Cambodia

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Cambodia was the next stop on my journey. I took a speedboat from Chau Doc, Vietnam, to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. The ride was comfortable and we only stopped twice, once at the Vietnamese border point and once at the Cambodian. Neither took especially long. Phnom Penh is right along the river and I had picked a hostel not far from the dock so I was able to bypass the crowd of tuktuk drivers waiting for us. I didn't have to walk especially far, but it was in the middle of the hottest part of the day when we arrived. Phnom Pehn felt very much like the Vietnamese cities I had been to. The archictecture is very similar, in the French Colonial style. While there were plenty of motorbikes, there were more cars than I saw in Vietnam. I was surprised, especially since many of them were lexus SUVs and other new looking cars. It was still easy to get around the city walking though. There are not too many sights in Phnom Penh, but more than Hanoi or Saigon it seemed. Phnom Penh has a variety of markets, temples, the royal palace, and a nice riverside walk, all not far from my hostel. A bit farther out is the Killing Fields and a famous prison, which I did not go to. My stay in Phnom Penh was a short one, only two days (really a day and a half). I mostly walked around on my two days there, checking out the nearby markets and neighborhoods. I visited a few temples and the royal palace as well. Luckily all of these sights were withing walking distance. At one point I tried to find one of the markets, the Russian Market, which has lots of souvenirs and stuff, but I didn't walk far enough (it was a pretty far walk). Cambodians have a local currency, the Riel (4000 riel to a dollar), but they use the US dollar everywhere. You will collect a stack of Riels, even if you never exchange money since you will get them back as change. Even the ATMs dispense dollars, at least the ones I've used. The riverside seemed to house most of the restaurants. There were very few Khmer restaurants, most served western cuisine with a couple Khmer dishes. In the evening, near the riverside, a night market starts up. It is not especially large, a couple of lines of stalls, and most of the vendors sell the same selection of clothes and t-shirts. A few had the usual tourist knick-knacks. Behind the vendors was a food section where you could get a variety of cheap eats. Mostly I had fresh spring rolls (1500 riel) and sugarcane juice (1000 riel). The riverside walk is a popular place to be in the evening. There were groups of people just kicking around a rattan ball inviting everyone to join. Despite the seeming lack of Khmer restaurants, I was able to try a few Khmer dishes at some of the places along the riverside. One of my favorites was amok, a type of curry. Its hard to go wrong with curry.



After two nights, I booked a bus to Siem Reap, the city right next to the Angkor park. The bus was comfortable enough, one of those huge semi-luxury type deals, but the road for the first hour outside of Phnom Penh was pretty rough. Parts were only half paved and not smooth at all, so it was rather a bumpy ride. Eventually it smoothed out. For several hours all I could see around me was flooded fields, from the same weather that caused the flooding in Thailand. The road was raised several meters above the fields, as were most of the houses, so the road was dry. The bus was supposed to take about 6 hours, but we were delayed at least an hour after the bus apparently hit a motorcyclist and we had to stop for the police to do their thing. We finally made it to Siem Reap in the late afternoon, at which point I had missed my free pickup from the hostel and had to get a tuktuk driver to take me there. It wasn't expensive, but he didn't know where my hostel was and I didn't have directions since I was expecting to be picked up. After consulting with some of his fellow drivers and a smartphone, we made it there. I stayed in the Angkor Wonder hostel, a few minutes walk from the pub street and night and day markets. Siem Reap is a fairly small town, with most of the tourist markets and restaurants concentrated in a central area. The room was nice enough - it had two beds (no singles were available), fan, cable tv and a bathroom. Nothing special, but at $6 a night, perfectly workable. The were a variety of restaruants/bars on the pub street and surrounding area. Pub street food was good, but a bit more expensive than the other restaurants. You could get local and western food for about $4-5 a plate, compared to $2-3 for pretty much the same food in the smaller "local" restaurants the next street over or at the outside street restaurants at the end of the street. The best part of pub street, however, was the happy hours, which usually lasted from opening until midnight. You could get a glass of draft beer (Angkor or Anchor, I wasn't quite sure) for $0.50 or cocktails for less than $2.



The main attraction to Siem Reap, is not the pub street or cheap beer, amazingly, but the Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and dozens of other thousand year old temples. I arranged, through my hostel, a tuktuk driver to take me around to the different sights for three days. For a private driver, it cost me about $60 for the three days. I had to buy a pass to get into the temples as well, which was $20 for a one day pass or $40 for a 3 day pass. It was very much worth the expense. I could try to describe the temples, but I don't think I could even come close to doing it justice, so I will give a brief overview of a few of the major ones and at some point upload some of the 1000+ photos I took and let them do most of the work.



