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Published: April 23rd 2006
Cambodian Banter
The child in the middle spoke to Helen for about 10 minutes and not once did she think about the basket of fruit balancing on her head.11th April 2006
I think having now left Cambodia, it is our favourite country to date. We spent just under a week there but saw more in that week than most of our travels so far. Not one journey made was without incident. Even crossing the road was an experience!
The first journey was on a plane from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, before boarding we bumped into two people we had met three weeks before in Phuket. Lisa and Paul are there names and they are from Ireland (Paul - Dublin, Lisa - Waterford). We ended up spending the entire time with them in Cambodia because A. they were lovely to hang out with and B. we were able to share taxi and tour costs.
I must say, landing in Cambodia and driving to Phnom Penh was certainly eye opening. Even though the taxi driver took the main road to town you could hardly call it a road, more like a dirt track. It was great, half of the time he was driving on the wrong side of the road to avoid the giant potholes and parts where the road had collapsed. The air was filled with a
Local Life
The done thing in Cambodia is for the kids to hang about in the pyjamas all day long. What a life! haze of orange dust, the shops were dark brown and worn, everything was... everything was... well... what we thought all of Asia was going to be like.
I must say that we have been shocked by the level of development in all the countries we have been in. Of course we had been expecting it in Singapore and Hong kong, but in Malaysia and Thailand we couldn't help but be surprised. Even in the smaller towns they still had McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut - the small towns in England don't even have that.
But Cambodia was certainly different. Mud huts lined the streets, people transporting dead pigs on the back of their motorcycles filled the roads - everything was just so raw. Before arriving people said we would be shocked by the poverty but in all honesty it wasn't shocking. It was just real. As we watched the mud huts and the wooden houses on stilts, we could see the children in rags watching us, but they were all smiling, they all looked happy... I am not saying they necessarily were happy, but it wasn't as though they were asking us to feel sorry for them. For
The Killing fields.
I can't say we had a nice day when we saw the killing fields, but it certainly was eye opening. a lot of the people we met it was all that they knew. They had grown up expecting westerners to give them money, they had grown up sharing a room with ten other people, it was their life... and although I couldn't imagine living like it myself, and if they had the choice they may well change it, I didn't feel as though I should feel sorry for them. All I felt was an overwhelming urge to help them as much as I could by being a proper tourist and spending lots of money on them, and on their country.
Our taxi driver was called Mr Nol. He was a lovely man and he won our hearts over immediately. We all decided to let him be our driver for the whole day and paid him to take us to all the sights around Phnom Penh.
It was a hard day because he took us to the Killing Fields and showed us all the places where the Khmer Rouge committed genocide and hideous war crimes. What made it especially tough was that Nol himself had lost both his Mother and his Father to the Khmer Rouge. They were murdered
What Green Cross Code?
Never mind looking both ways before crossing, simply don't cross... only 20 years ago.
It felt strange to be snapping shots with a camera, taking it all in, when only 100 yards away there was a man who had lost his whole family at the very places we were looking at. What was even harder was that he was forced to make a living by driving people to his worst memories. The only thing that helped was the fact that our accepting his invitation meant he was going to earn enough on that day to keep him going for the rest of the week. We used Nol for the rest of the time in Phnom Penh and even though we probably paid over the odds everytime we used him, he had paid for more in his lifetime than we will probably ever do.
The city of Phnom Penh was fantastically frantic. There were motorcycles and cars everywhere, there wasn't ever a safe place to cross the road and you basically had to step into the traffic and dodge through the cars and bikes. It was never safe, it was never comfortable, but after a while, it became normal. I think by the time we leave Asia we will
Five minutes of rain.
They haven't invented drains in Cambodia yet. never cross the road in the same way again.
On the last night in Phnom Penh the heavens opened up and the rain came tumbling down. And boy did it rain! Within about thirty minutes all the roads were flooded. Kids started running out onto the road in their swimming costumes, fully dressed men in suits started having showers from underneath the gutters... Cambodia is mad!
