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So we arrived in Cambodia and became instant millionaires, only in riel terms mind. It's the first country we've come across that happily trades in three currencies; 4,000 riel to the dollar, 100 to the bhat - an eight dollar meal and we had 3 dollars, 7,300 riel and 3,500 bhat...work that one out.
After thanking the very cheery and patient border guard (he must have corrected us on our Khmer at least twelve times - we were only trying to say "Thank you") we chose the cheaper minibus, rather than the quicker ferry, to skirt around the Cardamom mountains and on to the coastal resort of Sihanoukville. Our driver happily told us that Cambodia no longer has civil war, the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, violence or guns, oh no, Cambodia now has...corruption.
Seven hours and 200km of corrugated dirt roads, with four river crossings on the most Heath-Robinson of ferries, left us thinking that perhaps the boat journey would have been better . We transferred to two motorcycle taxis (motos) at our destination town and then, as pillions, embarked on an interesting trip through the still continuing Songkhran celebrations to the Victory Beach area of town. They seem
to celebrate it different in these parts, using water bombs instead which is great fun, even while riding past at forty miles an hour one hits you on the neck.
Sihanoukville is a sprawling seaside town with the usual mix of guesthouses and girlie bars. Our first taste of Cambodia seemed, not surprisingly given their history of colonial rule, a bit Gallic with an abundance of French architecture, tourists and ex-pats and overwhelmingly, and more importantly, baguettes...everywhere.
We spent a few days in this very pleasant town passing the time on some of the many local beaches and riding to a well hidden waterfall. It seems our ability to get lost isn't country specific so our destination actually ended up being the Ream National Park and it's beautiful beaches, deserted apart from a handful of high ranking Cambodian Naval Officers who insisted on sharing their beer and food with us to celebrate the New Year.
We moved on to Kampot next, the last major settlement on the Cambodian coast before the Vietnamese border. A much smaller town, Kampot has a more friendly and local feel about it. We used it as a base and hired a dirt
Phnom Penh
Not entirely sure if these were being sold as pets or food...just down the road there's another stall with barbecued birds on skewers.bike to tour the surrounding sites, first up, Bokor Hill Station; built by the French in the 1920s in an attempt to encourage the Asian elite to visit and lose money at their exclusive casino. The setting is stunning or eerie depending on the cloud cover at the time, all of the buildings abandoned, ravaged by war and then neglected since the French pulled out in 1953. The approach is also stunning, and numbing; 32 km each way of steep, rocky, rutted road a full four hour round trip; Rachel went through the various stages of pilliondom in rapid succession from enjoyment, through pain then to to a kind of zen-like trance (the latter being the most peaceful). Gluttons for punishment, on returning to Kampot we decided to ride off to the fishing village of Kep, well worth the trip although the extra two-hours ensured we didn't walk properly for another four days.
The following day we caught the single daily bus service to the capital and settled in at a highly recommended backpackers guesthouse which, apart from losing Rachel's clothes in the laundry (not advisable), proved to be the most up-to-speed place we'd stayed in so far. We
spent a few days in Phnom Penh but didn't seem to be able to achieve a great deal save walking along the river front a few times and visiting a couple of the city's cavernous markets, still we knew we'd be back in ten days or so as we'd arranged to meet Rachel's parents there.We'd also identified a local delicacy that we could challenge Bob (Rachel's Dad - it can get a little confusing) to eat; imagine a healthy-looking boiled egg, then try and work out what your reaction would be when, after tucking in you realise it is actually a fertilised duck egg containing an embryo that you're eating, the taste is amazing...the locals assured us.
I negotiated the rental of another trail bike for a week and we hit the road, again. We'd read that the north-eastern quarter of the country was particularly off the beaten track and chose that as a good area to explore, with all our luggage and the pair of us on the bike we headed towards the Mundulkiri region and it's capital Sen Monorom. Again, our ability to under-estimate distances surprised even us and we arrived in Snoul, only a little over
half way, at the end of a very long first day. We found the first of only two guesthouses dropped the bags and went to celebrate and numb the pain in the sweet shop cum bar next door. A couple of hours were well spent trying our best to chat to the owner and his family, being offered an unidentified rodent splayed on bamboo skewers (we declined as it still had its fur) and being directed to the best restaurant/shack in town. The next day the journey began proper, we got ourselves lost pretty quickly and were eventually directed down a very narrow jungle track, if it was the "road" we had seen on the map we were in trouble; with bike-sized potholes, fallen trees and lake sized puddles our progress had slowed dramatically. We passed a local guy who appeared to have broken down and following a bizarre exchange of extra slow English/Khmer/motorcyclist sign language we established that he'd seized his engine and the track was busy enough for some local help to come by soon - he then went on to show us his home made mine-detector. The correct road made itself known after a couple of hours,
with similar obstacles and the same orange dust at least it was as wide as a normal road and within another three hours we had arrived at Sen Monorom.
