Email from Cambodia

Solo backpacking , 29th June - 9th July, 2006

"Johm riab sua" from Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital - back here after 2 days in the equally unpronounceable beach town of Sihanoukville! The trip began with the notorious border crossing - the transition from Thailand is far from graceful or gradual - Cambodia hits you like a wet Mekong River trout to the face. Poipet, the infamous border town is very much Scam Central, you're immediately greeted by dozens of people peddling various cons and rip-offs targeted towards the new and ignorant backpacker. The town itself is home to a cluster of new casinos catering to Thai daytrippers for whom gambling is normally illegal. The road to Siem Reap, base for seeing the magnificent Angkor Wat temples, is typical of the truly awful state of the highways here - their condition is way down there with Mozambique and DR Congo. Composed almost entirely of potholes, your arse spends as much time airborne as seated, and over the past week my backside has taken more abuse than it would have seen in even the most brutal of prisons (apologies for crudeness mom, but you have to sense of humour about near spinal dislocation). "You have to do the ancient road to see the ancient temples" as one local put it. And why is the main overland route in such a sorry state? Bangkok Airlines pays the government to keep it that way, forcing people to fly (capitalism at it's finest!).

To compensate for the bumpiness, many of the vehicles jack up their suspension really high, making each bouncing passing car look like something out of a Dr. Dre video. I planned to get a taxi but was told a bus was leaving in 5 minutes - so, as 5 minutes turned into two hours, I watched this guy tell a dozen other naive punters that the bus is 'leaving in 5 minutes' - he might as well have been stroking a white cat with an evil cackle. Passing through the countryside, I found that Cambodia - aesthetically at least - looks a lot like Uganda - the red dirt tracks, tin-roofed shacks, lush vegetation - and the damn heat! We also passed lots of public information bill boards, with messages and painted pictures saying 'hand over your weapons' - though now peaceful, arms are still widespread. After 6 hours, we arrived late in Siem Reap, and having been ferried to various commission-based, overpriced pit-stops and diners along the way, we all, by principle, refused to stay at the hotel we were dumped at, as we each already paid triple for the skanky minibus. The town is booming, this small country sees only a million foreign visitors annually - and, because few leave Angkor, Siem Reap is the focus of the tourist industry. Since it's only been safe to visit Cambodia from 1998, a lot of it is very much 'under construction', but you can see the place has potential to be a worldwide holiday hot spot, if only the roads weren't as crap and the touts as persistent.

Angkor is a huge complex of ancient temples, Asia's most magnificent, a wonder of the world and home to the world's largest religious building. The temples were the heart and soul of the Kingdom, and Angkor Wat adorns the national flag, national beer - everything, it's a source of pride for a battle-scarred nation which is now slowly emerging from the darkness of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. The Tomb Raider movies were shot here and entrance for 3 days is a hefty US$40. Joining up with a couple of Canadian girls, I hired electric bicycles and they were fantastic - we all wanted one for home. The only problem being that as they were silent, you didn't notice when someone was coming up behind you.

Amongst the temples we saw was the superb Banyon ruins which featured 216 serene faces carved into the stone looking spookily out into the forest, and Ta Prohm which was being slowly consumed by the jungle. Roots from nearby trees had twisted like tentacles into the stonework, slowly digesting the mysterious Hindu/Buddhist ruins. As the Lonely Pillock Guidebook put it, there's a certain poetry about man rapidly overcoming nature and then nature slowly and gradually reclaiming it all. These were all really cool, if not quite similar to Hampi in India - however, in honesty, I would've found 1 day enough - I did two in the end but am always disappointed by huge, over-hyped "must-see" attractions. I often have more fun seeing more quirky things, cool experiences or playing with kids or what-not. The Pyramids and Taj Mahal were the same story (I'm so spoilt!), you're obliged to see them, but ultimately, it's the dumb little things you remember. Perhaps I'm ignorant but I couldn't absorb the history very well or really appreciate the detail as it's so bloody humid. On the second day we spent an hour playing with local village kids and gave them a football - though they all hassle the hell out of tourists, few realise that they are mostly direct descendants of the Angkorians and have a right to see a slice of the money flying around it. I say 'around it' because only 10% of the entry fee goes towards conservation, the rest goes to the government and to the oil company which controls the site! Really, 90% should go towards the local community and conserving the complex, which is being destroying by tourism.

