Cambodia: A Country of Contrasts and all Creatures Great and Small

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Having explored some of Cambodia’s towns and cities, met local people and learned about the country's history, we've not just enjoyed ourselves immensly, but also noticed some stark contrasts. Our first introduction to Cambodia was arriving in the 21^stCentury capital of Phnom Penh, a dynamic hub with a large expat community which seemed a million miles away from the hill tribe villages we later encountered where pyjama-wearing locals cut crops by hand, sold petrol in coke bottles from the side of the road, and lived in small, wooden houses on stilts without electricity. The weather as well proved to cover extremes, with blazing sun and hot days almost as common as monsoon rains. Nights could be hot and humid on one day or chilly the next.

The Khmer people themselves also seem to have contrasting characteristics which became more evident over time. On an individual level, they have been very friendly, gentle, polite and helpful, however behind this are tales and evidence of larger-scale political corruption, money being misappropriated, and land being taken from tribal communities for rubber plantations and large enterprises which serve to maintain the extremes of wealth and poverty within the country (with the vast majority falling into the poverty bracket). And that’s before we get into considering how modern-day Cambodia has survived its past. The three of us have travelled a bit between us, but we're agreed that if ever there was a country that demonstrated that it was able to remember its history, but still move on with hope, it would be Cambodia.

We arrived in Phnomn Penh, settled in, and spent our first day at school, getting a history lesson. But this wasn't any old school. It was Tuol Sleng. Formerly a high school, Tuol Sleng was taken over by Pol Pot's security forces and transformed into Security Prison 21 (S21) when the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975. Classrooms were divided into brick cells with shackles, or turned into torture chambers with instruments for inflict suffering and death. Over the course of the three years of Khmer Rouge rule, it's estimated that 17,000 people were detained at Tuol Sleng at various points in time. Now, it's a museum, the cells and barbed wire remain amidst a sense of peace and quiet on the outskirts of the city. The Khmer Rouge were excellent at documenting their brutality and it seems that the only ones to survive Tuol Sleng were those who could paint or take photos and who subsequently went on to catalogue each victim that passed through the school. When Phnom Penh was liberated by the Vietnamese in 1978, they found just 7 people detainees alive there. Amazingly, we got to meet one of them and spoke to him at Tuol Sleng. He'd survived because he could paint and had infact painted a picture of Pol Pot without knowing who he really was. His wife and children were executed. Now, the halls and classrooms of Tuol Sleng are lined with thousands of photos of the victims later executed, including men, women and children.

From the start of it's reign the Khmer Rouge began to instill a kind of peasant-dominated communist cooperative, expelling everyone from all the cities to go and work for 12-15 hours per day in the country labouring. This included the old, sick and infirm. Any resistance brought execution and noone was exempt. Further to this, the revolution set about wiping out those who it thought would be a threat to the regime. It seems that had Emma or Chris been resident of Phnom Penh in the late 1970's, we would have certainly been executed, Emma probably several times over. Higher education, speaking another language, wearing glasses, or even having soft hands, was seen as enough of a threat to the regime as to warrant execution.

From Tuol Sleng, we got a tuktuk 14km out of town to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where most of the detainees of the former school were executed, usually just by bludgeoning to save on bullets. Surprisingly peaceful and tranquil, it's hard to imagine the awful brutality that occurred here and at killing fields across the country (although the memorial filled with thousands of unidentified victim's skulls soon acts as a reminder).

So, our Cambodian adventures started on a sombre note, but it was interesting and felt important to put the country and it's people into a historical context, particularly considering how different things are in Cambodia today. Phnom Penh would have been a ghost town during the Khmer Rouge's reign, but now, it's a thriving city. Despite being one of the poorest countries, the city centre is clean, new park developments and memorials are well maintained and every evening green areas become a hub of people exercising doing outdoor aerobics, running, playing football and racquet sports. It's great. People here actually seem to value outdoor exercise en masse - not something we've seen elsewhere in South East Asia. And watching the eighties-style aerobics sessions in the park was entertainment in itself.

It seems that in Cambodia, attempts at overcharging are less frequent, and there's no hard-selling, just friendly banter. Even at the main central market in Phnom Penh shopping was a lot easier than it has been elsewhere in South East Asia, even if Chris did once again end up with yet another unidentifiable bowl of something or other! Otherwise, the food is fantastic. The Khmer curry is gorgeous and we have also been introduced to other spicy concoctions including 'amok' (another type of curry usually made of fish, but veggie versions are available) and luk lok (beef or tofu in a peppery sauce). Even Bob has branched out a bit and is trying some new foods. Furthermore, owing to it's recently burgeoning expat community, Phnom Penh also serves up cake, homemade chocolate, pizza and cocktails on the cheap. Hurrah!

