Cambodge
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Leaving the bad atmosphere of bangkok behind us we head for the border once more. Besides our visa is up and time is running down.
A comfortable mini bus to the Cambodian border at….was followed by what would have been an equally fine journey to Siem Reap, if we hadn’t of happened to be on a small bus with a large group of some other British girls. Lest say..we weren’t compatible..you get a very different type of tourist/traveller in South East Asia then India and although we were prepared for this it doesn’t stop the irritation seeping through on a long bus journey, especially when your ill and they won’t shut up bitching about home and how dirty this country is. ( If you dont like it GO HOME. Dont subject me to your drivel or rudely patronise me with offers of water in a vain attempt to stop me coughing)
I also asked a fellow British traveller if I could glance at his lonely planet for a hostel to head to….he looked at me like I’d offered to decapitate him. After some more then uncomfortable hesitation in which I smiled and assured him that if wasn’t O.K, I could cope,,…he then agreed. (I felt like I had lost all faith in fellow Brits travelling at this point)
We spied a place in that there book called Garden Village which turned out to have dorms for only a dollar a night….cheap yes, so we got what we paid for, outside mattress with mosquito nets on a raised platform…..was no problem for us apart from the unforgiving heat and humidity, but I doubt if we’d strechted to a fan room it would of made all that difference…besides we used the money we saved to go on a few more adventures.
I should explain that in Cambodia the national currency riel is used only for small change, US dollars are preferred with most shops pricing in the foreign currency. Its 4000 riel to a dollar, so anything under one dollar was paid for in riel not cents…This meant no coins, just a confused mixed currency. Almost a game, it was the aim to get rid of all your riel when ever you could, otherwise you’d be carrying around a mass of notes, and when you left Cambodia your hard pushed for anywhere to exchange the country’s low currency.
We ended up staying in Siem Reap for around a week, I’d like to think we took some time to relax and chill out, but in reality it was more time to sleep after hot temple exploring- thus hiding from the heat and resting our burnt out legs .(Its currently the hottest season in Cambodia with even the local sweating profusely.) We used a day or so but no more to recover from daily hangovers, self induced by a trips down pub street.(We’ve got to the point where if a hangover occurs it has to try hard to stop us getting out and about)
We had ben told about the legendary pub street by a few people ,who had only said good things as one would expect- the name speaks for itself…or so one would think….but the idea of pubs here and around is so different from ours, pub street was just a lot of restaurant bars (two of which stretched to dancing at around 1am) …No traditional British pub and of course…everywhere served buckets…on a less threatening scale then Bangkok and Laos, more a friendly place where you gathered at either Temple or Angkor What? bar to exchange stories and drunkenness, mixed with hopeful plans and arrangements to see temples the next day.
Ah the temples…..Angkor Wat itself seemed almost like a stately home, made supreme with restoration, impressive yes but not the overgrown, jungle temple complex invisioned in my head from whenst I was young- first hearing about ‘The lost temples of Angkor’.
Angkor Wat was situated in a vast open space with its moats and bridges either intact or more recently restored…there was no clue as to which and I’m no archeologist, still, interesting to walk through the cool stone corridors and marvel at the detail and size. I had forgotten much of what I had learnt from several brief documentaries or articles I had read about the ancient civilization, though I’m sure I’ll pick up something along my travels, or when I get home, so things are just enough to see and take in and let your imagination do the trick for the time being…facts can be bothered about later.
Our tuk tuk driver for the day took us next to Angkor tom, much more interesting atheistically with large worn Khmer faces looming out of the stone. We didn’t need to walk around every corner of it and step through every path way… but just sit on one of a high central point and drink in the atmosphere….though we would of liked to have been there without any other the other sight seers milling around…and I’m sure they felt the same.
