Which Wat?That Wat.

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Right. So its been a while since I updated huh? Since leaving Chiang Mai we headed to Auttuya, then across to Cambodia, back to thailand and to Indonesia where we currently are.
Its taken me a while to find the courage to write about Cambodia and have managed to avoid it until now.


We brought a ticket from Auttuaya to get to the Thai/Cambodia land boarder crossing in Poipet. We boarded a train bound for Bangkok in the very wee hours of the morning where we were to meet a man outside KFC for our minivan to the boarder. All sounded very sauded. The night train (as it was 5am and in my eyes,that is still,most definitely night time) was an interesting experience. The seats where bare minimum and there were no windows on the train..the stench of fumes and the occasional poo smell happily wafted in and didnt seem to affect the dozens of people having a good sleep in our carriage. Arriving at the station and meeting a smiley man who somehow, despite there being lots of 'farangs' (foreigners)around knew we were to be his passengers and we got into his minivan.

Despite being assured the minivan would take us right to the boarder where there would be another to pick us straight up, as always, it was a massive bend of the truth. We ended up being dropped off at a 'visa station' just before the boarder. Where, for an extra fee, the 'trouble' of getting our visas stamped would be sorted for us there and then.
Jimi and I had read lots on this and were both very wary. I was quite happy to do my own visa work thanks very much, esp as they were asking for an extra $10 for the pleasure. Hordes of minivans were already at the site and no body seemed to be questioning it. So I did. And I was greeted with a 'you can do it yourself at the boarder but you wait long time' I said I didnt mind the time id be waiting, I had been prepared to stand in queue, its what us British do best (besides make remarks about the weather in conversation) but realised at looking around, the people paying the extra $10 wouldnt be too happy sitting around waiting for jimi and abi to cross the boarder.
Turns out when we got to immigration control, there was no fast track option, we had to stand in the queue like everyone else so the whole hassle and extra fees was a complete waste of time. (Despite constant assurances from the visa station people, worried we would walk away,that doing it their way would be a far faster process.)

And of course when we'd passed through passport control, there was no minivan waiting for us. We had to walk 30 mins to another boarder control station, in the blazing heat with our backpacks, which may not sound much but honestly, the heat was ridiculous and ive never felt a heavier weight on my back than walking through no-mans land to the next check point. It felt as though the 17 kgs on my back had quadrupled and added to the fury I felt about being blatantly lied to about the whole deal.
Where was our minivan?We all began questioning as we were shuffled onto a big bus headed for some undisclosed location.(Conveniently our 'guide' was involved in a various,very important 'phone calls' everytime someone asked her something) We were being driven to a bus station, where we'd have to wait for the next 6 hours,possibly more,to wait until there were enough of us to put onto a coach. They were very happy to tell us we could pay a ridiculous amount to get into a taxi that would take us to Siem Reap, around 2 hours away.

More and more people arrived and jimi and I got hopeful our coach would finally fill up..but, being disheartened by the wait as we were, everyone eventually got into a shared taxi and got on their way. After being up 5am the morning before we really weren't in the mood to wait around. Our coach was inevitably never going to fill up because everyone was fed up. As were we, so we begrudgingly got into a shared taxi, after i bargained hard with the money grabbers and we eventually arrived at our lovely guest house in Siem Reap.





Siem Reap was NOTHING as I'd imagined it being. I was expecting a touristy town that was still developing, maybe a few restaurants but mostly dirty shabbiness and the bare minimum of western catering. The main tourist drag in town was proper plush and trendy, streets lined with upmarket restaurants and bars, that wouldn't look out of place in expensive areas of London, all boasting of the 25 cent draught beer.

Its funny how transport differs each place you go to too. 'Tuk Tuks' seem to be of different design everywhere. In the Philippines it was motorbike attached to an almost converted horsebox but wayyy smaller, that you would share with atleast 10 other people..In Cambodia it was like a plush carriage hooked onto the back of a motorbike, a carriage that wouldn't look out of place transporting Marie Antoinette around eating her fondants.

There is really only one reason that everyone comes to Siem Reap, and that's to do the temple tour, obviously with Angkor Wat, the Khmers' finest structure, the national symbol, the largest religious structure in the world, being the highlight.