The realities of Cambodia's landmine problems are on display from the moment you cross the border and spot a child missing an arm. Amputees of every description, people with their faces seemingly blown off to people who've lost all of their limbs - some lucky ones have crutches, a false limb or wheelchair. I don't think I'll forget a somewhat aggressive beggar pressing his stumps desperately into my side as I walked home one night. These damned things have been responsible for 35,000 amputees after the cessation of hostilities and still the 4-6 million remaining live landmines in Cambodia claim up to 35 victims a month (down from 300 a decade ago). We paid a visit to a landmine 'museum' but it wasn't historical, more a testament to an ongoing evil - a weapon of war and of peace, since mines respect no ceasefire. It's bad news for a country based on agriculture. The museum turned out to be a hut filled with semi-coherent information sheets and dead mines of every description, it also doubled as a centre for child victims. Some of the children were happy to speak about their stories and one told me, on video camera, how it happened when he was playing football on the border near Thailand with friends. Gruesome design specifications detailed the effectiveness of 'fragmentation mines' which ruin the lives of everyone in a close radius - I read everything there, but four facts stuck out for me... They cost US$3 each to manufacture and lay but $300-$1000 to safely remove one. Only 3% of mine victims are military - the rest of civilian. Between 100 and 200 million mines were laid and activated today. Most countries signed a deal in 1997 to prevent their use and production but the USA, China and a handful of other usual suspects didn't (and still produce them today!). Very sick.

I got the 5-hour bus to Phnom Penh, we passed a few villages where crickets were very much on the menu. I recall an American guy I was with saying how there should be a stage in a society and country's development where they should "be able to eat not bugs" - though I believe the guys here developed a taste for them during the times of near-starvation in the late Seventies. There's a town somewhere where big kahuna jungle spiders are a speciality - cracked open and eaten like crab, they - of course - taste like chicken, so I understand. I'm squeamish so have been sticking to Western stuff, it costs more but is still pennies. The currency here is 'riel' but the US dollar is arguably the main one - as there are no coins, this makes for lots of confusion in restaurants but I'm used to it now. Anyways, the torrent of touts, tuk-tuk and moto drivers was a little bit special when I exited the bus - all the tourists were assaulted with yelling and screaming 'good price!', 'sir where you go?', 'come stay at x guesthouse!'. The constant hassle is why most people doing the Southeast Asian loop don't hang around here. As much as I want to spend money, and as competitive and as much as these hustlers need it, they've little idea how much they damage Cambodia's tourism aspirations. Within a minute of leaving my hostel, I've been offered all kinds of transport, massages and soft drugs available - it's on par with India or E.Africa for pesterage, and I get double my share since I'm alone and it's low season! Drives me nuts, as they say around here "oh my Buddha!!". I guess we just have to be polite, stay patient and remember they're not representative of real Cambodian people (who are actually ridiculously friendly, curious and will always flash a beaming smile back if you so much as grin at them!).

Like much of the country there is something of the Wild West about Phnom Penh - 50 people, many foreigners, are robbed at gun point in the city each month. 50 is really enough for me to decide that it's a considerably bad way to die and I'd rather stay in and read. The main 'attractions' in the capital are the silver pagoda in the Grand Palace (very similar to the equivalent in Bangkok), the Killing Fields and the S-21 Genocide Museum, based in the school which the Khmer Rouge used for torture, detention, interrogation and murder. People held their were usually intellectuals - teachers, doctors, anyone - even people who wore glasses - who they suspected posed a threat to the 'revolution'. As the Vietnam War spilled over the border, the Khmer Rouge seized control in 1975 - declaring it 'Year Zero', they banned money, suspended the mail, closed the country down and killed 1-2 million people, a quarter of the population. Those who survived were worked to the bone in labour camps, underfed and diseased, often starved. As per Orwell's '1984', they brainwashed kids who grew up to be amongst the most evil and brutal members of the regime. One of the reasons that the infrastructure is so bad today is that the middle class was wiped out between '75 and '79, until Vietnam invaded and occupied the country for 8 more years. It is this latter reason that many Cambodians still dislike their neighbours, and they've little time for Thailand too since they harboured the Khmer Rouge (plus, many Thais somehow reckon that Angkor Wat belongs to them and look down on Khmer people).

