There’s such a lot of world to see

Booking the boat from Siem Reap to Battambang was a little bit of luxury. Or that was the plan, anyway. It cost three times as much, and took double the time, of the bus, but I’d heard amazing reviews of the journey, which goes down through the immense Tonle Sap lake. Good job, really, that the scenery turned out to be so lovely and fascinating, because the journey itself was very, very long and the boat was very, very crowded and had a propensity to break down very, very often. When we boarded the boat, it was just a group of foreigners on – a girl who looked like she was teaching in Cambodia, a German lady who I chatted to for a while, three other Brits (who I would later know to be Lucy, Julie and Mark), and a Canadian guy (Matt, although I didn’t get to know his name that day – our paths would later cross elsewhere in this country. There you go, a little bit of suspense to ensure you keep reading!) For a while it was just us, with the three guys who were sailing the boat. I suppose our first clue for the journey to come was when one of them picked up his saw, and started taking away chunks out of the bottom of the boat. Turned out there was another layer of wood underneath, but still, not the best way to get your passengers’ confidence levels up. With my track record for jinxed journeys, I felt guilty for not warning my fellow journeymen that we were likely to run into some trouble along the way. And we soon did.

Just after we passed our first set of floating villages – an amazing, surreal world where people carry on complete lives on the river – including shopping, going to church, and schools (wouldn’t like to know what detention is like there – treading water for an hour, maybe?), our boat slowly ground to a halt. There was much Khmer shouting and discussion amongst the three boatmen, until the youngest one – presumably the Cambodian Boat version of an office junior – stripped down to his underwear (small, tight and dark blue, for those of you who are interested in such details), and plunged into the filthy water. It was a bit disconcerting, to say the least, but after a bit of fine-tuning involving a sledgehammer and a new propeller, we were on our way again.

We started making multiple stops in the floating villages for people to get on board, and pretty soon the boat was full to capacity and was sitting low down in the water. The seats were wooden slats and, with no room for manouvre either way, I soon lost all feeling in my bum, back and legs. Obviously this wasn’t enough for some people. A local woman nigh on pushed me further up the bench, almost onto Mark’s knee (wouldn’t he be the lucky one), so she could LIE DOWN on the full-to-capacity bench. I did my best British tut, but shuffled up away from the scary lady anyway. I didn’t trust her not to haul me overboard plus (and this is what scared the bejeezus out of me), her toenails were really long and filed to a point and painted scarlet. I wasn’t getting anywhere near those bad boys, and was glad that her head was nearest to me. Be grateful for small mercies is my mantra. A teacher who I was talking to gave me half of his corn for breakfast (what? Stop looking at me like that, he pushed it into my hand, it’s not like I asked for it or made my ‘pitiful and hungry’ look in his direction. Much). Actually, it’s amazing here how the people are so willing, nigh on delighted, to share what they have, despite having so little by Western standards. Lovely people. Despite filling up on the corn, we stopped for lunch – every journey here, even a 2-hour one, involves a lunch stop. My kind of travelling – where most of the locals and I, the German lady, and The Person I Would Later Know As Matt (TPIWLKAM) (Hereafter shortened to ‘Matt’) ate rice and an unidentified but tasty meat.

The boat broke down again, and this time the poor junior didn’t even bother to strip down – he just plunged right in, and dove right under the boat for minutes at a time. Something to do with it belching out black smoke, but, on reflection, I’m kind of glad I didn’t fully understand what was going on. At any rate, I was soon distracted by a mini battle that was occurring opposite me, with Matt and a couple of locals; the battle of the awning. The boat had awning down both sides that was originally rolled up, so we could look at the view, but kept getting rolled down by presumably sun-and-scenery-weary locals. Matt was undeterred, and kept pushing it back up. Brave. I kept looking at the scary toenail lady next to me (now with her feet resting on my backpack), and decided to keep stum. They could have done some real damage.

Eight hours after we set off, we floated into Battambang, the second city in Cambodia, although it’s smaller – much, much, smaller – than my hometown. We were beseiged by moto drivers (the local taxis here are motorbikes), and, for the sake of an easy life, I got in a minibus going to one of the hotels. I was shown a room there but, for the sake of principle (also known as “cutting your nose of to spite your face”, a trait in which I excel), I decided to go to a different hotel down the road. After dragging my backpack up three flights of stairs, I didn’t have the heart to go back down, even though the room was, frankly, a hole. Still, it had a tv. And nylon, bug-infested sheets. A treat indeed!

