As told by me

I got myself out of bed nice and early and after spending an eternity waiting for my hotel breakfast to arrive, I checked out and grabbed a tuk-tuk for the day to take me to the temples at Angkor, just a few kilometres out of town.

First stop was Angkor Wat, the iconic multi-towered temple which is featured on the Cambodian flag. I started wandering towards the temple itself and was quickly joined by a knowledgeable young local boy who I couldn’t shake off. He really did know his stuff and I was happy to give him a couple of dollars for his 30 minutes of explanation, given that I hadn’t sought out his services. He took great offence at this however as he considered five dollars to be the going rate. Oh well, perhaps he should have discussed the price up front, like I have to do everytime I want to avoid being ripped off.

We then moved on to Angkor Thom, a walled compound which served as the Royal Palace for the local king in the 12th century. There are a number of temples and other structures in here that I explored for a couple of hours, including the Baphuon, which like most of the temples was originally a Hindu temple which was later converted to Therevada Buddhism. In this case, part of the temple was dismantled to create an enormous 70 metre long reclining buddha, which is currently being restored.

Next stop was Ta Prohm, the temple of Lara Croft Tombraider fame. This is a large and impressive temple, though it was very busy which made getting some good photos a rather frustrating experience. I’ve never understood the need that so many people have to put themselves in every photo.

By now it was after 12 and I was starving so my driver took me to a local khmer restaurant where I had a fairly simple but tasty chicken and vegetables with rice. We continued on for one last temple before I was templed out. We then headed back into town where I had a quick wash, picked up my bags and headed out to the airport.

If you want to learn more about the temples of Angkor, this is a good start.

I was a solid two hours early for my flight and managed to have about 40 minutes of kip in airconditioned comfort in the deserted check-in hall before someone appeared to start checking in our flight. I checked in, then paid the US$25 departure tax (no wonder it’s such a lovely new airport) and headed into the lounge where my hunger forced me into a bowl of quite tasty but very expensive Ho Fun noodles with prawns. When we boarded, I found myself seated amongst a group of middle-aged Americans who had been in Siem Reap for some medical-related conference. They kept talking across me and generally being annoying but I just closed my eyes and tried to sleep for the whole 35 minutes it took us to get to Bangkok.

By the way, the only reason I took this flight is because Thailand changed their visa rules about two weeks ago. Previously, most westerners would get a 30 day entry upon arrival. The new rules mean that you only get the 30 days if you fly in. If you come across a land border then you now only get 15 days. This extremely ill-timed change is designed to crack down on all the Farangs (westerners) who abuse the system by doing a border run every month to restart their 30 days. Anyway, I duly got my 30 day stamp at Bangkok airport without so much as a single word from the immigration officer – technically you’re supposed to have an onward or return flight and/or be able to demonstrate sufficient funds to cover your stay. Or not.

I caught a taxi into town and headed for a cheap guesthouse recommended by Lonely Planet, about 10 minutes walk from Backpacker central at Kho San Road. The guesthouse was lovely, if very dimly lit, in an old teak house set in a quiet garden, well off the main road. It was something of an oasis and at $10 with a shared bathroom, it was nice and cheap. I had a quick (cold) shower and then headed out for a walk down to Kho San Road for a look and also because I knew there was a Boots pharmacy there and I needed a few provisions.

Kho San Road is pretty lively though a complete tourist trap and I got in and out of Boots pretty quickly, with all of my needs fulfilled. I then headed back towards the guesthouse, had a great bowl of Tom Yam soup at a streetstall and then crashed into bed, well before 10 for a much-needed early night.

More Angkor photos here

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Cambodia - December 2008, Thailand - December 08, January & February 09

After such a big christmas eve, today was never going to be particularly eventful. The only real event was the change of hotels, precipitated by some very noisy kids and a guy using a very loud edge trimmer to mow the lawn next to the hotel very very slowly. These noises were not compatible with the magnitude of my hangover so I checked out and told a tuk-tuk driver to ‘take me to a quiet hotel’, which he promptly did.

A peaceful afternoon of airconditioning, television and a touch of melancholy at my lonely predicament on christmas day ensued.

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Cambodia - December 2008

After one of the best sleeps I’ve had in a while (despite the wafer-thin mattres, I woke to a beautiful peaceful morning by the lake. A good breakfast of two fried eggs, some ‘bacon’ (curiously reminiscent of thinly sliced spam but it was fine) and the baguette (compulsory throughout Indochina – these were French colonies remember) was enjoyed in the lovely balcony overlooking the lake. I was starting to understand why Lonely Planet had recommended this place.

My tuk-tuk driver arrived promptly at 9am and we headed straight out of town to Choeung Ek, to the Killing Fields memorial. I wasn’t sure whether I really had time to come here as it was a solid 30 minutes each way, but I’m very glad that I did. Some 17,000 people were executed here and despite the very peaceful riverside setting I found it to be deeply disturbing. I bought a flower and an incense stick and paid my respects at the ‘bone monument’, a three-storey tower which contains the skulls of 8,000 souls, then walked around the dozens of mass graves that have been excavated to date (plenty more to go by the look of the map).