Jimi and I hired ourselves a tuk tuk for three days to take us around all the major temples and sites. I had originally wanted to hire bicycles and to it at our own pace, but the heat and humidity in Cambodia was like nothing we'd experienced before. We saw plenty of people doing it, but I literally dont know how they physically did. We'd often shout words of encouragement as we passed melting temple goers, peddling away in the mental heat. After walking around these huge structures in the heat too, it was a relief to think our tuk tuk driver would just take us to the next place rather than having to peddle our way there.After we woke him up with his Spanish language book resting on his face. I dont think ive ever sweated so much in my life as I did walking around the temples lol.

Our second day in Siem Reap and we went to watch the sunset from a temple up a hill. (sorry for my vauge-ness but after visiting over 20 temples in the space of three days names just dont stick lol)
The sunset was incredible but there were HUNDREDS of tourists. Which should,in essence by a beautiful concept, lots of people gathered in an ancient holy spot to watch a sunset. But instead you had a lot of insensitive people, not least 2 -top less- French guys (temple rule number 1 fail) drinking beer (sacrilege number 2) who then decided to ask a group of monks enjoying the sunset to pose in a picture with them! Grabbing them and placing them accordingly, putting their arm around them (BIG no no,NEVER touch a monk,man OR woman,but ESP a drunken half naked person) thrusting beer in their faces and asking rude questions..which made me feel somewhat ashamed to be there.
We were the last to leave the temple after the sun had gone down, which was nice because we got to see the temple in peace..and there is a strange mysticism about a temple at dusk and the moon in the sky, lighting the paths and creating shadows.




The next 3 days of temple touring followed and I can safely say I dont want to visit another temple in a very VERY long time. It was great fun dont get me wrong, but once you've seen 20, you've seen all they have to offer. We went to Angkor Wat on the last day to watch the Sunrise. We thought we would avoid the crowds because no one would be willing to get up at 4am to gather around a lake to watch the sun, but we were proved wrong lol. We joined masses of people around the lake to see Angkor silhouetted by the morning sun. It was beautiful, and accompanied by a soundtrack of strange instruments I couldn't pronounce the names of being played by landmine victims. (Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world) Which became the soothing soundtrack to our visit to most of the temples.

Despite me having dreamt about visiting Angkor Wat for years, this huge, mysterious serene structure, it was actually Angkor Thom that captured my imagination the most. With long, mirroring, parallel corridors that you could explore at your will, and at your risk (most of the staircases in the temples were literally vertical in steepness,requiring you to physically climb up them) and huge smiling faces overlooking your exploration of its secret passageways and wall inscriptions at every turn. Jimi and I were like big kids, literally felt like explorers, because it was so big you barely bumped into anyone else and of course ended up in us getting lost numerous times!

The last set of Wats that we visited were the most impressive and it could easily be seen where the inspiration for the scenes in The Jungle Book came from. The biggest trees ive ever seen just growing out of these ancient,crumbling wats leaving them contorted and unstable, roots growing through the roof of the temples and vines that you could swing on. We got so lost wondering around it really did feel like we were explorers out of Indiana Jones (where incidentally, a lot of the scenes where filmed)







After our Wat tour we decided to move onto Phnom Penh to learn about Cambodias' recent bloody history. It was something ive been dreading ever since reacting so adversely just to a few photographs in Vietnams' war museum but something, again, ive wanted to do for years.

And its the reason why ive found writing about our trip here ive been putting off updating for so long.

Phnom Penh was by far the poorest place we've visited so far. The sight of very small children begging for food and going through rubbish bags filled with all sorts of horrid things in order to find a piece of plastic in the hope it sell it on and recycle was gut wrenching. We were in a restaurant having just finished a large meal when a small child, no older than 8 approached our table with the saddest eyes ive ever seen. He wasnt begging for money but looking to see if we had any leftovers. Which we didnt. We've been wary of giving money or buying things of the street children, knowing they dont get to keep it and ultimately keeps them in the same position rather than getting the chance to go to school. But this boy stood there just looking at us for 5 minutes without saying a word. We'd already paid for our food and had no money left to buy him any so I gave him the rest of my drink which he looked grateful for and immediately finished. It was a horrid, harsh reality of where we were.

