Off East

We took the bus from Kampong Thom to Siem Reap. We were on the local bus which was an interesting experience! Every long distance bus we took in Cambodia had Khmer music or films playing the whole time – at top volume. Thank god for ipods!

After the inevitable mobbing when we got off the bus with our bags at Siem Reap we managed to squeeze on to a Tuk-Tuk and went to our hotel. It was a great little place with a lovely pool and super-friendly staff and was on a quiet local street just 5 minutes walk away from ‘the action’ in town. We went for a quick stroll and were pleasantly surprised to see that Siem Reap was nothing like Phnom Penh. It was just a small town really, that happened to have one of the 7 wonders of the world (the Angkor Wat complex) right on it’s doorstep. And the people were really, really friendly with none of the edginess that we’d felt the whole time in Phnom Penh.

It was bloody boiling though and we soon discovered that most people were hiding indoors if they could between the hours of 12 – 3pm as the sun was so vicious. We realised that we had indeed arrived in Cambodia at the hottest part of the year and that it was gonna get even hotter hitting 42/43 degrees most days.

We decided to buy a 7 day pass for Ankgor Wat as opposed to a 3 days pass as it cost only $20 more and we had the time to spare. This turned out to be the best thing we did as it meant that we were able to see the temples at our own speed thus avoiding temple overload and fatigue. We grabbed a tuk tuk and went to go and get our pass and then climbed to the top of a hill to see the famous Angkor Sunset. Frankly it was a bit rubbish and my first impressions were that it was more like being in the sacred space at Glastonbury – i.e busy and full of fake hippies staring out at a sunset that never arrived. Hoping that not every temple was going to be like this, we climbed back down the hill and chatted with our Tuk Tuk driver about the best plan of action with regards temple spotting over the next couple of days.

We spent the next couple of days visiting lots of temples. Angkor Wat (the most famous) is just one of many in what is a huge national park and temple complex. Cambodians still live and farm within the national park and there are cattle wandering around and people selling their produce at the side of the road. Our Tuk Tuk driver Keo (more about him later), was absolutely invaluable in taking us to a particular temple just as the crowds left or before they arrived and he spoke enough English to tell us a little about each temple.

I was surprised at how different each temple was and how many there were. They were all in varying states of repair/disrepair too. It was a shame how badly some of them had crumbled/collapsed as a result of them being clambered over by too many people for too many years and of course, being over a thousand years old, they had weathered pretty badly. But similarly some of the reconstruction/preservation seemed to give some of them a bit of a theme park feel which is only likely to get worse – so get there and see them for yourself as soon as you can! Our favourite temple was Bayon (the one with the smiling faces carved into all the buildings). It was really amazing and was like a warren of temples within a temple that had a really amazing feel to it.

In the hot weather, it was really, really hard work clambering over the temples and we both soon were packing flannels with us to absorb the vast amounts of sweat that were pouring off us every day! We quite quickly realised that it was enough seeing 2 or 3 temples a day. Any more than that and the thought of climbing up more stone steps was pretty unappealing and you’d spend more time hiding from the sun than appreciating the carvings.

Likewise, the hawkers at some of the more popular temples were really quite exhausting at times. They weren’t allowed inside the actual temples so we’d get mobbed as we got out of the tuk tuk and walked towards the temple and would be mobbed as soon as you started walking back to the tuk tuk when you left. They were selling everything from bracelets to fans to t-shirts to carvings to books to drinks to snacks to musical instruments (pan pipe or violin anyone?!) and they were the most persistent hawkers we met anywhere! The usual patter would begin with ‘where are you from’? upon whichever nation you replied, you would be regaled with the Prime Ministers/Presidents for the last 20 years. This would move on to the football players of their favourite team all being shouted in your ear as you tried to walk along and fend them off, repeating ‘no thank you’. The children were the most persistent. They’d just go into some sort of a robotic trance repeating ‘3 bracelets $1′ in a slightly pathetic voice, over and over and over and over again whilst clinging onto your hand… We quickly found that if you asked them a question, rather than just said ‘no thank you’ it would have the same effect as administering a slap to someone having histrionics i.e it would stop them for a short while whilst they thought of the answer to your question and would give you enough time to jump into your tuk tuk and drive away…

As well as temple spotting we took a day trip to Tonle Sap lake to visit a floating village. Unfortunately we didn’t plan and research this as well as we should have… As it was so hot and the dry season, the level of the water in the lake was really, really low. This we expected but what we hadn’t thought about was how low the river flowing into the lake (and where the boats left from) would be. We got into our boat for what should have been a short boat ride out onto the lake. This actually turned out to be an hours crawl into the lake whilst boats got stuck etc. We should have guessed that perhaps the trip wasn’t going to be much fun by the fact that all the tourists coming in the opposite direction, seemed to be grimacing slightly.

