassac was all about Apsara dancing, I was to be proven wrong: the spellbinding performance offered the audience the chance to discover the diversity of Cambodian culture and traditional arts through a combination of traditional dances from different eras and ethnic groups. The young artists wore brightly coloured outfits and made us travel through a variety of dances by the regions, celebrating the history of Cambodia.

Each dance lasted no more than 10 minutes and displayed technical, playful and folk-style skills. The artists employed graceful dancing, enchanting music and plenty of energy, a dynamic performance that captured the whole audience. The distinguished show included dances based upon the Ramayana Indian myth interpreted through Cambodian lore, like the much-loved monkey dance, as well as Cambodian folk tales: a buffalo blessing from the Phnong tribe of Ratanakiri, a lively fishing dance in which fish are not the only catch, the Cambodian scarf kroma dance, and finally a captivating and well-expected Apsara dance. There was a screen onto where a projector gave brief explanation on the types and meanings of the dances performed, including some subtitles in English during the theater. The highlight was indeed the amazingly coloured costumes and most importantly the skilled dancers.

THE EMERGING ARTISTS

Great young emerging artists

I must admit I totally fell in love with the gracefulness of the professional dancers, so passionate and entertaining that you could tell the audience had a great time watching them dance, act, sing and play instruments on stage. These talented and enthusiastic young performers take years of practice to perform such technical yet compelling dances that drew the audience in and wrap them up in their show with perfectly placed movements that require an enviable amount of strength and grace.
In each of the performers I saw such a passion about their work, and such a talent as actors, actresses, dancers and musicians displayed an excellent standard of professionalism. The quality of the performances and of the dancers’ beauty, sheer strength and physical control were a perfect match to the gorgeous costumes made with traditional brocaded and silk fabrics. I felt so heavily engrossed in the show that at some point my eyes teared up a little.

MY IMPRESSIONS

I have been to cultural shows in other countries in the past, but this felt like a genuine experience. I was so glad to be in Phnom Penh on the right evening and to be invited to this amazing evening of entertainment. Just over one hour of show makes it for the perfect evening, recommended to anyone who is looking for a high quality traditional dance. If you are after a real cultural experience while in Phnom Penh, do not hesitate to go to one of Cambodian Living Arts shows at the National Museum.

The 80 minute performances are of great value at $15 at the door, offering a gorgeous snippet of the history and myth of Cambodia. Tickets can be purchased online through bookings@cambodianlivingarts.org Your patronage goes directly back into the program, which provides well-paid work for over 100 artists, as well as covering production costs. Your participation enhances Cambodian Living Arts mission to transform and revitalize Cambodia through creative expressions.

The final comments by Cambodian Living Arts

If you are on a budget and think this price is steep for your wallet, be aware that Cambodian Living Arts has a number of experiences that fit a backpackers budget, like an Observation Tour – starting at $5 – which allows you to see artists rehearse and train. Email bookings@cambodianlivingarts.org for more information and details.

Don’t miss the opportunity to give them your support when you are in Phnom Penh. Cambodian Living Arts are doing a great job and it is lovely to see that culture is being targeted once more as something worth protecting and nurturing. Best wishes to the whole team and keep up the fantastic job!

Cambodian Living Arts

St.13 corner of St.178 – National Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia +855 17998570

BOOKINGS: events@cambodianlivingarts.org bookings@cambodianlivingarts.org

WEBSITE: www.cambodianlivingarts.org

VIDEOS: http://www.cambodianlivingarts.org/about-us/press-room/watch-listen/