The Mondulkiri province is the most sparsely populated area in Cambodia, shaping the lower half of the Eastern bulge of the country. The surrounding area is a vast windswept landscape of rolling hills apparently still hosting wildlife such as elephants, tigers and bears. The human population are predominately from the Pnong minority and still live true to their hill tribe cultures. We spent a couple of days touring around the area travelling along another killer road known as "the bastard child of the devil himself", getting the bike stuck at the top of Bou Sraa, one of Cambodia's biggest waterfalls, and visiting a couple of the hill tribe villages.
We were hoping to follow a road to the North East to visit another remote province, Ratanakiri, but couldn't get a definitive answer as to whether the road was passable (just as in the other South East Asian countries Cambodians would rather tell you anything than admitting they don't know) and were fast running out of time to meet the
Land of the hammocks
Believe it or not this is a restaurant, they don't bother with chairs in Mondulkiri out-laws in Phnom Penh, so it was back to the capital in a single 9 hour journey...ouch.
We had a spare day in Phnom Penh and were finally able to visit some of the sites. A morning visit to the killing fields was as shocking as we'd expected, a huge monument containing the skulls and bones of some of the Khmer Rouge victims stands in the centre of the excavated mass graves as a permanent reminder to the horrors of this genocide, walking around the graves you can see exposed bones and fragments of clothing of other victims.
We went on to Tuol Sleng, the S-21 prison, formerly a secondary school in the heart of Phnom Penh it was taken over by the Khmer Rouge and used as a prison and place of torture, interrogation and murder of anyone who opposed the regime, spoke out or displayed any form of intelligence. It's very difficult to explain the atmosphere of this place, some of the cells have the torture implements positioned in the same manner that they were found with photographic confirmation displaying the last victims. Other classrooms have tiny brick cells, again displayed as they were found, and
the larger open classrooms have endless photographs - a small proportion of the victims taken at their registration for the records of the Khmer Rouge. The photographs are perhaps the most harrowing exhibit as they describe well the disorientation and fear that these people must have been going through; depending on the source the numbers killed as a direct result of the regime during Cambodia's dark years are as high as three million.
After a week of admirable service and nearly 1000km the bike had to be returned, it seemed to be upset by this, snapping its clutch cable in protest and leaving me with an interesting final few kilometres through the Phnom Penh rush hour. The next day we were to meet Rachel's Parents so we did the sensible thing and sat discussing the past day in a riverside bar until the early hours. Then they arrived...and we did the sensible thing and sat discussing the past six months in a riverside bar until the early hours.
Rachel's parents' visit was a real tonic, not least because they insisted on spoiling us with proper meals and luxurious hotels, it also enabled Brenda and Rachel to discuss wedding
arrangements to such an extent that they'll never have to discuss them again...ever. In return for their generosity we decided to drag them to the remote region that we were hoping to get to the previous week, Ratanakiri in the North East (when I say "drag" those of you that know Brenda and Bob will realise that they were eager participants and are far more accomplished travellers than us).
Ratanakiri province isn't as windswept as Mondulkiri but is as dusty and still has that edge of the world feel about it, tourism is just about picking up a pace based on the lure of the vast Virachey national park. We landed in the capital of the region, Banlung, and spent a couple of days taking in the sites around the town, riding around on motos (again) and visiting the local waterfalls and the most tranquil and refreshing crater lake, Boeng Yeak Laom.
Then began our epic overland taxi journey to, ultimately, Siem Reap. In Banlung we negotiated with the driver of the most road-worthy car to take us to Stung Treng. The deal done we loaded our gear and jumped in - five minutes later we hadn't moved,
The local petrol station, Snuol
Don't be tempted by the coke and sprite bottles on sale...more often than not they contain petrol the driver was arguing with another driver's wife, the problem; our driver had jumped the queue. With the potential fare of a quartet of naive tourists this just wasn't on so we were told to swap into a car that seemed to be made up of the parts of seven others. A very hot, bumpy, dusty five hour journey led us to Stung Treng where we asked about onward possibilities. Our intention was to try and work our way overland in a general straight line to Preah Vihear, a remote and barely accessible temple complex, we were told it could be done but it would take three days and four motos (these were jungle footpaths, formerly cattle tracks, not wide enough for a 4wd), each with one of us as pillion...the time and cost decided for us and we looked for other options. The daily bus for the next town had gone, it seemed the most convenient and cost effective way was to get a taxi to Kampong Cham and then bus or taxi to Siem Reap, we arranged for one to pick us up at 6am the next morning and tossed a coin to decide who had the better
of a room with a fan but no windows (in 40° heat) and a room with a broken fan, no locks on the door but with windows.
