Off the Couch and On the Road

I must firstly apologise if you are insanley bored reading what I am doing everyday. I want to make it sound more exciting, really I do, but I think I end up just churning out whatever I’ve done that day, which seems like it’s coming across more boring than it actually is.

For example, I may take a bus ride, which sounds boring, but on that particular bus ride, I may see a little man standing on top of a water buffalo, playing a flute. In the middle of a rice field. Playing a flute. As you do. See? More exciting than it first seems, yes?

But apologies aside, If I don’t keep a record of what I do every day, I know I will forget in two weeks, so this is for me as much as you, ok? So quit your whinging and think of how much work you are avoiding because of me. Ah, not so boring now am I…

Ok, back to me (because I can) – we decided we were templed out and spent the day by the pool swimming and sunbaking. Um, and that’s pretty much it. Although, as you can imagine, it was much more exciting that I am making it sound. You know how it is.

-Sarah

We left the hotel at 5am to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat the next morning, having only an hour or two of sleep, which was amazing. (The temple was amazing, not us. We looked like shit.)

It’s a truly beautiful temple, massive in size and well-preserved, and we sat on the stone step ruins of the Angkor Wat library watching the shadows slowly life to reveal the stone detail.

It started raining shortly after, which was even better, as the thousands of tourists dissappeared into their coaches and we had some space to wander, climb and explore this sacred sit on our own. Two things pissed us off though – two girls in singlet tops and short shorts wandering around, which was so disrespectful, and a Christian group who were actually holding mass within the temple, the pastor wearing his robes and everything. We stopped in the middle and stared incredulously at them, saying ‘Buddist, people, this is a Buudist temple. Seriously! Do monks go into the Vatican to worship? Seriously.’ We realised later that’s it’s Easter. But still, seriously.

After our healthy dose of temples, we ate breakfast on site, visited the landmine museum and slept in the afternoon, where we ate lunch, visited the markets and went to the hospital to donate blood, where we got a whole box of orange cookies afterwards. Each. That hospital rocks.

That night, we had cocktails at the Angkor What? bar – which has written on the blackboard behind the bar “This is not a tourist information centre, so shut up and drink.” So we did.

-Sarah

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

The next morning we had to take the public bus across the border into Cambodia. We were imagining the worst – giant tuk-tuks filled with chickens and pigs – but were pleasantly surprised when an air-conditioned bus drove us the 6 hours it took to get from Saigon to Phnom Penh.

The landscape in Cambodia was vastly different from Vietnam – the green rice fields and trees changed into a barren, brown, dusty landscape almost immediately, and the higher level of poverty, especially child beggars, was exceedingly obvious. And our bus driver honked his horn less.

We arrived in time for $1 cocktails at a local rooftop bar, enjoyed divine Kmer food (similar to Thai before they introduced a lot of their spices and chilli) before visiting another incredibly awesome bar called ‘Elsewhere’ that had wooden platforms with cushions where you sat within a rainforst garden filled with fairy lights. Later we spruced ourselves up to go clubbing at a local club called ‘The Heart of Darkness’ and worked up a sweat, dancing off dinner until 3am.

The next morning we slept in, ate lunch and decided we wouldn’t see any temples that day as we would have two full days at Angkor Wat. We also couldn’t see the palace as the King was in town (when he is in town the whole place is lit up with fairy lights. How can you not love a country that puts fairy lights on everything? It’s my kind of place) so we visited the markets before our visit to the Genocide Prison and Killing Fields that afternoon.

The afternoon was an education, certainly. The torture that the Khmer Rouge put the people through before killing them was not only shocking because of it’s atrociousness – all educated people and their entire families were killed – but because the Pol Pot regime encouraged the worst kind of civil war and seemed to simply want to rid the country of it’s own population – kids killing their parents, soldiers of 10 or 12 years old killing other soldiers.

We were taken through the toture cells that hadn’t been cleaned, blood still present on the floor, and photos of those totured to tell Pol Pot what they knew about educated people in their village, or where there families were hiding filled the walls. At the killing fields, one thousand skulls sat atop a Buddist temple in front of the fields where millions and millions were slaughtered – teeth, bones and cloth still visible through the rubble. There was one grave just for babies.

The worst thing was that it was only 25-odd years ago, that the US, Australia and NZ funded this regime under the guise of preventing communism so they could protect their capitalist back-pockets, that Pol Pot himself sat on the UN Council until the early 1990’s and died of malaria before ever facing trial for the atrocities that he created, that to this day the UN will never come out and say what Pol Pot did was wrong, because they would then have to admit they were wrong. It was an education, certainly.

But the Buddist way is to never dwell and always look to the future, and I think the people have recovered remarkably well considering. So we prayed for the victims spirits and hoped the spirit of the country would one day prevail against poverty and corruption – there are not many who deserve it more.

Our local guide took us back to his house that evening, his wife cooking us an amazing feast after we played with the kids at the english school he has set up in his own home. In return for dinner we provided a donation to the school, and spent the evening discussing the current Kmer Government and education system, and our guide’s experience during the Pol Pot regime.

It was an amazing insight into Cambodian daily life – there are 42 people living within their wooden slat house, sleeping on straw mats although they are relatively well-off. And damn that family can cook. We stuffed ourselves so stupid we were glad we were sitting on the floor so we could lie down and loosen our belts at the end of the meal.

-Sarah