Taxis don't seem to exist here so all travel is by tuk tuk or on the back of a motorbike for short distances, or bus for long haul destinations. And it seems, the world and his mother owns a tuk tuk here. Every corner, every street, we are greeted by the offer of a tuk tuk. It gets a bit waring, but in a country where average earnings are a few dollars per day, we keep our refusals polite (when we refuse that is, we've done quite a bit of tuk tuk travel of late).

After a few days in Phnom Penh, we headed south to Silkhanouville, and then caught a boat to the rather underdeveloped island of Koh Rong. Billed as being similar to how Thailand's Koh Samui was 25 years ago, we thought it would be a welcome break from civilisation and somewhere to chill out for a few days. It was indeed very beautiful, with a few small cheap resorts and no roads, or indeed much in the way of pathways. We waded our way through the sea and small rivers to our bungalow at the far end of the beach, sharing our lodgings with rodents, many small geckos, a few giant lizards and multiple ant colonies! Electricity ran for 4-5 hours every night and there were no activities on offer (except diving and snorkling but the rainy season meant pretty rubbish visibility). It was bliss, deserted white sand and turquoise sea, that is, when it wasn't raining, which it was, for most of the time we were there! Arrriving in monsoon season, we saw our fair share of deluge and subsequently got to spend more than one evening (and a whole day), wading through giant puddles, dodging dank swamps meeting some very happy frogs and ducks, and playing cards in the big bar/restaurant. It was still relaxing, even if we didn't get all the sun that Emma was hoping for.

After a stormy trip to the mainland in which the boat broke down twice, and then a delayed bus back to the capital, we were back in civilisation. Having previously enjoyed our stay in Phnom Penh, we decided that a few more nights there certainly wouldn't be a bad thing. A happy day was subsequently spent mooching around the shops including bookstores, icecream parlours and a Belgian-style Khmer chocolate shop where Emma tried to spend the day's entire budget. We also went to the amazing National Palace, where the grounds were full of ornate temples and there was a pagoda with a floor made of silver and some beautiful gardens home to a few families of monkeys.

Our last night in Phnom Penh was meant to be a quiet one with dinner at our favourite restaurant (yes, we'd been in Phnom Penh long enough to have a favourite), and then splashing out with a cocktail at the Foreign Correspondents Club. Well, we managed to do this, and it was very pleasant, but it was still quite early and so we thought we'd perhaps have 'one for the road'. The nearest drinking hole turned out to be 'Rory's Irish Pub'. Perhaps we should have been put off by the fact that aside from the expected imported Guinness, Rory's pub also advertised that it could do tattoos. Or maybe we should have been wary when we found out that Rory had in fact sold the pub three years ago to a guy called Chad from Seattle. Chad, having picked up a Cambodian wife half his age, had moved to Phnom Penh, bought the pub, but couldn’t be bothered to change the decor (and besides he felt the theme was fitting because his great-grandfather’s cousin’s cat knew someone from Limerick or something like that). We could have taken into consideration that one of the few people in 'Rory's Irish Pub', a guy called Jonny, couldn’t stand up without clinging onto the bar. (We later watched as he was refused a tuk tuk, something I didn’t think would ever be possible.) Unfortunately, despite all of the evidence that it might not be the most salubrious of establishments, we decided to stop for a round at ‘Rory’s’. This was subsequently followed by several others until Emma was at the bar in charge of the music playlist, Chris was being given cigars by Chad and staff brought us bowls of free chilli to subsequently be berated by Chad who, it seems, did not become a nicer person after a few drinks to say the least. It was four in the morning when we left and our long distance bus the next day was at 7:30. And we hadn’t packed. Our trip to Sen Monorom in Eastern Cambodia a few hours later was subsequently not a terribly good one.

Ten bumpy hours later, we had a four-wheel drive pick up taking us along the muddy dirt roads of Sen Monorom to Nature Lodge where our own private Swiss Family Robinson chalet awaited on the side of a hill. We spent a couple of nights there, relaxing, eating lovely food and playing cards. We also went for a nice walk to the waterfall a couple of hours away, made more interesting by our map, which shall we say, was not approved by the Ordnance Survey.