The last temple of the first day was our favourite, more spread out across lower levels with trees threatening to pull up foundations as they grew in and around the stones. This was actually the temple they filmed Tomb Raider in I hear whispers say. Its hot and sweaty, but the stones are cool and we hear tour guides preach in French, English and Chinese to their groups.( we huddle in close to all but the latter to pick up information) The carvings as in all the temples we have seen are exquisite and detailed, topless curvaceous women dancing, gods akin to the Hindu ones I learnt about,and repeated patterns fading away or brought back to life by restoration. Of course this is an archeologists and architects dream, imagine piecing together the civilization that once lived here and figuring out how the massive jigsaw of such a temple fitted together….a whimsical idea, but then again id love to draw a map of them :>
The dappled light filter through the trees creating an illusion of coolness while the humidity rose with the heat of the day, the fig trees spread their webbing roots like spiders on ecstasy, fallen exquisitely cut slabs of rock – the building blocks of the temples gathered in heaped piles, so where they had obviously fell, others in pile made as a route way was cleared for visitors.
We had already earmarked a trip to the floating village, though we had envisioned cycling there as we were eluded to think that it wasn’t far…..after excepting that we would have to pay for a tuk tuk to cover the distance instead of hiring a very much cheaper one dollar a day bicycle we joined forces with a British couple who were keen to go too, turned out they were from Salford and Blackpool…..
A Goregous tuk tuk ride there breathing in the bright sun light dryingthe green pasture, gardens and open sided stilted houses made me fall even more in love with the country. We got on a boat that would take us down the Mekong to the edge of Tonle Sap lake…the massive lake rises by 12 metres in the rainy season. As it was the hottest time of the year, just before the rains, the lake was at its lowest murky and brown, with the house boats out on the lake scouring for fish rather then at the banks of the river- where they retreat to in monsoon. Glimpsing slices of peoples lives as we motored past, while they snoozed, work, ate, played- they must feel a bit on display with a few groups tourists coming to see their floating houses, but all in all the trip is very insightful…learning about the river, its wildlife and how the people here live….also it creates jobs for them, which in dry season when fish are scarce, provides income, and a trip always involves an excursion to a shop and restaurant where you feel obliged to buy a little something, even if it is just a cold drink.
There are some more sureal sides to it though, kids running round with large pythons rounds their necks asking for money in return of a picture…..other boats pulling up out of nowhere besides yours as a kid leaps across the gap to ply you with cold drinks and hops back to her boat just as quickly ans speeds off to hijack another boat….and when we disembarked from our long boat a women came rushing up to us forcing ceramic plates in our face, it took more then a second glace to realise the photo graphs stcuk in the middle of the plates were actually of us boarding the boat, a very comical souvenir that we had to refuse….they would just peal the photo graph stickers off and replace them with pictures of the next unawres models.
Siem Reap was full of adventures, and looking back one of my favourite places. we were intreiged by some of the temples out of the angkor area, which had been more or less left to their own devices in terms of nature, unrestored still over grown in the jungle, very close to how how they would have been found when first discovered by french explorers. Away from the crowds and very beautiful, we took a long, beautiful (if not a little hungover- well buckets and fellow travellers always make for good fun) tuk tuk ride to Mela Telek.
The cambodians are by far some of the loveslist people I have met, we stopped on our hour long ride to fix a flat tyre in the unforgivable heat, and were offered seats and good conversation from a beautiful 14yr old practicing her English and exchanged information about our families. In the burning midday sun we passed hammocks complete with their fill next to the raised wooden houses and dry fields that became lush when the yummy rain drops fell and even splashed us under the hood of the tuk tuk.
The temple was exactly as we had wanted it to be; mossy and untouched, deserted apart from a Mr. tomnness like character who gestured to us to follow him around one side of the once magnificent stoney south gate. He indicated before we even got near that we should follow his path up through the fallen stones for a better view of the inside of the temple walls. He led us along the narrow ledges around the edge of the now waterless moat and through half falled arches and door ways. We mazed, climbed, trickled, and stumbled around the fallen wonder, its massive stones and most magically the nature that had been left to creep through the foundations and walls, slightly distorting but mainly becoming part of the structure. I could of lived there, amongst the caved in stone libraries and creeping fig trees.
