Back on the Charts. (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
Here I am, back on the charts after a third world delay of a couple weeks. The last posting came from Koh Phi Phi on the west coast of Thailand – thereafter we moved onto Bangkok, where I succeeded in only uploading a portion of my photos before I crashed the computer (more to follow upon our return to Thailand), and the next day we were off in the direction of Cambodia for some ‘real’ traveling, or rather, something that would possibly feel less like a Euro sun holiday. (As a disclaimer, I must add that meeting so many Europeans in the south made the trip a riot and were our best remembered moments.)
Our travels en bref and up to date:
Bangkok > Koh Krong, Cambodia (oo, a coup behind us!)> Sihanoukville > Phnom Penh (or ‘P.P’, which in parts it smelled of) > Siem Reap.
At the Cambodia border, which turned out to be nothing more than an old wooden kiosk on a dusty dirt road, we had the good (and unusual) fortune to run into our sex tourist, self-appointed grandfather, Scottish ‘Mackenzie’. He led us to our first guesthouse in Koh Krong, gave us the general appearance of knowing what’s going on, and filled us in on the ‘chicken coup’ at Koh Krong – essentially, a collection of shacks where the poorest of poor prostitutes work. We worked hard at a smile, which presented itself more as a grimace, upon hearing the news of such tourist highlights.
The next morning Mackenzie turned up in tank top and silk boxers to lead us onto the southern city of Sihanoukville by 4 hour ferry ride. As the boat was, at one time, meant for use on the Mekong river, open seas boating felt very much like water skiing over the wake of a cruise boat. I volunteered my seat and my stomach to a mother and child, only to be stuffed in the back of the cabin on top of crates of insect ridden fruit, between rucksacks and vomiting children. As such, all experiences to follow have painted in rose.
Wet Sihanoukville prevented us from visiting the adjacent National Park (which is rumoured to contain at least one tiger – even so – guffaw!) and so we toured around by moto to nearby waterfalls, visited a Wat (a what? A temple.), were tailed by legions of street children, admired mating monkeys, and practiced our fragmented French with a lovely older, and extremely patient, couple.
On we went a few days later to Phnom Penh by bus on tarmac (a luxury!)and arrived to find, surprisingly, a more or less fully developed city, paved throughout. Staying in an interesting wooden, stilted guesthouse on the edge of Boeng Kak (unphallicly, ‘Green Lake’), we spent our relaxing meals watching patches of green water plants doing their round of the lake, and sampling the gamut of Khmer (Cambodian) curries. Nights were spent at a local expat party, ‘running into’ (stalking) a trio of London funnies, and politely declining offers for opium and pot at every corner.
Our heavy day comprised a visit to S-21, the converted schoolhouse which housed thousands of prisoners before their deaths during the Khmer Rouge genocide in the mid to late 70’s, and also took a very precarious moto ride (2 big ladies and the driver) to the Killing Fields, where they buried the prisoners en masse.
From an outsider’s perspective, Cambodians are just the loveliest group of people – we’ve had only honest, attentive and playful times with them. The genocide is however evident when considering the rarity of the elderly here and prominence of babies (replenishment?). Most people seem to have had family who have been killed, including our guest house manager in P.P, orphaned at a young age and living on his own ever since.
At this time, we find ourselves in Siem Reap, having just toured Angkor Wat and surrounding temples, which were at least, stunning in size. Angkor Wat itself is 1 km squared, and many of the temples took 40 years to build. Impressive to consider that these temples were built by human effort not long after ‘the invention of the wheel’… (plus or minus a little historical embellishment). It also seems as though the modern gradient for stairs has softened during the past thousands of years… they were truly ‘climbs’ up each temple, akin to bouldering up a cliff – and me nearly finding myself releasing turds squarely on the shoulders of the visitors below us.
On that same subject, we had a laugh yesterday in our tuk tuk as we passed a moto driver with a (dead?) pig strapped, tits to the sky, to the passenger seat, voiding itself at each successive bump in the road as passing vehicles swerved to and fro. What a shitty job.
Today will be the land mine museum and scouring the markets for silks and other gifts that will inevitably be destroyed, packed away in our bags during the next few weeks.
Khmerly, Laura.
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