Siem Reap: Angkor Wat

Days 74-76

We have seen the last must-see sight of our trip and that is the Khmer Temples of Angkor and the huge Angkor Wat. The temples were magnificent and it was a long held ambition of mine to see Angkor Wat so I am particular pleased with seeing them now. Tomorrow we head back through Thailand and hopefully to our next country Laos.

I also have to admit making a mistake in my last post regarding the death of the King. The guy that died last month is actually the current King’s father. He abdicated to his son, the current king, Norodom Sihamoni in 2004. I have learned that he was a somewhat controversial figure as he had associations with Khmer Rouge and had to live in exile during the 1980s, but he appears much loved by the people none the less.

After the Vietnamese deposed the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the brutal regime fled to the more rural parts of the country herding much of the country’s population along with them. With the chaos that ensued little rice got planted and many people died in the resulting famine, another cruel twist in the fate of the long suffering Cambodians. From our bus ride to Siem Reap it was obvious that another rice shortage is out of the question this year at least. Rice paddies stretched across the flooded plains as far as the eye could see for almost the entire length of our journey from Phnom Penh, only the usual suspects of banana and palm trees breaking the sea of rice stems.

Siem Reap is the gateway town for the thousands of tourists that come to visit the temples in Angkor every year and it has developed into an enjoyable place with lots of hotels, restaurants and pubs. Many foreigners actually make this place home as it’s cheap with all the amenities you require. The food is a welcome relief from the frog’s legs, red ants and miscellaneous insects of the local cusinine and decent western food is widely available here. Best of all though, the beer is cheap coming in at $0.50 a glass, to be fair it’s not great but no worse than the standard lagers available at home. One establishment was even screening Pro12 rugby.  As I watched Munster beating Cardiff with a last minute try on Setanta Asia I wondered if my attempt to see the All-Ireland final back in September would have been more successful in Siem Reap.

Cambodia these days is overshadowed by its large and more successful neighbours Thailand and Vietnam. But it is a far cry from the time when the mighty Khmer Empire ruled the roost over the entire region from the 9^th to the 15^th centuries. At its height it ruled over all of modern day Cambodia, Laos, Thailand as well as healthy chunk of Vietnam and Burma from its powerbase at Angkor. Angkor in its day was the largest city in the world with a population of one million living over a wide area approximately the size of modern day Los Angeles . Europe by comparison was languishing in the middle ages and London at the time was a town of only 20,000 people. Just as it feeds Cambodia today the floodwater of the Tonle Sap was the life blood of Angkor as it provided irrigation and transport for the city. Reliance on these waters left Angkor vunerable and drought may have been the beginning of the end for the Empire. Once weakened, the increasing strength of the Thais and Vietnamese happily provided the nail in the coffin and after Angkor was sacked a few times by the Thais, it was abandoned. Although it was never forgotten about by Cambodians, the city was discovered by a French explorer and it has been intermittently on the tourist trial ever since, political instability being the main threat. Thankfully despite destroying many religious buildings, the temples of Angkor were given a pass by the Khmer Rouge and after the civil war, the tourists have been flocking to Siem Reap and Angkor with good reason: the temples are magnificent 

Our trip to Angkor began with a 4.30am start on Tuesday (6^th Nov), required for the popular sight of sunrise over Angkor Wat.  Transport for the day was provided by the Cambodian version of a tuktuk, which is basically a little carriage hitched onto the back of a motorbike. We sped the few miles to the temple and battled the crowds to get into the temple grounds for the sunrise money shot beside a pool before adventuring around the levels of the temple. The grounds of the temple are huge, sitting on a moat enclosed island and measuring roughly 1km square. The various grand entrances and pathways lead up to the main temple which is a three tiered pyramid crowned by 5 lotus flowers all combining to form a very grandiose setting. The interior of the temple is lined with images of the Hindu epics and scattered with temples and statues of Hindu Gods, but 3 hours was adequate and we headed for breakfast.

Although Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples, there are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of other sites sprinkled over a large area. Many people spend a couple of days sightseeing, but we were only spending one (very long day!) there seeing the main sights. After breakfast we headed to the next temple; Bayon. This temple is a pyramid with 37 towers adorned by a four stone carved faces. The lichens grow all over the sandstone partially obscuring and eating away at the carved details but they add they create an overgrown affect making it feel like ancient and lost. We visited a few more temples within the Angkor Thom complex before heading for lunch, which due to our early start almost felt like dinner.

