Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Cambodia - Siem Reap: Angkor What?
Last blog I was just about to meet my new group for Cambodia. Not all of them were there yet at the time, but the breakdown now is: three Aussies (Sarah from my last trip, and my roommate Anna from Melbourne), three Americans (Ruffin from N.Carolina, and Eleni & Bryan from Boston), one Fin (Brigitta) and nine poms - I'm now blind from all the red and white skin (but then I look away from the mirror and it's ok).
So we started off meeting at the hotel, same as for the last tour. We got all the pleasantries out the way once again, then headed into town for dinner (Khao Sanh Road again). Bonding over buckets seems to be the way to go here, so after dinner, those of us who had been here before introduced everyone else to the giant cocktail, then we all decided it would be a fantastic idea to check out a ping pong show! Very classy, but when in Bangkok...
After negotiating a price with the tuk tuk drivers and telling them this needed to include a quick pitstop at our hotel, we were on our way. As soon as we got to the hotel to drop off the keys though, they started demanding payment straight away, and wanted us to buy our ping pong tickets from them. Dodgy... We told them we'd just buy them once we arrived, but they were very insistent, and wanted to be paid separately for each trip (despite negotiating this beforehand). In the end we just walked away, they followed us for a bit, then gave up and left (there were about 12 of us and 3 of them - plus Ruffin is 6'5", so that probably helped).
So we arrived at Pat Pong Rd in new tuk tuks, and walked straight in to one of the ping pong places - which had no entry fee! Good thing we didn't buy any from the dodgy brothers. It was pretty depressing actually. The girls on stage were nothing special (some looked like they had post-baby bodies, which made it even more sad that they had to do that), and they just looked really bored and didn't do much. Every now and then one would pull a string of beads or glowsticks or something equally nice out of herself on stage, we'd all go "eeeewwww!!!!", then they'd go back to looking bored. Then one finally did come out with bucket of ping pong balls and got to work. The best part was that she handed Ruffin a ping pong bat and expected him to take aim! Bloody funny, especially considering his alcoholic motor skills (which explains why I got hit in the foot with a stray ball - gross). Once we'd witnessed the freakshow though, it was time to go...
Next morning, bright and early we all jumped on a bus to head to the Thailand/Cambodia border. Bangkok traffic the morning after a night out is a bad thing... and they wouldn't pull over for me (even though it was our bus anyway)! How rude! Someone was kind enough to hand me a plastic bag just in time, which I had the pleasure of holding on to for the next two hours... blah... Ran into Sam from our last tour at the servo too, she was with her new group and already didn't like them, poor thing, but the plan was to catch up with her in Cambodia and rescue her if they didn't improve!
After about five hours driving and a stop for lunch, we crossed the border into Cambodia. Long process! New country, different road rules (including driving on the other side of the road) which meant we had to offload all our luggage to swap to a new bus once we got through immigration. Got our first real taste of what to expect poverty-wise in Cambodia too - as we walked through towards customs (on the Thai side) we were followed by crowds of little kids wanting to hold umbrellas to shade us burny white people, and just generally swarm around chatting. I didn't bother with the umbrella (not that long a walk), but Sarah did, and as soon as she hit shade, she was confronted with a cranky face and a hand held out for payment (which she gave - softie). Then we were told to check our pockets and bags to make sure the kids hadn't stolen anything. Nice... but we were all good.
Crossing the border, we walked into a little poverty-stricken, try-hard version of Vegas. Lots of hotels and casinos (including a "Crown Casino") for the Thais, who are not supposed to gamble on their side of the border. After swapping our money over for US dollars (which they mostly use here instead of their Riel) we were on our new bus for the five hour drive to Siem Reap. The main road into Cambodia from the border, is the worst in all of Cambodia. Think 1m deep potholes, gravel, and mud so deep that you can't actually use the road in the wet season (which is why our trip notes said to budget for a plane ticket just in case). Driving along it is like being in a mixmaster - surprisingly, I wasn't actually sick for this part of the trip though! The conspiracy theory is that an airline has paid the government to not fix the road, so they can keep making money on airfares. Dodgy... During the ride, our group leader Haing gave us a bit of a rundown on Cambodia's sad history and the corruption which is still going on in their government today.
After about five hours in a mixmaster, and a couple of pitstops the road finally smoothed out a bit and we found ourselves driving past some pretty fancy hotels. Apparently in the last few years, tourism, especially around Siem Reap has taken off. Gotta love Lara Croft, nothing boosts tourism like a hot chick in a cool temple (Tomb Raider was filmed here, in case you missed the reference). Then after passing all the nice hotels, we finally made it to our own - not quite so fancy (the toilet was over the shower), but it did the job. Then out for dinner (Cambodian food is very similar to Thai, but not quite so spicy), then a few of us headed down Pub Street (yes, that's what it's called) to check out the nightlife. It wasn't a big one though, we had a couple of drinks and headed home for a relatively early night (compared to the night before).
