Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), Cambodia

Our hostel arranged a tuk tuk driver for us to visit the Angkor temples. The tuk tuks here are a motorbike that tows a sort of carriage behind it. It's a surprisingly comfortable way to get around.

The Angkor temples are the remains of a vast city that, in the 13th century, had 1 million people when London had about 50,000. The area covered by the ancient city is incredible. Whilst Angkor Wat is famous around the world as the world's largest ever religious building, it's actually quite small in terms of land coverage compared to some of their other achievements. These include two Barays (reservoirs) which measure 8km by 2km and are entirely man-made. Also, Angkor Thom is 9km sq and surrounded by an 8 metre high wall and a 30 metre wide moat.

The number of buildings is also stunning. There are countless temples, buildings, reservoirs, roads and gateways. If you go off of the tourist trail a bit, you could probably have a whole 9th century temple to yourself for the day. Over three days, with our tuk tuk driver Mr Sing, we visited about 20 temples. Because the city is in the middle of the jungle, the plants and trees have slowly engulfed some of the temples and a lot of effort is being put in (notably from Japan and South Korea) to try and save these buildings from mother nature. Whilst of course I want them to be saved, it does look amazing to see trees growing through the sides of temples, with doorways covered in vines - it's very Indiana Jones!

Whilst in Siem Reap we visited the Landmine Museum. This was set up by a guy called Aki Ra who was a child soldier in the Khmer Rouge who wanted to rid his country of the landmines he was forced to lay as a child. I didn't know this, but anti personnel landmines are designed to maim, not to kill. The logic being that the enemy will have to use more resources looking after an injured soldier than dealing with a dead one. Aki has personally disabled over 50,000 landmines and quite a few are in his museum. It appears that he has had to renounce his landmine clearing methods under pressure from the NGOs who also help clear mines. The NGOs rightly argue that his method - using just a stick, a screwdriver and a healthy dose of instinct - is quite dangerous, but others argue that the NGOs can't claim legitimacy when it costs them up to $1,000 to remove a mine if Aki does it with a stick and screwdriver for pennies. The benefit of the museum is clear, though. He funds a school for victims of landmines. This includes indirect victims such as orphans and children whose parents can not afford to look after them following a landmine accident to the family breadwinner.

---

---