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Wednesday 19th August
5am alarm goes off and we made our way, sleepily, to the train towards the Thai-Cambodia border. We’d avoided the cheap bus because of scams and cons being rife (remember those words). The train journey was crazy; most stops weren’t stations, just a place where the train stops on the tracks and people emerge from nearby shacks and climb aboard. It got progressively busier as we made our way through the Bangkok suburbs and slums, and the food progressively unidentifiable; the ladies started offering rice and mince, which then got swapped for balls of deep fat fried things, then something wrapped in bamboo… hmmm! Half way along the trip the police came down telling everyone to close their blinds to half way… they then ushered half the train out into another carriage then a TV camera man came down filming us all… very random! We did what we were told, but the camera man didn’t seem to want the white people on camera so think our Thai TV debut will have to wait. After six hours we arrived in Aranraprathet, where we jumped into a tuk tuk and gave the driver (another racing car driver wannabe) clear instructions to take us to the border. At the ‘border’ we were instructed to pay 1300BHT - we argued the toss that the visa should be $20US (680BHT) but they refused and we were stuck at this office with no way of getting out (the driver was in on the scam). So we paid up reluctantly, received our visas, and were then driven to the real border where we found visas were in fact $20US! b******s! And the driver still wanted his 30BHT for driving us through the scam! Luckily we didn’t pay in advance there for our cab or accommodation on the Cambodian side - which probably would have turned out to be fake anyway! Still, we walked through border control and whilst double the price, at least our visas were real and duly accepted. Once through we shared a cab into Siem Reap with two girls we’d met at the fake border and transferred to tuk tuks who no mater what we said took us to their accommodation of choice! Having established their choice was located centrally and quite nice we negotiated a much lower price and explored around town after a $1 meal - love it. Now we had no intension of buying things iin the ight market - the whole way through we’ve just been looking and identifying things we’d buy at the end of our trip thus avoiding carrying al this junk… that was until we started getting quoted $3 for things we’d seen at ten times the price… then $1 for other things.. crazy prices! So we loaded up and have almost filed our bags now with bags, wooden things, t-shirts and all sorts… oops!
Thursday 20th August
Temple day… we me our guide for the next two days, Tee, and made our way to Angkor. We started at modest ones with the aim of building up to the big finish on the second day and therefore not get Wot’ed out. So we started in the scorching heat, having driven through quite a few villages comprising of really basic homes and workshops but still smiles all round, and explored Banteay Srei. Avoiding the sellers we then headed for the landmine museum where an ex-soldier, having laid about 50,000 mines in his career had started an amends for his evil past. The museum hosts thousands of decommissioned mines and a few home truths about the evil they spread, and the evil ones who spread them… USA included! Back to temples, and in-between dodging shrieks of “Lady! Lady! You buy my water!” and “Mister! Mister! You buy this bracelet” we traipsed around Ta Som, Preah Neak Pean, and Preak Khan where we employed the services of an illegal guide for $4. We had to have silences whilst security guards passed by, but were quite funny and more than worth it for the stories and facts we got when we were finally alone! Tee seemed very anxious to leave when finished and when we found out it was for football training we thought we’d join him… he cheekily asked for an advance on his fee at a shop so he could buy two new football shirts, and off we went to meet his team, although with no boots and a rough pitch we decided to just watch instead and have a knock about with the younger kids.
Friday 21st August
With the ridiculous idea of watching the sunrise we woke up at 4.30am and made our way, with a sleepy Tee, to Angkor Wot along with hundreds of others… can you believe a traffic jam in country with so few cars at 5am! It seemed everyone else had the same idea! Stumbling over the rocks in the dark we found our spot and watched for an hour as the sun rose behind the clouds… d’oh! Ah well, it still looked impressive. Then we turned our attention back to the temples… determined to learn something we bartered for a guide book and took ourselves around with me reading through the pages of historical tales describing the inscriptions, carvings and architecture… it’ quite difficult to walk through ruins and read, but no broken ankles were had. We made it around Ankor itself, then Bayon, Terrace of Elephants, Ta Keo, Ankor Thom, Ta Prohm and Banteay Kdei. Having exhausted ourselves, and Tee, we went back to town where we befriended Nick (even a Spurs fan!) and Bec in a bar, dragged them around the market and shared a bucket of beer… lovely stuff.