Talcum Powder and Whiskey
We were lucky enough to be in the country for Khmer New Year, which coincides with new year festivals in Thailand and Laos…we had very much wanted to be in Thailand for Songkran their annual water festival, but visas permitted otherwise, Cambodians celebrations though were on a similar level I dare say with dancing and water being thrown in the streets- The main parties of the 3 day festival (of which they celebrate the days before and days after- so it turns into a 5 day festival) were held out of town in the forest by an ancient temple….We had had a tip off from a South African guy in Angkor What? bar the night before we went. He had been to the celebration that day and told us we had a missed an amazing party….if we knew what was good for us we should go the next day….So around 3 pm the following afternoon we hailed a tuk tuk, pre bought some wine ( we weren’t for starting on whiskey so early despiste the lead from the locals) and headed off.
The party in the forest was, in one word, magical. Thousands of Khmer people, either with families or friends were laughing trough the walkways of food stalls in the forest….a peace temple up a small hill one side of a dancing compound ring where some distorted kind of Cambodian dub-step was playing as young and old alike milled around a tree in the centre of the circle. The way to do it was it seemed to dance counter clockwise around the tree to one song…and on the next to stop still and dance in one spot for the next song’s duration.
As tradition many people were covered in white talcaum powder…which I can only guess is another symbol of cleansing in the New Year festival…naturally we joined in and once the khmer boys saw we were helping them celebrate they of course insisted on covering us in the more talcum powder then most…… the action preceed or followed by shouts of ‘Happy Khmer New Year!’
There were cafes set up serving food, also selling whiskey and Angkor beer in vast quantities…a man powered child fair ground ride squeaked around for the many numbers of young children joining in the festivities. Stalls selling freshly cooked meat – mainly chicken- were there in abundance, we joined in with the chicken and rice cooked in large bamboo sticks as the light fell and powerful hanging lights took over lighting up the still dancing crowd. A beautiful forest festival that felt like something from another world with orange/brown dust being kicked up amongst the dark green shrubbery and tall trees… marring vision and along with the grey smoke from cooking meats.
Beyond the land of the Temples.
After a little more rum at Angkor what? Bar we were up the following morning for a bus to Phenom Pehn, we hadn’t planned to spend a long time in the capital, mainly because we had heard it was even more humid then Siem Reap had been ( a ghastly thought) and with less to really see. I think you have to have an understanding the recent history of Cambodia to have an understanding its people and its cities. The mass genocide caused by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 50s still scars the country and the current generations, though memories are slowly diminishing and as of yet there is no teaching about the blood past in schools.
I didnt know much about the Khmer Rouge before going to Phenom Penh, I had only a vague idea, but I picked up a memoir in Siem Reap called ‘ First They Killed My Father- a daughter of cambodia remebers‘ by Loung Ung. So it was only after visiting the killing fields and reading the enthralling story of a young child, did I start to really appreciate and gain an understanding of the country and its people.
I knew the country was poor and that the Khmer people had encountered great losses and suffering, but I didn’t know the whole story behind it. At the killing fields you are greeted by a memorial 20m or more high, with glass panels all the way up showing shelf after shelf of skulls and bones found in the mass graves at the killing field. This was where many of the people deemed to be rich, educated (even those who wore glasses) or un-pure (of foreign blood) were sent in order to cleanse the country.. The site was as haunting as the descriptions by Luang Ung, but it showed me another part of the world, its political troubles and mass suffering that I had never been exposed to, never had it been covered in history lesson ( in my school we mainly learnt about British history, politics, religion)
So after our brief, if not spirit damping spell in the capital, we headed for a place called Sihinoukville, a beach town that is deemed to become very popular in the next 5 years…..and it will, with all the development and bars springing up its likely to become the Costa del Sol of Cambodia with Westerners and richer Cambodians from the capital, making weekend trips to the coast. A lot of apartments were being built and the beach already flooded with chilled out bars offering sea food buffets and late night drinking (‘buckets’ were a plastic drinks bottle cut in half)….made for a good setting, though lacking the people and the beautiful space to house such commercialism. (for the time being)
Fun was had on all accounts, first night syndrome with buckets galore always houses some good stories, memories and thankfully/unfortunately not photographs. I definitely wish our time in Cambodia could have been longer for some more exploring but yet again it was time to go back to Thailand, for the final time, visit the last few towns and islands,then and head further south to Malaysia.
grandvoyages