I am sat in Phnom Penh waiting for my Vietnam visa, so I have loads of spare time to write about all the I did in Cambodia, as I realize I've not written about any of the places we've been to. There weren't as many as Thailand, so it shouldn't take up too much room.....hopefully.
Siem Reap
This was our first port of call when we crossed through from Bangkok, in a monolithic bus journey that took about 15 hours. The road from Poipet at the Cambodia border to Siem Reap is the worst road I have ever travelled on in my life, and the pain my poor bum and legs got from bouncing around inside a minibus for 6 hours was a testimony of that. We were 'delivered' by our minibus to a hotel late at night, which meant we had to spend the night there in a room with extortionate rates ($6). This was an example of the 'scam bus' that practically everyone travelling from Bangkok to Siem Reap has to endure - the journey doesn't actually take that long, but bus drivers deliberately take their time in driving so that you end up at a hotel of their choice (commission). We only stayed there one night, and despite the protests from our rip off hotel that we wouldn't be able to find anywhere cheaper, we left and found a $3 room within the space of 10 mins.
Siem Reap is the gateway town to the famous Angkor city and temples, which if you haven't heard of, are the main tourist attraction of Cambodia. Angkor was an ancient city and set of temples built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD. From this city, Kings ruled an area that stretched as far as Vietnam and China. There are still around 100 temples remaining at the site, which Ness and I used a tuk-tuk to get around, although we only managed to see a small proportion of them. Other aspects of the civilization such as wooden buildings and houses have of course, long since disappeared.
Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples, although it wasn't my favourite. Apparently watching sunrise over the temple is 'the' thing to be done, so Ness and I got up at an ungodly 4 am for the privilege. I got some good photos, although I hate taking pictures in places where there are a million other people taking pictures of the same thing.
One of the things that drove me crazy about this place was the amount of stupid bloody Japanese tourists. Truckloads of them constantly have to get in everyone's way to take pictures, usually standing in a group consisting of unsmiling adults and grinning youths doing the peace gesture that they seem so addicted to. The location of the photo-taking irritates me simply because they seem to choose places like small walkways, open doorways and the tops of staircases - mindless of the gigantic sweating crowd all desperately wanting to get past them.
My particular beef stems from the fact that I wanted to climb some steps to the uppermost part of the Angkor Wat tower, but managed to only get halfway up before what seemed like the entire population of Japan decided to bloody well come down the same staircase. There is only a small handrail to the left hand side of the steps, so I was forced to move sideways into the middle of the staircase, the steps of which scared me as they were narrow and worn, and I was terrified of falling down them. After clinging to the middle of the staircase for what must have been about 20 mins in the boiling sun, I finally managed to catch a break as there was a lull in people coming down, and the Americans sat at the base of the tower felt so sorry for me that they all yelled for the people at the top to wait, and cheered when I finally got to the top of the tower. However, I had been more afraid of going back down the steps as they were so narrow and steep, and everytime I overcame my fear to go down the staircase, hordes of fucking Japanese people would appear at the top. They all decided to take one of their daft group photos at the top of the staircase, at which point I narrowly resisted the urge to push the whole lot back down the way they came. Needless to say, after I had aged about a year, I was able to go down the staircase, cursing them all as I went.
We managed to get quite lucky however, as we unwittingly seemed to time our visits to different temples just as the truckloads of Japanese tourists would leave. Ness and I managed to visit some almost empty temples, which were great fun to run around in, and I think my favourite one was Ta Prohm, one of the few temples that had been left alone with nature, so it was covered in trees and vines. In a claim to fame, it was a part of the set for one of the TombRaider films, although they are both so shit that I don't remember which one. Amusingly, there is actually a "TombRaider Tree" labelled on one of the maps that we have.
Aside from Angkor, Ness and I used a day to explore Siem Reap itself and...drumroll....
we got to not only photograph some Buddhist monks in their robes but also talk to them!
