Cambodia - Heaven

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Well having spent an eventful and unpleasant time in Vietnam I was really looking forward to a change of venue.

I was still fighting a fever but it seemed to be somewhat under control after 5 days so I decided to fly to Siem Reap, the little town that services Angkor Wat. It was an afternoon flight and as flight time approached I certainly wasn't feeling any better. When we finally departed I was a human inferno and as it turned out had a temperative over 104 degrees again. I was just a little happy to land and was looking foerward to getting to the hotel.

Well I've never seem more forms to be filled out anywhere than in Cambodia though they offer visa on landing. Well one of the forms was a medical form!...and there was a huge sign that said something like "We have a head size machine that takes your temperature"...honestly I wasn't delirious....so I had to decide what to do......being returned to Vietnam would have been a fate worse than death but a Cambodian hospital may have had the same result! So using my many years of travel tricks I decided I'd just ignore the medical form and they would probably too. Nope..that didn't work. So I was in the moral conundrum of lying on the form re fever and potentially having to walk through this huge alien machine and get caught OR fessing up with the totally unknown results that would follow. Well honesty is always the best policy...although I'll never know...i answered YES to fever....and I don't think anyone even looked at the form and I was through and into Cambodia!!!!

I slept a fair bit and by the next morning with the Cambodian sunshine (something I hadn't seen since Bangkok) I started to feel much better. A change of hotel to a small hotel that had a tourism program that helped street/rural kids as also just the ticket.

I rented car and driver and headed up to begin to see what Angkor Wat was all about. It has been one of those places that I have wanted to see for a very long time!

It is truly an amazing place. It covers many many acres and is a series of temple complexes that were built in the 900 to 1200s in Khmer architectural style and then they were overthrown and the area was abandoned. The first traces of these temples were rediscovered in the 1860s and reserruction/repair/renolvation started in earnest in the 1920s.

They were completely covered in overgrowth, roots and dirt and it's a miracle than anyone ever found them at all.

Angkor Wat itself is the most stunning of the many temple complexes and covers 81 hectares. Around the outside of the walls of the temple complex is the world's longest bas reliefs. They are incredible in their height and detail and they tell various stories of wars and religious fights.

The complexes are an interesting mix of Hindu and Buddhist as during the various years different kings would be responsible for construction and would ask for some Buddhist things to be removed etc.

I can honestly say that I have never seen a site so well presented from a tourist perspective. There are wonderful 2 lane paved roads everywhere and the various tuk tuks, cars, and buses and motos and bicycles all seem to happily coexist without any honking or stress. The area is so lush and green it is stunningly beautiful and add in the temples and it's perfect. There were not the huge crowds that I was expected and the weather could not have been better...mid 80s and not humid! There is a sense of peace pervading the entire site.

Over the course of 2 days I saw about 15 different temples and am delighted to report that unlike some things that are so anticipated this one met or exceeded by expecations. the second day I rented a tuk tuk and didn't take a guide and in face found it much easier and relaxing. A tuk tuk is the way to go in Cambodia! In fact, talk about connected!....my tuk tuk guide in Siem Reap arranged for a buddy of his to pick me up from the bus in Phnom Penh....which was actually much appreciated and became my local guide for my 2 days there.

The actual town of Siem Reap was only built up over the past 30 or 40 years to service the tourists and there are probably more fancy hotels here than in anywhere else of its size in the world.

As I was running out of time for my trip, I decided I'd head down to Phnom Penh and see what the capital was all about. After a 7 hour bus ride...first class....with a stop for 45 minutes as some villagers had unfortunately decided to cut down a major tree that day and it fell across the road...a slight deliay. The only other delay for for another bus that had somehow manage to career off the highway and into a rice paddy.

Phnom Penh turned out to be a wonderful surprise. It is a relatively new city and everything looks very clean and the avenues are wide. There is a fair bit of bustle (nothing like Vietnam) with mostly motos rather than cars but lots of traffic. The Tonle Sap River runs through town and if you're coming from anywhere other than Siem Reap...it feels like French Indochina should....very mellow...the riverside is gorgeous....many many Khmer (Thai) style temples dot the landscape and again...the wide avenues and lush vegetation make it seem so peaceful and sedate.

The absolutely god awful history of Cambodia helps to explain some things and defies other things. IN 1975 Pol Pot and the extreme Commmunist Khmer Rouge took over the country. At the time, 3 million people lived in Phnom Penh. He decided that the people needed to move to the rural areas to produce more rice and therefore he ordered the city vacated and sure enough within a few months the city had less than 35000 people left.

This was also the time of the Killing Fields and S-21. S-21 is a local high school that was taken over by Pol Pot as his interrogation centre and over the course of the next 3 years over 20000 Cambodians were brought there....and only 3 escaped. After days or years in captivity and interrogation, they were shipped about 15 kms outside town to an area now memorialized as the Killing Fields and they were all killed...and left in mass graves. Over 9000 skulls were subsequently unearthed. The high school is a very eerie reminder of a huge extermination which was never acknowledged or known at the time. There is a very moving memorial at the Killing Fields of a tall glass pyramid filled with bones. The area around it is so peaceful and lush the contrast is stunning. The mass graves are all around.

Against this backdrip and with all the architects and over 20000 engineers killed during the Khmer regime, it is remarkable how much the country and the city have receovered and how amazingly kind and gentle and "Buddhist" the Cambodian people are....

A truly amazing people...they've been persecuted by the French, Vietnamese, US and then their own Khmer rouge...and through it all...they have flourished.....such a happy contented people...I was really shocked only because of what I knew they have been through...there is sure something to that Buddhist perspective!.....

There is a wonderful beach area called Kep with a truly great resort that a friend of mine alerted me to over a year ago and sadly due to the medical downtime in Vietnam I didn't have time to make it down to the coast....another trip?

Can't believe that I'll be back so soon....cold and Christmas......hmmmmmm.....it's been another really interesting trip!.....

Thanks for following the story with me!....look forward to see you all real soon!

JF

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Comments

[Dave Harley]

What You Missed!
John, just wanted to let you know that today Toronto is setting a record - a weather record that is. This is the first November since records have been kept that TO went without a snowflake! Awesome!!! You should have been here....really. People are still golfing. I hesitated sending this message to you realizing that you're there when you could have been here but since you would eventually find out when you got back I thought it best to prepare you for the shock. Please don't think for a moment that I'm being insensitive. I really do have your best interests in mind. At least this way you can plan to be here next November and hope for a repeat. Experiencing this seems much more interesting than all those dreary days you've been suffering through. Don't worry, you can thank me for the heads up when I see you at the club. Keep your chin up you'll be back soon enough;-) Dave