Siem Reap, the Ultimate Juxtaposition

We (Alex, Jeff and I) have left Bangkok with much heartache and have now entered Cambodia. For the first time on this trip I’m actually somewhere new, somewhere that I have to figure out from scratch. Finally! Real travel!

To enter Cambodia overland from Thailand we took a bus to the border town of Aranya Prathet. That part of the journey was fantastic: cheap, easy and hassle-free. The only hitch occurring when Alex left his wallet in the seat of the bus. Fear not, he did get it back, but only after suggesting to the bus driver that he call the police to report the loss. All of a sudden the driver did a second pass through the bus and lo-and-behold [sp?], he found the wallet. What a surprise. From there to the border was a short tuk-tuk ride complete with a lot of scammers trying to sell us overpriced visas. Unfortunately, when we got to the official border post to buy our visas we found that they were overpriced anyway.

Now, the strip of land between the two countries is like nowhere else that I have seen. Think vegas (casino wise) mixed with a rubbish tip. The place was filthy, stinky and extremely casino-y. Apparently a lot of Thais cross the border to in order to get their pokie fix.

To complete the journey to Siem Reap we tried to get a share taxi, as the Lonely Planet guide said to avoid the busses at all cost. We walked around the dirty little town of Poipet for about an hour trying to hail taxis without any success. They would either ask for $40 or simply refuse to take us, all the while pointing in the direction of the scam busses. We were very tough, we didn’t give in to the scams, and we are all very glad about that. Sort of. The $40 taxi was a lot more expensive (the bus would have cost $21 for the three of us), however, we arrived in Siem Reap at 7pm whereas the busses got in around 10pm. The other downside to the taxi was that we came very close to either dieing ourselves or at the very least killing a dozen locals on their pushbikes. Our driver was crazy: gunning it along at 75 kph on roads that can only be described as rubble. I’ve never seen a road in such a pathetic state. Every 500m or so there was a detour around a section of road which had been washed away. The taxi spent almost as much time on the shoulder of the road as it did on the road. The potholes were more akin to open-cut mines. At one point the car went over a bump and landed on a large rock; I actually felt the point of the rock through the floor with my foot! In the end though, we survived, as did everyone else that we passed on the road.

Western Cambodia is dirt poor; much poorer than anywhere else that I have been (Laos is supposedly poorer overall but the wealth seems to be more evenly distributed there). On the drive to Siem Reap we passed so much squalor I was actually shocked. I can hardly believe that people can live in such a state with so little infrastructure. Everywhere that you look you see rubbish and refuse. I really can’t even describe how terrible things are in that part of the world. And what is worse is that the town of Siem Reap itself is quite affluent by comparison. On the drive in you suddenly change from horrendous dirt roads surrounded by hovels to wide bitumen roads surrounded by 5 star hotels and resorts. Farmland is replaced by golf courses and an airport, and the delimitation between the two is instantaneous.

I’m not suggesting that all of Siem Reap is affluent; quite to the contrary. As soon as you walk 100m down any alleyway you find the places where the locals live. The veneer of rich tourism is so thin here that you start to question the validity of the entire system. How can one very small section of society be profiting from the ridiculously large tourism industry brought about by Angkor?

One advantage of the arrangement comes to poor backpackers such as we three. Apart from our first night (which we spent in a $17 guesthouse which had a nice old school charm) we stayed in some very nice accommodation for only $6 a night. SIX DOLLARS!!! I’m in heaven. When organising my daily budget I discovered that after paying for accommodation, meals and daily passes to the attractions, I had $25 left to spend on nighttime fun. Considering that beers cost 50 cents each, that turns out to be an impossible amount of money to spend.

Alex and I also found an interesting way to save money of transport around town. We hired a tuk-tuk to drive us to a temple about 12km south of the town, then up to a second temple about 20km north of town and then back to town. We spent almost two hours in the tuk-tuk that day and the driver waited for us at each stop. Now, normally they would ask for quite a large sum of money (in Cambodian terms) for that trip but then we told the driver that he could take us to a few souvenir shops during the trip if he would halve his price. So, we walked into two shops, pretended to be interested in some small trinket for a minute or two and then left. The driver got a few dollars commission from each place, and we only paid $6 for a private chauffeur. What a bargain!

As for the town of Siem Reap itself: I really loved the place. It has a very relaxed vibe which makes it really fun to just hang around in. Every morning we went to a French café for breakfast and ate real omelets and they also severed good coffee which was quite a nice change of pace to the usual guesthouse fare that we have been consuming. Jeff, as per usual, had a fixation with using the internet all day (particularly Australia day when he stayed online for seven hours!) so we found a nice little internet café on the main road near our hotel. It wasn’t till the third day that we noticed the rainbow flag out the front, the purple wallpaper and the fruity artwork on the walls. All that time we had been in a gay-bar and hadn’t noticed. Of course we kept going back there because it was cheap and quiet. That was the only reason, honest.

One other establishment caught our eyes on the first night and we decided to become regulars there. It was a small place called the Temple Bar which had good pool tables, cheap drinks, and a plethora of lady-boys (what is it with the theme of this journal?). On the four nights that we went there we met four different breeds of patron. First off it was an Australian couple who gladly celebrated Australia day with us (9pm on the 25th for us was 12am on the 26th for you). Later that night we met a Cambodian girl, well to be more precise, the girl met me and hit on me constantly all night. It was really difficult to get away from her! I guess I’m just irresistible right? On the next night we met two American girls, Lisa and Kate, who are teaching English in China and we had an absolute riot. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with them when I am in China so that I can see the school where they teach. Furthermore, on the third night we met two girls from Iceland. Jeff and I couldn’t figure out where they came from by eavesdropping because they kept changing languages. It came as quite a surprise when they said they were from Iceland, I had my money on Denmark. So yeah, in three days we managed to meet awesome girls from three completely different parts of the world, how could I not love the place?

I will finish this journal her, as it is difficult to actually express how great Siem Reap is. It has so many facets to explore, from the rich tour groups from Japan, to the poor backpackers barhopping, to the tuk-tuk drivers that will pester you everywhere, to the land-mine victims that you see busking on the streets, to the friendly guesthouses right next door to rubbish piles. I really could spend a lot of time in Siem Reap and never see it all.

Oh yeah, we also went to see the Angkor temples. Twas fantasgreat.

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