The next day, I hosed off the bugs, and set out for a cooking course I had booked the day before. I haven’t cooked (apart from a similar course in India) since I’ve left, and I’m really, desperately missing it – it’s such an entrenched part of my daily routine that it’s yet another highlight of the temporary nature of life on the road. I’ve enjoyed Khmer food since I’ve been here – it’s similar to Thai, only far, far less spicy, which means that you can taste the other flavours, such as lemongrass, garlic, and ginger, unrivalled by too much chilli. That was where I met Lucy, Julie and Mark who were on the boat – they’d also booked on the course. We chose three dishes to cook (I’ll post the recipes at a later date), and were then taken to the market to buy the ingredients. To me, it seemed how shopping should be done – our guide went to different stalls for most of the ingredients, even though most things were sold in most places. The cooking went down a storm and, I’m happy to say, it was delicious – despite being full to the gills, we ravenously ate everything we cooked. In fact, we were so absorbed in the eating that we didn’t notice Lucy’s camera being stolen from right under our noses. This then led to a distinctly unpleasant couple of hours in the police station for her, and, more annoyingly, the loss of photos.

To cheer ourselves up, we went to some bar whose name escapes me, but involved some kind of lake, or river, or water, in the title. Our reason for going was that Angelina Jolie hung out there when she was in town, but she must have been too busy with the baby because she never showed. Not that she’s even in Cambodia at the moment, but, y’know, she could have got a craving for one of the fabulous burgers and chips they sold there, and instructed her personal pilot (or better still, Brad) to take her there.

After that, it was back to my bugs in my bedroom to watch the football – thanks for all the email updates on the scores, by the way – and off to sleep. I’d decided to head off the next day to Phnom Penh, as Battambang wasn’t really grabbing me – not much charm to it (although I do know some people who loved it), and I’m learning now not to hang around for the sake of it. I only woke once during the night, and that was when something – god knows what, but it was bigger than, say, a mosquito – was crawling on my hand in the night. I shook it off, and knew I had definitely made the right decision to leave.

My mother is a wonderful woman.  Apart from raising two intelligent, charming, and astoundingly good-looking offspring (so I know at least Michael is on my side in this post), she is talented and can turn her hand to pretty much anything she wants to do.  With one notable exception.  For the 29 years I have known her – and, I would imagine, at other times as well, she has a complete inability to ride a bike without falling off.  One of my favourite times was at Centre Parks, when we were younger, and like the devoted children we were, Michael and I only stopped laughing long enough to take a photo.  Apparently as well, on her recent trip to China, the same thing happened.

Well, those of you who are fortunate enough to have met both me and my mum know that we look like a version of “Send in the Clones”.  We act like it, too.  So I guess when I hired an electric bike to take myself round the Angkor temples for a day, I should have seen it coming.  The day was going so well, as well…

Jessica and Matt had left early that morning, so I was on my own for the day, and decided to make the most of it by getting an electric bike.  It was the best of all scenarios, really – I would have the independence of my own transport, without the pain and suffering of riding a push bike in temperatures approaching 40 degrees.  Electric bikes, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, look like normal bikes except they have a battery unit on them which powers it.  You can pedal if you desperately want to, but really, who wants to?  They have a top speed of around 20 mph, so you pootle along in quite a sedate fashion.

I wobbled along the road (OK, these things take some getting used to), and made my first stop at the Aki Ra Landmine Museum.  This is a fabulous, important institution that educates about landmines, campaigns for their full ban worldwide, and supports young people who have been directly (and indirectly) affected by this blight on civilised society – including funding some of these young people to go to university and have something approaching a ‘normal’ life.  I might write further about landmines in a later blog, but for now, I’ve put a link to Aki Ra’s site on the right, please take 5 minutes to read it and see what we can do.

So, once I’d been there, I set off for the temples.  I intended to actually re-visit the ones we’d seen the day before – they are so huge, and varied, that I think I could have visited them 100 days in a row and never grown tired of wandering and discovering their hidden treasures.  I’d charged up my camera battery, and wanted to get some of the shots I’d missed the previous day.  Giving Angkor Wat a miss until later, I headed off to Ta Phrom, where the trees are coveing the crumbling temple, and to Bayon, the one with the faces carved into every wall. 

It was getting pretty hot, so I sought refuge in a cafe, and then headed out to find my two postcard girls.  The temples of Angkor are overflowing with local, insanely cute children, all selling you postcards, and pretty much anything else you would care to buy, all for “One dollar” (You get used to hearing that cry all day long).  I’d promised two of these girls (one of whom was called, seriously, Spidergirl – is that the coolest name in the world, or what?), and found all the children in a circle under a tree, paying rapt attention to a teacher.  I was intrigued, and stayed to listen for a while.  Apparently, they were having ‘politeness’ classes as to the best and most appropriate ways to deal with tourists, including approaching them in groups no bigger than three.  I was told later that the classes also take in wider social topics that these children might not normally have access to, such as AIDS awareness (vitally important in a country such as this, where unfortunately prostitution is rife, usually – as in most cases – amongst the most weak and defenceless in society).  Spidergirl spotted me, and, after class, came over and I bought her postcards, along with one set from her friend, as well.  They also gave me (and they insisted, before you start rolling your eyes in disgust at my freeloading) two bracelets.  I’m not THAT much of a scav, and I tried to give them back, but they insisted, without pressing me to buy anything else.  They waved me off, with an admonition to be careful on my bike.  If I had only heeded their warning.