Somewhat underdeveloped, Mondulkiri is rural Cambodia, home of tribal people with traditional ways of life. One of the previously long-established traditions in this area of Cambodia was the use of elephants to help with logging and haulage. Unfortunately however it seems that whilst the use of elephants has been continuing, the demands on them have increased to compete with modern machinery, and the ways in which working elephants were originally looked after have been forgotten. The result can be a cycle of overworked, sometimes underfed and therefore angry or unproductive elephants. Fortunately, a local NGO, the Mondulkiri Elephant Project was set up to buy or rent these elephants from owners in order to return them to natural habitat and ‘teach them to be elephants again’. With Chris’ birthday pending, we arranged to splash out for a couple of days and went to visit the project, spending time with the elephants and staying in one of the jungle lodges there. It was great, we got to meet all twelve elephants at the project, learn about them and their histories, and then feed them bananas, scrub them down, and see them play and interact with each other, watching the more timid or recently arrived ones seeking reassurance from more dominant members of the herd. They really are awesome animals and full of character. Bob met his match on discovering the grumpy old male elephant was also called Bob. Since his elephant counterpart was somewhat larger and reportedly prone to bouts of aggression, for once, the sheep kept his distance and behaved himself. We also did a half day volunteering, helping to carry chopped up banana trees up steep muddy slopes ready to feed to the elephants. All quite exhausting, but lots of fun and the food was good and our bed was comfy (as evidenced by the colony of ants that joined us to wish Chris a happy birthday). Chris’ birthday at the project was surprisingly dry and sunny. We spent the day with the elephants and he got to spend some quality time with his favourite, a rather large female with long eyelashes called ‘Easy Rider’. In the evening, we were back at Nature Lodge where we had a lovely dinner before packing up our things ready to travel on to our last stop in Cambodia, Siem Reap, the next day.

Carlsburg don't do guesthouses, but if they did, it would look something like Golden Temple Villa in Siem Reap. For 12 dollars per night we had en suite with hot water (something of a luxury), four poster bed, television and DVD, half hour free massage, free bicycle and internet use and as many bananas, teas and coffees as we wanted. And the staff were all lovely. Our main reason for going there was to see the temple complex of Angkor Wat, but we did also manage to get suitably sidetracked by the night markets, restaurants, bars and another massage place, where we again, having not learnt from our Laos experience, paid to be pummelled and generally bent out of shape.

We did of course go to see a few temples as well, starting out early with Angkor Wat, the mother all religious buildings, with an outer wall that encloses over 200 acres and hundreds and hundreds of metres of bas relief friezes depicting Hindu epics, it took a bit of time to explore and was quite incredible. After this, there was the Bayon, with towers that were carved into serene large faces looking out over the temple and the land around, and Ta Prohm, which like a scene from The Jungle Book, was a decaying temple with trees growing from roofs and over walls, their roots splaying out for metres along paths and courtyards. We saw many more temples and terraces besides, and that was only during one day of exploring - some people go there for a full week or more, but we decided a day was enough for the highlights, even if it did only really scratch the surface.

Sadly, time was against us, and after some debate as to whether we could perhaps just stay for one more night at Golden Temple Villa if only because they were so friendly and it was such a nice place, we decided that we really should probably push on to Bangkok to sort through our things and replenish our stocks of essential items before heading off on the next leg of our trip in a few days.


Tallies

Offers of tuk-tuks - 1659

Snakes seen in the wild - 1 ?cobra

Giant lizards befriended - 5 (although Bob was a bit scared of them)

Number of times Chris has fallen over – 3. All on slippery mud/wood, including one comedy landing on his back whilst wearing full backpack with arms and legs flailing beetle-on-back style. Oh how we laughed. Fortunately he’s very tough and so suffered only very minor bruising.

Things we have learned in Cambodia

You can still ride a motorbike whilst simultaneously receiving intravenous fluids/medication so long as you have someone behind you holding the drip stand.

Suspension isn’t necessary for buses, even on unsealed road over many hundreds of kilometres. However, it’s not advisable to sit at the back of the vehicle.

You should not go into Irish Bars owned by expat Americans that advertise that they also do tattoos and have a resident drinker clinging onto furniture for dear life. It will not end well.

Riding on the back of a motorbike with a rucksack on your back and a speed demon up front on steep muddy roads in rainy season is not to be recommended.

An elephant really does never forget

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