Angkor Wat is pretty much the historial highlight of this trip, so we were all pretty chuffed to fly into Siam Reap the following morning.
Siam Reap literally means ‘Thailand Defeated’, in reflection of the various times the ownership of Angkor fell to the expansionist Thai kingdom and was subsequently retaken by Kmers. Unfortunately in the 80’s, the international community decided that privatisation of public assets was the thing to do, so Angkor Wat was sold to the Vietnamese who still retain ownership to this day.
We head straight out from the airport to the temple city and spent the morning climbing through the ruins of some beautiful temples from the 8th and 9th century, the engraving on the stones still incredibly detailed with some sites rebuilt with the original stones by various archeological organisations.
As we started early there weren’t too many tourists around, and we had lunch, a nap and a swim in the hotel pool during the hottest part of the day before heading out to see the jungle temples during the afternoon. These were where Angelina Jolie filmed Tomb Raider, and the giant tree roots lifting and covering the stones were amazing. If ever there was a time to leap over stone carvings and stairs in boots and black lycra this was it. (Don’t worry I refrained – I didn’t have the chest for it anyway).
We were the last ones through that afternoon so were free to explore wthout the thousands of tourists around which was great fun. That evening we visited Dr Beat Richner at the Jayavarman VII Hospital who runs the Kantha Bopha Foundation which operates 3 completely free of charge hospitals in Cambodia.
He is an accomplished Cello player and performs a free concert every week at the hospital, which also provides him opportunity to educate the audience on the health crisis in Cambodia.
“If you are young, give blood,” he said between songs. “And if you are old, give money. If you are in between, give both.”
It was an eye-opener – although the 3 hospitals together (including outpatient treatment and education) treat over 85% of the population who would otherwise die because the regular hospitals require corruption payments before they let patients inside, the international community says the expenses are too high for such a poor country, because the hospitals have no corruption as they pay staff regular salaies and inisist on the same level of hygiene and equipment used in the western world.
It’s sad the governments place a higher value on lives in the western world, even media coverage of SARS which killed a few hundred vastly outweighed the dengue fever and TB crisis affecting thousands of children every day here.
But I suppose even if they donate millions, the government takes most of it before it ever gets to the hospitals, so Beatocello (as he calls himself, and his cello) says he must continue to ‘beg for money’.
We left the concert and ate dinner before ending up in a gay bar called ‘Linga’ which literally means ‘Cock’. Points for simplicity, yes? A few in the group tried fried cockroaches (I have already tried crickets, but I do have my limits. I think cockroaches are way beyond that limit) but the cocktails were good and it was a very late night. Or early morning. Or whatever, it was great.
-Sarah
Sarah