Indeed the overgrown theme was taken to new lengths at our next temple after lunch, Ta Prohm. The roots of the jungle canopy have attempted to retake the temple for nature. The affect is dramatic with tree roots becoming intertwined into the buildings and statues and with trees actually appearing to sprout out of the top of temples. The half overgrown theme and narrow corridors of this temple created a newly discovered affect and Indiana Jones wouldn’t have been out of place leaping around the ruins. Indeed the pretender to his throne as Hollywood’s leading archeologist, Lara Croft in Tombraider was filmed here in 2001.

Our tour of Angkor was reminding me of our visit to Tikal and Caracol the year previous. These ancient Mayan cities in modern day Guateamala and Belize were also abandoned and retaken by the jungle. But although I believe that a visit to any site should be appreciated for what it is on its own merits, I couldn’t resist a comparison between the two. I was favouring Tikal’s dramatic pyramids right up until our last stop revisting Angkor Wat, but the afternoon light (and fully woken mind!) provided us with a better appreciation of the scale and setting of the temple. So Angkor shades it by a whisker ahead of Tikal, just! Its also easily the greatest sight in South East Asia and the only thing that cold challenge India's incredible sights.

 We headed back to Siem Reap and then out for dinner and we got an introduction to sex tourism in South East Asia. It seems to be rampant throughout the region with middle age white men deciding to use their money to get what they couldn’t get at home. So in major tourist areas there are always a few white men hanging around with young scantily glad local women. To be fair, they are all consenting adults so it’s really none of our concern but it was starting to encroach on us at our current restuarant. The establishment like many of the tourist hangouts in Siem Reap was foreign owned by a German man. A very large and very drunk German man, who continued to get drunk and shout orders and make cheeky remarks to his wife who appearing to be running the place. His wife a local who was serving us was a genuinely lovely lady and tried to make little of her husband’s ridiculous behavior to us. But as he staggered around the place he made us feel seriously uncomfortable and we beat an early retreat feeling sorry for his wife who was stuck with him when she went home.

After spending last night availing of the 50 cent beers we have spent our last day in Cambodia lazily watching the election results coming in America. Our visit to Cambodia has been short but enjoyable, the people are great, the temples of Angkor are magnificent and Phnom Penh a cool little city. The Khmer food in Cambodia is mostly awful with anything liable to appear on the menu, but that is nullifeid by beers costing $0.50. Tomorrow we have another epic journey ahead of us when we try to make it to Vientiane in one day. It does appear to be possible but we shall see, doubtless though we will have a tale to tell. 

Phnom Penh

Days 71-73

After an epic 21 hour journey we arrived in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh from Bangkok. The journey was nothing short of cruel: battling traffic, corrupt border officials, transport scams and poor roads to get here. But get here we did. And we have spent the time since exploring the sights and dark history of Phnom Penh. We will make for Siem Reap and the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat tomorrow   

On Friday (2^nd) morning we had to navigate our way back across Bangkok to the Vietnam embassy to pick up our visas and then to the Northern Bus Station to the Cambodian border and hopefully to Phnom Penh, but aware that transport and infrastructure would be considerably worse than Thailand we weren’t sure if it was feasible to go the whole way to the capital in one day. We declined the option of private buses from the Khoa San Road and decided that we would do it ourselves, this in hindsight was probably not the best decision.

 Getting around and then out of Bangkok was our first problem. The city is a nightmare to navigate around, which is a little difficult to understand since there are good roads and plenty of cheap taxis (as long as they switch on their meter!), and an efficient skyrail system. Our taxi crawled through the city to the Vietnam embassy, the 9km (5.5miles) took 25minutes but we soon had our visas in hand. We then made our way to the Bangkok’s sky train (BTS) to the bus station. The BTS was clean and efficient, if a little expensive, but it got us to the destination of Mo Chit were the bus station was supposed to be. Wrong; it wasn’t there but we grabbed a map and made off in what we thought was the direction of the bus station. Wrong again; after about 30 minutes of continuing to believe that it was just around the corner we had to admit defeat and flagged down another taxi to get us to the bus station where we caught a bus to Aranya Prahtet on the Cambodian border. This bus journey should have taken 4 hours, but a broken down bus and the horrendous Bangkok traffic meant that it was 6 hours later and 18.30 before we got dropped off at the border market. The border market in Aranya Prahtet is a maze of market streets and the bus dropped us 2km from the border post. Along with our equally clueless fellow Thai passengers as to where the border checkpoint actually was, we set off and eventually their ability to speak to the locals and our ability to follow them got us there.

