Us Round The World
…….our travels across the globe

Cambodia

Of all the countries that we planned to visit over the following year Cambodia was one that we probably knew the least about. An experienced and wise traveller friend of ours (the ever insightful H) once said that travelling was all about expectations and how right he has turned out to be. You can be really expecting a place to be amazing and then it falls a bit short or you can know nothing about it and its turns out to be fantastic. Cambodia is a country with such an compelling recent history, people,  landscapes, coastline and architecture that were way above our expectations.

Border Crossing to Cambodia on our boat via the Mekong Delta

We arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, by boat along the Mekong River from Chau Doc (the sleepy coastal village of Vietnam) which is the only way to arrive in Phnom Penh we think (after experiencing its horrid bus station a few days later!). As the boat approaches the shores of Phnom Penh you feast on an impressive skyline, at least compared to Vietnam’s, and a City that looks more modern but still has bags of authenticity and character that make it Cambodian. As soon as the boat arrived we were ambushed by around 50 moto tuk tuk drivers literally climbing through the windows to encourage us to choose them to take us to our hotels. With all 50 constantly asking ‘ You want tuk tuk?, You want tuk tuk?, only 1 dollar’. After a stressful 5 minutes we rescued our bags, found a nice tuk tuk driver and he took us to a nice cheap guesthouse (AKA Guesthouse $15 / night) right next to the Royal Palace. Quite a location.

Phnom Penh – ‘Moto Tuk-Tuk, only 1 dollar’

First things we noticed about Phnom Penh – the moto tuk tuks are great and there is nothing equivalent to this in Vietnam as its either motorbike or taxi so we enjoyed the experience. Our second thought was how much quieter and laid back Phnom Penh was than the Vietnamese big cities we visited – we might actually be able to cross the road! The third thing we noticed that whereas Vietnam was technicolor Cambodia was all about golds, oranges and yellows. The fourth thing we noticed was the amount of SUVs and more precisely ‘Lexi’  SUVs – not what we were expecting from what we thought was the poorest country in SE Asia. But an interesting side effect of its recent history as we would later learn…

A nice stroll along the river showed us loads of western bars and ex-pats, English pubs and the like. A major difference to the Vietnam cities. Our first day there we took a tuk-tuk out to Cheung Ek. We organised this through our original tuk-tuk driver for an inflated price of $22, the reason they only charge 1 dollar originally is so that they can try to organise all of these extra tours and take commission from the hotels.

Cheung Ek is the site of the killing fields museum and also where 17,000 men women and children were killed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979. The field has been made into a memorial for those that were killed and there are similar memorials all over the country in memory of the 2 million people (out of a population of 9 million) that lost their lives during this short and bizarre period. Its only in the last 10 years that Cambodia has seen peace; even though the Khmer Rouge lost control of power in 1979, there was much civil unrest and rebel clashes across a lot of the country until 1998. The memorial features thousands of skulls all looking outwards sombrely; taking pictures somehow did not feel right. And the killing tree where they used to swing babies into head first to kill them.  Some of the Khmer Rouge leaders are currently facing a very long trial in Phnom Penh for their role in the killings and we read this week that the trial is likely to last until 2015.

It’s difficult to understand the clear reasoning behind the extreme purges of the Khmer Rouge, I but in essence they wanted to bring Cambodia back to its simple and basic state that has no influence from the western world and kill any one that opposed them or theoretically could oppose them. This meant killing all intellectuals, destroying all systems and records, getting rid of the currency system and generally doing whatever they liked to destroy a modern society.

Other sights in Phnom Penh included the Wat Phnom and Royal Palace as well as generally wandering around the city and eating some very good food – yummy amok has definitely become our favourite asian dish!

 Kep

Our original plan was to head straight to Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor and then straight to Thailand. However as we hadn’t had much sun and we were in need of a good break from cities and crowds we decided to spend some time on the south coast. We headed first to a very sleepy little town called Kep which was wonderful and has become one of our favourite places. As soon as we arrived we just relaxed. We stayed in a bungalow (Vanna Bungalows) set on the base of a jungle type mountain overlooking the seas and facing west so we could watch the sunset in the hammock!

Kep used to be a resort for wealthy French colonists and claims that it used to be the first resort n South East Asia. The town was formerly full of old colonial villas which have now been left to ruin which means that there are just lots of old burnt out buildings. As we were told, after the Khmer Rouge lost power there was no currency in Cambodia for 5 years. This meant that the people had to trade items in order to live and the villas were stripped bare for this purpose. During the 1990’s the derelict villas were handed out to government officials and senior Khmer Rouge officers as a type of peace agreement. A law in Cambodia means that if a building is not gated you lose right to the building and therefore Kep is full of derelict buildings surrounded by modern walls and gates. Creating an amazing but strange experience to walk around the Town.

Although Kep is getting more touristy we had still had every bar and restaurant we went to all to ourselves. This included an amazing crab market where we feasted on freshly caught crab with black pepper (the black pepper is also local) and some of the best pizza we have ever had cooked in a wood fired stove at Eldorado’s. Although the chef is a bit crazy!

Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island)

We also took a day trip over to Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island) which was just stunning and beautiful. So much better than we thought it would be, with no hawkers, few tourists and a beautiful strip of sea and sand. Kep and Rabbit Island, we both agreed, were our favourite places we had been to so far on the trip and neither of us wanted to leave. There are bungalows on the beach at Rabbit Island for $5 a night and some travellers had set up home there – we were quite tempted to do the same. We heard some scary plans that a Korean company were going to build a 600 room hotel and casino on the Island and build a 4 lane bridge over to the island – crazy! It even had David almost turning eco-warrior at the thought of it.

 Kampot

We reluctantly left the sleepy and friendly town of Kep; for the first time on our trip, neither of us wanted to move on. We travelled by moto tuk tuk to Kampot which is a riverside city just down the coast from Kep. We only stayed the night though as we realised we were in need of yet more relaxation and so headed for Sihnoukville, Cambodia’s most well known and popular beach resort.

 Sihnoukville

We were expecting a rowdy kind of Benidorm by all accounts, but it wasn’t like this at all and was actually a very nice laid back resort. We walked over to the quiet beach of Otres during the day and walked back along the deserted end of the main beach during sunset. This was mostly free from westerners but had loads of Cambodian families swimming and having bbqs on the beach. This was much more interesting than watch westerners drinking happy hour sunset vodka buckets!

 We had 3 days here, enjoying the sun, sand and sea. We had become so accustomed to the relaxed coastal way of live that we had to convince ourselves to go back inland and head north to the temple viewing sights of ancient Angkor, as opposed to following the coastal route around to Thailand. We so nearly didn’t; but not going to Angkor, would be like going to Egypt and not seeing the pyramids. So we headed north by bus (lots of them which took about 12 hours in total and meant staying over again in Phnom Pehn) and prepared ourselves for the hordes of tourists we had been warned about by everyone.

 Angkor  

Built between the 8^th and 13^th centuries by the Khmer civilisation to celebrate the God of their time, the temples of Angkor were rediscovered deep in the jungle by the western world in the late 19^th century and mostly renovated. And it takes quite a lot of planning to decide exactly what you are going to do with your time. As there are many temples, not just Angkor Wat, spread out over many miles.

 Initially on arriving that day, we went to see the sunset at Phnom Bakheng, which you can for free after 4.30. On doing so we also caught a glimpse for the first time of Angkor Wat peeking through the forest, looking menacing and imposing. Truthfully the sunset was disappointing as we thought it would set over Angkor Wat, not the forest. And the thousands of slow and inept package tourist groups tramping on every ancient rock they could find grinded on us slightly. We then decided to do the opposite of what the guide book suggested, and go the places at different times of the day to what they recommended, which is a great plan to avoid the crowds.

 So we bought our tickets for the next day ($20 each) and arranged for our moto tuk-tuk driver to take us round all day ($15). So we were all set for the following day for our Angkor experience, or so we thought. This was until Laura woke at 5 and ran to the toilet, never a good sign based on previous experience! Several minutes and some strange noises later she emerged with the news she is not feeling very well. Oh dear. So instead of Angkor, we spent the next 3 days in the same smelly room with Laura eating very little and doing not much more than waiting for Laura’s stomach to get better. At least they had the HBO movie channel!

We finally made it to Angkor 3 days later, after re buying the tickets and a getting ourselves a good deal with a tuk-tuk driver. First we went to the main attraction, Angkor Wat itself. Pictures describe it better than words, but its intricate detail and massive scope make it something very special, and worth all the effort. Next we headed to the Bayon which is a more of a spiritual temple, and has eerie carved faces looking out at you everywhere. Next we went to the temple famous for where Tomb Raider was filmed, Ta Phrom. No reconstruction has been done at Ta Phrom so you can see the jungle still entangled in the temple as they lived side by side for the last 1000 years untouched. We enjoyed Ta Phrom as it was cool to see how the jungle had taken over when the temples have been deserted.  We finished off our tour with a couple of the smaller sites which were also amazing and surprisingly peaceful.  There are however a LOT of hawkers all around Angkor shouting sir ‘you wanna buy water’ sir..you wanna buy coke?’ ‘sir you wanna buy guide book? You wanna buy fruit? Painting? Icecream? Handbag? Strange frog thing that makes a noise when you scrape it? We managed to get away with only being forced into buying some postcards from the best salesperson in the whole of SE Asia an 11 year old girl. You shouldn’t really buy from the kids but they are relentless and very very good and what they do – they’d definitely give the winner of the Apprentice a run for their money!

So after seeing Angkor we could finally get on our way to Thailand on a very slow ‘express’ bus…… as with Vietnam we were sad to leave Cambodia as even with the various food poisonings and stomach ailments and the continuous hounding of the hawkers cries of ‘you wanna buy something?’ we really enjoyed our time there.  Maybe the Cambodians are not as entrepreneurial, confident or dare I say it ‘clever’ as there Vietnam neighbours. But they certainly are as friendly, welcoming and maybe even more laid back. It’s got a crazy history and it will be really interesting to see how it develops over the next few years…. we’re hoping it won’t too much though as we like it just the way it is!