Angkor Temples, Cambodia

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I spent this weekend in Cambodia, seeing the temples of Angkor with the other Starfish volunteers - 19 nurses from Oz. I have totally mixed feelings about the trip...let me fill you in.

The trip started on Friday morning at 7am. This may not seem that early, but considering I'd been out the night before and didn't get home 'til 4am, I was rather knackered! The first leg of the journey was getting to the Cambodian border. This was fine. Next we had to get a taxi for all of us to get to the nearest town to the Angkor Temples, Siem Reap. We managed to bargain a price of 20 quid return. Not bad considering Siem Reap was 4 hours from the border. After managing to sort out our Visas, which took about an hour cos they're so slow with sorting stuff out in Thailand we got into our taxis. I was with 3 others, so it was a tight squeeze in the back. Our first experience of the Cambodians is this. We had given the agreed amount of money to the taxis, except the guy was telling us we'd given him only 4000 out of the 5000 baht. He even had the cheek to say that he was telling the truth and he put his hands together as of he was praying. Bastard. In the end we had to give him another 1000 baht. So our first impression of the Cambodians was that they were out to stitch you up, and could not be trusted.

Finally the taxis left and ours was last. But within 10 seconds our driver drove onto the second side of the road - a bumpy and dusty track, there's no tarmac at all, just earth and lots of dust - and stopped by a little shop serving drinks and snacks. He opened the boot and got out of the car and called someone from his mobile. All the other taxis had by now driven off and were nowhere in sight. All sorts of ideas were going through my mind at this point, none of them good. Our mobiles weren't working cos we were out of Thailand, so we couldn't call the others to tell them to come back and we couldn't speak with anyone because noone spoke English and we didn't even know how to say hello in Cambodia. Crap. I was feeling really nervous. One of my friends, Jess, took photos of the driver and of the registration plate, "we have to think safe" she said. Good thinking. Finally another driver arrived, who had a nice car compared to all the others.....this was not a good sign to me. I was now scared that this was some sort of pimp and whether I would ever see my mum and friends again. We had no choice but to get in the car and hope that he would take us to Siem Reap. Everything turned out fine in the end and we passed the other taxis, so I was a bit more relaxed after that.

A little mention of the actual ride is necessary I feel. As I already wrote, the roads were dusty tracks. With lots of holes. We had been told the journey would be bumpy, but I didn't expect this. If anyone is car sick, I don't think even tablets would have helped! It felt like we were on a roller coaster.

Anyway, once we'd arrived we settled into our rooms and then we set off for the markets, which are meant to be even cheaper than in Thailand. There were children begging. One was about 8 holding his little baby sibling in his arms. We passed him several times during our 3 days in Siem Reap and strangely the baby mever cried. The family must have given the baby some sort of tranquilisers. In any case, it wasn't good for the baby to be out at 11pm. We told the boy that, but he stay put and didn't go home. The tuk-tuk drivers - like the things you get around Soho in London with the guys on the cycle and you can sit on the cart thing attached to them - were all very keen to get you to hire them. We always declined. Once we reached the market, the harrassment, which is exactly what it was, continued. Each stall owner would run up to you and say "OK Lady, maybe you want this". Even if you stopped for 2 seconds, they would be right next to you trying to sell something. Some stall owners even begged that you increased your price during bargaining. Jess told them that begging isn't pretty and they stopped! In any case, we all hated the fact that you are never left in peace. Some Cambodian wants something out of you and they don't leave you alone. I just found the whole thing stressful and got pissed off by it all very quickly. THey're just so in your face it's ridiculous. And it's not like your average market where they try to entice you. This was much worse. They also tried to short change you, which would have been quite easy as we were working in 4 currencies - Thai, Cambodian and American, as well as trying to convert that into British. Nightmare. For example, if you paid in Thai Baht, you would get change in Cambodian Riel AND in US dollars at the same time. As you can imagine that could get confusing!

Enough of that. On Saturday we all went to see the temples of Angkor. These were totally amazing and made it worth having to deal with the shitty Cambodians. I took loads of pics, which I shall be uploading soon, so you can have a look through them. Suffice to say, I'm in love with them, and think they're fantastic. The main temple, Angkor Wat took 38 years to build! It's so intricate and beautiful. I loved it. Although I do have to admit that by the end of the day I'd had temple overload and everything started looking the same! We ended by watching the sunset after a scramble to the top of the hill. I was expecting the whole red, purple hued sunset thing, but instead all there was was blue and some light green and orange. I was unimpressed.When you see the pics, you'll understand. The harrassment was really bad all across the temples, too, which pissed me off. One boy was trying to sell a book to me and was flicking the pages open right infront of my face even though I'd told him I didn't want to buy any books. They just don't take no for an answer and follow you for 5 mins. So I just hit the book out of my face, which happened to fall out of the boys hand and on to the floor. He started complaining and that made me laugh. I really hate the Cambodians and missed the Thai, who are not like that at all. And the Cambodians even ahve the cheek to be pissed off if you don't buy anything off them.

We ended the day by going out to a bar called Angkor What? and had a bucket of alcohol for only $5. Bargain. And it was rather strong, so that lasted me the whole night! I think it was the cheapest night even! And they were playing awesome current music, which made the night even better. I was knackere and hadn't wanted to go out, but Jess promised it was only for one drink. I even got Rachel out of her PJs to come with us. We didn't get home til 4am. So I only got 5 hours' sleep. I didn't feel too clever the next day and the bumpy ride to the border was not my idea of fun.

But within 6 hours we were back in Surin and I was never more happy to be there. It was such a relief to be back. I don't want to go back to Cambodia anytime soon. I know they've had a shit past and have had to struggle, but so have the Thais and they've just got on with things. They are always smiling and are just so friendly. I love Thai people.

So that's a round up of what's been happening. I'll be in touch soon.

xxx

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