Cambodia

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After a quick hop back to Kuala Lumpur and a night in an airport hotel where sufficient space to partake in cat swinging was not included, we flew north to Cambodia. Our chosen point of entry was Siem Reap, the home of the Angkor temples.

Arriving into Siem Reap was an absolute pleasure - what a great little airport! After climbing down the steps of the plane, we walked through a neatly maintained garden and into a lovely wooden terminal building constructed in a traditional Khmer architectural style. Inside the building we applied for our visas and waited for five minutes as it passed along a visa production chain of ten or so men - one to take the money, another to give out a receipt, a third to pass it to the fourth, a fourth who sticks the visa sticker in the passport etc etc. After that we passed quickly through immigration and collected our bags, which were already waiting for us on the baggage claim carrousel. Finally, all that we needed to do was walk the last 20 metres to where we were picked up by our hotel's complementary tuk-tuk service.

After checking in we headed out to explore the town and quickly feel in love with the place. There were so many things to like about the place: it is small enough to walk around easily; it is the massage capital of Southeast Asia; it served the best food that we have had anywhere on our travels to date; it has a handful of markets selling all sorts of things at reasonable prices; and beer is cheaper than Coca Cola!

And all of that is before even considering the Angkor temples. Angkor is the region of Cambodia that served as the seat of the Khmer Empire, which flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries AD. According to the trustworthy source that is Wikipedia, "the temples of the Angkor area number over one thousand, ranging from nondescript piles of brick rubble scattered through rice fields to the magnificent Angkor Wat, said to be the world's largest single religious monument".

"An international team of researchers using satellite photographs and other modern techniques concluded that Angkor had been the largest preindustrial city in the world, with an elaborate system of infrastructure connecting an urban sprawl of at least 1,000 square kilometres with the well known temples at it's core".

So, all in all, quite an impressive set of historic monuments...

We picked up a multi-day entry pass to the temples and spent the first day cycling around the less famous temples. Renting two bikes for the day only set us back US$3 and was a great way to get around the temples. The roads are all in good condition and because the countryside is so flat it is almost effortless. At a rough guess we clocked around 35 kilometres on the bikes that day; we ate cheap noodles for lunch outside the Ta Prohm temple (the classic view of the temple being engulfed by the jungle - think Tomb Raider) we shared a freshly cut pineapple bought from a roadside stall for US$1; and got caught in a huge downpour. The rain was not entirely surprising given that it is rainy season, but each afternoon it was confined to a 20 minute spell that we just needed to shelter from temporarily.

On our second day of seeing the temples we opted to get up early (4:30am) so that we could be at Angkor Wat in time for sunrise. Unfortunately, although our tuk-tuk driver managed to get us there in plenty of time, it turned out to be somewhat of an anti-climax due to the morning clouds at this time of year. However, with all the tours groups still tucked up in their hotel beds it was not a complete waste of time as we only had to share the temples with the handful of other people who had also got up early in the hope of a glorious sunrise (well, you have to try). With the place virtually to ourselves and lit only by dawn and torchlight, the temples were peacefully quiet and beautifully calming to wander around.

That afternoon, exhausted by our early morning rise and the strenuous tuk-tuk ride, we decided to treat ourselves to a bit of pampering. Being the massage capital of Southeast Asia the options are nigh-on endless, starting from as little as US$1 for a ten minute neck and shoulder massage on a reclining chair in the market and ranging all the way up to exclusive spa retreats where if you have to ask the price you probably can't afford it. We went for something in the middle: a his and hers session including a body scrub; a full body massage, a facial treatment and a pedicure. Perhaps "a bit of pampering" was a slight understatement but at US$100 for four hours of relaxation it was an easy bill to settle. And hey, Rich's toe nails have never been so shiny...

On the food front there were plenty of options, for the most part centred around Pub Street. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a town whose main street is named after a kind of drinking establishment, Siem Reap has a really nice vibe to it. On the recommendation of one of the dive masters in the Perhentian Islands we tried the Mexican restaurant Vivas. Although an entirely worthy recommendation, our favourite had to be Old House. Offering a three course set menu for US$6, every dish was fabulous but special mention must be reserved for the Khmer chicken curry. Full of flavour and beautifully creamy, the Khmer curry is like a less spicy version of a Thai red curry - absolutely delicious! In dire need of the recipe, Rich attended a cooking school one day and learnt how to make the curry paste from scratch. Now he can't wait to get home to make it again...

