Phnom Penh and Siem Reap: Temples and killing fields(a lot of photo's)

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We took a bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia which took about 8 hours including the longest border crossing I've ever had - it was about an hour to get our passports stamped and checked several times - we started whistling the great escape theme having "escaped from ' nam" and reaching cambodian soil! the ticket we had booked took us straight to the king guesthouse which was a bit out of the way from the city centre but they were well organised and with a bit of bartering we got a good price for a room.

We organised a half day tour to take us to visit the killing fields and the former prison S21 called Toul Sleng- sounds like a fun packed day huh? But it is an essential part of visiting cambodia to understand its past and i think its something that might turn even the most hardened person against war. We started in the killing fields of Choeung Ek which was where people from S21 were taken to be killed - they were often blugeoned to death to save on precious bullets. Only some of the mass graves have been exhumed and they have found nearly 9000 bodies. It is suspected that approximately 17000 people were tourtured and killed between 1975 and 1979. The bones of those exhumed are kept in a memorial building (stupa) at Choeung Ek and there is a memorial service every year. As we walked around the killing fields we noticed clothes and parts of bone close to the surface of the path we walked on.

S21 - The prison, was formerly a school and has now been turned into a museum. Similarly to the nazi regime, the victims/ prisoners were photographed on arrival to the prison and sometimes during/ after the torture -these photo's are displayed now in some of the ground floor rooms. There are also instruments of torture on display, paintings and descriptions of the torture methods e.g. they would hang prisoners upside down until they lost conciousness and then dip their heads into fertilizer to wake them up and then continue the interrorgation. You could walk around the prison and see where the prisoners lived - some were individual cells, others mass detention rooms. The prisoners were treated horribly and it has been estimated they killed approximately 100 people a day (men, women, children from all walks of life, mainly cambodians but a few foreigners). This was all carried out by the khmer rouge who were similar to the nazi's and the country was liberated by vietnam in 1979. All in all quite depressing and humbling.


We had an interesting experience in Phnom Penh when we went to a coffee bar at night - we noticed a sign outside with a guard saying leave all weapons here please as we went in - we later discovered it was a casino/ gambling den as we could see past the coffee shop into the back and then noticed lots of security cameras in the shop itself - needless to say we paid and made a swift exit! i don't think we were in any danger.

We moved onto siem reap and were here for a few days exploring Angkor Wat - an amazing temple complex for which Cambodia is famous. We managed to visit and explore some of the main temples; Angkor Thom, Bayon, Baphon, Terrace of elephants, terrace of the Leper King, Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat. My favourite was Ta Prohm which was one of the temples used for the first tomb raider movie -its overgrown with trees and has been left mostly untouched. It was fun exploring all the temples, often pretending we were in Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones movies. The Angkor Wat temple complex is more than just a bunch of ruined old temples -it was created between the 7th - 11th century by various of the god-kings which ruled the Angkor empire which stretched down as far as Malaysia. Its amazing to see the sand stone carvings which have survived all this time, some of them very intricate and beautiful. Some of the temples have been restored whilst others are in the process of it - its a beautiful place to walk around in, surrounded by some amazing trees -we got a three day pass which was 40$ and had hired a tuk-tuk each day but it is possilbe to hire bikes to explore it. Our tuk tuk driver Sam was abit strange though -he kept on whispering and ocasionally playfully punching us! On the third day we returned for sunset at Angkor Wat which was really beautiful (check out the pictures!). Siem Reap is a town which is small enough to navigate on foot and caters well for tourists - we even managed to find a birthday cake for Tom!On Tom's birthday we went to a Butterfly garden bar/ restaurant (no butterflies were harmed in the making of our meals!) which was very cool. However there are a fair few beggars here especially amputees