It arrived as planned and did seem to be "the best taxi in Stung Treng", our driver didn't communicate much so we got ourselves comfortable for the five hour ride all the way to Kampong Cham. The roads in these parts are bad, real bad, after 20 minutes it became apparent that the door, window and boot seals weren't up to much, in fact there was less dust if we had all four windows open, which left us with the fakest of fake orange tans. Our first real obstacle (you have to understand that by now we'd become a little blasé about car sized potholes and fallen trees) was a detour around some bridge works. It wasn't really a detour as such, we'd arrived before they'd managed to route, plan or think about any such thing. We sat and watched the Toyota Land Cruiser ahead struggle, then fail, then struggle and eventually make it to the top of the impassable and very steep bank of loose earth, or "detour". Brenda and Rachel's
pleas of "shall we get out...?" were cut short by the screams from the engine as our driver snaked towards his challenge for the day, despite the roadworkers' attempts at flagging him down...then, with apparently the bare minimum of effort, we were at the top, five adults and four large rucksacks...in our Toyota Camry. Our applause only seemed to spur the driver on as he sped us through endless "detours" of thick mud slurries and jungle tracks until he reached his ultimate goal, he overtook the Land Cruiser.
We pulled into the first town of Kratie, after a little bit of activity on his mobile phone our driver pulled up, intimating problems with the car. Some locals helped us bump start it and we made it to the local taxi rank, more negotiations and we were told that we couldn't proceed to Kampong Cham in the same car because it was too dirty (!!?) but hey, we weren't worried as the cleaner car on offer was another Camry. You tend to get used to the Cambodian way of life, endless negotiations, backhanders, mis-information but always carried out with a smile.
We waved goodbye to Colin McCrae and said
hello to a new taxi (that was very soon just as unclean), to another eight hours, to timely mobile phone calls by the drivers, to a couple of other bizarre excuses, to two more Camrys and finally to Siem Reap. Our journey in a single taxi had turned into a well coordinated journey by four taxis, it's the way they do it here, but they could have told us beforehand.
Siem Reap has become a bit of a boom town in recent years, geographically important due to its proximity to Angkor Wat it's attracted big investment with luxury hotels opening almost on a monthly basis. On top of this there are countless quality restaurants and bars, the French legacy showing in the quality of food as well as the architecture. Brenda and Bob again treated us to far more luxurious accommodation than we'd been used to and we all enjoyed relaxing a little and sampling as much of the food as possible.
We had to do it, the main reason anybody stays in Siem Reap is to visit the temples so we got up early, hired a couple of rickshaws and embarked on a whole day of Angkor
Watting. You probably wouldn't realise unless you had visited it already, at least I didn't, but Angkor Wat is a single temple complex in the Angkor area, there are dozens of others spread over a huge area. It is special though, and one of the most impressive along with the Bayon and Ta Prohm temples, but all in all though I think our favourite was the rambling Preah Khan. It's difficult to explain the scale and impact that these structures have, photographs don't do them sufficient justice either - they just have to be seen first hand. A full day around the area can be bit tiring though, our tour of around ten of the more accessible and major ruins had left Bob and I whining from about two o'clock onwards, the bars of Siem Reap beckoned.
The following day we bid a reluctant farewell to Brenda and Bob, after a great two weeks of travel, adventure and relaxation, in equal measures, it was time to get used to being back on our own and back to budgeting. We spent a further day touring some of the smaller temples of Angkor, which were just as impressive if only for
the distinct lack of other visitors, and then boarded a bus direct to Bangkok - just for that final taste of what good old fashioned Cambodian road engineering has to offer.
Before we left the UK Cambodia was on our list of possibles, if we made it there we knew we had to see the Angkor temples and were prepared to leave it at that. We're so glad we didn't as it turned out to be one of our favourites so far, Angkor Wat is it's obvious trump card and the real soul of the nation but there is so much more besides.
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