A history lesson

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Just to bring you up to date. After leaving the full moon island we headed back to Bangkok where Kellie caught her flight back to London. Glad to say he arrived back safely. I decided I needed to get the hell out of Bangkok so I booked my ticket to Siem Reap and would be catching the bus at 7am the next morning. I got on the bus and the journey went by wihtout a hitch. Just before we got to the border, as I hadn't yet organised a visa to enter Cambodia I was asked to hand over my pssport to the bus driver and he disapeared withit and a handful of other peoples. We sat and had lunch and nervously waited for him to return. No sign and then the bus returned to pick us up, still no passport. Then we drove onto the border. Still no passport and no visa. Everyone was getting really edgy then someone piped up that British passports can fetch up to 400 pounds a piece on thew blackmarket. Nice one I said. Then right at the last minute this official looking guy came up to the bus and started handing out the passports
containing the visas. Now it was time to leave Thailand and crossover into the kingdom of Cambodia. The border was a bit of a joke and there were hundreds of street kids running around begging for dollar or baht or riel or whatever trhey could get their grubby little hands on.

Once across the Thai border you end up this strange no mans land with not much there except two huge casinos. Unbelievable, here you are with all these kids running about bare foot looking hungry right next to these two Las Vegas style casinos. I nearly went in for a few hands of Blackjack but there wasn't time. I later found out the reason they have these casinos is because gambling is pretty much illegal in every country in sout east Asia except Cambodia. So the Thai people desparate enough for a quick spin on the roulette wheel can travel up to the border leave Thailand but not actually enter Cambodia and feed their addiction. Aside from that bit of big business the border was absolute chaos. Motorbikes zipping around, kids begging, people with big trollies selling stuff, officials. We had to go through a little hut to
Me in front of Angkor Wat
have our visa checked and passports stamped, but I could have easily just walked right into the country without any problems.

Once into Cambodia we were met with the usual barrage of people trying to sell you stuff sunglasses, books, postcards, cold drinks, bread rolls, dairylea triangles, tuk tuks and fake zippos. Because I had paid to get from Bangkok to Siem Reap, there was a bus waiting for us as part of the package. I had heard bad things about the state of the road to Siem Reap so myself and 3 others decided to go four ways on a taxi for $50. Rumour had it that the taxi does the journey in 3.5 hours but the bus can take up to 10 hours and they actually plan to arrive after dark and have you exhausted so they can take you to a guesthouse where they get commision to drop you off. Not wanting to have to fight an angry Cambodian guesthouse owner because I refused to stay in his guesthouse after he had paid the bus driver commision the taxi seemed like the best idea. So we set off along this road.

I have never in my life been on a road in such a bad state of repair. It truly was the worst road in the world. In fact calling it a road is far to generous. Think farm traack and you are not even halfway there. Anyway we bumped along this road in a our drivers trusty Toyota Camry, which for a minute reminded me of being a child as my Grandad used to drive one of them. The only difference was that the suspension was lifted so much it resembled some kind of rally car. After about 2 hours of driving and trying to understand the drivers Cambodian above his Cambodian music which was really loud I had had enough. Only another 1.5 hours to go I thought. In fact it took us about another 2 hours or so. We eventually reached Siem Reap and the driver thn decided we should stay in a guest house he recommended instead of the ones we had all booked. He started pretending he didn't know where mine was. Being exhausted after around 10 hours of travelling I really wasn't in the mood for this so when he dropped the first people off I got one of the locals to explain where my hotel was.