My first day consisted of getting up sometime around 4:30 to get to Angkor Wat and see the sunrise before heading off on the "little circuit" tour, which visited the Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Bayon, Ta Phrom and a few others. We arrived at Angkor Wat sometime around 5:30, and there were already crowds of people walking through the darkness through the outer gates and along the causeway to get to the pool in order to see the sunrise. I had brought along my lightweight tripod (very worthwhile to have a lightweight tripod for the temples during the day as well, since they can be very dark inside) and found a spot to set up. Not much room, but enough to for my camera to be just above the people sitting in front of me. After staking my spot, it was still about half an hour until the sun was up. The sky gradually got brighter and I took a variety of photos until the sun turned the few clouds behind the temple into a beautiful red. Once the sun was up, I packed up and moved into the temple itself. Angkor Wat is one of the largest of the temples in the area, if not the largest. I spent about an hour walking throughout the halls and chambers of the temple. The temple has a rectangular shape with an outer hall, inner hall, and central tower. Between the inner and outer halls, there is an open grassy area with a few ruined buidings. The outer hall houses eight 100+ foot bas reliefs that run unbroken along the hall between the entrances. They are incredibly detailed and tell stories from the Ramayana and others. The halls are half open, with the reliefs on the inner wall, with the outer open. Inside, the next level up is the inner hall. This hall is fairly plain, a simple rectangular hall surrounding the central courtyard and main towers. A few broken buddha statues sit along the hall, placed there many years after the original construction when buddhism became dominant in the area. The central tower is a very steep, tall stone structure. It has a square base and 5 pinnacle towers. Since I was there very early, the topmost parts weren't open yet, but I would be back again in a couple days to explore it more. The central tower was set in the back of the rectangular footprint of the Wat. The front had a variety of courtyards and halls. There were four large, dry pools which according to a tour guide for another group, were filled with purified water from some place far away. Of course, none of the structures were plain, they were all covered with relief carvings of apsaras (celestial dancers), monsters, naga and an endless variety of different patterns. After about an hour there, I walked out back towards the tuktuk parking lot. On the way out, I ran across a bunch of monkeys roaming around the grass. I was also able to get a good look at where I had come from, since when I arrived it was pre-dawn and dark. Between the main temple complex and the main gate was a long causeway flanked by a small building on each side, about halfway between. On either side of the causeway right in front of the temple was a pair of pools, around which we had all crowded to see the sunrise. The causeway had a variety of steps off of it at regular intervals. At each entrance up, there was a pair of naga, with their snake bodies lining the whole causeway as a type of balustrade (with plenty of signs telling you not to sit on them!). The main entrance to the grounds was another building, impressive in its own right too. There were three entrances and a long hall on either side. Between the street and this building was another causeway, over a wide moat which encircled the Angkor Wat area. Just outside was the parking lot.



After finding the tuktuk (no easy task), or rather the driver finding me, we went to the next stop, Bayon in the Angkor Thom complex. Bayon is another temple famous for the dozens of 4-faced towers in the complex. Like the Angkor Wat, Bayon is covered in bas reliefs and carvings of all kinds - apsara, demons, various patterns, etc. Bayon is smaller than Angkor Wat, perhaps the size of the inner hall. Again it has many towers, each with 4 faces carved, one on each side. There is a maze of narrow, dark halls that lead fairly deep into the structure. Also, like Angkor Wat, there is a multitude of bas reliefs around Bayon. A short walk from Bayon is Baphuon, another large temple. There is a long, raised causeway that leads from the terrace in front back to the temple over a swampy area. Baphuon is built in a 3-tiered pyramid shape. Even though it has been largely reconstructed, it is not nearly in as good of condition as its neighbor Bayon or Angkor Wat. Nearby is the elephant terrace and the terrace of the leper king. The elephant terrace is a long platform about 10 feet high with a few staircases up at the ends. The entire face of the terrace is covered with carvings of elephants at the ends and demons in the middle. The terrace of the leper king is a smaller section covered with hundreds of carvings of naga and soldiers, all about 1-2 feet high, with maybe 8-10 layers. Angkor Thom is a large walled city, one of the ancient capitals, but only a few of the structures remain including the Bayon and Baphuon temples and a few smaller structures scattered around.



