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Published: January 16th 2010
Okay, don't get confused: we are posting a blog about Cambodia but are allready some time in India now. We just couldn't find internet in India untill now.
While we are posting this blog the teller reads “ 165 days on the road”. Pffew, it really doesn't seem that long! 154 days, mostly in the tropics, without any incident? Something was bound to happen sooner or later. And yes, Raf got dengue (or whatever it was) near the end of our stay in Laos and was running a high fever on Christmas day. Yes yes, and a Merry Fever to you too, thank you very much! We immediately went to the hospital the day after because the fever didn't go down. In the hospital they were thinking in the lines of malaria, dengue or lyme and even now it is still not clear what it was. After a few bloodtests, the hospital however soon concluded: dengue!
Having dengue is not really a welcoming Christmas present. In fact it can be quite dangerous in some cases. You get it from mosquito bites and there is no existing medicine or treatment for it. You just have to wait untill your body
gets the disease under control. It normally takes about 8 days of high fever and then there is a period of recovery for one to two weeks. Not so good of a news because we have a tight travel schedule and we would have had to drop our visit to India if Raf would have been indeed sick for three weeks. But he was very lucky: after only three days of high fever, the fever stopped. Still tired and with soare muscles and knees, we were able to continue our trip to Cambodia. Because Raf recovered so quickly the Belgian VAB doctors said we have to keep in mind that it still can be malaria or perhaps the (swine)flu, regardless the bloodtests in Laos (not very reliable apparently??). Anyway, if it was malaria or lyme, Raf got antibiotics for it.
Our plane was booked so we were lucky we could continue our trip....
We even were able to visit Angkor Wat on the second day after the fever ended, although we had to take it very slow and had to rent an airconditioned taxi (it's sooooo hot there!). By New Year Raf was again recovered completely and we could
welcome 2010 with our dancing shoes on! Jipiejajee!
The highlight of our visit to Cambodia was off course...Angkor Wat! We had planned to stay here three or four days to visit different temples, but shortened it to two days because of the dengue. There are so many temples around Angkor Wat that you could easily spend a week here. But in two days (and even with our slow tempo) you can definitely see all the highlights, plus some extras. The highlights you must visit are: Angkor Wat itself, Bayon and Angkor Thom and also Ta Prohm; a temple overgrown with jungle trees. Apparantly Thumb Raider and Indiana Jones were filmed in Ta Prohm, but Miss Croft and Mister Jones weren't home when we visited (haha, ...not). We added a visit to a faraway temple, also in the jungle, called “Beng Mealea”. Also very nice because fewer tourists go there and here you can still crawl over and through the ancient ruins yourself. Indeed, in this temple you can play Indiana Jones or Lara Croft yourself!
We were planning to visit the countryside as well and take a boat trip over the Tonlé Sap (a big lake) to Phnom
Penh, but again; because of the dengue (and because it was too hot) we cancelled this and just took an airco bus straight to the capital city. We also had to arrange our visa for India, so we could use some extra time in Phnom Penh, just to be sure we could get our visa back in time. Aaaaaaaaah, those aweful Indian embassies!!!!! We had tried to arrange our Indian visa in Laos before but they needed one week to get it in order there. One week??? In all other asian countries you just buy this piece of paper called “visa” at the border or at least they need just three days to get it in order. For most countries it is just another cashmachine. But how bureaucratic is one week??? “No sir, we can not do it quicker and paying extra money will not help you!”, “No, you may not speak to the embassador. Please leave now or I will call security”. Euhm, okay then...? Unfortunately our flights from Laos to Cambodia were booked, so we had to leave Laos without our Indian Visa. Luckily, a new embassy had just opened in Cambodia so we could get it there
and suprise suprise...in Cambodia they could arrange it in just three days, BUT enduring the same very very VERY unfriendly attitude of Indian people working in Indian embassies!!! Is that part of their training?
One of the dozens of examples of their behaviour : a tourist in Phnom Penh goes to the embassy on December 31st. He arrives on time, has 2 photos on him and a copie of his pasport, but no copie of his Cambodian visa (normally you never have to give copies of pasport or visa, because they GET your pasport, but the Indians...). The guy behind the counter throws back the pasport at the tourist and says : “no copie of Cambodian visa”. It's 10 min. before closing time and the tourist has to go and take a copie somewhere in a shop (and undergo again the “everyone = a terrorist security measures from the embassy”). But then he's not back on time. And with the national holiday, his only possibility was to return January 4th, which meant his visa was not ready on time. And now the climax : next to the guy at the counter there was a copymachine!!!
