Cambodia

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We walked across the Thailand - Cambodia border into a town called Poipet. Immediately on the Cambodian side hundreds of people were running around in casino uniforms. Gambling is illegal in Thailand so, there are 4 or 5 casino's here for them. Apparently, there's no ATM in Poipet but the casino's have an arrangment with border officials where unlucky gamblers can be escorted, with no immigration requirements, to a cashpoint on the Thai side (for a small fee) to draw more money out & then cross back! We bumped into an American who'd been on our bus who had just successfully bribed an official to avoid the queue back into Thailand. A few hundred yards on we negotiated a price for the 2 hour taxi journey to Siem Reap. Just as our driver had closed the boot and was about to get into the car, a policeman came over and started having a go at him. Apparently, he wasn't supposed to pick up there as there was an official taxi stand further on. All was OK thought once the driver palmed him a few notes.

All this blatant corruption within minutes of our arrival bode well for us as countries this bent are always the best!

The road from Poipet is a boneshaker even in a decent car like we were in (god help those who were on the Scam bus). The reason for this is the airline that runs a service from Bankok to Siem Reap bribes government ministers to make sure a decent road is never built.
As we approached Siem Reap the taxi driver got on his phone and arranged for a Tuk Tuk driver to pick us up on the edge of town as that was as far as he went. The main, if not only, reason people visit Siem Reap is to visit the Temples at Angkor, the main one, Angkor Wat being considered the 8th Wonder of the World. Rather than us pay him to our guesthouse he wanted to take us for nothing but charge us $15 (about £7.50) to take us round the temples all day the following day. Tired, sweaty, still with my Thailand head on and, thinking we were probably being stitched up, I insisted he just take us where we wanted to go and was welcome to come and find us tomorrow once we'd had a chance to look around. As it happened it was a good deal but we never saw the poor bloke again (damn Thai's). Adding to my guilt he'd also taken us to a guesthouse much better and cheaper than the one we'd originally asked him to take us to!

We headed straight out just as it started to pour down so dived into a Cambodian Restaurant. The food here is quite similar to Thai but less spicy. The portions are way bigger than in Thailand aswell, so much so we got nowhere near finishing a full meal each and always just shared something from thereon in.

Most of the bars in SR are located on "Pub Street".
As tacky as it sounds it isn't at all and there are loads of bars and restaurants which are lively enough but not too lively. Best of all, the music is decent. One bar, called Angkor What?, plays nothing but indie all night which, after the shocking drivel we had to listen to on Khao San Rd, was very welcome. The Temple plays reasonable stuff downstairs and has traditional Khmer Apsara dancing upstairs. The price of beer ranges from $0.75 (40p) to a huge$1.50 for about 400ml of local draft Angkor (which is nice). All these places serve food aswell, most dishes costing around $3 (£1.50).

The national dish is a mild coconut curry called Amok which comes with beef, chicken, pork, veg or fish. Fish was best - usually catfish, which comes boneless, from the nearby Tonle Sap lake. It comes served either in a bowl fashioned from banana leaves or half a coconut shell.

Next to Pub St is Pub St Alley which has a similar number of bars & restaurants but a bit quieter and more intimate. A place on here is owned by the same people as The Temple and did the nicest Fish Amok. If that wasn't enough, we went there for lunch one day and it was happy hour where the Amok came with rice and a beer for $3 (the same price it was everywhere anyway so the beer was effectively free). My second beer cost $0.75 and was buy one, get one free so a meal and 3 beers cost $3.75, less than £2! Or 3 beers for 40p.

Another local speciality is Cambodian Barbecue where you cook the meat at your table. Snake, Crocodile & Frog are the 3 most common options. We didn't bother.

If you're only after a ligh bite there are loads of street side stalls selling fried crickets and other assorted insects.

Because Cambodia is such a poor country lots of kids beg and sell stuff on the streets (mainly sell stuff). Most manage to be quite persistent without being rude, speak perfect English. Nearly all of them ask where you're from and then tell you the capital city, the current prime minister & about 10 before him & the population. After a few days of this we found throwing countries like Mozambique at them usually had them stumped and they'd leave us alone.

There are also a lot of adults who've lost limbs from landmines both begging and selling things like books and postcards.

On our third day we finally went the temples. We hired mountain bikes for $5 each and set off on the 7km to Angkor Wat. Tickets for the temples are available for 1 day, 3 days and 7 days at $20, $40 & $60 respectively. We'd been told one day wasn't enough so went for the 3 day pass.

Whereas Rachael is obsessed with animals, especially monkeys, I'm more into history so I was looking forward to a refreshing change for the next few days. About a mile before Angkor Wat a few people had stopped by the side of the road and were looking at something. Because I could see Angkor Wat in the distance I didn't pay much attention & carried on until I heard Rachael (lagging behind as usual) shouting me to stop and waving me back to where all the people had gathered. I turned round to see what all the fuss was about and what was there by the side of the road? Loads of f*****g monkeys! Unbelievable.

A lot of these "must see" sights around the world often leave you underwhelmed but, Angkor Wat was just as impressive as they say it is.

After we finished walking round Angkor Wat we went back to our bikes which we'd locked together in a big car park. One of the tyres on Rachaels was flat. I rode around for a while on my bike to try and find any other cyclist with a pump but to no avail. Eventually a young girl came over and took us across the car park to a group of blokes who offered a tyre pumping service at 20p a tyre. Far be it from us to cast aspersions but, they seemed very busy and the tyre never did go back down again. Hmm?