Saturday 22d August
Destination Phnom Penh. The journey was supposed to be uneventful, but the driver had other ideas; he decided to knock two people off their moped (we were on the wrong side of the road overtaking something at the time so clearly our fault). When he didn’t stop things got a little worse! Everyone aboard got quite angry (we were the only backpackers) but someone must have called the police or something because we got pulled over at the next police check where several people started telling the police what had happened. They took him over to the police desk (a table under an awning by the side of the road) for questioning then decided everything was all fine and let him go. With zero communication this is not what actually happened but what we guess happened based upon watching and the gesticulations of fellow passengers! 6 hours later we arrived in Phnom Penh and negotiated our way into an air con room. The evenings entertainment started with a huge lightening display over the river and finished with fighting off local kids and landmine victims all selling things we didn’t want or begging…. this was to be an early introduction to the horrific aftermath that PP, and the rest of Cambodia, is getting through. Phnom Penh is a city of conflict past and present… past, as in civil war, current, as in smiles disguising tortured souls.
Sunday 23rd August
After a little exploring of the smelly local markets and side streets we made our way to the city temple… we were starting t get Pagoda’d out as so probably took more interest in the elephant outside than the temple itself but it was impressive (the elephant that is!). Feeling hungry we made our way to Friends café (they support an orphanage and a training/development school helping kids get trained in the service industry).
Watching Spurs beat West Ham that night was very entertaining, as were the street seller kids joking with us and being cheeky…
Monday 24th August
To see more for ourselves, we made an appointment to visit the orphanage our breakfast café supported and went to meet the kids for a few hours. It was a mall orphanage with only 29 kids and the conditions compared to what we’d heard about in the out of town orphanages was comparatively good! They were great kids… sometimes a little over excited but we didn’t mind. In between placing catch, piggy in the middle and football they’d smile and tell you they were there because their parents died of AIDS “but it’s ok because they are clean“… truly a city of . Having had our group photos and said farewell we left feeling really guilty but glad as at least these kids had someone who cared about their futures.
After a fun morning it was time for something less fun…. Tuol Sleng Museum; S-21. Once a school, turned into a prisoner interrogation unit by the Khmer Rouge regime throughout 1975-79, and now a museum of remembrance; S-21 is grim and shocking. Basically the Khmer Rouge decided their ideal world wasn’t working, not because they were brutal leaders with ridiculous ideologies, but because of sabotage from within. They were a paranoid bunch and trusted no one, especially those from the cities who were all evacuated to the countryside to farm the land. At S-21 suspects were dragged from their homes tortured, forced to confess, then compile a list of other saboteurs (sometimes 40+ names) who would then get arrested, tortured and name another 40 people. They literally wrote down anyone’s name to stop the pain, and so no one was safe from S-21, so the numbers grew each year as more and more names were innocent people were given up as saboteurs. Not even the guards were safe; after a long service (1+ years) it was deemed that they knew too much of what went on , and were then also killed so no witnesses remained. Nice. Our guide had actually been alive during this regime and was quite emotional taking us around the skulls and images of the victims. Having to re-live that regime every day takes its toll and must be so tough.
The Royal Palace was next on the agenda so we covered our knees and shoulders and made our way around the very strange place where kings hide (or are held under house/palace arrest) when the country is busy killing itself. Some spectacular buildings, but lots of random spires, models of temple and water features… but who are we to judge! The museum was equally strange with very few explanations so was navigated rather swiftly! Once out we fought our way through the street sellers and I braved a $2 haircut from a street barber… and survived the cut throat razor.
Tuesday 25th August
Deciding we’d been too cheerful we hired a tuk tuk and made the hour journey, through some interesting suburban villages, out to the Killing Fields. You see they hardly ever killed people at S-21, instead they loaded them onto lorries and drove them into the countryside where it was though to be a bit more hidden. All that remains now are huge excavation holes from the mass graves and a memorial filled with bones, skulls and clothing from the victim forced to lean over the holes so that when they were bludgeoned to death (as with the Nazis, bullets were too expensive to waste) they’d fall directly into the grave. Nice. Our driver had said to us “Do you want to go too the firing range first as you wont want to go after you see this place“… and he was right, we didn’t feel like shooting just yet. After getting back into town via some very dodgy back streets/mud ways (apparently to avoid the local road block that charges tuk tuks a fee) Nikki passed up the street barber and went for the posher $3 option in a salon. Another wander around town later and we got back to our hotel in time too watch a documentary on S21, which they advertised on big boards outside... it turned out it was just us two sitting in the restaurant watching a DVD (never have expectations of what to expect in this part of the world!).
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