Once we’d finally got out onto the lake, it became apparent that the ‘floating village’ wasn’t what we were expecting. It was actually a very primitive camp for Vietnamese refugees who lived there in terrible conditions and were totally dependent upon handouts from the tourists. First stop was to the floating ’school’. The school was a large houseboat with one room full of children running around. There was one ‘teacher’ and there was very little evidence of any teaching going on. As soon as we walked in, the kids flocked over and posed for photo’s.

On the way out, our guide informed us that the next stop was the local shop, where we could buy some much needed pens or books for the school kids. Whilst at the school, Steve had spotted a cupboard bursting with packets of unopened pens and books that clearly weren’t being used. Once we got to the shop (which didn’t appear to be run by Vietnamese) we were told the proce of said pens and books – this was about ten times more than you’d pay in the UK. We smelt a fish. Declining to buy any of these and pointing out that they had hundreds already at the ’school’ we were told that we could buy some noodles instead – again at vastly over-inflated prices. Again we declined.

Next stop was the floating crocodile ‘farm’ and floating ‘fish farm’. Here our guide announced that we should stop for 30 minutes. We got off the boat and found the said ‘farms’ consisted of one crocodile in a cage and a couple of sad looking fish in a net. Oh and there was of course a HUGE gift shop and cafe. Again we declined.

We finally persuaded our guide to take us back and as we left, we saw the desperate sight of boatloads of tourist handing out money and food off the back of a boat and being pursued by hundreds of women and children in small rowing boats.

This really was tourism at it’s ugliest and I’m certain that the Vietnamese were not benefiting from this in any way at all – especially the children, who were effectively being treated like animals in a zoo and who certainly were being allowed to receive the education that they deserved.

When we finally arrived back at the dock our guide demanded money for his services over and above the whopping $20 each we’d already paid and which we found out was going straight into the pockets of the Korean investors who ran the whole sorry show. This was another example of how both the Cambodians and the Vietnamese were being exploited without really realising it. Thoroughly depressed, we set off in our tuk tuk to our next stop, the Landmine Museum.

Now, as depressing as it sounds, this was actually a fascinating though incredibly sad place to visit. It was basically a sheltered home out in the countryside with the aim of raising funds to look after the young people who were being supported by the organisation. All of these young people had either been injured, displaced or orphaned by landmines. As a result of the civil war, the Khmer Rouge regime and the American bombardment of Cambodia, he country is littered with them and thousands of innocent civilians are killed or injured every year by these as they try and go about their daily business. It is not thought that Cambodia will ever be fully ‘cleaned’ of landmines or UXO (unexploded ordnance).

The museum is run by a guy called Akira. He had a very sad but quite inspriring story (link to film here). A former Khmer Rouge child soldier who experienced and inflicted so many horrors at a young age, he had used his skills and experience in laying mines for the Khmer Rouge, to become a kind of landmine vigilante; clearing landmines with his own hands all around the country. Eventually, the UN had taken him on board and trained him to do this properly ensuring that all the areas he had cleared were logged properly etc. The museum was full of examples of the landmines and UXO that he had cleared over the years and to show the horrors that they inflict.

Whilst visiting the museum, we were chatting to Keo our driver who we had become good friends with and he started to tell us more about himself and things he’d experienced and witnessed, including being orphaned, public executions, bombings and killings all carried out by the Khmer Rouge. He is 28 years old. This was happening in the first 13 years of his life at for least 13 years after the Khmer Rouge regime supposedly ended. I felt completely ignorant that I had thought all their problems had ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge regime ‘officially’ ended.

During our first week in Siem Reap we were getting to understand Cambodia and the lovely but damaged people a little better.

Kampong Thom is a small town on the East Side of Tonle Sap lake, about half way between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Most visitorstend to miss most of the towns and villages in this part of Cambodia as they take the express bus between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap which takes about 6 hours. We didn’t really fancy doing the journey in one go (Cambodian roads are even worse than Vietnamese roads!) and we wanted to see some of this part of the country so we decided to break our journey in Kampong Thom.

