Cambodia is fulll of surprises

13/10/2010 by Russell.

Cheerio Bangkok, Hello Cambodia and Siam Reap

Well it was a fond farewell to Bangkok on 24^th September, a 9hr drive through the border and into Cambodia and Siam Reap.

You meet all kinds, already have met an ex-West Herts librarian in India, and shared good moments in Thailand with a female friend, I embarked on a journey to Cambodia as Billy no Mates, only to find myself discussing publishing books with Phillip a 50-60yr old with his Thai girlfriend along the journey and meeting a Spanish woman over lunch on her way to Siam Reap.

Angie -the Spanish woman, had like myself just said cheerio to her brother as I had to a multitude of Thai masseurs in Bangkok.

We arrived in Siam Reap as a small party on the bus – to find us all under pressure to stay at the bus company’s hotel. Angie (from Teneriffe) and myself legged it together. I assured her there were plenty of cheap options elsewhere. We walked along the road, much to the amazement of local tuk-tuk drivers. Its ”too far we heard them say, ‘3km to town’, was it my arse. Legs are extraordinary pieces of kit when you know how to manipulate them, one in front of the other and in 5 mins we were in the town, amazing!

We stumbled across, very luckily down some leafy side street, a hotel, with pool all for $6 a night. US dollars, greenbacks etc are the order of the day here. Menu’s, tuk-tuks, supermarkets are all priced in dollars. Within 5 minutes of arriving we had dived into to the pool, to find we were the only occupants, great moments, just after such a tiring day.

Saturday 25^th

I said ‘Happy Birthday’ to myself as I shaved, oh what joy, first time ever no-one has given me a greeting, at least I was grateful for a companion for the day, I had no idea how the day was going to shape up, except we had decided to hire bicycles and go up to Anghor Thom and Anghor Wat temples. We headed in to town as instructed to hire bikes, not one bicycle to be seen. We had breakfast and mentioned to our host – Seab- what we wanted to do and before we could eat our porridge, two bikes appeared for $5. Wow, service.

So far we had only met compliant and lovely Cambodians and Angie and I were finding the town very clean and modern beyond our preconceptions, well especially mine after India and third world country country territory.

Off we popped on our bikes for the 7km ride to Anghor Thom, very much like ‘Five go Mad in Dorset’ (an early Comic Strip production). Me waving at everyone and telling them it was my birthday, and people waving back, lovely jolly and cheerful.

Like all these places which attract tourists, the Cambodians are ready, with sweet children (bloody child labour) coming up to sell postcards scarves, necklaces, guidebooks etc..very hard to resist. We cycled past Anghor Wat to get to the furthest temple first, Angkor Thom.

First impressions it looks just like the pictures you may have seen in books or elsewhere, this was the last great city of the Khmer dynasty, it once housed 1 million people. The stone work on the temple with the faces, the Bayon, over 54 faces carved out of stone in the 12^th century, incredible, by their size and the detail all around the site. This is just a foretaste of the main site.

The heat was bearing down on us both, so much so as I cycled my arms were running water like someone had turned on a tap, and we were cycling as if we were in Holland. Our cheese for the picnic was smeared on the bread and licked out of its wrapper like a choc ice. Our water was hot enough for a cup of tea.

On we went to the terrace of elephants, which ran for 300m of elephants carved out of stone forming a huge ‘bas relief’. The steps were guarded by three headed elephants, which would have been imposing in their day to any visitor.

It was here that when we parked our bicycles under a tree, we discovered how enterprising the people are. There was a sweet 10 year old girl, who, if asked ‘what is the capital city of South Africa, or any other country for that matter, she knew the answer, which she used as a way of selling goods. All the information was provided to her by tourists, and she remembered them all, I tried to catch her out with Latvia and Australia and Iceland and even Ukraine.

After climbing and walking round the heart of this site, Phimeanakas and the scaffolded Baphuon, we cycled to the iconinc symbol of all the the temples the Angkor Wat, typical coned towers shaped like the flowers buds of the Lotus. There is also some extremely good bas reliefs – thought to be amongst the best in the world.

