Cambodia

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Cambodia. I only spent a week here which isn't nearly long enough to get to know a country. Especially one with as complex a history as Cambodia.


I spent the first few days in Phnom Penh, learning about the recent history of the country. Following the Vietnam-American war, in which Cambodia lost many people to American carpet bombing of the country, the Khmer Rouge took control of the country with an attempt to create a Maoist state. To achieve this they tried to eliminate threats to this ideology, which included eliminating people of religion, politics or intellectuals. Millions were held prisoner in the S-21 security prison and then later killed and dumped into mass graves at the Killing Fields, south of the capital. I visited both these places and it was quite haunting to learn what had happened less here than 30 years ago. I didn’t go to a shooting range after visiting the Killing Fields, as many tourists seem to do. It just didn’t seem right to me.


Nowadays Cambodia is a happier place, with a temperament similar to Thailand. Although not as advanced as Thailand, they welcome tourism and the economy does seem to be developing. I stayed a few days by a lake in the capital Phnom Penh (where most travellers seem to spend all day in their guesthouses watching American DVDs), before taking a bus across the country to Siam Reap to visit the Temples of Angkor.


The second part of my stay in Cambodia would be focused on Cambodia’s much earlier history from a thousand years ago, when the Khmers ruled South East Asia. As leaders of this part of the world, they created a massive complex of temples, called Angkor. The largest of these temples, Angkor Wat, is the largest temple in the world and is an impressive sight to behold.


I decided to get a 3 day pass to explore the place properly. For the first day I hired a tuk-tuk driver to take me round. We visited all the temples on the large circuit, which included the majestic Bayon temple with over 200 stone heads and Angkor Thom, a collection of smaller temples to the north of Bayon. Then we looped round past Prah Kahn and Neak Paan to Ta Som and East Mebon, each temple different in its style and meaning, some Hindu, some Buddhist, some from the 9th century, some 10th, some 11th, but each one impressive in its own way. The temples are all well preserved and some are restored, though not all the restoration work is done well. It is how I imagined Hampi to be, but Hampi being India was massively neglected. Angkor in contrast, is well looked after. I finished the first day at Angkor Wat, and climbed the steep steps to the top just before it rained. To be caught in a storm at dusk at Angkor Wat was a nice moment, and it reminded me of the storm at the tiger reserve in India in May.


The second day I went by bicycle to see sunrise at Angkor Wat and visited the temples of the smaller circuit. The sunrise wasn't too impressive, it sort of just came light. Nowhere near as amazing as those sunrises I saw in Nepal. The temples of the small circuit include Ta Phrom, the "Tomb" from "Tomb Raider" (I can add that to my collection of film locations I have seen such as the "Beach" from "The Beach" and various James Bond locations). Ta Phrom is different from most of the temples as it is not restored and has trees growing from it and looks quite crazy!


On the third day I took a tuk-tuk out to see the most beautiful of all the temples, Banteay Srei, an hour away from Angkor Wat.


And then it was time to leave Cambodia already. I took a bus to the border and then switched buses and continued on to Bangkok. The road from Siam Reap to the border is the worst road ever. This is surprising when the road from Phnom Penh to Siam Reap is quite good. But then isn’t surprising at all when you learn that only one rather high class airline flies from Bangkok to Siam Reap and is keen to keep all the richer visitors to Angkor Wat flying in rather than getting there by road. Oh well, my bus only cost $10 and the journey to Bangkok only took 14 hours…

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Comments

[rupert]

the road to the border..
Hi Paul, yeah i remember the road to the cambodian border from Siem Reap as well.. It is really dodgy! On that journey i was speaking to a swiss bloke who'd been living in Cambodia for the last 5 or so years. He told me that the owner of Bangkok Airlines actually paid the cambodian government $10 million in return for a promise that they would not repair that road for the next 6 years or something like that... So, maybe in a few years the road will be ok!