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Published: November 7th 2007
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Here is the next installment coming right up....
We left Laos and got an overnight train back to Bangkok, on arriving we decided that we didnt want to spend any time there so headed straight on a bus to the Thailand/Cambodia border in Aranya Prathet/Poipet.
At the border we encountered the notoriously corrupt immigration officals, as we were getting our visa there we had the 20 USD payment ready (there is also a big sign on the wall saying 20USD) so the guy tries to charge us 1000 thai baht (30 odd USD) then when we discuss it, he says that the sign is for the buy in Bangkok price here the price is higher - we have to pay his price.. we bargain him down to 20USD and 50 thai baht each (less than a pound - but its the principle!!) the extra money goes straight into his pocket!!
Anyway arrived in Poipet (Cambodian border town), pretty rubbish place really, plenty of people trying to con you for transport to Siem Reap, we negotiated a taxi and shared with a Hungarian couple and off we went.
Now the road from Poipet to Siem Reap gets plenty of
mention in travel guides as a pretty crappy road and yeah it is, holes everywhere and people drive wherever to avoid the craters.. more fun at night when half the tractors and carts and stuff dont have lights!! It wasnt too bad in a taxi, pretty bumpy but tolerable, probably a lot worse in a bus. There is a rumour that an airline is paying a political party to stop any improvment to the road to keep people flying......
Arrived in Siem Reap, which has a lot of tourist services, guess the presence of the most famous temple set up in the world might have something to do with that?!
Siem Reap is the town nearest the remains of the temples of Angkor which was the capital of the ancient Khmer empire, between the 9th and 13th centuries the empire stretched from Burma to Vietnam. There are hundreds of temples surviving in some form or another today, the largest being Angkor Wat which was the largest religious building in the world.
So the next day we were up before dawn to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat, unfortunately there was no spectacular sunrise, just dark then light...
still was cool to be there to see it anyway. We spent the rest of the day exploring Angkor Wat and neighbouring temples. Angkor Wat is the most spectacular, the amount of work in building it and doing all the elaborate carving must have been immense. We also visited Angkor Thom which is a whole fortified city with temples and terraces etc set inside the wall. One of the most interesting things too see was Ta Phrom which was a 12th century Mahayana Buddhist temple, which has now been overrun by the jungle, and now has trees growing out of and all over the temple, it was used as a set for the film Tomb Raider.
At the temple sites there are lots of kids trying to sell water snacks and souvenirs etc. most things cost one dollar so the cry of ‘one doollar’ is present all the time. The kids have also learnt the capital cities of most of the worlds countries and when you say where your from they tell you the capital city! Quite impressive so we tested them out and they did well, “Iceland”, and without hesitation “Reykiavik”. We had some fun bartering with them
and bought some books and sounvenirs. The day was rounded off with some excellent Khmer food in a resturant in town, really, really nice food, never really here much about cambodian food but on this evidence its very good.
As we were on quite a tight time schedule, we only spent the one day in Siem Reap and so headed down a nice paved road to the capital city of Phnom Penh. The city is pretty crazy with motorbikes all over the place, crossing the road was interesting but apparently good practice for the roads in Vietnam to come.
We stayed at a guest house on the banks of a lake Boeng Kak which was a nice place to chill out. Some of the main things to do in Phnom Penh are very much things that you have to see to understand what the Cambodian people have been through in their recent history but not the usual enjoyable tourist sights.
First off is the museum on the site of the S21 prison the main detention and torture centre of Pol Pots Khmer Rouge regime. The building used to be a high school until taken over by the Khmer
Rouge, the place has been pretty much left as it was found, when the Khmer Rouge were overthrown and is now a museum, with the mug shots of all the prisoners displayed. The numbers of people, of all ages that were sent to this place and the sheer brutality of their treatment and the treatment of all the cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge is simply staggering. One of those places that needs to be visited to understand but not easy to do so. On the outskirts of the city are the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, this was the site were the prisoners from S21 where bought for execution (virtually none of the prisoners made it out of S21 alive). Many of the mass graves are yet to be excavated and around the ones that have been, bits of human bone and clothing can be seen poking out of the ground, so a very macabre and sobering experience.
Spent the rest of our time in Phnom Penh seeing some of the other sights such as the Royal Palace, guarded by soldiers with guns with no magazines attached, although the police around and about had their guns and we
werent gonna test out our suspicions, just have a chuckle at the daft situation. Having got a flavour of Phnom Penh it was time to head off down the Mekong River into Vietnam, we would have liked to have spent longer here and in Cambodia as a whole but unfortunately time was against us so we had to keep moving.
The journey to Vietnam involved a bus ride of an hour or so to the river, before boarding a small launch to head down the Mekong River into Nam, stopping at the Cambodia immigration post to get stamped out, then back on the boat in no mans water to got to the Veitnamese immigration post to enter the country, had to pay to get a medical clearance stamp in our passports, not demanding just complete a form “are you ill?” “no” ok pay up and welcome to Vietnam.
We swapped boats and headed down some smaller tribuatory sections of the river to see some of the local lifestyle up close, our very friendly local guide/chaperone had plenty of information. Saw the locals fishing with their nets etc, the waterbuffalo cooling off and the kids washing and swimming in the
river, all the kids wave as you go past which is all good fun.
Arrived in Chau Doc, from there we took a minibus to Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as it used to be known). This turned out to be quite a hair raising ride, firstly the drivers in Vietnam in particular use their horn a lot, I mean a lot. There is plenty of horn use in Cambodia and stuff but here was by far the worse, they seem to sound the horn everytime they see another vehicle at times!!! Occasionally it is actually justified, most of the time its everytime they overtake or approach another vehicle. Secondly it turns out our driver was having trouble staying awake….. I was asleep so didn’t realise this till Owen told me about it later!! He wasn’t happy.
So arrived in Ho Chi Minh City late at night, the hotel we had booked had closed up, so a helpful local took us through a maze of backstreets asking all the hotels and guest houses if they had any vacancies, eventually found a nice hotel and crashed out.
So that’s were I will leave this, for now.
Climbing at Angkor Wat
Steps were a bit steep in places!!!
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