Cambodia

We again got up early today and met our Tuk Tuk driver outside at 7am. We went to Angkor Thom, which we had driven past the previous day.

Angkor Thom is an old city and temple complex, and the site is massive. We went first to Bayon Temple.

Bayon Temple is an amazing building. The main feature of it is all the massive carved faces set into the walls and towers.

The temple was quite large, and to get to the highest point meant climbing a series of quite steep and worn steps. The heat was just beginning to increase as well, which made things more difficult still. Once up though, the effort was worth it. At that time in the morning, there were not many people around. This meant that it was quite easy to find an isolated spot and just sit and stare at the temple and the jungle surrounding it.

From Bayon Temple, we walked around what remained of the actual city. Many of the original structures had long since gone, but long walls remained with a vast section of one featuring carved elephants.

Whilst walking around the elephant carvings, the amount of people at the site had increased dramatically. We spotted some more ruins through the trees on the other side of the dirt track road, which nobody else seemed to be going to, and headed there. This probably gave us the best experience of the whole visit to Cambodia.

Walking through the trees, we were greeted with the site of several pyramid-esque structures hidden amongst the jungle.

There was nobody else around, and it felt like we had “discovered” them ourselves. There was no noise from anything other than the sound of the animals and birds in the trees, and we had the pyramids completely to ourselves.

By the time we got back to the Tuk Tuk driver, the heat was oppressive to say the least. We had planned to do an elephant ride, but couldn’t face being exposed to the direct sunlight by that stage so headed back to Siem Reap.

We saw two things today that both were both shocking and a reminder of the conditions that many people in Cambodia live in. Firstly, whilst in the Tuk Tuk coming back, we passed a paediatric hospital which was having a blood donation drive. There was a Dengue fever outbreak in Siem Reap, and they needed specific types of blood to treat the many children affected. There were over a hundred women and children outside this hospital waiting to be treated, which gave you a sense of the epidemic they were having. The second thing we saw was in Siem Reap itself. We’d gone for a walk near to one of the rivers, with a shanty town on the other side. The river itself seemed heavily polluted, and was swarming with mosquitoes. Suddenly, we noticed a girl of around 10 years old, completely naked, getting out of the river in front of us, walking down the bank a few metres, and then getting back into the river up to her neck. It was obvious that she was from the shanty town across the river, and was all the more shocking because of the epidemic that was occurring. You couldn’t help but think that she would be joining the long queues of children outside the hospital in the near future, and also couldn’t understand why a town which was busy throwing up £400 a night resort hotels couldn’t allocate some finances to educating the poorer sections of the town to the dangers.

In an attempt to beat the worst of the heat and humidity, we had arranged for our driver to pick us up at 7 am. The Tuk Tuk driver service is really good; for a set amount each day they take you wherever you want to go, wait for you as long as you want, and then bring you back when you’ve finished. It’s also ridiculously cheap.

We had prepared our full jungle outfit as an anti-mosquito measure. This comprised of:

Large Hat: 1 of
Full length Shirt: 1 of
Full Combat Trousers: 1 of
Socks: 2 of
Trainers: 2 of
Rather crappy and unfashionable anti-mossie sweatbands soaked in 100% DEET: 2 of

Feeling like the biggest messes in the world, and vastly overdressed for the heat, we met our driver outside and set off to Angkor Wat.

We firstly had to pay for our passes to get into the temple complex. This was an unexpected expense, and completely screwed our budget up at US$40 each for a three day pass, but it had to be done. We pulled up at the car/ Tuk Tuk park and were swamped by (mainly) children trying to sell us water, postcards, guide books etc. They seemed very well drilled, reeling off facts about England when they discovered where we were from, such as “Capital city London”, “Queen is Elizabeth”, “Prime Minister is Gordon Brown”. Resisting the temptation to test their knowledge by asking them what a Prime Minister was, we walked across the road to start towards Angkor Wat temple.

We had another reminder of where we were, which was waiting for us on the other side of the road.

Luckily, it didn’t try to sell us anything, although it also knew that Gordon Brown was Prime Minister!

To get to the main temple complex, and the “classic” view of Angkor Wat, you walk along a long bridge over a river, walk through the first temple ruin, and through an archway you get the first view of Angkor Wat.

It’s really hard to put into words how it feels to visit here. Firstly, the buildings are around 900 years old. In many places, jungle had been allowed to grow inside the buildings, turning many into ruins. Angkor Wat itself has been restored in the past 100 years, and there was still restoration happening when we were there, but it doesn’t detract from the experience which is simply amazing.

The walls are not just the “standard” blocks you’d expect from a ruin, as many of them are decorated with carved figures of animals and people.

It is quite vast an area to explore, made all the harder with the uneven surfaces and steps you have to navigate. The sensation you have when there is also much more than just the views and the architecture. There is the heat and humidity, which hits you every time you step out of the shade, and the noises, which range from deathly quiet inside the temple corridors to almost deafening jungle sounds outside.

It is also still a religious site, and you can see quite a few Buddha shrines inside the temple and Buddhist monks wandering around.

