| Crossing the border from Vietnam into Cambodia is straightforward enough, apart from the bus staff who insisted I pay US$25 for my visa, when I knew it to be twenty. Throughout the journey, they frequently requested my passport and payment. I can be a stubborn beast at times, and so just as regularly, I refused both. I was interested to see how long I could hold out.
On this occasion, the bus was merely half-full, or half empty, with a smattering of backpackers, locals and a few western men on a “visa run” with their little Cambodian wives. At the border, all became clear. The bus man shot me a disdainful look to indicate I should visit the immigration post. Meanwhile, he got busy with a handful of passports, filling out the entry forms, a service for which he charges, you guessed it, five US dollars, not that he actually tells you that. I filled out my form with no effort, paid my twenty, and triumphantly strode back to the bus. I guess if even ten folk each day are gullible enough to pay up, he is doing very nicely. If I had endured a bad trip in Vietnam, this experience may have sealed my opinion on the country. As it is, I thought, “nice initiative”! The tuk-tuk touts meeting my arrival in the capital, Phnom Penh, crowded the bus so much I could hardly exit. In a rather sadistic way, I rather enjoy negotiating the mob, content in the knowledge I simply will not be using their services. As I manoeuvre over to the edge of the pack, they suddenly quieten down when I strike a deal with a man patiently waiting on his machine. I love the look on their faces when I climb aboard. There is a gentle moment of calm in the proceedings as they absorb this new turn of events. How could I do this to them, after all their efforts? How could the man, that man, quietly sitting over there, win the lush dollar of the tourist? Having computed this incredulous occurrence, the noise is again turned on, and they surround our vehicle. How much did I pay? Where am I going? “I take you one dollar, good guess-house”! I have trained a few dogs over the years, and at feeding time, it is always important to teach the prudence of good manners. Those that misbehave inevitably are fed last. And so it is. I believe, no, I would like to believe, that if every traveller followed this rule with touts of any kind, the world would be a quieter place. Unfortunately, though, creating noise is simply a whole lot more fun. Breaking free of the frenzy, we took off into the streets of Phnom Penh, and only then do I realise I don’t have a clue where I am going. Short of an American/British invasion, I am about as unprepared for a country as one can be, with no map, no place in mind to stay, and not even an inkling as to how many riels I get for my dollar. I have given up carrying guidebooks for now, in my quest for an ever-lighter pack. In fact, it seems I am carrying nothing but one change of clothing (as some kind people have noted in my photos), a laptop and a Vietnamese silk painting. The latter I have tried unsuccessfully to post home several times, but have been unable to find a tube to pack it in. I turn to my driver for assistance, and utter the internationally recognised words “guesthouse” and “cheap”. Soon, I am deposited at a hotel, and one look at the lobby confirms to me that I will not be sleeping here tonight. However, I went in the check the price, and promptly came out again. “Cheap-er” I said, and off we went. My first impressions of Phnom Penh were of a hectic, untidy city, stricken with poverty. With hindsight, this notion remained upon my departure. In some ways, the Cambodian capital reminded me of Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia; for there is some money around, but the disparity between rich and poor is painfully obvious. It has a frontier feel to it, a certain wildness that is both exciting and occasionally intimidating. For my complete lack of street knowledge, I ended up eating in an overpriced river front bar. My next mistake was to sit outside, where I was treated constant interruption by beggars. Nothing can make a rich tourist feel worse, feel guiltier and utterly disgraceful than eating in a place where a meal costs more than some of these people will ever earn. I have seen plenty of poverty on this trip, hell, we all have, even in our own countries, but here it is enough to move me to tears. Naked children, less than ten years old, blackened by street grime, hover around hoping to fill their distended stomachs with some scraps. Behind them, a police officer looks on oblivious, there to protect and ensure the westerners do not get bothered, too much. Pulling out onto the street, a Range Rover, a Range Rover for god’s sake – a vehicle that cost’s the earth in the country where it is built ten thousand kilometres away. I simply could not stand the feeling of sitting there any longer, and left. Around town, I see many more vehicles that are expensive. I purchased a cheap meal for a disabled woman and two kids, laid right across the street, it was somewhat impossible to ignore her. Something is severely wrong with this world, and the one I am in tonight is very depressing. The following day, I needed cheering up, so I hired a local Khmer to take me to the killing fields; it didn’t work. It was a twenty or so kilometre ride out of the city through the mental traffic, before we hit pot-holed country roads. These are mostly dirt, and along with