We had heard plenty of tales of overcharging by the Cambodian border officials at this post, but we had researched and we knew all we needed was $20 and a passport photo for a Cambodian visa. In the immigration building there was a sign confirming this, but it didn’t deter an official producing another sign and asking us for an extra 100bhat (£2/$3). My wife though pointed to the more official looking sign on the wall and the guy didn’t push it and we soon had our visas. Our corrupt official’s sign was laughable, it was written out by himself in bubble letters on a piece of cardboard with marker - not the type of thing that should fool most people and he did relent quite quickly. However if he was more persistent and refused to give you a visa unless you pay what could you really do? Payment would be the only option. I suspect that the huge casino right on the border could contribute to this behavior of the immigration officials and an extra few dollars or bhat could be feeding a few gambling habits.

Once in Cambodia we weren’t sure how far we could to our next destination Phnom Penh so we set about finding a bus. Poipet is a dirty little border town and the transport for the tourists is controlled by a bus cartel who overcharge tourists by as much as 200-300% on local prices. Sure enough they weren’t going to let us slip through the net and a tout picked us up from before the border and we were soon forking out 500bhat (£10/$15) each to get us to Phnom Penn. It may not sound like a lot but in comparison today we paid $6 for a trip about ¾ as long as this. This bus itself was a local bus and the trip was the toughest leg of the journey as the road was potholed filled and the bus shock absorbers appeared to be nonexistent, the result from our perch on the back seat was like a shifting trampoline. Our fellow passengers seemed friendly though and one lady next to my wife offered me what looked like a cricket. I ate one and it didn’t really taste like much but then she offered me half the bag, I politely declined,  the lady wasn’t going to let them go to waste though and soon had the whole bag of crickets devoured. Unlike me, my wife who despite her chronic travel sickness managed a few hours sleep I got very little before we pulled in Phnom Penh that morning.

Cambodia’s official currency is Riel but rather strangely its use is minimal. All prices are quoted in US dollars and ATMs even dispense dollars. This along with the traffic driving on the right should make Cambodia feel just like home for my wife.  But then the lack of English, funky transport and exotic foods would leave you in no doubt you are in Asia.

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia and its busy streets are situated at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and the mighty Mekong river.  The Tonle Spa is fed by a huge lake which fills a huge plain in the centre of Cambodia and when the monsoon swells the Mekong a freak of nature occurs. The higher level of the Mekong actually causes the flow of Tonle Sap to be reversed and instead of draining its lake it starts to supply it with the Mekong excess. Phnom Penn was officially the capital ever since the downfall of the Khmer Empire, but it was not until the colonial French arrived that the city expanded and became a key trading post on the Mekong in French Indochina.  It has come out of a turbulent period of history and today looks like a busy thriving city, although not in the same league in size or prosperity as Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur.

After grabbing some much needed sleep we took off through the streets to the National Museum and the Royal Palace. The French influence is clear in the building architecture as we visited the National Museum which was packed almost exclusively with Khmer and Angkor Wat era artefacts; next up was the Royal Palace. 

Until I crossed the border I wasn’t even aware that Cambodia had a monarch, but the border post was welcoming us to the Kingdom of Cambodia. It has been a constitutional monarchy since 1993 and the monarchy has a direct lineage back to the Khmer empire. However Norodom Sihanouk, who had been in power since the new constitution, died on 15 October this year and is lying in state at his palace.  For this reason the palace is currently off limits for visitors and we didn’t get to see the spectacular looking buildings within the compound. 

