Travel report #19
Cambodia - Phnom Penh and Angkor
Thursday May 10, 2001
Crossing the border took more than 2 hours!! We waited, walked to a new office, waited, ... 5 different offices with forms, stamping and inspections before we eventually were through!
Then started a facinating boat ride. A small 15 feet boat with 40hk outboard motor, 6 people with big backpacks + a driver. The driver had a helmet!! We did not! What should that mean!?!?
The boat was fast and very bumpy as the wind made the river rather un even. No need for the helmet, luckily :-) But we got sore bottoms and plenty of water thrown over us!
A taxi took us the last bit into Phnom Penh, where we found a nice guest house (Narin 5) with a lovely roof terrace restaurant!
(Phnom Penh means Penh's Mountain, the hill you see here is the mountain that the lady Penh "found")
Friday May 11, 2001
This day the Cambodian royal family held the annual harvest festival. We got up early to have a look, and it was a fantastic show. At a big, open square, lots of people had gathered to watch the King and the Queen predicting this seasons harvest. A convoy of 3 bulls, the King and the Queen (we were later told it was stand-ins, the King and Queen to old to walk themselves) leading one each. Huge parasols were held over the royals and they all had very stylish, traditional clothings. It looked as we were hundreds of years back in time!
After several rounds around the square, the convoy broke up and the bulls were fed with different types of corn and drinks. Dependent of what they preferred and ate, the harvest wood be good or bad...
We were actually interviewed by a television crew, they asked if we belived in the predictions :-)
After lunch we hired a motobike! Off into the Phnom Penh traffic, actually not as bad as in Vietnam, the drivers are more careful here. We drove around the city for some time and got to see the fantastic Royal Palace and other spendid buildings, and next to all this, in betweeen, we saw poverty, people sleeping on the streets, unpaved mud roads... This is truly a city of contrasts!
(As we tanked up the service man wanted his photo taken:-)
Out into the countryside we headed for the Choeung Ek killing fields. Nice drive there, very poor roads but that only ment that everybody had to drive slowly. We missed a turn, and ended far out into nowhere land, interesting experience. People were staring at us, probably thinking "what are those stupid white people doing out here?", but they were all very nice and smiling and helped us back on track :-)
The killing fields were terrible. Thousands of Cambodians and a ten-fold foreigners were killed here, and their bodies dumped into mass graves. On this site they have now build a tall tower holding thousands of sculls! We could even go into the tower and touch them! Children were playing with the sculls!!
Saturday May 12, 2001
More of Pol Pot's terror as we visited the S-21 museum. This was a normal high school only 30 years ago that Pol Pot and his men turned in to a horror prison. We got to see a lot of photoes and illustrations, and also many of the cells. Terrible and frightening stuff.
As the Cambodian's had their Harvest Festival, it also marked the start of the rainy season. We got to know some of that as we were out walking. It seemed like the sky open up and poored down everything at once!
Time to watch football! At 9pm we found a nice pub full of Cambodians betting on european football. Plenty of LIVE broadcast of european football in Asia, we (that is mostly B) were interessted in Arsenal - Liverpool, the english FA-cup final. A thriller match, and LFC won 2-1!! :-)
Sunday May 13, 2001
We got on the early boat to Siem Reap, 7am we headed up the river on a speed boat. The boat, more than full, all the backpackers were sitting on the roof!
As we got closer to Siem Reap we crossed over the big lake. It seemed to be very shallow as we could see at times the engine run more in mud than water! When we arrived we had to board smaller boats as there was no proper harbour. These boats had then to be pushed over the more shallow bits, running their special motors at full. Amazing! We eventually reached Siem Reap where we were told that the rainy season makes travel in Cambodia very troublesome.
At 4pm we had found a ok guest house and a nice moto-driver named Teom. He took us towards Angkor, the main attraction of Cambodia! And what a sight!!
Our first and only stop this afternoon was Angkor Wat, a unbelievable Castle or temple. It was huge! A water pit surrounded the complex, close to 1x1km. We entered one a causeway, through a fantastic portal and over to the main temple! Unbelievable dimensions and all the way through fantastic stone carvings.
Not a single stone was untouched by a stone carving artist!
We walked around here for 2-3 hours and got to see a lovely sun set. We had a rain shower, but it luckily cleared up in time for sun set. Fantastic!
(We talked to a Buddhist munk; interessting; IA had to keep her distance for the photo shoot:-)
Monday May 14, 2001
We had to make the most out of this day. We had seen only one of tens of temples in Angkor, and we knew we could never mangage to see them all in one and a half day... First stop was Angkor Thom and Bayon. Again, it has to be seen. A huge temple with 25+ tall towers, 4 big faces carved on each of the towers!
We then walked on inside Angkor Thom, more and more temples and building structures with fantastic stone carvings.
(This is the grand 3D stone jigsaw (puslespill) that Pol Pot gave the French by burning all their documentation on how they had taken the temple apart...)
Teom then took us on, we saw two smaller temples, again fantastic, but by now we were spoiled. Hard to get impressed after Angkor Wat and Bayon. We also climbed a tall temple, very steep!
The third highlight was Ta Prohm, a huge temple that has been left as it was found by the explorers. Here we could walk and climb through as we were the first explorers to find this splendor; trees and roots were all over the structures and lots of bricks were fallen all over. Fantastic!!
One more stop before lunch, yet again nice temples and stuff, but it gets almost too much. And it was getting very warm.
After lunch we decided that we wanted to spend the rest of our time in Angkor Wat, to study it more instead of rushing to another set of temples. They are far apart anyway, and would involve a lot of driving. We spent another 2-3 hours walking around inside this unbeliveable complex. All around the main building, hundreds of meters, there are stone carved history tales on the walls!
At sunset we climbed a small mountain nearby, nice views.
Short background on Angkor: These temples were built in the period from about 1000AC to 1500AC, in parts of this period the Cham empire controled most of Indochina (today Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam). The temples are inspired by Indian gods, and most of this was built to "impress" the gods and give them a place to live. It was all left to the nature around 1500AC because a more close to earth belive was adapted and nice temples was no neccecity...
(Our driver Teom was a very nice young man :-)
Tuesday May 15, 2001
We had a terror night. As we stay at budget hostels, AC is luxury and we mostly have had rooms with fans. So also this night, with a huge mosquito net. But somehow, a big cockerrouch (kakerlakk) made his way into our bed, IA saw him but belived she was dreaming, then suddenly (at about 3am) B found it crawling in his hair! We did not sleep well after that...
Another travel day, a very interesting one. We were on a bus to Bangkok, Thailand. The first half was to the border and on Cambodian roads (or whatever we could call them). It was unpaved and very bumpy. That is, parts were paved, but never more than about 50 meter at a time and full of pits.
About half way, they did repair work on a bridge and there was no alternative road. All the trucks, buses and cars had to drive off the road, into a rice field and then back on the road again. We saw may trucks stuck in the mud and jeeps beeing pulled by tracktors. Despite all this our bus driver took a chance and made it!! He spun through the mud!
The drive into Bangkok was as beeing in a different world, no problems, proper roads!