After a bumpy three hours on the bus (with the Killing Fields being screened for the passengers?!) we alighted at Kampong Thom a bustling but dusty market town. We were supposed to stay for 2 nights but the hotel had cocked up and only booked us for one night, so after a slight detour to check out another place to stay for the 2nd night (grim) we arrived at our hotel to find that we had a really lovely typical Cambodian bungalow surrounded by trees and flowers and birds. It was so peaceful!

We borrowed a couple of bikes and set off along the river to take in the Cambodian countryside. It was, very, very hot again and as Cambodia hadn’t seen any rain for over 6 months, everything was totally scorched. The red soil was red dust and the fields were empty. With thin cattle grazing on the non-existent grass, it looked like what I imagine Africa looks like and I could suddenly see how the country could have had a drought that killed 1000’s of people only a matter of years ago.

The river was about a quarter of it’s normal height and people were trying to pump water up to the river bank so that they could water their crops and have water to bathe in. In the rainy season conversely, the rivers usually flood and their is so much rain that the majority of rural Cambodian houses are built on stilts, to protect their property. This shady space under the house was now being used by most families as somewhere to hang their hammocks and escape the heat or to tether their livestock. Most houses had either a pig or a cow and for most families this will provide their livelihood. It really is subsistence farming.

We cycled around the town and were met with curious waves and glances by the locals – I don’t think they see many tourists in these parts! Again, I was really surprised by how many buildings appeared to be occupied by NGO’s and international charities providing a variety of different healthcare/education services. Kampong Thom (like most of Cambodia) is still incredibly poor and due to it’s relatively close proximity to Vietnam was bombed heavily by the Americans for years and years (a chapter in the American Vietnam war that no-one ever really talks about) and was also a Khmer Rouge stronghold until the late 1990’s. As a result there are many orphanages in the area. The children either orphaned as a result of landmines still in the fields, or simply abandoned by their parents in the hope that they might have a better life in an orphanage than the one that they would get at home.

Back at our hotel, I got chatting to an American lady who turned out to be a Doctor working for a charity in the town. Her charity (which she was funding herself from fundraising by running marathons etc) was trying to set up a clinic at a local school to ensure that the children could receive basic health care. Healthcare is not free in Cambodia. This is a major problem for the majority of people who are simply unable to raise the funds to pay for medicine, doctors fee’s, operations etc. If you earn only $2 a day, how are you supposed to find the $’s to buy medicine for your sick child? Likewise, if you are ill and you cannot work, you don’t get paid. This is the vicious cycle of poverty that we saw all over Cambodia; in stark contrast to a very small proportion of the population who are very, very wealthy.

The Doctor had been working with a local orphanage and they had invited her and her medical students to the orphanage that evening where they were going to perform a series of traditional Cambodian (Khmer) dances to say ‘thanks’. She invited us along with her. Having never been to an orphanage before, let alone a Cambodian one, I didn’t really know what to expect. When we arrived, we were met by the Director and his staff and by loads of gorgeous happy and healthy looking kids. The Director of the orphanage was a lovely man and very humbly admitted that the orphanage had won ‘Best Orphanage in Cambodia’ several years on the trot.

The children and young people were aged between 18 months and 21 years of age. Their circumstances were all different but a high percentage of them had been brought there by their parents in the hope that they’d have a better life. They lived in comfortable houses with a ‘mother’ to keep an eye on them and lived like a family unit. They received an excellent education in English and French and some of the students had even gone onto to study at University. The orphanages’ existence is totally dependent upon donations.

The older children performed a series of traditional Khmer dances which were more or less wiped out (along with most Khmer art forms) during the Khmer Rouge regime. During the Khmer Rouge regime dancers, musicians, artists and writers were particularly despised by Pol Pot (the Khmer Rouge leader) and were killed in their 1000’s taking most of Cambodia’s culture with them. As a result, there is a real desire in Cambodia to retrieve these arts and reintroduce them as part of every day popular culture.

It was a really interesting and humbling evening and one of mixed emotions. Whilst it was so sad to see these young people without their families, it was comforting to see that they had a safe and secure place to live, but also saddening to think that many, many children all around Cambodia wouldn’t infact be as fortunate as these orphans…

We got up early to take the speedboat up the Mekong Delta from Chau Doc in Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. After 5 hours on the boat we finally crossed into Cambodia and docked at Phnom Penh.

As soon as we stepped off the boat we were mobbed by motorbike/tuk tuk/ taxi drivers. Some of them were really rude and quite aggressive but we eventually managed to find one who was friendlier. We came to learn that this aggression was actually desperation. With an average income of $2 a day, our fare was REALLY important to them and may have made the difference between their family eating that day or not.