We should also say a word on our accommodation at Hotel 89. US$18 a night got us an air-conditioned, double en-suite with breakfast included. They turned down your bed, leaving a couple of sweets and a copy of a Cambodian bed time story on your pillow each evening. They also printed off a page telling you which movies would be on HBO and Star Movies that evening. Very nice little touches!

The included breakfast was was also quite good - a set menu of egg, bacon, toast, juice and a plate of fresh fruit (and tea or coffee if you're that way inclined). One morning Claire asked to change her egg and bacon for a banana pancake, which they nicely obliged with. After being told three times that it would be 'just five more minutes' it arrived after half an hour and, much to Claire's disgust, didn't taste remotely of banana and was over an inch thick. It must have taken the 30 minutes to cook all the way through!

One of the following mornings a French lady at the next table also negotiated a change of menu. We couldn't help but chuckle to ourselves when she repeatedly enquired into the whereabouts of her pancake. Amusingly, she almost choked when it arrived - it obviously wasn't the crepe that she had been hoping for!

Moving on from Siem Reap, we caught a bus to Phnom Penh. We decided three nights was sufficient time to spend in the Cambodian capital. Bigger, more noisy, more polluted and with more drivers speculatively beckoning 'tuk-tuk?' than in Siem Reap, that would be plenty of time.

First up, we spent a less than cheerful day touring the sites that now serve as a memory to the events perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge on the Cambodian people during the period 1975-1979.

Headed by Pol Pot, Cambodia was renamed Democratic Kampuchea and a regime of social re-engineering was instigated. Few knew the true identity of who was actually in charge, instead the political party in charge was rather creepily known as Angkar - literally translated as the Organisation. Angkar strived for an extreme form of agrarian communism. Intent on complete self-sufficiency, urban residents were marched out of the cities and forced to work in the rice fields. The concepts of wealth, ownership of property and family were meant to be driven out of people. Belongings were seized and children were separated from their parents - it really does beggar belief! Needless to say, it did not end well for anybody opposed the regime.

Nobody knows exactly how many people died during the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia. The number has been put at anywhere up to three million, with around half thought to be by execution and the rest through starvation and disease. That represented between 15-20%!o(MISSING)f the pre-regime population. Again, that is really is quite hard to fathom.

The centre of some of the worst atrocities was the Tuol Svay Prey High School, which was taken over by Pol Pot's security forces and transformed into Security Prison 21 ("S-21"). Around 17,000 prisoners passed through S-21 - all of them tortured in ways that you don't want to imagine. Looking around old school rooms that had been turned into prison cells where people had been tortured and murdered left us with an uneasy feeling.

Parallels have inevitably been drawn with the Nazis, but in some ways the way that the crimes were carried out here make them even harder to comprehend. Most of the prisoners of S-21 ended up at the Choeung Ek Killing Fields, where they were executed and buried in shallow mass graves. It is the manner in which they were killed that was most appalling.

To save bullets, prisoners were bludgeoned to death one at a time. To mask the smell and kill anybody unfortunate enough to survive the blows to the head, the bodies were covered in DDT. Later on our trip, we visited a Killing Cave where people opposed to Angkar were pushed off cliffs and down into caves. Presumably the fall didn't always kill. However, the worst was the treatment saved for babies...

Their minds tainted by the capitalist thoughts of their dead parents (yes, you read that correctly), babies would be thrown up in the air before the guards attempted to catch them on the way down using the bayonet attached to the end of their machine guns. Alternatively, babies were held by the ankles and had their heads smashed against trees. It takes a pretty sick individual to carry out that sort of order, which is probably the thing that we found the hardest to get our heads around.

Visiting the Killing Fields, it is a bit hard to get a sense for it all. There is a stuppa filled with 5,000 skulls of the bodies that have been excavated from the mass graves; one of the mass graves contained nearly 400 bodies; another filled with only women and children; a third where all the victims were headless. Not all the mass graves have been excavated and in some places we could see evidence of where bones still float to the surface when it rains.

Although the regime was ousted in 1979 the war that followed didn't fully end until 1998. It goes without saying that, as nearly a fifth of the population died as a result of the events, everybody in the country had been affected. It is therefore testament to the people of Cambodia that they are such friendly and welcoming people.

Smiling is an important part of Khmer culture, and we saw plenty of smiles during our time in Cambodia. The trials against the former leaders of Democratic Kampuchea on charges such as crimes against humanity and genocide are still on-going. Hopefully they will conclude in the near future to give the Cambodian people some sort of closure on the events of their recent history.