Mongolia, this is the only other country I have visited where dirt roads run right up to the capital. Many sections resembled a motocross track, and I wondered how I might stay aboard the bike. Terrance, as we’ll call him, for I have forgotten his real name, informed me that it is tourist dollars that are paying for the newly surfaced section we are now riding on. Painstakingly slow, it creeps its way out to Phnom Penh’s premier attraction, a little more laid as money becomes available, in all likelihood when the government Range Rovers have been paid for. Our first stop was a firing range, where one can let rip with a dazzling range of weaponry. I never for a moment planned to fire any of them, I can do that at home for free, but I was interested to see who might be there and just what was actually on offer, for there are many myths about this place. I was greeted and seated with all the attention one might expect in a top-notch restaurant. The menu was hurried to my table, but indeed this was no ordinary carte du jour. Opening the plastic folder, there was not a prawn cocktail in sight. Instead, a smorgasbord of hardware for me to peruse; and for the more discerning palette, the specials of the day were hung on the wall behind me. I was keen to take a photo or at least some notes, for this journal, but the waiter nearly jumped out of his skin at the very suggestion. I repeat the list below, from memory, though I am sure I have missed many out and have some names wrong – gun nuts, I apologise profusely. AK47 (25 rounds) US$30 Kalashnikov (25 rounds) US$30 9mm pistol (10 rounds) US$20 M16 Assault Rifle (25 rounds) US$35 Hand Grenade (1) US$100 RPG (1) US$200 Anti-Tank missile (1) US$300 I am told that one esteemed Chinese client brings his business partners here every year, for a boy’s day out. They have free run of the weaponry (I shudder to think, I’ve seen their driving), and the piece de resistance is to destroy an old car with the big toys. I guess it would make a change from corporate paint balling. One old myth that lingers among travellers is that, if you are of a certain type of disposition, you can buy a goat to use as a running target. With this country as it is, I have no doubt that somewhere, sometime, it has been done. However, the waiter assures me with a definite “no”. It may be that one has to work his or her way through the menu, to become a regular patron, before such delicacies are available – but I will never know. I now had to extract myself from the rather deep hole I had dug, having showed so much interest in their services, by explaining this was all a bit above my budget. He instantly called my bluff in offering half prices for half the number of rounds, but I stuck to my guns, as it were. At something like US$5 per second, this restaurant was only marginally better value than visiting a lawyer. To tell you the truth, with the killing fields just a short distance away, an area so recently bathed in blood, I found it all a little bit distasteful. Terrance standing by like a loyal Labrador, I hopped on the bike and we were away. My run of bad luck in picking guides, as mentioned in the last journal, continues. Don’t get me wrong, Terrance fills his role as driver agreeably well, but it turns out his command of English does not extend beyond standard answers to standard questions. Anything outside this is met with a unanimous “yes”. For example, “Terrance, are we going to drive any closer to the rear of that large truck”? Reply, “Yes”. “But Terrance, if he brakes or swerves, we may get flattened”! “Yes”. The text block with “wiki” marked in the gutter were put together with the help of wikipedia – a site that I always link to on here, when sending you off to read more information on a subject. Normally, any facts I give you, though quite possibly completely wrong, are from my own investigative efforts derived from a wide range of sources – guidebooks, displays, leaflets or random conversations with locals. However, due to a rather unfair hangover, horrifically measuring close to eight on the Richter scale, I raped and pillaged the aforementioned website for information. I did not have a guidebook and managed to lose my notes. Forgive me for my journalistic faux pas, but a hangover is a hangover. Choeung Ek, more commonly known as The Killing Fields, is one of the more well-known sites where the KRPP carried out executions. Most were beaten to death with clubs and iron bars, to save valuable bullets, and then thrown into shallow mass graves. Today, a large shrine contains the bones and sculls of many victims, recovered from the area. There is little else to see, apart from open pits, clothing still embedded in the soil and scattered human bones. I was about ready to spontaneously combust in the midday heat, and so I was pleased to get on the bike and head back into town. Along the way, Terrance unveiled more of his repertoire, outside those of driver and arms dealer; he could arrange “young” girls and drugs too. How often are you in a taxi at home, and are offered all these essential services in one place? Tuol Sleng - Prison S-21 My final port of call for the day happened to be the Tuol Sleng prison camp known as S-21. It was a former city school, before the buildings were commandeered by Pol Pot’s regime, the Khmer Rouge. The buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers and all the windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire. From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (some estimates suggest a number as high as 20,000, though the real number is unknown). The prisoners were selected from all around the country, and usually were former Khmer Rouge members and soldiers, accused of treason. Those arrested included some of highest-ranking communist politicians. Although the official reason for their arrest was "espionage", these men may have been viewed by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot as potential leaders of a coup against him. Prisoners' families were often brought en masse to be interrogated and later murdered at the killing fields. In 1979, the prison was uncovered by the invading Vietnamese army. In 1980, it was reopened as a historical museum. Today it stands largely as found, and contains an alarming collection of photographs, for the KR was meticulous in their record keeping. Most prisoner details have been separated from their photographs, so the images are anonymous. In several rooms, the tortured faces of several thousand of them stare back at you, and out of respect, the visitor is compelled to look at each one in turn and reflect. The experience is made all the more horrific with images of men, women and children, all tortured to death, their frightened faces full of confusion and suffering. This is not just a museum; the buildings contain the souls of so many people who spent their final miserable moments here. There is not a single person in Cambodia who was not affected by Pol Pot’s actions, and most simply will never know what happened to their loved ones. Many still come here even today in a futile attempt to find out. It did not take me many days to realise that Phnom Penh would not be rating highly in my list of favourite cities, so I plotted my escape to the north. It is nothing personal against the capital; I need to be in the right mood to get the most out of a city. I have not really given it enough time to create a fully informed opinion, so my comments are based solely on first impressions. The Lost City of Angkor The bus trip to Siem Reap took forever. The unrelenting heat caused our engine to boil often, and we regularly stopped to throw a bucket of water over the radiator. This had little effect other than filling the cabin with steam, stinking of rusty hot water. Nobody on the bus seemed in a hurry anyway, including me, and it was probably a good job. I chatted with a few locals, it has surprised me how many have some passable English. One young man explained to me, the distortion emitting from the sound system was a popular Cambodian pop star. She made he mistake of criticising the government in one of her tunes, and they tried to have her shot. She now lives in exile, wherever that is. Against my wishes, the bus was again the only realistic choice for this journey, for the Cambodian rail network, consisting of one line, is, essentially useless. The trains are reputed to gather up a top speed, sometimes peaking at 15km per hour, but more usually around ten. To me, this sounds fantastic, for you all know I am a great lover of rail travel, but on this occasion, I do not have that much time to waste. The most attractive aspect of train travel here is that you can ride on the carriage roof. Elsewhere in Asia, I love to hang out of windows or ride between carriages, but oh, to ride on the roof, now that would be something! Hell, here, if you need to stretch your legs, why, you can just get off and walk alongside the train – but you’d have to be careful not to get too far ahead! I am very upset I did not get to do a train ride in this country – I beg future visitors, take time out to complete at least one part of your journey by this method. I also looked at renting a motorcycle again, but prices were high, and fuel goes for US$1 per litre, making that actually quite high too. So the bus it is. |
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| Siem Reap The bus deposited me in what I presumed to be Siem Reap. There was a feral feel about the place. The dark skin on many folk, for there is plenty of Indian blood in Cambodia, and the dusty wide-open streets, with single story shack style buildings, made it feel more like some African township. Using the aforementioned strategy, I picked a quiet driver with a big smile. It wasn’t just on his face though; he had a great sign above his head with a yellow smiley face, advertising for “Smileys Guest House” – if ever a man lived up to the job of smiling, it was this one. It was soon apparent that I had been dropped out in the ‘burbs’, for inner Siem Reap is quite developed and very tidy. It is, after all, gateway to one of South East Asia’s jewels, and quite possibly one of Cambodia’s great earners of foreign currency – I refer, of course, to the ancient Kingdom of Angkor Wat. Smileys Guest House turned out to be a very good choice; it was cheap, friendly and well located. While I was having this unusual run of good luck in decision-making, I hired Mr Smiley to be my man for tomorrow’s assault on Angkor. I knew disgracefully little about the ancient kingdom, but I did know that it covers a large area and I would need a driver. As it stands at the moment, for I am informed the rule changes often, it is illegal for foreigners to hire self-drive motorbikes. I had to be up at four-thirty in the morning, and there was just time for a