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Published: April 18th 2008
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(Matt)
In 1859 the French explorer Henri Mouhot set off from Bangkok to explore deepest darkest Cambodia, it took him twelve months of hacking through jungle fighting off leopards, leeches and wild elephants until finally he reached the ancient temples at Angkor.
I'm pleased to say that the journey nowadays is a lot easier. The tuk tuk driver, from our hotel in Siam Reap, took us to the huge car park-like multi-lane ticket area where we were quickly and efficiently given our very own 3-day Angkor temple photo ID pass for a reasonably priced 20 pounds each, not a leopard or a leech in sight!
Day one and we headed straight for the big daddy - Angkor Wat. Built over 800 years ago it is astonishingly well preserved and quite frankly stunning. We marveled at the size of it, sighed that our photos couldn't do the place justice and then spent happy hours wandering through intricately carved corridors and courtyards.
There was always going to be a danger that none of the other temples were going to live up to Angkor Wat; however, this really wasn't the case at all. Ta Prohm Temple (my personal favourite) is
Angkor
Watching the sunset at Angkor on day one. We were told this is the quiet time. You can bet all these people's photos have no-one in them! overgrown with trees and other foilage and is like being in Tomb Raider or an Indiana Jones film. Bayon Temple had lots of huge mysterious stone carved faces looking down at you. Banteay Srey (one of Catherine's favourites) had walls lined with delicate stone carvings. In one temple we climbed up hundreds of steps, in another we got lost in labyrinth-like passageways. Over two days we saw about 15 temples before we had finally had enough.
To celebrate a great few days sightseeing temples we went for a drink in a huge but quirky bar called 'Dead Fish Tower Inn'. We loved the welcome sign: 'Don't serve Dog, Cat, Rat, Worm'! The menu had a section for the brave with items like cow's brains and pigs trotters and best of all right by the toilets with an alarmingly low knee high barrier was a pit with crocidiles in it! It turned out to be a crocidile farm and you could even purchase dead fish to feed them! What a brilliant place, you just couldn't get away with it at home.
On our third day in Siam Reap we decided to stay as far away from temples as was
Tuk Tuk
A slight variation on the usual tuk tuk this was more like a moped drawn carriage - we spent plenty of hours bumping along in these! physically possible. So with a short amount of time on our hands we decided to respond to an advert in our Guest House asking for volunteers to help out in a Cambodian school for children from poor villages. Expecting to spend the afternoon in the background we were slightly surprised (but very happy) when we were each asked to take one of the three afternoon classes (learning days of the week in English). The energy and enthusiasm of the children was absolutely incredible, our only regret was that we didn't have more time to commit to the project.
It's impossible to visit Cambodia and not be appalled and shocked by the devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 - 1979. During this time it was estimated that around 2 million Cambodians were killed as a result of execution, starvation and forced labour. To put this into context before the Khmer Rouge regime the total population was around 7 million.
In Phnom Penh we went to Tuol Sleng Prison (also called S-21), formerly a school until the Khmer Rouge surrounded the walls with barbed wire and turned the classrooms into cells and torture chambers. Out of the
14000 prisoners sent to the prison only a dozen survived. Visiting the place today (a genocide museum) it's hard to reconcile the quiet school buildings with the attrocities committed there. As a visitor the realisation of what occured there is an incredibly moving and sad experience. This feeling is intensified when you see the museum's rows upon rows of photographs of the people who were there (the photo used to be part of each prisoner's file).
From the prison we went to the Killing Fields (mass graves) at Choeung Ek and saw the memorial containing skulls from some of the thousands of exhumed remains.
Walking around these two sites I think there comes a point when your mind can no longer process the extent of the cruelty committed by one human being to another. We also realised how important it is for generations to remember what happened and to honor those who lost their lives.
Despite everything we had seen it was encouraging and amazing to see the resilience of the Cambodian people. We also felt genuine hope that the country appeared to be succeeding in overcoming the effects of it's recent brutal history.
We were
Intricate stone carvings
I had to pick Catherine up for this shot, I hope you appreciate the things I do for this blog! only in Cambodia for 8 days but we experienced so much, our final few days were no exception. In Battanbang following the advice of our friends Georgie and Craig we enroled on a fantastic half day cooking course. We visited a local market to buy produce (not the skinned frogs thank goodness!) and we were taught how to cook some of the best Cambodian dishes. We ate so much we could hardly walk down the road!
In the afternoon still full of food we went on the infamous bamboo railway. Many Cambodians use these self-made train-like vehicles. A tiny electric generator engine provides the power, a bamboo platform (like a fence panel) rests precariously on top of two sets of train axles and wheels. The railway track is warped, pitted, twisted with small gaps in places. If you meet another train coming in the other direction, as it's a single track, the one with the lightest load must dismantle their contraption and reassemble once the other train has passed. With all of this in mind you would hope that the driver would exercise some caution in how fast you go. He didn't, we went off like a rocket! If
Henri Mouhout had known about the bamboo railway he wouldn't have been hacking through the jungle for 12 months!
After a whistle stop tour of Cambodia we've decided to slow down a bit. The beaches of Southern Thailand here we come!
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