We had to wade through the water to get back to our grotty hotel - Helen and Lisa screamed and laughed all the way home.
After Phnom Penh we booked a boat journey to go to Siem Reap. The journey was supposed to take five hours but ended up taking 8 hours! 2 hours along the Tonle Sap River we were transferred from our nice air conditioned boat onto a boat half the size, this meant that about fifteen of us (including Helen, Lisa, Paul and I) had to climb onto the roof and go the rest of journey from there. We didn't mind too much as it seemed rather funny at the time, after all we only had a few hours to go - we could work on our tans
Floating along
This was our third boat in one trip. Boat number two ran out of petrol about 2 miles from the pier. we thought. Three hours later we still weren't anywhere near Siem Reap, we were starting to ache, it wasn't easy holding on to the boat either!
About an hour later we came to a stop. We all thought this was planned but half an hour later we realised that we had come to a stop because the boat had ran out of petrol!! Another half an hour later a smaller boat came carrying petrol and we were off once again. We travelled another thirty minutes and then were transferred onto even smaller boats! When we finally arrived at the pier we realised that we hadn't arrived at the pier at all but in fact, half a mile away from it. It was about 35degrees and we had to walk with our backpacks in about ten inches of mud (the rain the night before had made the banks very muddy) the last half a mile. Needless to say we were very tired by the end.
Siem Reap was much quieter than Phnom Penh. You mainly visit Siem Reap to go to the temples of Angkor. We hired our taxi driver who had picked us up from the pier (a
Broken Buddhas
A while ago the Thai's wrecked Angkor and chopped all the Buddhas heads off. friend of Nol's - everyone has a friend - whether it be another taxi driver, a tailor, a restaurant owner - you name it!), his name was Mr Savoon.
Angkor and all the 'Wats' (temples) were amazing. We spent the whole day there seeing all the different Wats. The most famous is Angkor Wat and then there is another one where Tomb Raider was filmed that is pretty well known as well... to be honest, they were all great.
Funnily enough the kids hanging around the Wats were the highlight for us. The kids in Cambodia were great fun. They really knew how to hussle. If you looked at them you generally lost a dollar. They simply were too cute and too clever. From a photograph - they would jump in front of you, shout "one, two, three... smile" and then pose for a photo... then once you have taken the photo, you give them however many dollars there are for however many kids there are. I must say it was a pleasure throwing our dollars away when it came to the kids. Helen and I bought more bangles, bracelets and general tat from the Cambodians than anywhere
Angkor Wat
Just to prove to you we were there. else on our travels - needless to say, if you are a relative, expect Cambodian 'Tat' for Christmas.
We hired a taxi to the border back to Thailand. It was actually the cheapest option between four of us. We then went on a six hour train journey in Thailand for 80pence each (bargain!). But before we could get to Thailand we still had a few more incidents to "experience".
Cambodians (Thais, Malaysians etc.) are complete lunatics when it comes to driving. They are nuts! Crazy! Everytime you step in a car, bus, motorcycle you know you are engaging in an extreme sport, it is white-knuckle all the way! On the journey from Siem Reap to the border back to Thailand we saw two motorcycle crashes (no one was hurt thankfully) and our taxi driver almost ripped off his front wheels. We actually had to get out of the taxi half way for an hour or two while he took it to the garage. We spent the time talking to yet more lovely kids who relieved us of yet more lovely dollars (you gotta love 'em!).
We were obviously delighted once we reached the border because we then
Wonders of the world
The sights really took our breath away realised we didn't have to use any more transport in Cambodia.
All in all... it was tough, it was hot, it was strange, emotional, difficult... but it was so, so, so, so much fun. I wish we could have given Cambodia all of our money and all of our tourism, maybe we will go back there one day and help out in some way. Or adopt a Cambodian baby! They were almost tooooo cute!
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Lois Mason
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Gretings from Lois
Well done Helen and Sam. Great to read your travel saga. Stay safe and well. Lois Mason