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Angkor Ruins
Incredible detail remains, over 800 years on.Cambodia is a country with an interesting and diverse, if often disturbing, history:
In 1975, the Communist 'Khmer Rouge' launched an offensive that eventually destroyed the Khmer Republic that had previously governed the country. The Khmer Rouge soon turned Cambodia into a land of horror. Immediately after its victory, the new regime ordered the evacuation of all cities and towns, sending the entire urban population out into the countryside to till the land. Thousands starved or died of disease during the evacuation. Many of those forced to evacuate the cities were resettled in new villages, which lacked food, agricultural implements, and medical care. Many starved before the first harvest, and hunger and malnutrition - bordering on starvation - were constant during those years. Those who resisted or who questioned orders were immediately executed, as were most military and civilian leaders of the former regime who failed to disguise their pasts.
The Khmer Rouge regime is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, through execution, starvation and forced labour in the three and a half years that they were in power. This was about 25% of the country's population at that time. In terms of the
Life on the Siem Reap River
Vietnamese workers plying their trade number of people killed as a proportion of the population of the country it ruled and time in power, it was probably the most lethal regime of the 20th century. Nevertheless, only three of the Khmer Rouge leaders have been imprisoned since their rule ended, one on unrelated charges.
Click here for a more detailed account of events during the Khmer Rouge's reign The legacy of the Khmer Rouge is still evident today, however, it was a glimpse of everyday modern life and a look back across many centuries that formed the backbone of our short visit to the country.
Day 1 - The Floating Village
Our taxi from the airport to our hotel turned out to be our taxi for our whole stay in Cambodia as we learnt that the driver, Sunny, was also a tour guide.
First stop that afternoon was the floating village on the Siem Reap river. Cambodia contains a lot of water and the rivers often swell and flood during the monsoon season. We saw many houses built on wooden stilts on the drive to the floating village although we were fortunate enough to be there when the road was still passable. The dirt road was in a right state though and
Begging boy in a bathtub.
He was the first to get to our boat I imagine that the local mechanic is extremely skilled in the repair of suspensions!
We got a motorised boat and spent about two hours on the river, travelling as far as the mouth of the mighty Tonle Sap river. We passed numerous floating homes as well as a school, a church and the endemic tourist stop-off points. The local residents didn't seem too friendly and I wonder if the hordes of tourists that pass by each day are resented. The only contact we had with the people there were the children that paddled up in small bathtubs and held out their hands for money. Nonetheless, it was a fascinating look at how their environment and way of life differs from my own.
Days 2 & 3 - The Temples of Angkor and the War Museum
It has been written that 'going to Cambodia and only visiting the temples of Angkor is like going to England and only visiting Stonehenge.' Perhaps this is an overstatement, but I can understand the sentiment and I hope that I will get time to see other areas in Cambodia before I leave Asia.
Sunny collected us from our hotel early on
Young crocs
These were all caged, but I assume that they weren't caught locally as there were loads of kids swimming in the river. our second day after a night's sleep that was often interrupted by a gecko and some loud dogs that sounded like they were sitting at the foot of my bed. Oh, and I've learnt the hard way that roosters have a very different idea of what time constitutes morning than I do!
We were driven to the first of the Angkor Temples, Angkor Thom. There are both Buddhist and Hindu temples, highlighting the change in beliefs that occurred over the years of their occupation. The temples, which cover about 40 miles, were built by a succession of kings between 880AD and 1225AD when the Khmer (Cambodian) empire was a mighty force. The Thais eventually claimed the city of Angkor and in 1431 the city was abondoned, deserted and the capital was moved east to Phnom Penh. For many years, Angkor Wat was totally isolated from the Western World as large, thick jungles covered the area. The French colonialists were the first westerners to get exposed to Angkor. They heard rumours from the local population about "temples built by gods or by giants." Most of the colonialists referred to these rumours as folk tales, but some believed that there really
was a "lost city of a Cambodian empire", which had once been powerful and wealthy. The temples were first discovered by French missionaries in 1860.
We spent the day exploring the ruins of different temples in the area, each built by a different king and each having different features, most of which were hidden to my untrained eyes! Perhaps we should have shelled out for an official temple guide, although the costs of the trip were mounting. The Cambodians seem to be wise to tourist spending power and I found the prices here to be by far the most expensive that I have experienced in South East Asia. You can see some of the hundreds of photos that I took that day below.
We went and had a Khmer buffet that night and although the food was nice, I think that their cuisine doesn't compare to Thailand's. The real reason for going to this restaurant was to see some traditional Apsara dancing. I can now say that I've seen some, but I wasn't overly impressed. The dancers seemed to be teenagers so maybe I should put down the amateurish performance to that. In fact, the most memorable bit
The South entrance to the Angkor Thom complex
In the foreground, one of the many deities that were placed at the gates to protect the inner temples for me was before the dancing started: a woman came on to announce the start of the show and a little boy ran across the stage behind her without his trousers on! It would have earnt me 250 quid from 'You've Been Framed' if I'd had the videocamera rolling at the time!
We drove further away from our hotel on the second day and visited some temples that were built from a reddish sandstone. The heat really kicked in on that day and I was glad to get back in the air-conditioned car and give temple exploration a rest at lunchtime. We went to an outdoor War Museum in the afternoon. There were are all sorts of exhibits: guns; a helicopter; tanks; rocket launchers; land mines; uniforms. The most interesting part of the visit though was the guide - a Cambodian man who called himself 'The Cat' as he believed that he had nine lives. He had a prosthetic leg, numerous bullet scars, and all sorts of other war wounds including 80% blindness in his eyes. His stories were so dramatic that I would have considered them as BS, had he not had so much wrong with him.
The Terrace of the Leper King
Its name derives from a misconception that one of the Yama statues depicts
a legendary king who suffered from leprosy. Actually, the appearance of leprosy is an illusion caused by the lichen eating away at the surface of the stone. The Cambodian land mine situation got a lot of publicity following Princess Diana's visit some years ago and here was a man that had fallen foul of these weapons of mutilation. His lost leg was a result of stepping on a mine and he told how he had also stepped on a bouncing mine that had failed to detonate. The bouncing mine is designed to pop up into the air and explode once the pressure of a foot is removed from its top. A mine that explodes at head height is obviously more fatal than one that explodes in the ground. He recounted how he had been walking with friends when he saw the mine spring up right next to him, hit him on the shoulder and fall to the ground. As a man that was well aware of what this was, I can only imagine the terror that he felt in the split second when he saw the mine next to his head.
'The Cat' only became a soldier because his family would have starved had he not chosen to fight. This was the situation faced by thousands of other Cambodians in recent years, many of whom were
A broken Buddha statue
Many stop to pray here. as young as eleven and completely untrained in warfare. He told how he was once with some friends who had been supplied with grenades by their superiors. One of the younger 'soldiers' threw a grenade into a hole to see what would happen, only to be told that he wasn't doing it correctly as he needed to remove the pin first. He retrieved the grenade, pulled out the pin and threw
the pin into the hole. He was still holding the grenade itself when it detonated in his hand, killing him and wounding the people around him.
After an informative whistlestop tour of Cambodia we were out of time. We flew back to Bangkok the next morning.
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