If India wants
to welcome tourists with the slogan “Incredible !ndia”, do they main than : incredibly rude? Anyway, that's our experience in Indian embassies in Belgium, Laos and Cambodja.
Well back to Cambodia then. We arrived in Phnom Penh, the place were we put on our dancing shoes for New Years Eve. You can take the dancing shoes quite literally as Bart bought a pair of new shoes in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately they sold him a left shoe size 41 and a right shoe size 42. That's not really handy for dancing, so in the end he couldn't use them that night :-). Anyway, we had a great time in the capital and we stayed there for several days. We went three times to the same club and it was really fun. I guess once we got our dancing shoes on again, we just couldn't stop:-)
Phnom Penh in itself is also very nice. It's the capital of a developing country, so no skycrapers, nor big highways,.... At first sight it looks a bit dusty and dull, but if you know the good spots to land for a nice drink or dinner it is a great place.
The thing
that will probably stick to our minds the most however was the visit to the Killing Fields, where the regime of Poll Pot executed thousands of people and “S21”, the torture head quarters of Poll Pot. For those who don't know Poll Pot: he was a madman, a communist that thought he could introduce the ideals of a communist lifestyle in Cambodia by means of oppression. He ordered for example all cities to be evacuated and everybody had to become farmers in order to produce rice. He abolished money, closed down all schools, no more wedding parties, music or entertainment, etc... and the list goes on forever. Basically, everybody just had to work work work to fill his rice barn. Nice thinking mister Pot, sounds like a great plan. I wonder why it didn't work in the end? Anyone that was educated or that opposed him was killed and millions of people died. A holocaust, like we have had our own in Europe. Just as the Nazi's, when the regime failed and the end of the regime closed in, they became more cruel and killed more and more people in execution camps.
In the Killing Fields you can see
the skulls of executed people just lying there in front of you. Many skulls are all smashed in, because Poll Pot ordered that the prisoners should be beaten to death in order to spare bullets. What a nice thoughtfull man he was. The men of Poll Pot also killed whole families, including woman and little children (they were afraid the children would otherwise want to revenge the death of their parents later in live...). In the Killing Fields they even had a “baby tree”, a tree where they smashed the heads of little babies against to kill them. Really chilling.... The torture quarters of S21 were also very confronting. Here Poll Pot's men tortured people who were suspected of being against the regime. It was freaky, mostly because of the simplicity of this museum. You see a torture cell with a single metal bed in it, exactly how it was left at the end of Poll Pot's regime. On the wall there is one photo. It's a photo of the cell when they discovered the torture rooms after the liberation and you see on the photo a man tortured to death, laying in the very bed you are watching.
A
bit too bloody in detail? Yes well, that's just how it is, horrible.
To top off our stay in Cambodia and because it was the last country to visit in South-East Asia we spent the rest of our time at the beach, in a place named Kep. It used to be the beach town for rich Cambodians with a second home. The king also had a nice second villa here. But all the villa's and the palace were abandoned when Poll Pot came at power. So, Kep is now basically a ghost town filled with old ruined villa's from the sixties and seventies. A bit spooky, but also charming. Still, Kep now lives it's revival and you have some really nice holiday resorts here. We relaxed in one of these resorts, just swimming, sleeping, reading had some nice dinners, as for example at the crab market, mmmm.
Bart also took a bicycle for half a day exploring the deserted villas and royal palace, the salt fields and the coast line : hot but inspiring.
Fully powered again we set off for India, but that chapter will be for the next blog.....!
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Evelien
non-member comment
That's me on the dancefloor
Dag boysontheroad, That's me on the dancefloor! Dju toch ik dacht me nog zo goed verkleed te hebben dat jullie me niet zouden herkennen in Phnom Penh op de dansvloer! 'T was een goed feestje he! Volgende keer naai ik een straffere rekker in mijn onderbroek! Maak er een mooie start van 2010 van, wij proberen hier hetzelfde te doen! Dikke kussen Wouter en Evelien