Next day was a looooong day! We checked out the very old and very impressive temples of Angkor. I won't bother describing them in much detail - no time, and a picture says a thousand words - there's photos on Facebook (still can't get them to load up on this site). Our guide Lan really knew her stuff and spoke brilliant English - very impressed! Good thing too, because I came into Cambodia fairly blind, didn't bother to really read up on the country or really know what I was getting myself into (was too busy having fun in Thailand!). We started with the elephants first - they didn't look as happy or healthy as the ones we rode in Thailand though. A few people rode them, but Sarah and I gave it a miss (one lap around a temple compared to an hour riding through jungle.... ours was better). Then into the temples - Bayon's best known for it's smiley faces, and we took plenty of token touristy photos of them. It was so hot though, I think we probably would have stayed longer and appreciated them a bit more if it had been cooler. Next was the very impressive Angkor Wat - this is Cambodia's proudest achievement, and you can see it by the name Angkor being on absolutely everything in this country, Angkor markets, Angkor guest houses, even their national beer is called Angkor. And it's easy to see why - it's the largest religious building in the world, very detailed, intricate, and totally symmetrical. It's also got a huge moat surrounding it (approx 100m wide) which was dug completely by hand. Pretty amazing considering it was built hundreds of years ago. After lunch, and being suckered into buying postcards by one of the squillions of kids selling their wares, we moved on to Banteay Srei, which translates to Citadel of Women. It's made of pink sandstone, and they believe it was done mostly by women, because of how small and intricate the stone carvings are. After this was a stop at the landmine museum, run by a Cambodian named Akira, who has de-activated over 50,000 mines in this country. He used to work as a child soldier, and knows just a little bit about how they work. He now has an orphanage and museum at his house - we didn't have long there, about 10 minutes, but was pretty interesting. Then we moved onto my favourite temple, and the one where a lot of Tomb Raider was filmed (which I might actually appreciate if I'd seen the movie). They've barely restored it, and there's 400 year old trees still growing out of the walls and ceiling, with roots winding throughout the hallways. Very cool. We'd seen photos in Bangkok and wondered where they were taken, and now I know! After this, Lan took us to a market/food fair type thing which operates at sunset. The locals go there every night to eat and watch the sun go down. They all thought a busload of white tourists was fair game, so we were swamped with beggars at times, but for the most part they just stared, think we were just a bit of a curiosity. Saw crickets for sale, but decided to go with the battered fish and weird-looking eggs instead - and they were actually pretty good!
That night, despite being completely and utterly knackered from all the sun and from being up since 6:30am, we headed out for dinner and more drinking (yes, you may be noticing a theme here - there's been lots of drinking!). We ran into Alex from our Thailand tour at the restaurant, with his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/who knows? She'd flown over to do Cambodia with him. Was good to run into him, and he was meant to come meet us later for a drink, but he never showed - how rude! Possibly turned up while we were at a different pub though. Sarah and I drank Tomb Raiders at the Red Piano (Cointreau, lime, and soda I think) before heading to a bar called Angkor What? which cranks out lots of indie pommy music, and has very cheap cocktails! You'll see photos of some of them on Facebook. I was a good girl though, after we left there I was strictly on the bottled water. Haing then dragged us to what I think it Siem Reap's *ahem* best dance club. Lots of happy hardcore, followed by ballads in Khmer which all seemed to be sung by the same guy (I think they have only one major pop star here and everyone loves him). The weirdest thing about the club though was that the guys all dance together! Haing assured us it wasn't a gay bar ("we don't have gay in Cambodia"), but I'm not so sure...
Next day we had the morning free to just bum around - which meant a second attempt at massages, to find out if a Cambodian one is much different from a Thai one - a few of us headed to the nearest place and asked for an oil massage (thinking it would just be the good kind where they rub your back without cracking any vertebrae). No such luck - not as violent as the Thai one, but not exactly relaxing either!
That afternoon, we all jumped on yet another bus and headed to the floating village. Every wet season, the rivers flood, so there is an entire village comprised of either houses on stilts or home-made houseboats. There were floating TV stores, a floating school, a floating pub, a floating church, and plenty of floating houses. I'm amazed they don't have more infant drownings around there because there were little kids everywhere, running across planks over water, paddling themselves along the river in what were basically big buckets, and sitting on the edges of un-fenced houseboats. And they were all naked! I've never seen so many naked kids in one place! We did a stop at the crocodile farm (they're farmed for their skins), the fish farm (same as the ones that were in the canal in Bangkok), and then got to hold a python at one of the floating shops.
After that, we headed back to the bus, and were surrounded by locals trying to sell us souvenier plates - everyone got a bit of a shock when we realised our photos were on them! That explains why there was a guy taking photos of us when we got off the bus - everyone's pulling pretty funny faces, since nobody had actually realised they were having their photos taken. Needless to say, nobody bought one...
Out of the bus, and into the orphanage. I'm still not really sure why we went there - it seemed like a nice idea, very Angelina, but we weren't bringing donations, or serving any purpose - to me, there didn't seem much point being there. The kids seemed happy to see us, but I wasn't comfortable with them being like a tourist attraction. Very strange. A couple of people in the group do plan to adopt at some point though so they got some info.
Early night, ready for the bus trip to Kompong Cham tomorrow.
- comments