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Published: July 31st 2008
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We arrived in Siem Reap with the intention of seeing the main "tourist attractions" in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh before heading back into Thailand to spend some time in the Southern Islands. Angkor Wat and the many other ancient Angkor temples outside Siem Reap are world famous and we felt we could not leave South East Asia without spending at least a few days exploring. We got a three day tourist pass to the Angkor temples and on our first day we set off before 5am bleary eyed in a motor-bike drawn carriage to arrive at Angkor Wat before sunrise. We sat and watched the sun rise revealing the worlds largest religous temple in all its glory, although the overcast skies did take away from it a bit. It was still really nice to be at the temple at this time of the morning even if we did have to share it with plenty of other early rising tourists.
Now for a tiny bit of history; The temples of Angkor outside Siem Reap date from as far back as the 2nd Century A.D. There are many temples sprawling over hundreds of squre kilometres and built by successive kings down
through the ages. While the vastness of the temples are spectacular the detail and inscriptions are equally so. Most temples contain Buddha images and images of other gods and depictions of battles which took place centuries ago. The most famous temple is Angkor Wat itself built under King Suryavarman II in the 12th Century. Other renowned temples are within the Angkor Thom complex, particulary the Bayon temple which has over 200 stones heads gazing at your from every dircection.
So we spent a few days wandering from temple to temple. One of the most facinating temples was Ta Prohm which is nearly completely over grown by jungle and there are massive amazing trees growing over and engulfing some of the temples. Two films including Tomb Raider were filmed at this temple. Siem Reap was a fairly nice place to be for a few days. It's very touristy though with loads of hotels and western style cafes dotted all over the place. After four days we were well and truly templed out and took a bus to the Capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.
In Phnom Penh we stayed in the area around the Grand Palace. The Mekong river flows
right along here and a lot of the locals seem to come down to the waterfront in the evenings to just relax, kick footballs about and eat snacks like deep fried tarantula. We both thought it had a "Salthill on a summers evening" feel which was really strange because we could not have been further removed. We both wanted to learn a bit about Cambodias horrific and painful past, and particularly the Khmer Rouge Regime under Pol Pot. We visited The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek outside Phnom Penh. This is only one of the many killing fields in Cambodia and it is estimated that 17,000 men, women and children were executed here by the brutal regime. A stupa has been erected as a memorial here which contains the skulls of 8,000 of the victims, catagorized according to different age groups, some with visible bullet holes. Walking around the killing fields was a very somber experience and it was terribly sad to see what happened here only 30 years ago. We could hear the laughter of the children in the nearby school, a stark contrast to the cries of pain and torture once suffered here. Many of the mass graves
have not been exhumed as of yet and there are still human remains and their clothes protuding from the ground- very visible to the naked eye as you walk around. We hope that some day the mass graves are respectably exhumed and that these attrocities are never repeated here or anywhere else.
From here we went to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. Toul Sleng had previously been a school before The Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and torture centre. It was both the best and worst museum we had ever been to. Toul Sleng has been preserved as it was and is a very stark and graphic reminder of the suffering and needless torture of innocent people which took place here. Many of the rooms used for torture still contain the metal beds which victims were chained to and attached are some of the weapons used to torture the victims. Old photos showing some of the terrible wounds inflicted adorn the walls. The floors are still stained from where congealed blood once flowed. Other rooms contain photos of the countless innocent Cambodian victims who were brought here tortured, and imprisoned before being brought to Choeung Ek for
execution. Their pained, anxious and fearing faces peer at you whilst you try and imagine the pain and suffering they endured.
It was a very sad place to visit to say the least and after spending a couple of hours here learning more about the genocide which occurred we are amazed to see the magnificent spirit of the Cambodian people and the way the nation is recovering a mere 30 years on.
You don't have to look far whilst wandering the streets of Phnom Penh to see the abject poverty and people struggling to make ends meat. The more and more we travel its gets increasingly dificult to see such poverty, particulary children as young as seven walking the streets overloaded with bottles of water, books and tourist souvenirs looking for a sale. We visited an Orphanage in the centre of Phnom Penh where 29 children live. The children ran towards us giving us hugs, all vying for our attention and demonstrating their excellent command of the English language. We tried our best to pronouce their names, however it took a couple of attempts before they were happy with our pronunication!
We spent a few hours talking to and
playing with the children here. It was easy to understand their endless enthusiasm for our attention when we learned that their parents could no longer afford to feed them and had no choice but to bring them to the orphange to be cared for. One child was HIV positive, his mother and brother had already sadly died from the disease. We left the orphanage touched by the childrens enthusiasm for life, hoping they have a healthy and happy future ahead of them but at the same time knowing that the rice we brought and money we donated won't go far enough in changing their worlds.
After a short stay in Cambodia, we leave tomorrow to go the South of Thailand. Cambodia is certainly one country we wont forget.
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