After dumping our bags at our hotel, we set off to explore the city. What we’d read in the slightly outdated Lonely Planet painted a picture of guns, bag snatching, poverty and corruption so we slightly nervously took to the streets!

First impressions were of a slightly crumbling city on the river with some amazing old colonial villas alongside open sewers and children begging. It felt a bit edgy until you got the riverfront which was thick with restaurants and bars – most of which were hostess bars.

We went for a drink in one bar and had a constant stream of children selling books, people with severe physical disabilities and many people with limbs missing – which remained a constant reminder of the awful damage that landmines continue to cause in Cambodia.

It was REALLY hard to say no to everyone; particularly the kids who spoke brilliant English but buying from them only encourages them to work on the streets and makes them more vulnerable.

We visited one area of the city where Nokia had a break and street dancing competition which was really popular with teenagers and was quite funny to watch. Whilst at the market we had some street food but as we sat there a group of ragged children emerged from the shadows and nervously swarmed around the empty tables and the bins and picked through peoples leftovers and then disappeared as quickly and silently as they’d arrived. The poor little things were obviously starving. Some of them were as young as 5 or 6 years old. It was heartbreaking – and it was at this point that we realised that Cambodia was going to be emotionally challenging.

Later that evening, we got chatting to a young girl working in a bar and her story made me really angry. Again, this type of story would become familiar. Old Western ‘boyfriend’, young Cambodian ‘girlfriend’ being treated like some exotic commodity.

Feeling a bit depressed by what we’d seen of Phnom Penh thus far, we went and had a happy pizza (extra happy please!) and went to bed.

We spent the next couple of days exploring the city. It was seriously hot and soon as you stepped outside you were a big sweaty mess, so we hired a tuk-tuk one morning and went on a drive around the city. We crossed the river where no tourists go and by chance stumbled upon a harvest festival at a local temple. The Buddhist monks had been served food by the locals to say thanks and pray for a successful harvest. We were watching from a distance and before we knew it we’d been invited over by on of the older monks and asked to join them! He didn’t speak much English but did speak some French (which was their second language before the Khmer Rouge occupation which practically wiped it out) so as I dusted off some very rusty French speaking skills, he proceeded to explain the celebration to me. The locals insisted that we sat with them and ate their food and it was a really lovely cultural experience.

Phnom Penh is home to hundreds of NGO’s (Non-Government Organisations) from all around the world, who arrived to ‘help’ Cambodia during the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime over 30 years ago. Unfortunately Cambodia is still an extremely poor country whose people have pretty much been left to their own devices by a corrupt government. As I said earlier, the average daily wage is $2 per family. The majority of Cambodians still live by subsistence farming but tourism is growing and more people are coming to the cities to find the ’streets paved with gold’. Unfortunately, typically many people arrive in the capital city completely unprepared or in desperately vulnerable situations. This means that huge numbers of children live on the streets or are left to their own devices whilst their parents try and find work or more commonly, send their children out to work on the streets to fund their drug and alcohol problems. Sex tourism is still commonplace in Cambodia though efforts are being made to try and stop this.

There are a number of charities and NGO’s who work tirelessly to help the 1000’s of vulnerable young children and their families in Phnom Penh and we went to visit one of these projects to lend our financial support and to find out more about how we could help whilst in Cambodia. One of these projects is Childsafe and also the Friends project. We were really impressed by the work they do and met some of the young children that they’re trying to help in the city. It was a privilege to meet these people and to find out how we could become Childsafe travellers whilst in Cambodia.

Unfortunately Steve was really sick one day and was bedridden, so I took myself off to the Genocide Museum (recently bought by some Japanese investors who pocket all of the entrance fee!) which was the school in the centre of Phnom Penh that was turned into a prison where 1000’s of innocent Cambodians were taken to be tortured to confess to being spies/intellectuals/opposing the Khmer Rouge regime. After they had ‘confessed’ they were taken to the Killing Fields just outside the city where they were brutally executed by the Khmer Rouge. It was a sobering and moving experience and the full horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime suddenly became very, very clear. Whats more, this was happening the year I was born and as we were to find out later on in our travels, the Khmer Rouge continued to rule with terror in parts of Cambodia up until the late 1990’s. It was not ‘just’ the 4 years of horrors that I’d been led to believe it was. The poor, poor people of Cambodia.

We felt like we’d seen enough of Phnom Penh after 4 days and decided to move on. Next destination Kampong Thom.

Here’s a few photos: