Saturday, April 05, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Vale TAFE SA
Today concluded 25 years of working with TAFE SA. Some reflections on that (mostly) wonderful part of my life...
My first teaching appointment in TAFE was as a part time English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher of night classes in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. From the outset, coming from the school sector, I was struck by the amount of trust I was given. Just twice in several months in those early days in TAFE was I contacted by my manager to check if everything was going OK, and on both occasions it was clear that it was assumed that I was a professional who knew their job and would do the right thing by my students and the organisation. There was a curriculum (no Training Packages back then) and it was up to me how I taught it, what resources I used, and how I assessed students, but support was there if I needed it. Being the kind of person I am I responded favourably to this approach - I felt trusted and respected.
My first teaching appointment in TAFE was as a part time English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher of night classes in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. From the outset, coming from the school sector, I was struck by the amount of trust I was given. Just twice in several months in those early days in TAFE was I contacted by my manager to check if everything was going OK, and on both occasions it was clear that it was assumed that I was a professional who knew their job and would do the right thing by my students and the organisation. There was a curriculum (no Training Packages back then) and it was up to me how I taught it, what resources I used, and how I assessed students, but support was there if I needed it. Being the kind of person I am I responded favourably to this approach - I felt trusted and respected.
After some months I applied for a contract position on the
Education Program for Migrants (EPM) at the now defunct Kilkenny campus. I won
the position at interview (at which some people were smoking!) EPM was a ground
breaking program. It entailed English language instruction, vocational
electives held at various TAFE campuses, and a work experience program. And we
had a budget to hold a graduation ceremony that showcased students' skills and progress that to this day I
remember as landmark events . It was common for students to say "I will
never forget this day" because they had been afforded for the first time
in their new country the opportunity to display their talents in public, and be
proud of who they were.
Twenty five years in an organisation is a long time and it's
sobering to reflect on the fact that several colleagues who had a significant
role in your professional life as friends and mentors are now dead. One of
these people was Bron Davis. Anyone who knew Bron knows that she was not always
easy to work with but she taught me a lot about how to be an effective ESL
teacher and I am forever in her debt. I hope you're resting in peace Bron.
Of course the wheel turned and funding for this very
successful program was cut. The ESL program of Western Adelaide Institute, as
it was known at the time, was moved to Croydon and the Kilkenny campus was
demolished. I became the coordinator of the ESL program at Croydon and held
that position for several years. Throughout this time my program manager (of
Vocational Preparation) was Brian Jackson. Brian was a delightful man who cared
for his staff, stood up for us and the program when necessary, and just quietly
went about his business. He didn't check up on you or want to know everything
that was going on. But he too was there to offer support when needed. From the
bottom of my heart, thank you Brian. I never met your style of manager again in
ensuing years in TAFE.
It was during this time at Croydon that I discovered the Internet. I think it was 1997. I came back to work and
turned on my computer. I noticed a new icon on the desktop - a capital N. I
clicked on it and I knew instantly what it was. It was the Internet! The N was
for Netscape - one of the earliest browsers. I'd heard about this 'information
superhighway' and just started clicking. I was smitten instantly. I have often
wondered why others at that same point were not immediately smitten. I was used
to technology. I had at this stage spent several years navigating the
intricacies of Word Perfect, the precursor to Microsoft Word, and had enjoyed
learning how to exploit its more advanced functions so it was a natural
transition for me to graduate to another layer of technology.
Within weeks I was drawing on the Internet to create materials for
my ESL classes. I discovered very quickly that there were significant numbers
of ESL/EFL teachers around the globe who were putting their lesson materials
online and I happily made use of them. The next step was to organise for my ESL
classes to be held once a week in a computer room. I would direct my students
to ESL specific sites - the pioneer of them all was Dave's ESL Cafe. There I
would set students to work on the many exercises that Dave's ESL Cafe provided.
And they loved it. Even students with zero or rudimentary computer skills would
work diligently to complete the comprehension and fill in the gap exercises.
This was the first occasion when I saw students who wanted to continue the
exercises after the lesson was over
and I would have to reluctantly insist that students shut down the computer and
vacate the room!
The next step was to contact actual students who were online from
various places around the world and initiate live chat. I remember the first
time a student, disbelievingly, typed some introductory text into the little
chat box. We waited and watched and some seconds later some student somewhere
in the world replied! My student looked at me speechless and I had to tell them
that there was someone online at that very moment willing to talk with them. A
magic moment.
Another part of the site allowed for students to leave their
details as part of a basic profile that included an email address. After
introducing my students to email via basic conversations with me, some felt
brave enough to compose an email to an unknown stranger. Annie from China
was one who was keen to try this out. I set her up with an email address and
she sat at the computer ready to type to someone. Before she had typed a word
she looked up at me and said, "Is this typing or talking?" Another
magic moment! She had realised instinctively that she was about to embark on a
new form of communication for which there were no rules - a new genre if you
will. I told her it was a combination of both. Something else I have often
wondered about is why some people instinctively 'get' this Internet thing -
Annie knew she was on the precipice of something brand new and exciting.
Some students of course struggled with the writing requirements of
this kind of Internet contact, and the next magic moment in my early days of
Internet exploration with low-level ESL students was with an Iranian student.
She was from Tehran and I guided her through the process of using a search
engine (it was Lycos!) to search for pictures of Tehran. Happily we found some
- we found a site that even provided full screen images so we clicked on
a full screen image of a street scene in Tehran. What happened next was nothing
less than profound. She was suddenly silent as she gazed at the scene on the
screen in front of her and then managed to utter "that's my city."
With tears in her eyes she just sat there gazing at images of home. This was
the first time I realised the incredible power of this new medium.
So began my love affair with the Internet that completely
changed the direction of my career from ESL teacher to Internet and Education
specialist. It was around the year 2000 that I was 'tapped on the shoulder' by
Deb Bennett and asked if I would like take up a position as a Professional
Development Officer in Online Education for the newly formed Online Education
Services (OES) unit. I accepted the challenge and reluctantly relocated to a
new office in Adelaide TAFE. It was a hard decision to leave the safety and
camaraderie of ESL teaching but it was one of the best I ever made.
At that time TAFE SA led the nation in online learning, due
largely to the vision and foresight of the manager of the OES unit - Neil
Strong. Neil had quite deliberately
assembled a group of people who could take TAFE SA forward in this new and
exciting area. Before long my working
life in TAFE became one of a gypsy. Whereas at Kilkenny and Croydon I was
located on one campus year after year,
my life became one where I, together with Doug Purcell, would visit and
run training sessions in WebCT on several different campuses a week. This
included country campuses. Quite frequently Doug and I would set off on road
trips and visit campuses in the Riverland, the mid north, and as far as Port
Augusta. Further afield we took planes to Lincoln, Whyalla, and Mt Gambier. On
all these occasions we would arrive at a regional campus and announce,
"We're from the government and we're here to help you." It became our
standing joke, but we loved every minute of travelling far and wide across the
state to assist lecturers in the new world of online and elearning.
CONFERENCES
Such was our profile in the Australian VET sector WebCT entrusted
us with the planning, coordination and hosting of national WebCT conferences
for our part of the world. So the next stage of my TAFE life was to work
closely with Deb Bennett to coordinate a program for these conferences. These
were incredibly successful events that drew people from around the country and
the whole Asia-Pacific region. The work was challenging, incredibly complex, and immensely rewarding.
The next steps in my journey took me overseas. It's hard to
imagine in these cash strapped times how this was ever possible but in those
times TAFE was a visionary forward-looking organisation that saw value in
promoting our brand overseas, and sending staff overseas to see what others
were doing and bring back that first hand experience for the benefit of TAFE SA.
Consequently I went on trips to Georgia and Vancouver to attend WebCT
conferences and visit other educational organisations.
MIND MEDIA (Douglas Mawson Institute)
Somewhere in amongst all this giddy activity of organising
international conferences and travelling the state training staff in elearning
I became part of MindMedia. MindMedia was a mystery to many. What does it do
people would ask? Principally its job was to foster innovative practice -
remarkable now to consider that that was the brief! But we had to cover as much
of our salaries as possible. And led by the inimitable Marie Jasinski, we more
or less did. For several years we were the home of Learnscope, a national
elearning professional development program hosted by the Australian Flexible
Learning Framework (the 'Framework'). We hosted the national website (designed
and administered by Tim Cavanagh), and saw a succession of national and
international guests come through our doors due to Marie's indefatigable
entrepreneurial spirit - among them Stephen
Downes, Tom Reeves, and Thiagi . It felt like we were at the centre of
the elearning universe in Australia, and I think for a while we were. We hosted
international WebCT conferences and the national VET elearning PD program.
Everything elearning came through TAFE SA.
I've had the pleasure of working with several great
workgroups, but MindMedia was the most stimulating. As I said, our brief was
innovation. Marie J was a wonderfully creative thinker and was always coming up
with new ideas on teaching and learning. Tim ran the website, Jeff Catchlove and I facilitated Learnscope
projects and ran PD sessions, and it was all held together by the admin skills
of Jenni Chappel. (Thanks Jenni!) It was an extraordinary place to work There
were other people who were an important part of MindMedia (eg Lawrence James, Janet McMillan (the most fun manager I ever
had!) and a cast of others who came through in the course of the week. And
then tragedy struck. Marie suddenly got very ill and had to take time off. It's
a long sad story. Marie died and the unit was eventually closed as part of a
new TAFE strategy to centralise all media services into one. The rot had begun.
Unfortunately serious illness also played a part in the
demise of OES. Neil Strong got sick and had to retire, and the powers that be
began to frown on units that were going outside of TAFE to earn money and it
was discouraged. Again ironic when you consider the current climate where we
are all now encouraged to go out and create business. So the wheel turns!
KWALITY WITH A 'K'
Leftist activists of the late 1960s in America used to refer
to 'Amerika with a K' to highlight the fact that the Anerican ideal of peace
and equality was a just a dream for many. They argued that many Americans lived
in poverty and hardship, experienced daily racism and other forms of prejudice,
and that the system perpetuated these inequalities. Whenever they spelt Amerika
with a K it was to remind people of these injustices.
Let me be clear - the AQTF and the AQF are in themselves a
good idea. What is not such a good idea in my opinion, and where we have lost
the plot, is the over emphasis on assessment, auditing and accountability. In
TAFESA these processes have been regularly and stoutly defended as required by
a department we now called 'Quality.' I am sure that Quality achieved some things
of worth, but I also know that under this guise of Quality I saw:
·
an increasing lack of trust in dedicated
professionals
·
a growing obsession with assessment and auditing
·
the amount of time people had to prepare for teaching
drastically reduced
·
the amount of time needed for assessment and
reporting drastically increase
·
sometimes appalling treatment of staff
·
bullying of staff by managers
·
a noticeable drop-off in attendance at PD
sessions (because staff had no time for such things)
- all in the name of quality! I had been annoyed for some time
that TAFE had hijacked the word quality and I started silently referring to it
as Kwality, because what our 'quality system' had instituted in the name of
kwality had nothing to do with quality. In fact I could easily argue that with
the ever increasing influence of 'Quality' in our system TAFE life has had less
and less to do with quality. What I am absolutely sure of is the regard that the
organisation has for its employees is a far cry from the way people were
treated when I first came into TAFE. It is very, very sad to see.
Accountability, satisfying budgets, and passing audits is about Kwality.
Looking after your staff is about quality. As in quality of life. Kwality has
more to do with covering your butt at every turn so you can't be sued.
A RIVER DIVIDES TAFE
Around this time someone(s) decreed that the River Torrens would divide metro TAFE
into south and north. I fell out on the northern side although I had worked
across TAFE for the last 10 years. it was very strange to have to separate from
friends and colleagues across the river. I was fortunate though to be able to
continue in an elearning PD role. A little while later and the Teaching and
Learning Units for each of the three new institutes were born, and I found
myself in a workgroup of three. I found this really difficult. For about 15
years I had been part of larger workgroups that had been dynamic, progressive
and full of energy, but it's hard to generate that same dynamism between three
people. The three were Mark Hunwicks (manager), Cheryl Cox, and me. Over time
we became quite close and really felt that we were doing a good job servicing
the PD needs of TAFE Adelaide North. And then another door closed. Teaching and
Learning units were not part of the new structure that was unleashed mid 2013.
Further it was decreed that there would be no TAFE Act staff doing any PD. Mark decided to leave
in September and now I follow 6 months later. I find it difficult to see how I
fit into an organisation that appears to have sidelined the education part of
Vocational Education and Training.
When I was a novice in my early days in TAFE I sometimes
came across veterans who had been in TAFE a long time and were dissatisfied
with the way things were changing. (I guess it is ever thus!) But I thought at
the time that these disgruntled oldies would be better off leaving. They just
seemed to whinge constantly. I had become well aware over the last few years
that I had reached a similar stage in my TAFE life. I disapproved of many of
the changes and tried hard not to appear as a disgruntled type who just pined
for the old days. Only others can judge whether I was successful on that score!
I do find it hard to accept the changes. To me the only logical explanation is
that the government has embarked on a deliberate policy to dismantle as much of
TAFE as they can. All done under the guise of Skills for All. (Sorry - I don't
believe in it!)
As it happens, for the first time in my life last week
before the recent election I received a door knock from my local member. I
asked them why they were ripping TAFE apart and suggested it would be
preferable if they were open and upfront about what they were doing. Interestingly,
they didn't offer any counter argument.
Obviously I am disenchanted about what is happening in TAFE,
and I can be very critical of these changes. But I also want to say that I was
very proud for at least 23 of my 25 years here to say that I worked for TAFE SA.
I have had an amazing ride. TAFE has afforded me opportunities to develop personally
and professionally in ways I could never have imagined. It sent me overseas
several times, enabled me to travel the
state and attend conferences all over the country, and gave me the priceless
gift of meeting hundreds, if not thousands, of wonderful students and
colleagues who have enriched my life and helped me grow. It gave me enormous
freedom. I have often told people that I have the best job of anyone I know.
But times changed, and I no longer share the same values that the current
organisation espouses. In fact, I don't know what TAFE stands for anymore.
Every decision made in TAFE these days is made for just one reason - to save
money. And when that is the case you have arrived in a race to the bottom. I
sincerely hope that it survives and that people coming into TAFE now get as
much pleasure and pride out of it as I
have done.
Thank you all for your friendship and support. I loved being
your colleague, and helping out where I could. But .....as they say on reality
TV shows...it's time to go....Michael!
Farewell.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
5 Step Guide to Being German - 3rd Edition
Quirks in the collective personalities of
nations are a rich vein of humour for comedians and the much travelled Paco
Erhard is in a better position to exploit this than most. Americans are lousy
at geography, the Spanish are a tad too laid back, and the Bavarians don't like
to be thought of as German. Not so much a 5 step guide to being German but more
of a defence/explanation of why Germans are the way they are, this funny and
entertaining show has a serious point to make about cultural differences. If
only political leaders might adopt the comedian's realistic view that none of
us are normal.....certainly not Germans. Yes Erhard gets good mileage from
Germany's past (Nazism, etc) but it's from the perspective of a generation who
had no part in it and yet are held to account for Germany's past sins. Sounds
heavy but it's not. Erhard's beguiling charm has us all laughing at ourselves,
but mostly at Germans!
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Future of Learning
Notes from the Future of Learning Conference (Sydney, February, 2014)
Keynote: Mike Keppell: Understanding the Next Gen Learners
SEAMLESS LEARNING
What will influence learning outcomes in the next 5 years?
How to support academics through this change?
Keynote: Mike Keppell: Understanding the Next Gen Learners
- PLN; UGC
- innovative pedagogical practices (diagram)
- components of dig lit "understand info no matter how its presented"
- Rheingold: 'mindfulness'
- Digital ID (get from slides - to be added)
- Mike has had important conversations on Slideshare; also provides a form of learning analytics
- your digital footprint more important that CV? (dig tattoo?)
SEAMLESS LEARNING
- continuity of learning across locations, times, technologies, social settings
- assessment as learning - includes forward looking feedback; students have input into assessment crtiteria (rubric)
- dig cams give you instant feedback!
- [note to self: get a Garmin gadget - exercise; Fitbit?]
- Desire Paths - enable?
- new mindsets required
EDDIE
BLASS - the
year of 2525
5
drivers of change:
1) Dig
Tech
- BYOD
- learning analytics
- blend (student chosen)
- informal
- collaboration
- gamification
2)
Democratisation of Knowledge
- privacy redefined
- others can create your social identity
- smart systems/machines (eg Fitbit)
- instant peer review
- crowd sourced innovation
Therefore,
what is the future role of research at your org?
3)
Contestable Funding (for Higher ed)
- the next gen will be poorer than the previous generation for the first time in history!
- Ph Ds are not defended orally in Oz (viva)
4)
Global Mobility
- cross - cultural
- service provision (Khan Academy; MOOCs)
- global accreditation
5)
Integration with Industry
- by 2025 TAFE will be embedded in higher ed (assuming that TAFE will still exist)
- there will be 'pracademics'
- universe-cities - ed for the masses
- ac freedom superseded by Internet; ac id will be transient
TECH
DEVELOPMENTS ACROSS THE UK
Richard
Walker (Uni of York)
Julie
Voce (Imperial College London)
- disruption v renewal [two sides of same coin?]
- key challenges: mobile tech; BYOD
- students don't want tech to undermine contact time on campus
- pre-MOOC: only 3% of courses offered fully online (2012)Future: students as partners in curric design (there it is again)greater use of learning analytics (see Smart Sparrow)
- Sean Gallagher (uni of Sydney)
- Future of learning = future of jobs (is a second machine age coming?)
- many desk sitting jobs (screen) will disappear
- grads need to be creative problem solvers
- MOOC business model: worth it?
- good for marketing
- those who complete MOOCs tend to be higher ed grads already
- Using Big Data to Inform Pedagogical Innovation (Big Data has become obvious from MOOC phenomenon)
- MOOCs are personalised learning technologies
**Flipped Learning Design enables academics (researchers) to teach students the skills they already
have!!!! Researchers are 'creative problem solvers'**
PANEL
SESSION
What will influence learning outcomes in the next 5 years?
- Sandra Wills: HE will increasingly have to fund itself > open and free ed?
- Melinda Waters: changing skill needs of the workplace; industry want lit skills AND higher order skills (innovation, entrepreneurial. problem solving, global, mobility)
How
will institutions change to cope with the changes?
What
can we learn from other places?
If you
were Minsister of Ed what would you do?
Ken Udas:
free up information and content
Sean Gallagher (Uni of Sydney) :
NBN!
Why
bother having a degree at all? Any point?
- Ken: can you get 'knowledge' via the Internet? (Yes IMO); are we getting confused between the diff betw ed and training?
- Sandra: many unis have already changed and are NOT just delivering lectures; many offer applied learning as part of a qual
- Sean: go to uni for the social experience! (in US - residential college experience)
How do
we re-engage the disengaged youth?Ken: produce 'caring' people!