The next day we took a tuk tuk for $10 to look round all the other main temples.
Today it was raining quite heavily so as we arrived at the "Jungle Temple" where Tomb Raider was filmed I put on my waterproof jacket.

As Rachael lost hers before we went to S America she had brought a plastic poncho someone in work had given her that was still unopened. She undid the wrapper and as she was putting it on we noticed there was something printed on it. What were these words you ask, with which, emblazoned across her front and back, Rachael would spend the day exploring the ruins of Asia's biggest tourist attraction, the 8th Wonder of the World, the 1000 year old centre of the once great Khmer Empire??




















"Visit Blackpool"

Yes, "Visit Blackpool!". Thankfully, nobody enquired as to where Blackpool was and why they should visit it so we didn't have to explain the virtues of the Winter Gardens, the Big One or Kiss Me Quick Hats.

The next day the same driver took us to the temple farthest. By now we were getting a bit "templed out" and they were all starting to look the same but we also stopped at a Land Mine Museum & a shooting range.

The land Mine Museum is run by an ex-Khmer Rouge child soldier who spent most of his teenage years planting mines and, since then, the rest of his life de-activating them. The centre also acts as a school and home for amputee children who were the victims of land mines. Seeing them all playing with huge smiles on their faces and not a care in the world really puts into perspective the so called "problems" we have from day to day.

On the subject of the Khmer Rouge, after about 3 days we saw an old man and realised that he was the first old person we'd seen & we didn't see many more after that. Suppose it stands to reason when a third of the population was killed only 30 years ago. 40% of Cambodia's population is now under the age of 15, figures not even matched by most African countries.

Two days later after a day of doing absolutely nothing, our driver picked us up again and we travelled along the Siem Reap river past rice fields & through villages to visit a floating village and go for a boat ride on Tonle Sap. This is a lake that's fed by the Mekong River, one of the worlds largest. In the course of each year it goes from covering 2500km sq to & 2m deep in the dry season to covering 13000km sq and 10m deep in the wet season. As a result the floating villages move all the time and people build temporary houses for part of the year to tend to the rice fields then move as the wet season approaches. Some people just put their house on the back of a truck (see pic).

Siem Reap is the best place we've been so far in Asia, so much so that we came for three days and stayed a week. Unfortunately, we had to move on so left by bus for the capital, Phnom Penh.

We stayed just 2 nights in Phnom Penh. By now all big towns and cities were starting to look like carbon copies of each other albeit with slightly different food. The main difference here was there were a number of restaurants that specialized in "Happy Pizza".

On our only full day, I visited the Killing Fields and S21, the former Khmer Rouge interrogation & death centre. As you can imagine, both were a bundle of laughs. Rachael got out of going by pretending to be ill.

The Killing Fields has a kind of mausoleum where 8000 skulls of people who died there are displayed. As you walk around the grounds there are what apear to be grass covered craters everywhere. These were mass graves which, as the bodies swelled with gases after death, turned into mounds but afterwards sunk as the gases escaped. If that was bad, S21/Tuol Sleng Prison was even worse. You can go into the rooms/cells where the metal bedframes that prisoners slept on are still there along with a picture on the wall of a former occupant lying dead, usually bound, on that very bed. Much of the rest is now a museum with loads of info about what happened there. The worst part for me though was a display of hundreds of mugshot photographs of the inmates that the Khmer Rouge took. One of a young kid of about 5 years old was especially shocking. People, men, women & children were detained & killed here (and during the KR's reign in general) on the most spurious grounds - if you were deemed to be intelligent, if you were had the slightest link to anyone who fought against the KR during the civil war & even if you wore glasses. Aswell as there being very few old people in Cambodia, no-one seems to wear glasses either.

From the fun, fun, fun of Phnom Penh's genocide related tourist attractions we next headed to Sihanoukville and the beach.

Again we spent a week here. Nice beach, cheap food & beer (as ever) and plenty of bars and restaurants both on the Beach Road and the beach itself. Along the beach on a night it is happy hour everywhere with beer as little as $0.50 and spirits with mixer for $1 and most places also do a seafood barbecue for about $3 which is more than enough for two.

Another Cambodian speciality is "Prahoc". It's described as an acquired taste and no-one is quite able to explain exactly what it is but I ordered it anyway. It tasted as bad as it smelt.

On the beach itself every bar has beds outside with big thick cushioning on them which are free as long as you buy food/drink there. Loads of kids, mainly girls, are selling stuff on there and are usually really polite and often quite funny. Pretty much everyday Rachael would, at some point, be surrounded by a load of girls who'd sit themsleves down on the edges of her bed and start chatting away.

For the whole week we pretty much did absolutely nothing apart from on our last night where I went to a poker night an Australian who owns the Cool Banana bar had told me about. About 30 people played in a $5 tournament after which 9 of us had a cash game. After a few hours of this the Spain v Russia Euro semi final was about to kick off but the TV in the room we were playing in was on the blink. I was about £60 up and about to leave when it started raining heavily. By the time it stopped it was almost half time and I was only £20 up and had missed half the match. I jumped on the back of a motorbike taxi back to the hotel and, to the drivers amusement, could shortly thereafter be heard screaming "slow down" as he flew around a roundabout in the wet conditions at about 50mph.

From here we headed back to Phnom Penh by bus where we changed to a second bus to take us to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam.

Cambodian people are possibly the nicest, happiest we have ever met, despite all they have been through and are going through. So far it's the only place in S E Asia that has come anywhere near to being as good as South America.
We're sad to leave and hope to go back there on holiday at some time in the future. Hopefully Vietnam will be as good.

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Photos

Jungle Temple
But Blackpool's better