The Khmers, Cambodian people, are by far the most welcoming, friendliest people ive met so far. The population itself is very young, its a country learning how to rebuild itself after most of the intellectuals were murdered in the communist-led genocide in the 70s which is still hitting the people hard. Anyone with any higher education,glasses, who could speak a second language or who were deemed to be intellectuals were snet into the fields for hard labour then brutally murdered.
Young children, who were too young to remember how life was before pol pot came into power,were separated from their families and taught a new way of life by regime which turned them into merciless killers, the perfect uneducated solider. Brainwashed that family life, something held so dear to Khmers, was a lie and links to parents were to be cut. Children soldiers were often instructed to kill their intellectual elders, teachers, doctors, scientists. Millions of Cambodians were killed in under a decade and many are still feeling the effects- landmines were pasted into the landscape near boarders to stop anyone from attempting escape into neighbouring countries.

This is starting to sound like a history lesson, but its difficult to try to get across how horrific learning about all of this was,and by seeing the evidence. I'd really recommend wikipedia-ering it.

So we were in Phnom Penh to learn more about the history. There are 2 main sites to do this, which Jimi and I both had to prepare ourselves for. We got a TukTuk from our guesthouse to 'The Killing Fields' where hundred of mass graves were discovered throughout the 80's and 90's. The biggest of its kind just outside of the centre of Phnom Penh.
We arrived at the site, just off of a dirt road. Inside it was peaceful and shady and there was a huge, white tower in the centre. Dotted around, there were signs saying what had previously stood there and its purpose. One spoke about the coachloads of people being brought in and this is where it dropped them off, confused and silent being told they were being taken somewhere better. It had rings of what I'd learnt about the Holocaust at school and terrified me that something of such similar horror could be repeated in such recent modern history.

Inside the big tower were thousands of Skulls, piled one top of each other as far as the eye could see, separated from infants, male,female,elderly etc. Most of them had huge cracks in the Skull, where they had just been bludgeoned to death to save of precious bullets. Underneath were blood stained clothes and other bones. Many people were taking photos all around, but I couldn't bring myself to.
It was like when I visited New York soon after the 9/11 and we were taking to the site and people were just taking photos of a whole in the ground. What I was seeing and feeling couldn't possibly be brought across in a photograph. I took a photo of the tower, it was beautiful and a lovely memorial for all those who died.
We walked around for a couple of hours, being wary of large dips in the ground. And they were everywhere. It was difficult to walk between them at times. Some were labeled and accompanied with photos of when they discovered it. The worst one that stuck in my mind was a mass grave of women with the skulls of their babies beside them. The regime didn't discriminate and was gut wrenchingly brutal.

Every time it rains heavily, so more of the horrors are washed up. There had been a storm the night before and Jimi and I had to tip toe around rags,clothing and teeth that were protruding from the ground.
After we'd walked around and come face to face with the reality of the regime we stood and read about the history of how this had all begun, in silence, as we had been for the past few hours and as everyone else was as we tried to take in what we'd seen.
The Cambodians allow sites like this and S-12 (which we visited afterwards) to be open to the public so they can learn about the history and ensure it never happens again. I think its a good way to be. Rather than hide it, ashamed, pretending like it never happened.





We got in our TukTuk,sombre and silent ready to go to the next site on our grim tour- S-12. Our driver was lovely and we sat for a while talking to him about what we'd learnt and asked him about how the government in power now was like. He answered them and in return asked us questions like, why Jimi was hairy and what these 'things' on my arms were...freckles..and if I could go to the Drs to get an ointment to get rid of them.






Its really funny, the people out here are so fascinated by our white skin and openly talk about race without any fear of PC or being branded a racist. They just openly come out with questions that, at home, would be received with shock and make matter of fact statements about your appearance because of your race. We've been asked many times if we are from Sweden. Because apparently our faces are the shape of a Swedish face.

Women touch and stroke my skin telling me its so beautiful because its white and I laugh because at home it couldn't be more opposite, explaining that people in England want to be tanned and brown like them they look disgusted and say they wear long jumpers and jeans, despite the heat, because they want to be white!
Jimi told the Tuktuk driver he'd like to get tanned and he all laughed with the thought maybe he'd be more Cambodian then...and the driver just came out with..'no,because your nose is the wrong shape, you need a flat nose with big nostrils. You have a small pointy one. And your too hairy. You need hair in your country because its cold, here,men have no hair'
Can you imagine the ridiculous uproar at home if you had a conversation like that in Wetherspoons with a black person and an Asian person??