Visiting the genocide school museum was a solemn experience - more numbing than emotional, it used to be a high school. It was filled with photos of detainees - like the Nazis, the regime kept meticulous records - often with before-and-after photos of tortured prisoners. You can see the fear in some of the faces, many were children - some even babies, every last one butchered - often beaten to death to save on bullets. I also viewed the torture rooms which were furnished only with a metal bed frame to which 'traitors' were strapped down onto. Displays of some of the instruments they used and the wooden cells were open to visitors, though you could tell it was terribly underfunded. Why some anti-war charity of some kind isn't sponsoring the place, I don't know - it's a very necessary exhibit and similar, later atrocities in Darfur and Rwanda show how we never learn. Such oppression and labour camps are in full swing right now in North Korea, but unfortunately the museum gave little worldwide context or examination of the nature, psychology, history of genocide... When reading up on the regime, I waited for the part where us and the Americans come in with our mucky hands to make things worse - and lo-and-behold, the USA fed and harboured the oppressors (God Bless America - how unlike you guys!) whilst us Brits (the SAS, in fact) trained them in laying landmines (God Save the Queen - who would've guessed!). Meanwhile the UN was happy to recognise the regime and even keep them on the UN Assembly until 1991 - good work guys, you never get it wrong! The experience left me wondering, again, whether there is such thing as a 'just war', and how those who killed and tortured to 'save themselves' because 'they had no choice' can be forgiven. I also wondered why the present day activities of Western banks, corporations, IMF/World Bank/WTO are not seen as genocidal - perhaps because it's more indirect and they have suits, acronyms and glossy websites (i guess it's inappropriate and even extremist to suggesting it) Anyway, Pol Pot, the leading nutter of the regime, died in exile in 1998 but other ringleaders are still alive. And when do you think they swore in the international and Cambodian judges to try these aging bastards? Erm... last Tuesday! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5143968.stm Justice moves fast!

The Killing Fields are just out of town and feature a big memorial full of skulls reclaimed from the mass graves - a few graves have been left untouched and you can walk amongst them if you're brave enough to tread amongst the bones and pieces of clothing which float around in the muddy slush. It's horrible. Absurdly, hostels advertise a tour of the killing fields and S-21 school in the morning followed by an underground 'shooting range' in the afternoon. Soldiers wanting to supplement their meagre incomes (civil servant wages start at US$20 a month - what I spend in 2 days) welcome tourists to try out a few weapons - ranging from an AK-47 to grenades, to a rocket launcher - all at a price. You can also kill various farmyard animals from your regular chicken all the way up to a cow (which'll set you back $200). Awful, damaging to Cambodia's image and kind of sick after you've visited what should be the one of the world's biggest anti-war statements.

After a heavy couple of days, I went off to Sihanoukville, a dreamy, little-known beach paradise that is said to be comparable to Thailand's lush beaches. With the rainy low-season in full swing, it wasn't quite - plus, the beaches were pretty filthy. So instead of roasting my pathetic ginger skin in the sun any further, I rented a motorbike and checked out Ream National Park. On the way back I popped into a restaurant called Snake House. Here, you can enjoy your food in the company of dozens of harmless and poisonous snakes from around the world. Some of them were massive and even my table had a snake in it. I wasn't quite sure about the tropical birds they had locked up, and wasn't too happy about the big live crocodile they had on a chain a few feet away. Thankfully there were no arachnids, but the wildlife around my beach hut made up for it. By tucking in my mosquito net to keep the damn things out, I'd trapped three little spiders inside - I won't go into too much detail about the drama and palaver that followed. I was then kept awake by a chattering gecko, a bunch of frogs outside and two resident kittens who'd made it their mission in life to tackle the resident chickens. After a fairly sleepless night I returned to Phnom Penh last night to be up at 5am for the train today.

I got the train to nowhere, the weekly route to Battambang is the last of Cambodia's trains - I took it up to a village 4 hours North and came back down by road, which took about an hour. This shows how slow the train is - the 4 hour road trip is made into a 12-17 hour train journey, dependant on break downs. I love train travel and it was a great experience since all routes have now shut down, with this one probably soon to follow. The carriages were seriously rustic, old and rickety - the track was warped caused lots of wobbling - the dirty old loco at the front manages a top speed of 20 kilometres per/hr. It's so slow that I could easily hop off and out-run it, a convenient way to swap carriages. 3 had seats but were in really bad shape, holes in the wooden planked floor, a hole for a toilet etc..., the other two were wagons - people were dotted everywhere though, including the roof. Riding the roof was unforgettable, it was like flying, really good fun and one of the last countries in the world where it's allowed. The only problem was the ducking and diving of live electrical cables - not as much fun. Interestingly, during the time of the Khmer Rouge they had two empty carriages at the front for 'landmine clearance' (rides in these seats were free of charge!), and a huge gun turret on top. Check out the novel solution to the crap rail system which the locals invented: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5110236.stm

Off back to Vietnam tomorrow to see the South... all the best guys...
tom x

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