Next stop was Tuol Sleng Museum, aka Security Prison S-21, the initial detention point for most of the victims of Choeung Ek, though many others were tortured to death on site. Originally a high school, this is a group of otherwise nondescript three-storey 50′s era concrete buildings, not unlike many high schools of the same vintage in many other countries, however here the classrooms were subdivided into tiny cells and the inmates were shackled together by the ankles to long steel rods. I found this place to be unsettling but not to the same extent as earlier at Choeung Ek, possibly because I think it’s a very difficult mental leap to associate a building that looks like the science block at your school with some of the worst crimes against humanity from the twentieth century.

I’ve always found the Khmer Rouge period very difficult to understand, not just because of its unbridled brutality, but also because there just didn’t seem to be any intelligible point to it. It’s also the fact that it involved a people turning on and devouring itself in the most horrific manner while the global imperatives of the Cold War ensured that the rest of the world turned a blind eye. Not that these sorts of things aren’t still going on in other parts of the world today. There’s also the fact that it happened during my lifetime in a part of the world not too far from my own. Anyway, I could go off on a big rant here but I won’t. Suffice to say that it was clearly important for me to miss that bus yesterday, otherwise I would have skipped Phnom Penh altogether. I think subconciously I’d decided that I didn’t want to confront this period, on this trip at least – it would therefore appear that my subconcious is also a gemini.

On the way back to the guesthouse, we stopped outside the Royal Palace for a quick look and some photos. This is a large and impressive compound which my ten minutes of interest clearly did not do justice to.

I got back to the guesthouse with about half an hour to kill so I popped back around the corner to the Lazy Gecko for a quick beef curry and rice, which was really good (similar to thai red curry, which is one of my favourites).

The bus to Siem Reap was neither particularly clean nor in terribly good condition but it was clear that this was due to the maintenance crew spending all their time on the air-conditioning, which was powerful enough to cool a factory.   The trip to Siem Reap was pretty uneventful, other than the old guy in the buffalo cart that we nearly ran down at about 100km/h (he was struggling to control his buffalo and was all over the road).  This was such a near miss that we got to enjoy the acrid stench of burnt tyre rubber cycling through the aircon for the next 15 minutes.  We arrived about an hour before schedule, just before the sun set, and I hopped in a tuk-tuk to my guesthouse (booked on the internet) that was a little way out of town on the other side.

The guesthouse was pretty nice, with a pool, though my room was swarming with mozzies when I arrived.  I went to the bar and made use of their wi-fi (which they charged me for) while waiting for the can of fly spray they’d just emptied into my room to dissipate.  After settling in, I headed into town to get some dinner and ran into Oli, a tour guide I’d met a number of times since Hue, and his group who were on the same mission.  Oli invited me along as he was one short of what he’d booked for and I was more than happy to join him.

After an excellent Khmer fish curry (Oli’s recommendtation), I joined a large chunk of the group (there were at least 15 people in the group in total – way too big for my liking) around the corner at one of the bars on the aptly named “Pub street”.  After a few drinks here a couple of group members (kiwi girls, from memory) appeared in full santa suit, beard and all, and coerced us into coming down to the night market, where there was an impromptu street party in full swing, with 50c beers flowing strongly.

The night continued through a number of different establishments, including one which a tuk-tuk driver took us too called “X-bar”, which instead of the girly-bar we’d assumed it was based on the name, was in fact a very chilled roof-top bar with a number of pool tables.  The celebrations continued right through until dawn and I met an interesting array of people on this particular christmas eve, including three guys from my school in Canberra (though they were many years my junior).

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Cambodia - December 2008

For reasons that I don’t really want to go into (oh ok, I overslept), I missed the 7am bus to Siem Reap that I had booked. I therefore went and booked myself on a 1pm bus to Phnom Penh instead. This was a very fancy and comfortable bus and I had a spare seat next to me so it was a pretty pleasant journey, especially as I slept through most of it.

The journey to the border was pretty brief and the border formalities themselves were painless. We did have to wait half an hour for our visas to be processed however, which provided an opportunity for what turned out to be one of the best bowls of Pho Bo I’ve had so far.

We continued on to Phnom Penh through the unremarkable Cambodian countryside. We then crossed the Mekong on a ferry before the sun put on a real show, glowing huge and yellow becoming pink as it sank into the Mekong floodplain. We arrived in town about an hour after sunset and I got myself a tuk-tuk to take me to the cheap travellers ghetto by Boeung KakLake.

In lieu of any other information I took a recommendation from Lonely Planet, the Floating Island guesthosue, which my driver was more than happy to guide me to. Just as well as I’d never have found it on my own.

For $10 I got a clean enough air-conditioned room with a bathroom and a view of the lake. The guy working on reception was very helpful and booked me a seat on the 12.45pm bus to Siem Reap for tomorrow, as well as arranging a tuk-tuk to take me around a few of the main sights in the morning.

I dumped my stuff, hoping that it would be there when I got back (this wasn’t the most secure place) and headed down the street to find something to eat. Just down the road was the Lazy Gecko, a restaurant that gets the Lonely Planet nod but that also supports one of the local children’s charities, so I thought I’d give it a go. This proved to be a good choice as the stir-fried beef in oyster sauce with rice was excellent, even though it did take about half an hour to appear.

With a full stomach and droopy eyes, I headed back to my room for the earliest night in a long while. My room was not quite as peaceful as it had been earlier as the bar two doors down was now getting lively with the bass pumping. That didn’t matter though as I closed the window, cranked up the aircon and put my walkman on. I was so shattered that I think I could have slept through through a small war anyway.

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Cambodia - December 2008