Nightmare bus ride to Bangkok from Siem Reap!!!!!!!!!!!! If you ever chose to make this journey, don't. Fly if you can afford it(about 75 pounds). I've heard that a thai airline company pays the government not to fix the road to encourage more people to fly. Apparently Japan offered the government lots of money to fix the road (for all the japanese tourists visiting) but this was turned down. The road is full of horrendous pot holes - we had to stop to change tyres on the bus twice, one girl hit her head whilst going over the bumps -the same unfortunate girls foot went through the floor of the bus later on (and she was a very slim girl). This however was not the worst of it, bumpy roads can be put up with and at first it was quite amusing to see everyone bump up and down. However probably when we were half way through our journey we came to an area of road where hundreds of lorries were parked -we were informed by some other travellers that there were two bridges down and we had to walk and take motorcycles to get to the otherside of these bridges and get our transport from there. Apparently the bridges had collapsed a few days ago but there were many people with motorcycles wanting our custom aswell as people selling food, drink, cigarettes. We crossed the first bridge which was still attached on one side was at a 60 - 70 degree angle down to the river and overturned lorry at the bottom -we crossed this hanging on for dear life to the railing whilst carrying our packs! When we got to the otherside we took the motorcycle for about 3km to the next bridge and were charged $2. This bridge was collapsed and they had put down wooden planks for us to walk across the river and tried to charge us a small amount for this but we all refused. On the otherside of the bridge there was not a bus waiting for us. The driver of another bus had arranged a free jeep to take his travellers to the border but ours had not and they were trying to charge us $5 each to ride in the back of the jeep for an hour - a small amount perhaps in our english money but we were so irrate at the principle that we had paid $12 to get from siem reap to bangkok and including the motorcycle ride they
wanted us to pay an extra $7 or $12 if we went inside the jeep and they would not negotiate. After jumping in and out of about 3 different jeeps during negotiations and nearly getting in a taxi we finally agreed a price of $2 to take an air conditioned bus to the border. Arriving at the border at Poipet, it was very quick on the cambodian side but we queued for a long time on the thai side. However the bus to Bangkok was amazing!We named it the wonderbus, possibly the nicest bus I've ever been in! On the bus were some girls who had taken a boat from Siem Reap to Poipet via battam(?) which sounded a nicer way so perhaps if you can't afford to fly do it that way! The journey took in total about 16 hours (we had heard from some people it had taken them 30 hours so in comparision that wasn't bad). Clara and I are now hardcore travellers we have decided!!



A few impressions of cambodia apart from that its had a horrid past and a bad road from Siem Reap to Poipet! The people here are very relaxed generally unless they want you to buy something. When we got off the bus in siem reap, there were about 9 westerners including us and about 30 tuk tuk drivers all clamouring for our attention with signs, calling out to us, tapping us on the arms -it was quite scary - luckily the guesthouse which we has brought the bus ticket from had arranged for a free tuk tuk ride to a guesthouse of our choice so there was a man there with our names. Similarly when on a bus, we stopped to wait for the ferry and people were tapping on the windows showing you their wares and if the window was open, tapping you to get your attention. A further aspect of cambodia I don't like is the approach to rubbish disposal, rubbish seems to line the roads in places. See below for the positives!

Cambodia is beautiful and in someways reminds me of norfolk! The parts we have seen apart from one or two lonely mountains in the distance (which i suspect may have been a mirage) have been incredibly flat. At the moment it is also quite flooded, - literally water, water everywhere - but this happens every year and you can tell as all of the roads are raised up and the houses are on stilts. There are also ponds everywhere which have beautiful pink waterlillies- cambodia is a very lush green land. The food here has been good and unlike some of the other countries we've visited, they generally bring all of the food at the same time instead of one dish at a time which can be annoying when you are in a group. It's worth visiting here and I do wish I had more time although it has turned out to be more expensive here than anticipated. There is much of Cambodia we haven't explored. We have headed to a beach to relax for a few days before we move onto new zealand or in Clara's case back to the UK!

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Photos

The killing fields memorial stupa
Within this building are over 8000 skulls of those recovered from some of the mass graves at the killing fields

beautiful cambodia's tragic past
this is one of the boards at the killing fields which explains a bit about the history

Mother and baby monkey at Angkor Wat
Behind them is the water that the monkey's swim in!

Count the faces of Bayon Temple
The king who built this covered the temple with images of an amalgamation of his face and the buddha to let his subjects (and probably his concubines!) know he was keeping an eye on them - there are at least 4 on every tower

View from the top of angkor wat
you have no idea how steep the climb to the top was!coming down was fun!

Part of Ta Prohm, the "jungle temple"
This temple was used in the film Tomb Raider and has mostly been left to the mercy of the elements and the jungle -it was great fun to explore

Ele and Tom playing the drums in part of Ta prohm Temple
We had a guide for part of our exploration of this place who showed us a part of the temple that if you stand against the wall and bang on your chest it gives a really loud echo that sounds like drums!

Us in Ta Prohm Temple
The interpid explorer's!

Comments

[Gemma (Brown) Lettington]

Wow!
Hi Sarah (Ellie and Clara)<- hope they remember me! Looks like you are having an amazing time, hope you don't mind but i saved some of the pictures of the Buddhas to use in my teaching!! wooo! you all look really healthy and you're doing something that's wicked too - if not a little scarey... all whilst i'm sat at home with tonsilitus or however its spelt, keep the entries up, it makes great reading and stay safe. Gemma