Siem Reap

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After two months in Thailand the time had come for us to move on, our visa expired on February 1st so we got in the minibus and headed north towards the border and over to Cambodia. You could notice how humid it was getting the further north we went, thank god for the air con we had even if the Germans on our bus insisted on having it on the lowest setting. Getting across the border was pretty painless apart from how long it took, i had been expecting it to be quite a bit of hassle becasue of the high tensions between the two countries over a border dispute in the area but it pretty much seemed like it was an open border for the locals going either way, usually accompanied with a trolley full with stuff to sell.

The journey into Siem Reap was an interesting one, the roads in Cambodia could certainly do with a little upgrade as the bus could barely go above 40mph on them. The cows wandering aimlessly along the side of the road didn't help either and there was a couple of times our driver had to take evasive action to avoid running them over. There are little villages dotted along the roadsides and it seemed to be a constant stream of people walking along the roads even though I could never quite work out where they were all going, or coming from for that matter.

The difference from Thailand was noticable as soon as we got here, where as Thailand is definately set up for tourism, has good infrastructure and has embraced the capatilist western world, Cambodia is only just starting to develop. Poverty is rife and the people appear to live a hard life, working long hours for little pay. Apparently about half the population are under 18 and its quite tragic when you see the children begging or working on the streets all day instead of being at school. Even more tragic is when you see girls that are still children themselves with babies, there seems to be a generation of children being ignored and neglected at best, and i don't like to think about the worst. Hopefully the government, NGOs and the Cambodian people can work together to ensure that after the suffering caused by the Khemer Rouge torturing and murdering a third of the population during our lifetimes that the neglect and abuse of its countries children doesn't become a truley evil regimes lasting legacy.

To be honest it's depressing and sad just to be writing about that situation and as i am a computer geek and not a historian if you want to find out any ways you can help the Cambodian children or about its recent history I suggest you log onto the internet as Mr Google would be a far more reliable and informative source then I could ever hope to be.

Cambodia has a weird system of having two fully functioning currencies, the local Riel and US Dollars, having come from Thailand and using Baht for two months i can assure you it was a lot of fun trying to work out how much anything cost for the first few days, we had to go from $$$ that everything is priced up as into the Riel we had in our pockets before even knowing how much it cost in good old Sterling.

Siem Reap as a city was interesting enough, it was so hot, humid and dusty that it made moving in general a drawn out ordeal. Maybe that is why the pace of life in the region is so slow, as if you moved any quicker you would sweat out your whole body in five minutes. Where we stayed was out the main centre area and close to a local food market on the side of the street, which in Thailand and the crazy driving would of been deadly but here was completely safe. The Cambodians are of the mind set of there is nowhere they need to get thats so important to go over 30mph, I have to admit to sharing this way of thinking.

We went into the town a few times, walking along the side of the river was a good way to see a few different sights. Downtown pretty much consisted of four streets with an alley in the middle. The main street is called Pub Street which pretty much says it all, local draught beer is 50c a glass and cocktails were usually two for one so we had a couple of afternoons down there, one cool bar had free popcorn so you could feed for the day as you got drunk, a good combination.

We didn't really do much in the way of partying here as we just took a few days seeing the sights and relaxing. I am quite disapointed we did not go to see the floating village which is situated on the biggest lake in South East Asia. The tour people never really sold us on it and it wasn't until we spoke to a couple of people who had been that we understood its appeal. We did however visit the main tourist attraction in Siem Reap, the ancient mystical temples of Angkor...

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