It was a proud day when I finally managed to get a photo of one, after trying so hard to get one on the sly in Thailand. Apparently Buddhist monks aren't allowed to talk to women, but the ones we spoke to when visiting the local temples seemed glad of the chance to practice their English.
The Cambodian monks were very friendly and fluent, and they make Thai monks look rubbish. I have now got several monk photos and am well chuffed.
Phnom Penh
The capital of Cambodia was our next stop, and like Bangkok, we have been here several times now, as it is the gateway to everything else. It is a million times nicer than Bangkok, even with all the weird and perverted tuk-tuk and moto drivers. It is simply more interesting to look at, and the way of life is more easily observed and absorbed. There's not much to do here apart from see the palace, and the odd pagoda.
There is a genocide museum here, which used to be a high school turned prison, used by the Khmer Rouge to torture and kill anyone they considered to be betraying their regime. We saw a film of what went on there, which is probably the saddest thing I have ever seen. The museum itself is disturbing, full of portrait photographs of all it's prisoners, who were often photographed when they joined the prison and then again after they were executed.
Men, women and children were all detained here, and there are some very disturbing paintings of prisoners' accounts of what happened to people there.
After the museum we went to the 'killing fields' on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where something like over 8000 people were killed and buried. Disturbingly, I read somewhere that many of them were bludgeoned to death to save on bullets and other weapons. The field itself is a contradictory place - very colorful, quiet and peaceful - and at the same time it is mind numbingly morbid, full of deep trenches with signs displaying how many bodies were fond in each one. There are tattered scraps of clothing scattered around the place, although Ness and I both hoped that they were placed there for 'atmosphere' rather than being actual remnants of victims. It sounds a weird thing to do, adding bits of cloth for effect, but when you think about the fact that we paid to get in the field in the first place, the idea is actually plausible.
That entire day, sad as it was, has to be one of the most interesting things I have seen in my trip so far, giving both an insight into the tragedy of Cambodia's history, which most of us in the Western world are unaware of, and also into the power of human nature itself. The depths it can go to, to both create and endure something as horrific as genocide and dictatorship are amazing.
And after all that lovely stuff....
Sihanoukville
This is what someone described as 'Costa Del Cambodia'. I didn't really think of Cambodia as having beaches, but the one we spent almost a week on was just as nice as the beaches in Thailand. It had the usual white sand, but the sea was insane - always as warm as a bath - which is a bit of a bugger if you want to cool off from the sun, as it doesn't actually cool you down, it simply washes the sweat off you.
We met a lot of characters on the beach, many children here parade up and down selling things such as fruit and bracelets, to fund their private English lessons. They can sometimes become quite an annoyance, but Ness and I found that if you talk to them and play with them a little bit, they soon take their minds off selling and become kids again. We spent an entire evening playing with a few little boys and girls and they completely wore us out. I don't know how Hayley Woo has all the energy being a nanny!
I ate bloody well on that beach as well, people wander round selling tiny lobsters on their heads for about a pound, and I pretty much got all lobstered up every single day.
On the last night we went out for a meal in the oddest restaurant known to man. It was called The Snake House, and it literally was. The place is full tanks of snakes, and there were even snake tanks inside the table at which Ness and I ate. Very odd. When we arrived, the waiter asked us if we "would like a table next to the crocodile or full of snakes," which is the weirdest question I think I have ever been asked. Needless to say, we chose a table with snakes in simply because the crocodile was in a pool but not an enclosure, and I didn't much fancy him having a go at me whilst I was trying to eat my dinner.
Kratie
This was a town we made an overnight stop at, whilst on our way to Ban Lung. I was unimpressed by this town as Ness and I had a scary experience with a guy who worked at our hotel. He had no sense of boundaries, personal space, or manners, and touched both me and Ness in inappropriate places several times. He seemed impervious to threats which escalated from "can you not do that please" to "fucking get off, you'd be arrested in England for that."
He tried to make us go out to dinner with him and his cousin but we were so freaked out by him (and the fact that he was probably a possible, if not actual, rapist) that we hid in our hotel room for a night with no food (he was waiting for us downstairs). There was a point where my toothpaste was beginning to look tasty but thankfully I just wasn't *that* hungry.
Ban Lung
This is where we paid of lot of money to go for a trek that wasn't actually all that good. I can't be bothered to write about the trek as I bloody well hate Nature but Ness really likes trekking and I need the exercise.
On the way here and back, we had to get a taxi from Kratie, as there are no buses, and it is NOTHING like getting a taxi back home.
They are called share-taxis, so you have to wait for people going the same way, and to make more money, they cram you into the car like sardines. In our taxi - a normal sized car - there were 4 people in the back, and 4 in the front (2 people sharing the driver sat and 2 sharing the passenger seat). Plus 2 small children. God knows how the driver manages to drive, but it was a humorous experience, albeit one that I hopefully won't have to repeat in Asia.
Ban Lung itself was a great town, so small that it has no tarmac roads, just big red dusty ones. I felt safer wandering round there than anywhere else in Cambodia as it had the air of a place where nothing much, including crime, happens.
Sadly though, on our way back from trekking, the moto that Ness was on hit a small child who didn't get out of the road in time, despite the driver beeping. Kids here aren't taught not to play in the road, and all that stuff with the hedgehogs, and so they are much more fearless when it comes to moving out the way for vehicles. He had a chunk out of his head missing, and he was gushing blood like a tap, but because he was conscious and screaming, hopefully he was ok.
After Ban Lung, it was back to Phnom Penh, where I am now, to wait for a Vietnamese Visa. Annoyingly, it is Khmer New Year here, so everything shuts down for 3 days, and people do weird things like have water and talcum powder fights. Kids in particular aim for us foreigners, so we have to run like stealth soldiers everytime we leave the front door of the guest house.
I've just read up and realised that I lied, this is actually a really long post, so thank you to anyone who bothered to read it.
On a final note, Lisa has told me she is having a girl - Neve Isabella Sheehan :)
Siem Reap
This was our first port of call when we crossed through from Bangkok, in a monolithic bus journey that took about 15 hours. The road from Poipet at the Cambodia border to Siem Reap is the worst road I have ever travelled on in my life, and the pain my poor bum and legs got from bouncing around inside a minibus for 6 hours was a testimony of that. We were 'delivered' by our minibus to a hotel late at night, which meant we had to spend the night there in a room with extortionate rates ($6). This was an example of the 'scam bus' that practically everyone travelling from Bangkok to Siem Reap has to endure - the journey doesn't actually take that long, but bus drivers deliberately take their time in driving so that you end up at a hotel of their choice (commission). We only stayed there one night, and despite the protests from our rip off hotel that we wouldn't be able to find anywhere cheaper, we left and found a $3 room within the space of 10 mins.
Siem Reap is the gateway town to the famous Angkor city and temples, which if you haven't heard of, are the main tourist attraction of Cambodia. Angkor was an ancient city and set of temples built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD. From this city, Kings ruled an area that stretched as far as Vietnam and China. There are still around 100 temples remaining at the site, which Ness and I used a tuk-tuk to get around, although we only managed to see a small proportion of them. Other aspects of the civilization such as wooden buildings and houses have of course, long since disappeared.
Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples, although it wasn't my favourite. Apparently watching sunrise over the temple is 'the' thing to be done, so Ness and I got up at an ungodly 4 am for the privilege. I got some good photos, although I hate taking pictures in places where there are a million other people taking pictures of the same thing.
One of the things that drove me crazy about this place was the amount of stupid bloody Japanese tourists. Truckloads of them constantly have to get in everyone's way to take pictures, usually standing in a group consisting of unsmiling adults and grinning youths doing the peace gesture that they seem so addicted to. The location of the photo-taking irritates me simply because they seem to choose places like small walkways, open doorways and the tops of staircases - mindless of the gigantic sweating crowd all desperately wanting to get past them.
My particular beef stems from the fact that I wanted to climb some steps to the uppermost part of the Angkor Wat tower, but managed to only get halfway up before what seemed like the entire population of Japan decided to bloody well come down the same staircase. There is only a small handrail to the left hand side of the steps, so I was forced to move sideways into the middle of the staircase, the steps of which scared me as they were narrow and worn, and I was terrified of falling down them. After clinging to the middle of the staircase for what must have been about 20 mins in the boiling sun, I finally managed to catch a break as there was a lull in people coming down, and the Americans sat at the base of the tower felt so sorry for me that they all yelled for the people at the top to wait, and cheered when I finally got to the top of the tower. However, I had been more afraid of going back down the steps as they were so narrow and steep, and everytime I overcame my fear to go down the staircase, hordes of fucking Japanese people would appear at the top. They all decided to take one of their daft group photos at the top of the staircase, at which point I narrowly resisted the urge to push the whole lot back down the way they came. Needless to say, after I had aged about a year, I was able to go down the staircase, cursing them all as I went.
We managed to get quite lucky however, as we unwittingly seemed to time our visits to different temples just as the truckloads of Japanese tourists would leave. Ness and I managed to visit some almost empty temples, which were great fun to run around in, and I think my favourite one was Ta Prohm, one of the few temples that had been left alone with nature, so it was covered in trees and vines. In a claim to fame, it was a part of the set for one of the TombRaider films, although they are both so shit that I don't remember which one. Amusingly, there is actually a "TombRaider Tree" labelled on one of the maps that we have.
Aside from Angkor, Ness and I used a day to explore Siem Reap itself and...drumroll....
we got to not only photograph some Buddhist monks in their robes but also talk to them!
It was a proud day when I finally managed to get a photo of one, after trying so hard to get one on the sly in Thailand. Apparently Buddhist monks aren't allowed to talk to women, but the ones we spoke to when visiting the local temples seemed glad of the chance to practice their English.
The Cambodian monks were very friendly and fluent, and they make Thai monks look rubbish. I have now got several monk photos and am well chuffed.
Phnom Penh
The capital of Cambodia was our next stop, and like Bangkok, we have been here several times now, as it is the gateway to everything else. It is a million times nicer than Bangkok, even with all the weird and perverted tuk-tuk and moto drivers. It is simply more interesting to look at, and the way of life is more easily observed and absorbed. There's not much to do here apart from see the palace, and the odd pagoda.
There is a genocide museum here, which used to be a high school turned prison, used by the Khmer Rouge to torture and kill anyone they considered to be betraying their regime. We saw a film of what went on there, which is probably the saddest thing I have ever seen. The museum itself is disturbing, full of portrait photographs of all it's prisoners, who were often photographed when they joined the prison and then again after they were executed.
Men, women and children were all detained here, and there are some very disturbing paintings of prisoners' accounts of what happened to people there.
After the museum we went to the 'killing fields' on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where something like over 8000 people were killed and buried. Disturbingly, I read somewhere that many of them were bludgeoned to death to save on bullets and other weapons. The field itself is a contradictory place - very colorful, quiet and peaceful - and at the same time it is mind numbingly morbid, full of deep trenches with signs displaying how many bodies were fond in each one. There are tattered scraps of clothing scattered around the place, although Ness and I both hoped that they were placed there for 'atmosphere' rather than being actual remnants of victims. It sounds a weird thing to do, adding bits of cloth for effect, but when you think about the fact that we paid to get in the field in the first place, the idea is actually plausible.
That entire day, sad as it was, has to be one of the most interesting things I have seen in my trip so far, giving both an insight into the tragedy of Cambodia's history, which most of us in the Western world are unaware of, and also into the power of human nature itself. The depths it can go to, to both create and endure something as horrific as genocide and dictatorship are amazing.
And after all that lovely stuff....
Sihanoukville
This is what someone described as 'Costa Del Cambodia'. I didn't really think of Cambodia as having beaches, but the one we spent almost a week on was just as nice as the beaches in Thailand. It had the usual white sand, but the sea was insane - always as warm as a bath - which is a bit of a bugger if you want to cool off from the sun, as it doesn't actually cool you down, it simply washes the sweat off you.
We met a lot of characters on the beach, many children here parade up and down selling things such as fruit and bracelets, to fund their private English lessons. They can sometimes become quite an annoyance, but Ness and I found that if you talk to them and play with them a little bit, they soon take their minds off selling and become kids again. We spent an entire evening playing with a few little boys and girls and they completely wore us out. I don't know how Hayley Woo has all the energy being a nanny!
I ate bloody well on that beach as well, people wander round selling tiny lobsters on their heads for about a pound, and I pretty much got all lobstered up every single day.
On the last night we went out for a meal in the oddest restaurant known to man. It was called The Snake House, and it literally was. The place is full tanks of snakes, and there were even snake tanks inside the table at which Ness and I ate. Very odd. When we arrived, the waiter asked us if we "would like a table next to the crocodile or full of snakes," which is the weirdest question I think I have ever been asked. Needless to say, we chose a table with snakes in simply because the crocodile was in a pool but not an enclosure, and I didn't much fancy him having a go at me whilst I was trying to eat my dinner.
Kratie
This was a town we made an overnight stop at, whilst on our way to Ban Lung. I was unimpressed by this town as Ness and I had a scary experience with a guy who worked at our hotel. He had no sense of boundaries, personal space, or manners, and touched both me and Ness in inappropriate places several times. He seemed impervious to threats which escalated from "can you not do that please" to "fucking get off, you'd be arrested in England for that."
He tried to make us go out to dinner with him and his cousin but we were so freaked out by him (and the fact that he was probably a possible, if not actual, rapist) that we hid in our hotel room for a night with no food (he was waiting for us downstairs). There was a point where my toothpaste was beginning to look tasty but thankfully I just wasn't *that* hungry.
Ban Lung
This is where we paid of lot of money to go for a trek that wasn't actually all that good. I can't be bothered to write about the trek as I bloody well hate Nature but Ness really likes trekking and I need the exercise.
On the way here and back, we had to get a taxi from Kratie, as there are no buses, and it is NOTHING like getting a taxi back home.
They are called share-taxis, so you have to wait for people going the same way, and to make more money, they cram you into the car like sardines. In our taxi - a normal sized car - there were 4 people in the back, and 4 in the front (2 people sharing the driver sat and 2 sharing the passenger seat). Plus 2 small children. God knows how the driver manages to drive, but it was a humorous experience, albeit one that I hopefully won't have to repeat in Asia.
Ban Lung itself was a great town, so small that it has no tarmac roads, just big red dusty ones. I felt safer wandering round there than anywhere else in Cambodia as it had the air of a place where nothing much, including crime, happens.
Sadly though, on our way back from trekking, the moto that Ness was on hit a small child who didn't get out of the road in time, despite the driver beeping. Kids here aren't taught not to play in the road, and all that stuff with the hedgehogs, and so they are much more fearless when it comes to moving out the way for vehicles. He had a chunk out of his head missing, and he was gushing blood like a tap, but because he was conscious and screaming, hopefully he was ok.
After Ban Lung, it was back to Phnom Penh, where I am now, to wait for a Vietnamese Visa. Annoyingly, it is Khmer New Year here, so everything shuts down for 3 days, and people do weird things like have water and talcum powder fights. Kids in particular aim for us foreigners, so we have to run like stealth soldiers everytime we leave the front door of the guest house.
I've just read up and realised that I lied, this is actually a really long post, so thank you to anyone who bothered to read it.
On a final note, Lisa has told me she is having a girl - Neve Isabella Sheehan :)
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