Got back and swam in the pool and chilled.

26^th September

Got a car with driver through my cafe owner Seab, well he was prompt with the bikes, so why not rely on him for a car.

Off we sped at 6.30am to a temple 37km away, ‘Rough Guide’ recommends to to get to Banteay Srei early before tourists arrive by the bus load. It is a small temple, doorways only a 1m high and is reasonably well preserved. By the time we had finished breakfast at the site, one coach load had arrived at 8.00am, but more worrying was the darkening sky. Thunder and lightening and the rain poured from the sky like a power shower. Still the coach loads arrived, so from being just two there was more like 222 waiting for the torrent of rain to subside. The kids had great fun in the rain, and even the hawkers changed their dis plays from dresses to umbrellas and pac a macs.

Seeing the site among so many lost its gloss, but it is hidden away among the trees and is a site which is having money poured into it by the Swiss government. After here we were off to the ‘Tomb raider’ temple site. Just to think I was treading in the footsteps of Angeline Jolie. Well I could tread in the footsteps of my companion Angie to get the same affect.

Angie speaks good english and so we can have good conversations about destinations and life at home. I take pictures of her and she of me so it is a good arrangement. She is a grandmother already back on the Canary Islands and has 2 daughters. Of course all the Cambodians think we are married, so everywhere we go we are at pains to explain the situation, a bit like Basil Fawlty saying ‘(S)he is from Barcelona’ when referring to Manuel.

Surprisingly a lot of Cambodians speak and converse in very good English and are no fools, we have met and chatted to so many, I am even lining up girls with email accounts for Gregory, they are just so interested to be able to practise their english, and want to meet people and they are truly lovely girls.

Ta Phrom (Tomb Raider film) is extraordinary, roots of trees have taken hold all round the place as if it was designed to be part of the construction in the first place. It is quite eerie when walking round this huge temple site among trees with roots as thick as Wembley Stadium’s arch. They are holding some of the structure in place, and cannot in any way be removed without spoiling the atmosphere of the place or destroying the buildings themselves. Because of the film, I guess this has moved up the list of popular sites. It is amazing to see how nature reclaims her territory, these ruins like the others have suffered from the ravages of time, some are almost a 1,000 years old, they have been looted, and I guess abused during the Khmer and Pol Pot’s reign. These places were out-of-bounds during the 70’s.

Off we sped to our final temple – Banteay Kdei for the day, and this was bathed in sunshine and as always Angie gets clobbered by the small children, whom she sits and chats to, whilst I am off being Dr Livingstone. All sites offer great snap shots of ancient ruins, but it is difficult to take a picture never seen before or to try and capture the dramatic architecture from a fresh perspective without people in the shot.

Day 2 over and to the pool for a swim.

The final day was by tuk-tuk to the Rulous group, the first city of this ancient civilisation. Bakong and Preah Ko. But it was not the temples which intrigued us the most from our visit - as magnificent edifices they were, but a girl called Lena.

When we arrived and we always get asked for drinks, scarves, postcards etc..and amongst the throng was Lena. She had spotted we had done the shirts, scarves etc, but she asked if we wanted a drink after our visit.

We spent a good hour at Bakong temple, which has used a pyramid as its base to support a tower at the top. I said to Angie we can get a drink here, and she wasn’t keen, wanted to move off in the tuk-tuk to somewhere less crowded and perhaps cheaper. I said I had a girl wanting to offer us a drink – Lena. I asked for Lena and she presented herself and we walked to her little 4 table cafe.

Apart from the fact she understood and spoke beautiful english, she was such a pleasant individual. Lena has worked from the age of 10, initially selling postcards after school, progressing to scarves and discussed her determination to get sales ahead of other children. She continued like this for around 15 years until she had enough money to get a little cafe, This cost a kings ransom of $500. She spent her own money and borrowed to get a better way of life than selling trinkets everyday. Lena’s day is not all a bed of roses, she gets up around 5, showers in water from a well, prepares food and comes down to her cafe around 7or so, and she lives with her mother. Lena, like so many Cambodian women and the stories we hear have a very tough life and appear to be responsible for all household duties, money, groceries, cleaning etc. And it is the women we see working, men are tuk-tuk, taxi or moto’s, even in cafe’s generally it is a female who serves. Seab in Siam Reap, whom we met and became friendly with, has an even more harrowing story, which I will try to document.