After that I arrived without a hitch and checked into Molly Malones Irish hotel and bar. Yes, the Irish seem to get everywhere but I figured you can always trust the irish when it comes to eating, sleeping and drinking. I checked in and immediatly had a beef and ale pie and jug of Guiness. Totally wiped out I crashed out in front of the telly. The next day I set about exploring Siem Reap and trying to work out the best deal to go and visit the Temples of Angor Wat, pretty much the main reason for staying in Siem Reap. On first impression the town was very busy, slightly run down but seemed to be getting built up and slowly renewed. I walked around all day and didnt really see anything interesting at all. One thing I was shocked about was all the little kids some as young as 5 years old out selling books and postcards. I could imagine some kind of Fagin character sending them all out and then collecting the money in the evening. Pretty sad to see though. I then arranged for a tuk tuk
driver to pick me up the next morning and take me to Angkor Wat. In fact I hired Murray for the whole day for $12. Which I understand is a pretty good rate seeing as though the average monthly wage is around $60 a month.

10.30am the next day and I was an hour late for Murray the Tuk Tuk man. He happily sat there and waited for me whilst I had a good old Irish fry up complete with english tea. I know I know I am such a British tourist but there is no way I can manage noodles or rice first thing in the morning. All fed and watered we head off for the temples.

Ok history lesson time and I have condensed it somewhat.

It all started in 802, Jayavarman II united the warring Chenla factions and worked towards building a magnificent and propsperous kingdom. He declared himself universal god-king and became the first of a succesion of 39 kings to reign over the most powerful kingdom in Southeast Asia at that time. So the Angkor era was born, a period marked by imaginative building projects, the design of inspirational temples and palaces,
It was fine climbing up these but climbing was a different matter
the creation of complex irrigation systems and the development of magnificent walled cities. However, as more resources were channelled into ever more ambitious construction projects, Angkor became a target from neighbouring Siam. Successive invasions by the Siamese army culminated in the sacking of Angkorin the fifteenth century and the city was abandoned to the jungle. Although Khmers knew of the lost city, it wasn't until the west's 'discovery' of Angkor in the nineteenth century that international interest was aroused. It was first reported by a French missionary, Father Bouillevaux who wrote about the Pagoda of Angcor and the ruins of Angcor-Thom, over grown and camouflaged with jungle greenery. So that was that really.

There are more than 100 monuments spead over 3000 square km so it is huge and I didn't manage to get round all of it. The best known of course is Angkor Wat, but Angkor Thom was amazing and covered in huge faces, also Ta Prom was where the film Tomb Raider was filmed. Ta Prom was comepletly overgrown with jungle and the trees were coming out from everywhere. I got see around 6 or 7 of them and that took me all day, even in murrays tuk tuk. I have to say Murray was a legend he drove me from place to place and waited around all day for me. The place is truly amazing. I would've spent another day there but I was templed out by the end of it. No visit to Cambodia would be complete without it. I managed to see a highly poisonous green snake while I was there as well. The only thing that spoilt it a bit was all the kids trying to sell stuff to you. No, I don't want to but a bloody wooden flute. I guess they are only trying to make money to eat, but still is nowhere sacred?

That night I was still quite tired so after all the temple fun I just chilled after a good old shepards pie.

The next day I got Murray to take me to the floating village which was a quite a mad experience. Unfortunately the batteries on my camera ran out so I didn't get any pictures. But it was exactly as described a floating village. Complete with floating school(with basketball and tennis courts), a floating hospital, a floating battery charging shop and a floating tv repairman. The place was absolutely filthy though and the water terrible. There were still little kids swimming in it and the people were fishing out of it. Further up the river and out boat driver suggested that I should drive the boat. So we swapped seats and I was driving this old boat up the river. We stopped at some kind of floating museum/shop/crocodile farm. The crocodile farm was a huge cage in the water filled to the brim with hungry crocs. The boat drive thought it was hilarious to keep pretending to push me in, so I did a defensive pivot and flipped him in. I drove the boat back. The museum place was billed as a fish museum which I thought is more of an aquarium but I didn't want to split hairs. The places was just filled with fish tanks with dirty water and a few catfish in. But still the people were friendly and really nice as usual. There were people eating lunch there but I declined. When we arrived back at the port it was clear the driver was expecting a tip. I didn't mind as he had been very informative along the way.