Going back home, I realised it was Siem Reap rush hour, and the traffic going both ways was busy – I was getting overtaken constantly, as the battery was getting low, so I was going about 12 mph.  I’ve mentioned before about crazy Asian traffic, and this was no exception.  Suddenly, a guy swerved in front of me, I panicked, and the bike veered off to the side.  I hit the kerb with a thwack, and did a most spectacular Starsky & Hutch style catapult right off the bike.  Some lovely people stopped to see if I was ok, and I did that thing where you grit your teeth and smile through your tears and cry, slightly hysterically, “NO!  I’M FINE!  NO PROBLEM!  NOW, YOU BE ON YOUR WAY!”.  I limped back on to the bike where, to add pain to injury, the battery had just died a death, so I had to cycle the rest of the way back to town, leg bleeding, and feeling like I wanted to cry (admittedly, more from the ego bruise than anything else). 

I had to look at my leg myself – the medical advice for Cambodia is “get back to Bangkok”, which I thought might be a tad excessive for a cut leg, so, with virtual advice from my lovely medical relatives and friends (CL and JP take a bow, and a big thankyou), had a go at patching it up.  Let’s just say I’ll never make a nurse but now, thankfully, it looks like it’s well on the road to getting better.  I might end up with a huge jaggedy scar, but still, think of the sympathy I’ll get.

Understandably (well, for me, anyway – I do like to dwell on these things), I woke up the next morning in somewhat of a grump, feeling most ‘woe is me’.  Cycling round that day was out of the question, and I didn’t want to particularly splash out on a tuk tuk just for myself – my budget is quite tight here in Cambodia – so I’d pretty much written off my last day at Angkor.  Dejected,  I went to a lovely cafe for breakfast, and that is where my day took a massive turn for the better.  As I was on my way out, I looked up to see a lovely familiar face – my old friend (well, in travelling terms, anyway) Brad, who, with Michelle and Gary, I spent a great week with all the way back in India.  I couldn’t think of a more welcome sight. I knew he’d be in SE Asia at around the same time I was, but didn’t know that Cambodia was on his itinerary, so it was pure fluke that we were in the same place at the same time. It seemed to be a case of that marvellous serendipity that’s following me around. We spent a couple of hours just catching up, then decided to get a tuk tuk together and head off for more sights of Angkor.

Angkor Wat was our first stop, which was great for me, another chance to recapture some of my lost photo opportunities from the day of the dead battery, and then we went on to some of the lesser-known and lesser-visited temples, including a stop at a monastery with a huge (although very shiny and new) Buddha, where we ended up chatting to an interesting monk who was telling us about life in the monastery. He was older than us – I’d guess in his 50s – and had only been a monk for a year. I love the culture clashes that seem to go with these monks – you see some on the internet, some with mobile phones; this guy smoked a roll-up as we chatted.

Our final stop was another steep temple, facing Angkor for the sunset and, although there were a few other people up there, it was nowhere near as crowded as the first sunset I’d seen at Angkor. Equally as entertaining and as distracting as the beautiful falling light were the beautiful children who crowded round us, enticing us to buy their wares. We ended up playing games with them, especially numbers games, and speaking about our countries – most children know some basic facts about a lot of countries, presumably gleaned from one tourist and then used to impress others. A typical encounter goes something like this:
Child: “Where you from?”
Me: “England”
Child: “Capital is London. One of four countries all together – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Population of England is 51 million”.

My personal favourite, though, and one I’m dying to know how it entered the lexicon, is:
“England – lovely jubbly”. Maybe Del Boy passed through Angkor one day.

After sitting and watching the sunset, and again marvelling at my good fortune to see Brad just when a friendly face was most welcome, we headed off to see some Aspara dancing (traditional Cambodian, usually involving highly decorated dancers making slow and precise movements), and – the real reason why we went to this place – an all-you-can-eat buffet. Not having eaten lunch, we filled our boots.

At the end of the evening, Brad and I said goodbye (for the second time!), and I limped back to my hotel room, but this time I was smiling. Maybe my genes aren’t so bad, after all.

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