From Angkor Thom, we headed east to Ta Keo, a small temple with only a few buildings. Behind the main building was a guy selling temple rubbings (although if they are rubbings from the actual temple or from replicas made to preserve the carvings I don't know). I bought a couple of apsara dancer rubbings from him. After Ta Keo, we went to Ta Phrom. Ta Phrom is the famous temple that has not been heavily restored, with trees growing on the temple walls. I spent a good amount of time wandering around. There was some restoration work going on, but as I understand it has not been going on for very long. This temple was one of my favorites, simply because it was still mostly in its original unrestored state and it was fun to wander through and climb over some of the piles of stones. This was the last temple on the little circuit we visited.



The next day we went to some of the farther out sights. We started at Kbal Spean, about an hour and a half past the Angkor Way. Kbal Spean is not a temple complex, but a stream about a 1.5km hike up a hill. The stream is the site of the 1000 linguas, a series of circular carvings on the stream floor. There were a few other carvings on the rocks around as well. Coming back, we stopped at Banteay Srey, another of my favorite temples. Since this one was also farther out, there were not too many other visitors. This temple is a bit different, mainly for the material used, a redder stone. This temple has some of the more incredible carvings of all of the temples in the Angkor area. Banteay Srey is a small temple, but in good condition and covered in beautiful carved images. After I wandered for over an hour, we headed back to town. Since we went farther today, we didn't see as much, but the Banteay Srey was worth it.



The third day, we did the big circuit tour. This tour includes more temples around Angkor Thom, a little bit farther apart than the small circuit (but not much). We started at Preah Khan, another temple in a bit of disrepair. This was another one that was fun to wander around a bit. From there we stopped at Ta Som and then another temple, a bit farther out. Next was East Mebon and then Pre Rup. East Mebon resembles Angkor Wat somewhat with its 5 towers. It is also known for its large elephant statues at the corners of each layer. After this, I wanted to go back to the Angkor Wat to wander around a bit more. The plan was to go to Phnom Bakeng for the sunset, but it was still much too early, so I wanted to see some more of Angkor Wat. I spent a good bit of time wandering around. I was also able to climb to the top, where I couldn't go before. There was a great view from up top, although it was a very steep climb to get there. The top has 4 courtyards surrounded by halls and viewpoints. It is quite beautiful. After Angkor Wat, I got a quick bite to eat and we went to Phnom Bakeng. Phnom Bakeng was at the top of a hill, but the temple itself wasn't especially exciting. The sunset was nonexistant too, it just got dark. Oh well.



From Siem Reap, I had considered going to Battambang, another city a bit farther west, about halfway to Thailand and a bit south, but I decided not to and booked a bus to Bangkok instead. The first half was on a large bus that took us to the border, where we had to walk to the border points and walk across the border to where our transport to Bangkok was waiting. The exit point on the Cambodian side took forever and was outside in the heat. The line took forever, even though they just stamped our passport and took fingerprints for some reason. Then there was a walk to the Thai side, where at least they had an airconditioned building. The line took a while, but again was very easy, all I had to do was fill out the entry card to get the 15 day stamp. After getting the stamp, I walked out to find the guide who was with us on the bus and he took us to a restaurant where we waited to load into a bunch of minibuses. The minibuses were not very comfortable and it was a long drive. It gave me a headache by the time we got to Bangkok that lasted for a while. The traffic once we neared the city was pretty awful too. Overall it was over 12 hours of travel and waiting. I had originally scheduled a bus that left at noon, but there was a problem with it and luckily I got on the earlier bus at 8:30. By the time we arrived it was after 9:00, so I am glad I didn't take any of the later buses. The minibus arrived near Khao San road, and after a bit of wandering, I was able to find my hostel, take some painkillers for the headache and crash for the night. I didn't know this, but apparently all the ATM's in Thailand charge a ridiculous 150baht fee ($5). I had wandered around to pretty much every ATM in the area looking for one that didn't before giving up and just accepting it.



Today I am in Chiang Rai, in the far north of Thailand. I will be here another night or two and then I will head to Laos. Obviously I am a bit behind on the blog, but I will try to get up to date once I am in Luang Prabang with nothing to do. I will have a week and a half or so in Laos, then the rest of the time will be spent in the south of Thailand before my flight. Perhaps I will be able to upload some more photos in Laos, but I am not sure. Maybe I will just wait until I get home in a month or so to finish up with all of them.

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