strong coffee before setting off. Angkor Wat is no secret, and I strongly suspected I may not be the first explore it. However, I had a plan, which is why I had dragged poor Mr not-so-smiley-anymore out of bed this early. Shortly after paying the rather pricey US$20 entrance fee, it became increasingly clear that in actual fact, I was not alone in getting up early to beat the crowds. In fact, I would go so far as to say, everyone in Cambodia was at Angkor Wat for sunrise. Lying in bed until 9am, eating a leisurely breakfast and arriving after everyone else has moved on would have been a more successful plan, by far. It turns out, excuse my ignorance, watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat is a big thing, a must do. As it was, I was not actually fussed either way, and so the crowds of Japanese tourists vying for space in a tangle of Nikon tripod legs caused me little inconvenience. I found a quiet spot away from the classic “looking down the centre” postcard view, and settled. I then killed an hour or more, photographing the tourists with all their camera gear, which I enjoyed immensely, and supping coffee and noodles (not, I hasten to add, in the same bowl). By then, the wave of David Bailey wannabe’s had moved inside the temple and I was ready to begin my day. I did this with a stroll around the outside, both in the surrounding jungle and around the perimeter walls. It was deserted, and I could really appreciate the smaller but no less beautiful parts of the structure. When I finally made my entrance, the majority had shot several rolls of film and made a run for their coach, on to the next temple, leaving me to my own devices. That’s all it takes, say, a couple of hours, and the visitor can have a bit of room. The Khmer empire, noted for its achievements in sculpture and architecture, began under Jayavarman II in 802. The temples of Angkor, one of human history’s most ambitious building projects, were constructed by the Khmer civilisation between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Kings of the Khmer ruled an empire that took in southern Vietnam, parts of Chinese Yunnan and as far east as the Bay of Bengal. There are actually several hundred temples, many just remains swallowed by dense jungle, and they cover a huge area. The structures were the religious centre of an entire civilization, hence the oft-heard term “lost city of Angkor”. Only the gods could live in structures of stone, the rest lived in wooden buildings, now long gone. The Lost City was re-discovered by a French naturist called Henri Mouhot in the 1860’s, but it was not until 1908 that proper exploration took place. From this time, a French organisation undertook the task of clearing invasive jungle vegetation, reducing further breaking apart of the ruins, and rebuilding some parts. The work was interrupted by war through the 1970’s and beyond. Unless you already know a great deal about Angkor, the first thing to shock is simply the scale of it all. Allow three days to view it at anything like a normal pace – budding Indiana Jones’s should allow a week, archaeologists and philologists, a lifetime. Angkor Wat itself (Wat means temple), is the world’s largest religious building, its iconic towers and intricate sculptures making it also one of the most popular. As with my guide, traditionally all tour buses start here for sunrise, before moving on to several of the better known temples in the area (there are hundreds to choose from). After following the usual route to the first few, Mr Smiley agreed to do the rest in reverse. This worked especially well, and I often found myself alone among the ruins. It would be futile for me to attempt to describe each ruin in turn, though each site has a unique history and place in time. Even en route to the next, in every direction there is something fascinating to look at. A random walk into the surrounding jungle is guaranteed to reveal a forgotten ruin, sometimes small, sometimes large, each and every stone hand carved. I did this several times in complete solitude, and was struck with wonder as to the purpose of each building. Several of the more well know sites have been thoughtfully restored; others have been left to the jungle. But look around you, for there is far more to see. To put it simply, I think Angkor is among the most incredible man-made creations I have ever seen, and no words I could write would do it justice. Go there soon as you can. I am embarassed to tell you that I did not give Cambodia nearly enough time. It seems to me another fascinating country, with many issues to work through. It has been added to my "must return" list - but for now, I am going on holiday to Thailand. We all need a break from time to time. |
| a random passer-by |
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| this image: early morning Angkor Wat |
| Don’t forget, a new country means a new profile is available – just click on the view country profiles link from this journal or the home page to view. In there, you can find a brief history of the countries I visit, national statistics, current live weather report and even links to their tourism web site. Oh, and in case you don’ have a clue where I am, there is a map too – don’t I think of everything on here? |
| In an amazing display of sycronisation, I have updated Wander Years EXTA! with images of The Lost City of Angkor - hope you enjoy them - just click here |