Cambodia

Our first stop in Cambodia had us arriving late in the evening into the capital, Phnom Penh.  The usual hustle and bustle of ‘VIP’ tourist transport in Asia meant we left our accommodation in Laos at 8am, and arrived in Phnom Penh around 10pm.  Fourteen hours for around seven hours of travel means you spend half your time just waiting around.  We’ve got pretty use to this slow moving tourist transport now, but it still grates on you when you are forced to arrive three hours early and hang around overpriced (and likely under-hygiened) food stalls.

We had a few days in Phnom Penh and after the laid back surroundings of Laos and especially the Four Thousand Islands it took a while to adjust.  One of the main reasons for rapid adjustment is the tuktuk to tourist ratio, it must be about 10:1 here at the moment.  You physically cannot step outside a building or walk down the street without being accosted and hollered at. 

While in town we took a must do visit down to the Killing Fields.  Thirteen kilometres outside of town this is where the brutal Khmer Rouge regime would... well, i’m sure you can work it out from the name.  The Khmer Rouge were in power and at their worst as recently as the late 1970s, and have been accredited with killing one in four of their own population.  In fact one of the sayings they lived by was ‘it’s better to kill an innocent than let a guilty man live’.  This of course led to mass genocide on an immensely vast scale.  For a country decimated by such travesties only a generation ago it is however very much a country in transition.  There is a growing youth culture where fashion, music and funky hairstyles are at the forefront.  There is a lot of poverty around still, but in a city like Phnom Penh there are opportunities for those people whose parents had none.

On a brighter note we also got around to visiting a few of the temples, national museum, and of course the markets.  In the space of a matter of minutes we experienced the most scorching sun and sweltering heat, to an unprecedented downpour that was filling the streets and flooding the pavements.  We also had some of the best noodle soup in town, which got a lot better once we had worked out how to order it with normal meat, and no pigs organs!

From Phnom Penh we made our way across country and around the largest lake in SE Asia, the Tonle Sap Lake, to Siem Reap.  At just 8km, Siem Reap is the closest town to the Angkor Archaeological Park, home to Angkor Wat and numerous other capitals of the Khmer Empire.  The site is much more than just Angkor Wat itself and is spread over 400sq km.  With this in mind we bargained ourselves a tuktuk and a three day ticket.  Angkor Wat is the biggest hindu temple in the world, and a large part of the countries identity, so much so that it even features on the Cambodian flag.

We got up early on our first day and were in the park by 5.30am to check out Angkor Wat at sunrise.  However with this being the wet season the classic sunrise didn’t actually appear, but it did give us a good chance to have a good look before all the crowds arrived.  The temple is on a pretty immense scale and is surprisingly well preserved.

The same however cannot be said for a lot of the other structures around.  This however really adds to their allure.  In a lot of places you can see a slow but epic struggle between nature and stone with tree’s and vegetation spurting out from any available crevices.  For us our favourites were Bayon which dominates a lot of the styles, its recognizable by the many faces decorating all sides of the temple walls.  The much famed tomb raider temple, Ta Prohm, was also incredible to see, especially just after a Cambodian downpour.  Over our three days we saw upward of 20 different ancient Angkor temples in many different styles, conditions, and of course weather conditions.  Too many to list here, but the 500 odd photographs we’ve been left with are evidence of an awesome archaeological site.

  

From Siem Reap we followed our way further round the Tonle Sap Lake to Battambang.  After all the tuktuks of Phnom Penh and souvenir sellers of Siem Reap it was a welcome relief to have a bit more of a relaxed Cambodian experience.  No shouts of ‘tuktuk’ or ‘one dollar’ meant we were able to take a couple of bikes and head out into the countryside.  We got to see a lot more of village life here, and saw the families drying rice paper and shrimp in the sun outside their houses.  We have only had the time and money to do three places in Cambodia, but it has been a great experience in a country with such a rich but tragic history.