I thought 5 dollars to be a fair and maybe even slightly generous offer. He laughed at me and muttered something about me tight. The cheek of it. He is lucky he got that as I had already paid 10 dollars to go in the first place. Driving through the village on the way out was quite interesting as they were all living in these huts, the place was so muddy the tuk tuk could hardly move. We also had a few kids hanging off the back of the tuk tuk asking for dollars.

Back in Siem Reap and I booked a coach ticket for the next day to the capital Pnom Penh. The coach collected me in the morning and off I went. 6 hours later I was in Pnom Penh and the journey this time was alot better than the one to Siem Reap. Proper roads as well, yeah.
The minute everyone got off the bus, we were faced with the usual hassle of tuk tuk drivers, motorbike drivers etc etc. I decided to go and have some food while I worked out which way I needed to go and who I wanted to take me there.
Elelphant
Pnom Penh is madded than Siem Reap and so so busy. I eventually found a willing driver to take me to the Sunday Guesthouse. When I arrived I met my old friends Dave and Janet who had shared the taxi ride from the border with me. I dumped my bags in and sat down to the watch the movie about Cambodia, The Killing Fields. Another early night followed, I am getting used to these now. The next day I went to the killing fields, toul........

History Lesson number 2

At the start if the Vietnam war, King Sihanouk of Cambodia was being pressured into taking sides in the conflict. Despite publicly delclaring neautrality, he signed an alliance with the North Vietnamese government that allowed them to use Cambodian soil for supplying South Vietnamese guerrillas, the Vietcong, and tolerated deliveries of arms and supplies through Sihanoukville to Vietcong encampments. In 1969, the Americans began covert bombings of Cambodias eastern provinces, where they believed Vietcong guerrillas were hiding. Hundreds of Cambodian civilians were killed or maimed in these raids which continued until 1973. These raids were thought to have led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Left wing disquiet began to grow, and general Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Matak seized an opportunity to depose Sihanouk while he was away in France in 1970. The Vietnamese were order to leave Cambodian soil, but instead they pushed deeper into Cambodia, pursued by US and Southern Vietnamese troops, transforming the country into a huge, savage battlefield. Thousands of war refugees fled the fighting and headed to Phnom Penh, With the country in complete disarray under a weak and ineffective leadership, the communist Khmer Rouge began taking control of large areas of the provinces.

Khmer Rouge forces marched into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975 to the cheers of the Cambodian people. The war was over, and peace would prevail, they assumed. Unfortunately, this was not to be. From the day that the Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh, a systematic process of communist reengineering was ordered, presumably by communist party leader Saloth Sar, or Pol Pot as he was subsequently known. The deranged attempt to transform the country into an agrarian collective, proved a huge human disaster and caused international outrage, but little action. The entire population of Phnom Penh and other provincial capitals was forcibly removed to the countryside
to begin their new lives as peasants working on the land. They were the lucky ones. Pol Pot ordered the mass extermination of intellectuals, teachers, writers, educated people and their families. Even wearing glasses was a crime punishable by death. The brtual regime lasted four years before the Vietnamese forces reach Phnom Penh in 1978. By this time between 1 and 3 million Cambodians had died as a result of Khmer Rouge genocide. Pol Pot and his supporters fled to the jungle bordering Thailand and continued to wage civil war on succesive governements in Phnom Penh.

Khmer Rouge guerrila activity intensified after 1993 elections. An amnesty for Khmer Rouge soldiers had already begun to attract some defections to the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, and in 1996 the government scored a coup. Ieng Sary, Pol Pots number 2, defected with 3000 troops. This signalled a major split in the Khmer rouge ranks, and isolated the ageing Pol Pot. Further defections looked likely, and a paranoid Pol Pot ordered the murder of the defence minister and his entire family. Another senior military commander the notorious Ta Mok, turned on his former master. He arrested Pol Pot, and sentanced him to life
imprisonment. More defections followed, and as the RCAF troops began a final push into the last stronghold of Khmer Rouge in April 1998, the infamous Pol Pot died, possible of a heart attack, although it may be that he was executed by his own cadre.

ok, enough history. Its pretty mad to think that all this has happened to one country. Cambodia now is a much ore stable place. Although there are still something like a few million unexploded bombs/landmines.

