Sen Monorom - Kompong Cham - Siem Reap - Battambang

In our post last week, we told you that we had a bus ticket for the 3/4 of our next trip to Sen Monorom, far East of Cambodia... After that stop at 130km away from our destination, we planed to catch a mini-bus. This mini-bus left our station 2 hours earlier than our bus... Not synchronized at all... So when we arrived at 1pm, people in the station told us, we had 2 options: either sleep in the village and wait for the mini-bus next day at 11am or wait at the corner of the road for a pick-up that goes there, Inch'allah !!!
So we spent 2 very funny hours with a family who was selling grilled-bananas and cold-drinks along the road... Of course, we were the only Westerners around and let's say that after 20 min there, all the people in the village knew we were there and what we were up to... Lucky we were... A modern 4WD (=4x4) pick-up with 3 guys working as salesmen in the Petrol industry and their driver was going to our destination ;-))) So, we shared the back of the car outside with a local couple... All squeezed together, but who cares when it is a free-ride ;)))) The driver continued his fast driving on a 130km clay road in the mountains with some pretty damned deep holes that we were nearly kicked out of the car several times...
Finally we arrived safe in Sen Monorom and not wet (there was a thunder around these days) and what a coincidence we shared the same Guest-House ! The city looks like a small village up in the mountains surrounded by forest. The lucky day continued and we were invited by the boys for a various diner, all paid by their company ! They even insisted for paying all the beers we had later in the garden of the guest-house !
We seemed to have the jackpot with these guys we've just met...
Right next morning after a lovely breakfast, again invited, we went of to see a waterfall 30km outside town. This time we had the chance to sit inside this comfortable vehicle:P The road was in a bad shape as well, caused by the rain, so we had to walk the last couple of meters to reach the waterfall. After a photo session, we went quick back to the car, because the boys had to be on the road for their homes in Phnom Penh at 2pm this afternoon.
On the way back to our guest-house, we experienced a really heavy rainfall...the road became a nightmare of mud so that our very modern high class car couldn't move anymore, and we were obliged to push it several times in this awful rain. The boys had to hurry for Phnom Penh... Sadly we were alone again:( Strange feeling, because no more free driver and local guides !
Next day we decided to go for an elephant trek in the deep forest... Elephants have always been living in this region and local minorities have managed to train them to carry heavy stuffs, like woods from the forest. But it was a strange feeling riding on this animals because with the development of tourism more elephants will be needed and so more to be trained whereas it is supposed to be a wild animal... In our opinion, not to recommend.
Our departure morning was not sure because of the road conditions... For the last 2 days, it rained a lot and the clay road became a nightmare for the 4WD and so was almost "Impossible mission" for our mini-bus ! In the end, we got out of the bus 4 times and the guys had to put chains (similar as for snow) on the wheels to pass the sticky deep mud barriers.

Finally, we could get to Kompong Cham, a charming little city on the Mekong river, easily to cycle, so we did it and visited some Buddhist temples. Sun was back and we had nice little sun-burns after the rain in the far east.

2 days later we headed in the morning by bus to Siem Reap. We stayed there for almost 3 days to visit the very famous temples. This city has more Hotels and Guest-houses than people :) Two days in a row we had to get up at 4am to see the fabulous sunrise and to be one-step ahead the numerous tourist groups when visiting the temples in the morning. Let's say it must have been the first time in our lifes, we had to get up so early twice in a row...
We visited at least 20 temples, we cycled more than 50 km and more than 100km by tuk-tuk. The ruins are all absolutely stunning, all very different, some pretty well-preserved, some falling apart and some like a Lara Croft scenery. It is very unbelievable how the nature can take over places abandoned for years by human-beings (trees between temple stones). The site deserves to be the 8th wonder of the world. We think 3 days is good length to have enough time to get a global view of most of the temples but also not to be tired of seeing old stones the whole day !
Surrounded by all this magical landscape there is one big annoying matter of children working and bagging in this area. They constantly harass tourists to buy something for 1$... For example we met a child, max. 6 years-old, who asked us "You buy this for 1$", when we said "No thank you", he had a terrible answer "ok, buy 2 for 1$"... What the hell, is he doing here???? For this situation, a classic argument is to say that children participate to the family incomes... That's true, because tourists are more willing to buy or give money to cute little children... But let's see it on a reverse point of view: what are the parents doing to feed the family? In our personal vision and only in touristic areas (not talking for hard-workers as fishermen or farmers), they are using their children to get easy-money with less effort for themselves. In broad outline, mothers are cooking and waiting layed down in the hamac for customers in their stands, and men are either at home or sleeping and debating with their colleagues on their tuk-tuk... For the male occupation, besides our observations, we asked some women in their stands about their husbands... The shame is that the government doesn't do anything to protect children and build a stronger society with a well-educated youth. It would be easy to warn people by signs not to give any money to children.

After these 3 incredible days including a BBQ in our guest-house, we moved south of Siem Reap to Battambang by bus. It's a small city with some old colonial houses along the river. The main attraction around is the "bamboo train" which is a local transportation between villages. There is only one-way rail, so if another cart is coming from the other direction, one of them has to unload and put aside the cart, That was a funny and original trip ! We then visited "killing caves", scary dark caves where the Khmer Rouge used to kill "hostages" of their Revolution. It turns out to be today a holy place with a big golden Buddha. Who had watched the movie "The Descent" would understand why we didn't go too deep inside the caves...


Tomorrow morning, we're leaving for Phnom Penh for a one-day stop-over before heading to the well-deserved beaches in south Cambodia, at the end of our holidays ! We'll have the opportunity to attend a festival in the city and to meet our newly made Cambodian friends from the mountain.

Adventure continues ;-)

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Part of trip: Asie 2009

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