Today we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which was the site of notorious political prison S-21 used by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 after a power vacuum and civil war resulting from the withdrawal of the French and the Vietnam war. Lead by Pol Pot they were initially cheered as they entered Phnom Penh. But he and his regime soon became feared and hated as they set about about imposing his Maoist inspired vision of an agrarian society in the most brutal fashion when the urban populations of the country were uprooted to be put to work on the land. He exterminated anyone that would not fit into his ideals, this included intellectuals and spectacle wearers and anyone else deemed to be an enemy of the revolution. The prison was used as a torture centre for political prisoners to extract some form of confession before they were shipped off to the Killing Field on the edge of town for execution. In the four years of its existence 17,000 prisoners passed through mostly all on the way to their death. Other similar Killing Fields litter the country and in total an estimated 2 million died in these mass graves. Walking around the prison walls was an eerie experience and it is difficult to comprehend the torture, fear and screaming that hung over this place on a daily basis when it was used as a prison. The instruments of torture, skulls, tiny cells and mug shots of the former prisoners all combine to chill your bones, despite the oppressive humidity. Thankfully back outside of the prison walls the city seems to be recovered and the once deserted streets are now awash with the scooters and honking of urban life.

Thankfully tomorrow (Nov 4th) morning we will be journeying to Siem Reap and a happier time in Cambodian history, when Cambodia happily lorded over their now more powerful neighbors from the mega city at Angkor.  Angkor is now the site of one South East Asia’s biggest tourist attractions; the giant temple of Angkor Wat.

Bangkok

Days 67-70

We have arrived in bustling Bangkok. There is no doubt that it’s a busy city but its reputation as crowded and hectic is a little unjustified. It is a modernised and organised city and in comparison to an Indian city it is like a peaceful Pyrenean village. As well as seeing the traditional and modern of Bangkok we have been organising ourselves for our trip through Indochina and maintaining our cultural traditions on the far side of the world.

On Monday (29^th) morning a flock of hornbills converged on a tree in the Coco Lodge in Koh Mook to feast on its fruit and gave us a chance to see the exotic birds. It was like a final gathering to see us off from this beautiful place and with our hearts heavy we made for the jetty. After paying what I estimate to be five times the local price for our ferry and taxi back to the town of Trang we ended up stuck in the pack of a pickup truck along with the other backpackers as we sped our way to Trang. We had arrived in our predicament after the locals had quickly snatched up the seats in the air conditioned minibus.

For me it was like some dream come true, but far too late in life. When I was in my early to mid-teens the place to go for adolescents for miles around was the Beragh disco. It was a rather raw affair comprising of a DJ, a few (very large!) speakers, disco lights, a great big hall and lots of hormonally charged teenagers. It was before the days of designer jeans and flashy shirts and dresses, the standard attire was a t-shirt with a pair of Levis. The Carrickmore boys at least could always be relied upon to arrive in style thogh. They would arrive down to Beragh huddled in the back of pickups and looked like the militia of an African warlord as they jumped out of the pick-up bed to announce their arrival at the disco. How I longed for a group of lads from Beragh to do the same thing. That of course would have been impossible as living up the street from the disco I had only to saunter down to the hall and compounded by the fact that Beragh people are far to civilised to partake in such activity! But here I was now with my adolescent dream coming true in Thailand. Apart from being terribly uncomfortable on the rear end I can’t imagine hold cold it must have been for those lads in their t-shirts on a cold December night in Tyrone.

Cruelly my dream for this fantasy had long since evaporated though and I began to think how this would never have happened in India. The locals would never grab the first and best seats, they would make sure they were reserved for us as if we were some sort of Royalty. That was the thing in India, although everyone rudely wanted to take your photo and stare they made sure that you got the best seats and were treated much better than a local. My wife likened it to being a celebrity in the West.

Southern Thailand is no longer the rural backwater that I remember. The towns are clean, organised and well connected. But in no aspect has the increase in prosperity been reflected more than with the aforementioned Japanese pick-ups, which are for the most part new, shiny and numerous. These along with the popularity of cowboy hats give the town of Trang the comical feel of the American South.