Choeung Ek or The killing fields, was a pretty sombre affair. This was the place where 8985 people, all victims of Pol Pot were exhumed from 86 mass graves. A further 43 graves have been left untouched. Many of those who had been buried here had suffered prolonged torture at S21 prison which I will talk about in a moment you lucky people. Men, Women and children were beaten to death, shot, beheaded, tortured or just plain old buried alive. As you walk into the site it is dominated by a tall, white building that commemorates all those that died between 1975 and 1979. It displays about 8000 skulls demographically arrnaged on glass shelves. It was pretty grim
The jungle is taking over
really, but I found the piles of clothes underneath to be even more unsettling strangely. Walking around the site, I could see teeth just in the grass and bits of bone here and there it really was a sad place. That said, I still had some little buggers begging for money through the fence.

After that onto Toul Sleng or S21 was converted from a school in a quiet neighbourhood. Classrooms were divided into individual cells and housed rows of prisoners secured by shackles, not when I went obviously. Around 20000 prisoners were housed there between 1975 nd 1979. It was a pretty harsh place by the sounds of it and there were lots of grim images around the place. There was a real sense of calm about the place though. you could actually go into the cells and see what it was like to be locked in one. Once in there you can see the intruments of torture, blood stains on the wall. you really get an idea of the suffering these people went through.

After that I went to a firing range and fired an AK47 to lighten the mood. It felt a bit strange doing
What do you want?
it after all that, but hey it was great fun and firing a few clips off really lifted my spirits. They are much louder than I imagined and alot more powerful. I fired off a couple of clips and managed to hit the target twice once through the eye so it was a confirmed kill. They obviously aren't very accurate. The man suggested I shoot the m16 as its far more accurate, I thought I would save that for Vietnam.

That evening I sat about talking with the tuk tuk drivers helping them learn english. Thats all they wanted to do, speak english. So I gave an impromptu glass on the balcony of the hotel. I got talking to them about their lives and they were all so poor it was pretty amazing listening to their stories and one of them had relations who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. They were also telling me their average wage was 40-60 dollars a month and some of them had babies and they all had to give their parents money so were left without about 10 dollars a month. Crazy and it makes you think how lucky you are.
Tomb Raider 2
I still delighted in taking 30 dollars off of the four of them in a game of poker though. Not really, but they did want to play.

Probably the one of the highlights of my 2 weeks in Cambodia was visiting the orphanage. There are many orphanages in Cambodia. its the ones in the centre of the city that get visited the most. The tuk tuk driver who I had been teaching english to suggested I go to one out of town a bit as thye don't get many visitors. So I turned up with a 50kg bag of rice and about 150 bananas and spent the afternoon with the little tykes at the orphanage. I thought it was going to be really sad, but it was a really happy place to be honest. The kids were climbing all over me and wanting me to play football. It was really cool. Then I sat with the manager of the place and he was saying how they get no funding from anyone and its very hard. The only way they can survive is by tourists like me visiting and giving them food etc. A pretty cool afternoon.

So that was Cambodia. Sorry as this is so long, and some of you may find it a bit boring but I dont care. I just thought it would make a change from the drinking stories and stories of calamity that I usually write.

Right now I am in Vietnam, in Saigon. Its painful to be back in 'nam' after so long and the memories from the war are very painful. Tomorrow I am off to the beach for some diving in Nah Trang.

Keep it real

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Comments

[Mum]

How brave RU?
It all sounds very interesting but a little scary to me. All those hours travelling. I bet those kids in the orphanage said "Not more bloody bananas". Looking forward to seeing you in August! LOL Mum and Dadxxx

[SteveInLA]

AK47
Mate, you might as well hold on to that AK for when you get to LA............

[lee]

why dont you bring an orphan home with you