We spent around two and a half hours there, before the need to cool down got too much. We found our driver, and asked him to go to Ta Prohm, making the most of the breeze during the drive. We passed the next major site whilst driving there, which is Angkor Thom (an ancient city and temple complex) which we will be visiting tomorrow.

We also passed some elephants!

Ta Prohm is the area where Tomb Raider was filmed. The thing that strikes you as you wander around it is the amount of jungle that is still left in the temple. Many of the trees have grown around and inside the structures, which results in quite amazing views of huge tree roots forming natural archways on the buildings they have grown on.

More so than Angkor Wat, it is quite difficult at times to walk around Ta Prohm, as many of the walls and buildings have deliberately been left as ruins. This can mean having to jump over stone slabs or broken statues just to progress further. This though adds to the charm of the place, as there are very little restrictions on where you go (other than where buildings are dangerous to enter). This means that you can climb up the old stairs or on the walls to get a better view of something, or just get lost in the myriad of small hidden rooms.

We were exhausted by the time we had finished at Ta Prohm, and asked the driver to take us back to the hotel. He drove a scenic route back, passing by more of the shanty towns we had seen the previous day.

Getting back to the hotel, we went for a wander in Siem Reap, stocking up on bottled water. We’d noticed during the day that very few other western tourists had covered up, many wearing skimpy outfits more suited to a beach holiday, but every local was doing the same as us (i.e. dressed from head to toes). We noticed in Siem Reap that many of these very same western tourists were now covered in mosquito bites and were looking for insect cream to treat them. Neither of us can understand why, for the sake of being fractionally cooler, they’d risk potentially getting malaria. And quite frankly, so long as we continue to avoid being bitten, I don’t care!

And the final thing today; the power went out again, just as we’d finished eating again! The waitress then dripped burning wax over my hand from the candle, in a scene reminiscent of my first Glastonbury festival where we had a Burning Wax Dripped Onto Our Hands contest. As you do!

Today was a milestone. When booking our tickets for this trip, we agonised over whether to come to Cambodia. The main reason for the concern was that Siem Reap, where the Angkor temple complex is based, is a high risk area for malaria and dengue fever. One thing I have learned over the years is that, to mosquitoes, I am the crème de la crème of meals. Once a mosquito tastes my blood, they quickly invite all their friends and relatives to sample me as well. So, a combination of disease and bites that doesn’t bode too well! But we booked it, we’re going to extreme lengths to avoid being bitten, and it should be worth the risk.

For the first time on the trip, we didn’t have to get up before dawn to catch an onward flight. Having the luxury of a noon check out, we went for breakfast again, purchased several quality DVD’s to watch for our chill-out week in Penang in a weeks time (at around 40p each as well!) and sweated to death looking for Vietnamese badges for my Dad!

We boarded the plane to Cambodia with a group of Korean tourists. One of the group, who was sat in front of us, suddenly decided as the plane was about to start accelerating up the runway to change his seat to one at the front of the plane! And he then did it again, prompting the air stewards to shout at him to sit down! As the plane ascended, we noticed what looked like smoke or gas streaming out of the air-conditioning. Thinking it was either smoke from a burning engine or a novel Vietnam Airlines way of pacifying stupid Korean tourists, we accepted our fate, realising when it stopped that it was to kill any insects which may have boarded with us!

The approach to Siem Reap airport in Cambodia was stunning. For around twenty minutes before we landed, we were flying over nothing but jungle and river deltas. It felt like we were flying over the Amazon (wrong continent I know!!) and was a sight we’ve never seen before.

Siem Reap airport has taken our award for most positive landing experience of all time. Walking down the aircraft stairs, we were greeted by the terminal building which was, to all intents, a villa!

This positive experience continued through the Visa process, which took only five minutes in an extremely well air-conditioned hallway, and then our baggage was waiting for us immediately after passing through passport control. From leaving the plane, to leaving the airport took a maximum of ten minutes!

We were greeted on exiting the terminal with our Tuk Tuk driver, who had been provided free for the airport pickup by our hotel. He quickly picked our two packs up himself (the same packs that we combined are struggling to move!) and loaded them into the front of his Tuk Tuk. And then we were off to the hotel!

The drive gave us a real feeling that we were in a totally alien environment to what we were accustomed to. Firstly the heat and humidity, which was not as bad as other places we have been to, somehow felt different and more oppressive (although this may have been down to the clothes we were wearing, and the DEET spray to ward off mosquitoes). Secondly, it was obvious that we were now in a third world country. While there were lots of new buildings on the drive, we also saw real poverty with people living in shanty towns by the river and cattle roaming freely on the roads.

On arrival at the hotel, we booked the Tuk Tuk driver for the next couple of days for our temple visits and checked into our room. We quickly de-fumigated the room to kill off any rogue mosquitoes and put up our mossie-net.

Felt just like camping!

We went for lunch at the hotel and, having just finished the last bite, the power went out in the entire town. It seems that this happens on a regular basis, with one guest losing it with the hotel staff and saying he was leaving. We were quite philosophical about the whole thing; if you come to a country like Cambodia and the worst that happens is a power cut, then you’re laughing! We managed to get to bed using a combination of candle and torch light, and then the power came back on again giving us the much needed air-con and respite from the heat.

Cambodia is going to be an experience to remember!!