Our train left in the late afternoon so we wiled away our day in a café opposite the station. Our train was quite expensive compared to India, but the standard is a world away. They are more spacious and clean - no mice or roaches, the tickets can be purchased on the same day, the stations aren’t a confusing mess and home to thousands of people (or rats!) and amazingly people even decline to use the tracks as a latrine. As we got rolling  though it was apparent that the Indian trains were a lot smoother on the tracks, so we clunked and swayed our way north. The train staff came around to make our beds and my wife discovered there was a dining cart. Great, I thought so we slipped down to have a late supper and a beer as the air roared about the open carriage and the full moon shone down silhouetting the mountains and trees. 

My night’s sleep was a little fitful but nothing I couldn’t live with, my wife on the other hand was longing for the smooth journeys of the Indian’s trains through the night as the shuddering prevented her from any worthy sleep at all. Overnight the landscape had become flatter and the Palm Tree and Latex Rubber Trees of the Malay Peninsula had given way to sugar cane and rice paddies of central Thailand. Banana trees are a constant in South East Asia often providing a border around plantations or planted in gardens, although I haven’t seen any exclusive banana groves like in India.

Off the train we grabbed a tuk-tuk to the centre of the backpacking Universe: Bangkok’s Khao San Road. With budget hotels and cheap clothing galore it screams alternative Western culture with braiding and tattoos available every few yards and of course the essentials of laundry and bookshops. The Khao San Road itself is more of a tourist haunt these days with the mid and high end holiday makers having a good nosey around as well. From my last visit here the solitary Burger King at the bottom of the Road now has company; I counted 2 each of: Burger King, McDonalds and KFC as well as numerous 7Elevens and a Starbucks. 10years ago the ghetto was starting to expand towards the top end of the Kho San Road, but now that area has been completely taken over by the dreads and flipflops.

Bangkok began life as a custom made capital for the rulers of Siam the Rattanakosin dynasty, after the preceding Ayutthaya rulers fell to the Burmese in 1782. They have ruled Siam since successfully maintaining independence through the colonial period by skillful diplomacy. Their supreme rule ended in a coup in 1932 with power being transferred into a constitutional monarchy. During WW2 the fledgling government maintained power but at the behest of the Japanese, whose troops moved freely through its borders. After the war the Siam became Thailand and the current King Rama IX began his extended reign. These days he is the world’s longest serving monarch at 66 years and is much loved throughout the country, certainly much more so than the politicians whose rule is constantly changing thanks to a staggering 11 successful coups.

After finding a suitable hotel, our first job was to get our Vietnam visa sorted out. Our plan is to work our way through Indochina before flying out of Hanoi back to Bangkok and our flight home. Now the best of buds, the Vietnam embassy snuggles up beside the heavily fortified American Embassy. Applying was a simple if painful process as it left us lighter in the pocket by 3600bhat (£73/$117) for both visas. But the most interesting thing was the journey there and back, which was a crawl through the famous traffic jams of Bangkok but it also meant we got to have a look at the city. The city as I remember has advanced unrecognisably, advancing relentlessly towards affluence and the future. All apparent in the office blocks being built, the new cars on the road and the skyrails heading connecting all parts of the city (except the Koh San Road!). 

On Wednesday (31^st) we headed to Wat Pho, which is the oldest and largest temple in Bangkok and contains a huge image of a reclining Buddha. It is 46m long and 15m high, and was made by shaping plaster around a brick base and finished off with Gold Leaf. The image of a reclining Buddha is his state just before he reaches Nirvana, I thought that he looked like he was watching TV! But I suppose it is possible, maybe he was watching the Sopranos?

Wednesday night was Halloween and being aware that it is not really celebrated vigorously worldwide I made sure that we were prepared by lugging around with me a rubber Halloween mask for this very night! The Thais in this part of town at least are keen on Halloween with the pubs, clubs and street vendors donning spooky costumes. The mask only spent about 10% of my face as it was ridiculously sweaty.  We wandered up and down the packed Khao San Road sipping freely from our beers bought from the numerous 7 Elevens and fending off the numerous offers to take us to the PingPong shows in Patpong. There was no potato pudding or toffee apples to be had, but we had a good number of peanuts and a few fried grasshoppers to compensate and we had as an enjoyable Halloween that we have had anywhere.

We have another day to kill in Bangkok before making our way to the Cambodian border, nursing a hangover in the tropics is not a great way to spend it but there is only one person to blame for that! The clock is now ticking on our journey and we are keen to get moving once again.