Moving on ourselves, and in an attempt to be a little bit more cheerful, we also visited the Russian market and kept up our habit of using walking as our preferred means of getting around.

On the day that we left Phnom Penh we got up early an headed to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. Ensuring that we were moderately dressed, we were the second and third people through the gates at 8:00am. We were out the gates after little more than half an hour (still dressed moderately). It was all just rather disappointing.

Very few of the palace buildings and grounds were accessible and the Silver Pagoda was a let down. So named because it is constructed with 5,000 silver floor tiles weighing one kilogram each, the effect is lost when you cover the floor with blue carpet tiles! The Lonely Planet doesn't define them as floor tiles (only tiles) and therefore it was only because we could hear a metallic clickity noise when we walked over them and then found a couple of carpet tiles pulled up that we realised we were walking atop of the silver.

Another attraction of the Silver Pagoda is a 90 kilogram, life-sized statue of Buddha decorated with 9,584 diamonds. Amusingly, in front of the statue was a box asking for donations. Ignoring the diamonds, the gold on its own is worth just shy of US$5.2 million!! Suffice to say, we made no donation...

Our next stop after the capital was a six hour bus ride away to Battambang. We could not find the attractive "colonial architecture and urbane conviviality" that the Lonely Planet informed us was making Battambang into Cambodia's fourth main tourist destination. But we did take the recommended tuk-tuk ride to one of the nearby hill-top temples and the aforementioned Killing Cave.

However, the main reason that we decided to visit was so that we could take the scenic ferry ride from Battambang back to Siem Reap. The nine hour trip passes through gentle flowing and winding waterways, past countless floating villages and across the top of the Tonle Sap.

And now for a geography lesson...

The Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and is somewhat of a natural phenomenon. During the dry season the lake drains south via the Tonle Sap river into the Mekong river. However, during the wet season the water level of the Mekong rises and the flow of the Tonle Sap river reverses and flows north, increasing the size of the Tonle Sap. When this happens, the lake swells from an area of 2,500 square kilometres to 13,000 square kilometres and becomes a bird lovers paradise. All very interesting!

The boat trip to Siem Reap was a great little journey. The first half of the ride will be best remembered for our encounters with the river banks. At this point the river was very windy and, without wanting to get technical, some of the radiuses of the bends could not have been much longer than the length of our boat. This meant that the crew (who seemed to be made up of three teenagers on their summer holidays) needed to manhandle the boat around the turns and on several occasions the open sided boat slammed into the river banks and the plants growing along the banks filled the deck. Fortunately, everybody on board took in good spirits and laughed as we bounced our way downstream.

The second half was a much smoother affair. Given the nature of the lake the local residents all live in houses that either float or are on stilts. It wasn't just the houses but all of the village buildings that were afloat, with a floating pig sty and a floating full-sized basketball court being perhaps the most unexpected things that we saw. People smiled at us at pretty much every village that we passed through, whilst the children waved and shouted at us as we floated along the river. It was definitely a very enjoyable way to return to our favourite place in Cambodia.

We spent our last couple of days in the country re-visiting our favourite restaurants in Siem Reap; negotiating deals with second hand book sellers (exchanging six for four); and shopping in the night markets.

Knowing that we were coming back to Siem Reap, we had saved all our market shopping for these last couple of days. We must have built up quite a bit of shopping appetite, as we ended up going a bit crazy. T-shirts; vest tops; silver earrings; scarves; a painting; some decorative ball lights; a bed throw; a bracelet; and some wooden wall carvings filled the shopping bags on the walk back to the hostel that night.

Exhausted by all of the haggling, by the end of it Rich refused to negotiate. There must have been something in his eyes, because after they quoted US$8 and Rich flatly said US$2 whilst already turning to walk away they promptly gave in without even attempting to convince us that they would not make any profit at that price, or that their family would go hungry because of the crazy price we were forcing them to sell at...

Our last appointment in Cambodia was with Dr Fish. US$2 for a beer / soft drink and the chance for us to dip of feet into a tank of fish hungry to feast on the dead skin on the soles of our feet. Unbearably ticklish at first, we gradually got used to the small ones but every now and again a monster came along for a big bite. We're not sure if the "treatment" actually achieved anything, but you have to try these things...

Early the next morning, laden down by the success of the previous night's shopping endeavours, we boarded a bus that took us all the way to Poipet, our crossing point into Thailand...

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