After we sat for a while he asked if we were ready to go to S-12. So we did. S-12 was once a school, but when Pol Pot took over and all schools were destroyed it became a prison and torture cells. It had been all but abandoned and everything left in its place when the Vietnamese discovered it after Phnom Penhs liberation.
There were 3 buildings and arriving we saw several people sitting on chairs just staring at the ground and weeping. Jimi and I spent another few hours not saying a word but occasionally grasping each others hand.
The first building was just like large classrooms, but had a metal bed in with some implements used for torture. Rooms and rooms 3 floors of blood stained floors and walls and eerily large rooms.
The second building was filled with thousands of mugshot photographs of the victims. Shadowing the Nazis’, Pol Pots regime kept meticulous records of each and every man woman and child, literally some toddlers, to enter the doors of S-12. No one survived.

Barbed wire covered the balconies to stop the victims jumping to commit suicide which as if everything wasn’t awful enough already gave a horrid feeling while walking around. The second building was full of tiny cells, barely wide enough to lie down in, shoddily and hurriedly built it was dark and claustrophobic we could only peer into a couple before we had to leave. The third building had more photographs and torture devices on display. It was all just SO medieval. The exercise posts, in built for the children to enjoy during school were even made to use for water boarding.




We left Phnom Penh the next day, it was a poor and dirty city which, tragically, didn’t have much more to offer apart from giving people an idea what happened 30 years ago behind corrugated iron and barbed wire walls.

We arrived in Sihnoukville, Cambodia’s only real beachside town. We wanted the novelty of spending Christmas on the beach. We were worried we wouldn’t find anywhere that did a roast, but it turns out theres a massive community of Expats in Sihnoukville! So not only did we find somewhere to have Christmas dinner, we also found somewhere to get a decent fry up! With PROPER bacon too! Sorted!

It was both our first Christmases away from home and it was weird. We hadn’t felt remotely Christmassy and Christmas eve was our first hearing of any Christmas music too! (I know most of you at home would LOVE this lol) but it actually felt rather random, because of course at home you have a good 4 months solid of hearing it EVERYWHERE. Hearing it the night before Christmas just felt random. Especially singing along to songs about snow and the cold. But we spent it in really good company at a British bar with some lovely friends we made there..in fact we played DJ for the night! We all drank a bit too much, apparently in xmas eve tradition! Despite the drink, I managed to make a stocking for Jimi full of malteesers and kit kats.. probably the most expensive chocolate in Cambodia..forget frero rocher! Everything in Cambodia is imported, because they just haven’t got the infrastructure to support anything. Electricity, water, plastic, food..everything you could think of.

We got up on Christmas day, put on our santa hats we’d brought from a tiny little santa child on the beach and headed to ‘mick and craigs’ for our Christmas dinner. It was lovely. Christmas songs and all :D Afterwards we made way to another restaurant to get our fill of Christmas pudding and nearly passed out from the heat and so made our way to a private air-conned cinema to watch Scott Pilgrim until the heat of the day passed. Its something to say when you need to escape the heat on Christmas day huh?lol.

We stayed in Sihnoukville for about two weeks, mostly on the beach during the day and in The Purple Midget Bar during the night, where we managed to polish off 1 ½ bottles of Bacardi, 1 bottle of Malibu and 1 bottle of wine! All in preparation of course, for New Years Eve in Bangkok with Joe and his cohorts.

Cambodia was a country like we hadn’t visited before. I mean the Philippines was poor and underdeveloped but it wasn’t on the scale of Cambodia. We saw children waist-deep in raw sewerage – searching for rubbish that they could sell on for recycling. The people were so welcoming and happy though. And grateful, I think for the tourism.

I saw things id never think id see in my life..dead pigs on the back of motobikes as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. Massive, ancient structures and the evidence of every reason why communism couldn’t work in modern society, which got me questioning a lot about things I stood for before I left the UK.

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Comments

[Mum]

So Hard
I know you did a lot of sole searching on if you could even put into words what you experienced in Cambodia. As usual you have managed it beautifully. So very proud. Just seems we have such a wicked wicked world out there. How any human being can treat another like that never has computed in my brain. Well done you x