- Melinda: current funding makes it difficult to be community focused
- Where do we find these 'pracademics'?
- Sandra: break down the silos
How to support academics through this change?
- Sandra: it's a complex system
Is it
legit to speed up quals?
- Melinda: 'tick and flick' and 'time serving' are both issues!
FLIPPED
LEARNING Mel Edwards - U of Sydney
- groups students accordng to interest/industry; sometimes ability
- uses Ken Robinson talks to inspire and explain to students; empowers them; talks about diff betw 'knowledgeable' and knowledge-able
- 1600 students: a team of staff who have been trained in the same system!
- not for all students all of the time - students complain about it being too hard ("she asks us to do too much")
- uses Survey Monkey to track student behaviour in relation to pre-work
- has been running this course for 3 yrs
- Freire quote about authority and freedom!
Dror
Ben Naim - Smart Sparrow can provide personal learning analytics
Steve
Wheeler
- MOOCS have been hijacked by companies and big data
- we are heading for the meta-web (web X.0)
- fitbit is part of the quantified self phenomenon
- believes all content shd be open (resigned from closed journal)
- (need to check the slides for the rest)
- transliteracy - ability to understand, and present yourself, equally - all media
DAY 2
Andrew
Vann (VC, CSU)
- Putting People First (not the market)
- most Aust unis state that teaching isoce their first priority! (Adelaide and ??
- Game: Peacemaker (Israel v Palestine)
- we've adopted the worse characteristics of the corporate world
- John Seddon (book) : targets are a distraction; focus on process is more beneficial
- maintain a sense of soul
- accept constraints and imperfections!!
- US unis don't seem to be as obsessed by global rankings
- CSU has a 'narrative' , not a mission statement
- TAFEs that have become unis are teachng focused
Helen
Beetham (link from UK; adviser to JISC) bit.ly/jiscdigilit
Learning
in the Digital University (@helenbeetham)
- digital capability is contextual (not always best)
- students are divided on use of tech (my take: depends a lot on teacher)
- has been involved designing dig lit program for JISC
- check pyramid (similar to Laslow's hierarchy) on dig lit (with Sharpe, 2010)
- "student learning is hybrid and pushing boundaries"
- recruit students as mentors! get them to produce resources in gps "feed forward learning" (some students cd be paid!!)
- student solutions are 'better' - quicker, dirtier, need refinement, but WORK!
STREAM
1 - DIGITAL STRATEGY
Gilly
Salmon (Swinburne) - The Future is Mobile
move
to personalisation, authenticity
- [note to self: use CC badge on presentations]
- don't design for big screen anymore!!!
- 35% of world pop have Internet; 93% mobile penetration
- Aust: 81% Internet; 110% mobile; 57% FB
- Swinburne study (incomplete): 81% of students disappointed on how tech was used
- don't forget the role of assessment ----
- Flipped Learning Design requires mobile devices
- check apps that help develpent of UGC
- examples: field trip video diaries "learning in the wild"!!!
- possible resurgence of epfs with advent of multimedia channels????
MARK
BROWN (National Inst for Dig Learning, Dublin)
Painting
a Diff Version of the Future
The
Contested Terrain
- tech is not just a tool (agree!!)
- tech favours libertarians; decentralised, deregulated society - agree (ie values!)
- Shakespeare: "The web of our life is a mingled yarn - good and ill together"
- Books: To save Everthing Click, Against the Tide, Distrusting Ed Tech (Neil Selwyn)
The
Discourse of Persuasion
- ed is NOT in crisis - WHO says it is???
- Einstein: "it is the theory that decides what we can observe"
- Deschooling Discourse
- badges, open, uncurriculum; Mark thinks this is fundamentally flawed model
- eg P2P Uni, OER Uni, uncollege.com
- the flaw is...the state still plays an important role for reproduction of culture/heritage (weak defence IMO)
Who is
telling the story? What is the story telling? what story isn't being told?
(tick)
Saturday, March 01, 2014
Ada and Elsie: Wacko-the-Diddle-oh
The characters Ada and Elsie were stars of Australian
live radio in the 1940s. 'Live radio' played to two audiences - those out in
radio land and those gathered together at a live venue. In Wacko-the-Diddle-oh
the live audience gets to experience what it was like to help create the
atmosphere for the radio audience. And what a hoot it is. You're encouraged to
cheer and stomp as these two prissy ladies deliver their saucy humour. And it
seems that sponsors insisting on naming rights is not a modern phenomenon.
Then, as now, they need to be kept happy - not that easy in the 40s if you were
1) female and 2) wanting to push the boundaries. And then there's the sound
effects: marvel at the ingenuity of a lost trade. Really strong performances
from the three person cast, and a
fascinating, instructive journey into a genre that has faded into the past.
The Trials and Tribulations of Mr Pickwick
It's 1830 in Dickensian London, so it's the
language, manners, and humour of another time. And that is a large part of the
appeal of this production. How often do you hear such quaint phrases as 'a
token of outward satisfaction' or 'murmured a bashful acceptance'? If as a
contemporary citizen you can cope with utterances of more than 140 characters
(!) you'll appreciate the richness of the vocabulary used here. Nigel Nevinson
delivers a deft portrayal of multiple characters that is polished and
entertaining. OK - some of the jokes which may have been very funny nearly 200
years ago now seem a bit twee, but there's a charm at work here that tells an
interesting moral tale, and also has something to say about the slippery nature
of lawyers - not everything's changed! A wonderful way of becoming familiar
with the background to a classic of English literature. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Siem Reap/Angkor Wat
Siem Reap could easily be
a terrible place but it's not. So many thousands of visitors pour
through each week en route to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat and surrounds
that it could easily cave in to tourist tack and sell its soul, but so far its
soul is intact. There are some tacky parts to Siem Reap, notably the loud
and gaudy Pub Street, but for the rest it retains some integrity with a balance
of fine cafes and classy guesthouses and hotels. The Siem Reap river winds its
way through the town and if you follow it far enough at either end, provides
easy release to the fringes of town and
the countryside beyond.
But the reason for being in Siem Reap is of course the
superb World Heritage listed sites of Angkor Wat. The name Angkor Wat is used
to refer to both the mother temple of the region - which is Angkor Wat, and the
region that contains a series of other temples for several kilometres around -
like Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm. I visited 5 different temples, and they are all
magnificent, but Angkor Wat itself stands alone as the highlight. About 1.5
kilometres in length it is believed to be the largest religious structure ever
built. Its location in deep forest, the majesty of its design, and the endless
detail of the thousands of bas-reliefs and countless carvings on walls and
roofs takes your breath away, keeps you entertained, and in a constant state of
wonder.
There were a lot of people there the day I visited, and I
imagine that is the same every day of the year, and herein lies a potential
problem. The temple itself is big enough to absorb the crowds, but not so other
smaller temples. (The lovely Bayon was a nightmare.) The Angkor Wat complex must be a vast earner
of foreign currency - every foreigner pays $20 a day to enter the complex. And
now Cambodia is largely at peace with itself and the word is out that it is a
superb place to visit, the world will continue to visit in droves and this is
going to place a lot of pressure on the infrastructure around Siem Reap, and
create growing congestion around the smaller temples.
I am not going to attempt to describe the temples in any
detail here. Photos do a much better job of that. As in other places in
Cambodia be prepared for constant requests to take a tuk-tuk or buy stuff you
don't want. And if you say no try and be gracious about it.
When you're tired of the temples, and you still have the
time, take a trip to the floating village of Chong Kneas about 15 kilometres
away. It's one of those things you're never going to see in the average run of
daily life, and it feels like a privilege to witness the intimate life of a
community on water.
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Blackbird
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