So we came to the end of our tour around the temples of Siam Reap at Angkor, and were enchanted by their structure and by the people in Siam Reap and surrounding areas, so much so Seab wants me to organise a web site for him.

Tonight I will be sleeping with my first Spanish woman on a 12 hour coach trip to Sihanoukville, whey hey…We set of to Phnom Penn where we would change to another bus to take us to the south coast, but along the way at a rest stop I saw something I could never imagine and neither could you.

I saw roasted tortoise for sale in their shells. The underneath shell had been removed and the animal was then roasted in the remainder, all sizes, large or small tortoise to eat. Don’t tell Gaga and Bop….

Am staying at a hotel on the beach for $5 a night.

 

Sihanoukville & attempted murder

Am only 50m from the sea, a bit further away than Koh Tao island in Thailand, but near enough. The weather has been very changeable here with crashing thunderstorms, light shows at night in the sky from distant lightening to blue skies and near perfect water to swim in at the beach.

It is the beach which occupies the most of mine and Angie’s time here. It is also a place where hawkers ply their trade from bracelets, sunglasses, massages and food. Everyday I have had the pleasure of eating lobster on the beach for a few dollars. We would call them languistines (spelling?), small lobsters, I eat about 8 or 10, very tasty indeed and a rare treat.

Amongst the girls plying their trade we have met Annie. She has already removed my distinguished coloured chest hair, and I can vouch when it is ripped out with cotton, very much like a sycthe- it is bloody painful. She works like a baboon inspecting her mate.

Annie ventured to take us out to a fish restaurant and it is here we heard her story.

Annie is a single mum of 35, and is of mixed race, Vietnamese and Cambodian, but is very much a Cambodian. She comes from the north of the country, towards the Vietnamese border I guess. Her marriage wasn’t without its violence, she has the scars to match.

When she was 2 years old, she came face to face with Pol Pot himself. I pressed this point quite hard, because I thought it would be some other individual within the regime.

She and 29 other babies were gathered together and taken from their parents, to be looked after by another woman. (I don’t know why). Pol Pot paid them a visit and proceeded to murder each one by injection. He murdered the woman first, then one by one every other baby. However, he injected Annie on her upper arm, she wailed and wailed, so much so that he held her upside down by her ankles, and here the translation gets blurred, he ripped off her skin where the injection was and threw it away and her in the opposite direction. She has a scar on her upper arm where she was injected, it also bears the number 355.

Her mother was also murdered whilst she was pregnant around the same time.

A further 2 years later, Pol Pot came to visit again, this time he recognised that he had tried to kill her before and so proceeded to strangle her, somehow she survived this ordeal.

On other occasions she and her father hid in the bush/jungle to save their lives, her mother is not her natural maternal mother whom she lives with nowadays.

Despite this Annie is a very friendly woman and has a good nature, but for me to realise the reality of how persecuted Cambodians have been in days gone by is horrific. There are others whom I haven’t met, but I am sure there are equally other accounts to be told. I will still get to write about Seab’s story from Siam Reap.

Pol Pot – he was the undisputed leader of the Khmer Rouge, he ordered the mass extermination of intellectuals, teachers, writers, educated people, and their families. Even wearing ‘glasses’ was an indication of intelligence, a crime punishable by death. The regime lasted 4 years before the Vietnamese army captured Phnom Penn in 1978, by this time between 1 and 3 million Cambodians had perished. Pol Pot died in mysterious circumstances in 1998, thought to have been killed by his own men. Hence the killing fields…..

BTW we get some stunning sunsets here.

Posted in angie, annie, siam reap, cambodia | Print | 1 Comment »