Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

Before we left Sihanoukville we (of course) bumped into Marty and Jochem again, who were (of course of course) staying in the same hotel again. This time we weren't staying in a place reccommended by the Lonely Planet, in fact this place wasn't even in the LP; it was well out of the way and not somewhere you would easily stumble across. Now I had all the proof I needed: Jochem and Marty were spies! Now I just had to work out who they were working for and how best to kill them.

Anyway we returned from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh, where we retrieved our passports complete with (expensive) Laos visas. [Excuse any excess of typos above average; many of the keys don't work reliably on this keyboard]. This time we stayed at the cheaper, grungier, backpacker part of town where the lake is. "The Lakeside" to me sounded quite upmarket and romatic, but in fact is seems only to have been developed at all recently; as backpackers' accommodation, and also somewhere for large international corporations to dredge sandy silt to use as (I assume) building materials. I later read in the Phnom Penh Times (I think it was) about the scandal of international companies doing this (surprise surprise) without Cambodians seeing any benefit, despite the ecological damage it causes. Anyway, it seems until recently, the Lakeside was substanard housing with quite a lot of Indian immigrants. We took advantage of this by having a rather nice Indian meal the night we arrived back in PP. The guesthouse we stayed in (Number 9 Guesthouse, for anyone thinking of staying there) was absolutley disgusting.

Later research revealed that we should have given Sihanoukville a miss and headed for the less touristy beach resort of Kep, then spent as little time in Kampot. Oh well, next time!

The following day we moved to a much nicer hostel (Number 9 Sister Guesthouse) then organised a day of culture around Phnom Penh. Culture here, it turns out, is quite depressing. First we stopped off at a shooting range, where I declined the $40 fee to shoot 30 rounds from an AK47; even when he offerred me half a clip for just $20 I wasn't even half tempted. I don't really know why we went except it was part of the standard tourist route and I was curious. The LP claims you can possibly maybe shoot cows with AK47s, or indeed shotguns or anything else you are willing to pay for, after all in Cambodia money is king.

The above reminds me... I forgot to mention before, I think, one of the reasons I suspect Cambodia is so expensive is that everything is in dollars. At first I thought, OK, this is just to make tourist feel comfortable, so I'll just draw some local currency and get the "real" prices. The ATMs dispense dollars! Apparently you can choose if you have dollars or Riel if you have a Cambodian cash card, but a foreign card dooms you to dollars. I even went as far as working my way through the menus in Khmer to see if it would give me the option, but it wasn't my choice of English that had been deciding the currency. Now, when dollars are the currency, most things seem to cost one dollar minimum; in Vietnam we rarely spent a dollar on anything.

Which, in turn, reminds me about the Khmer language. Vietnamese had been a relief after Cantonese: roman script and only 6 tones instead of 9. Khmer was a mixed blessing. And to my shame I did not make it any easier by deciding not to get a phrasebook; I hadn't used it much in Vietnam, so why get one here? A mistake! It's worth it even for the few times you use it. Khmer is unusual in the region in that it is not a tonal language, however it uses its own script. The script is quite similar to Thai, although it predates it by some time (the Thais copied Khmer), the Khmer culture being the oldest of the dominant cultures in Indochina. Anyway, back to difficult to read, easy to say in theory. In practice, tourism is all they have in Cambodia, so everything that needs to be for tourists is in English; and it's not that easy to speak: the language is full of elisions and glottal stops (aspirated according to wiki). The roman translitteration contains loads of dashes and apostropes, which mean you have to sound like the power is cutting out on your microphone. Compared to the surrounding languages it sounds much harsher and truly weird. Anyway, I was lazy with Khmer and didn't bother at all.

Monument at the Killing Fields

Clothes are still scattered everywhere in the Killing Fields

So after the shooting range (which the driver had advised us to go to before), the Killings Fields, which is as depressing as you might expect: a large monument full of human remains, surrounded by the pits from which they were recovered. I don't know if they've done it for dramatic effect, out of respect, or just because the clean up would be far too much work, but all around the area where the mass graves have been exhumed, there are raggy old worn out clothes, half-buried in the earth. Nowhere did it say why, but I assumed that these were the clothes of the dead. In the monument they had a small pile of clothes recovered from the graves and these looked just the same. In a triumph of capitalism, you now have to pay to see this genocide monument; the money does not even go to the Cambodian people, or relatives of the victims, but (presumably) to the highest bidder, who in this case is a Japanese company. As far as I could gather they are doing none of the things you might expect in return for patronage of such a site; just pocketing the money I think.

Cells at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

As if not depressed enough, we carried onto the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which is just the Khmer Rouge's Security Prison 21 (S-21), preserved as a museum. It was previously a high school then, when everyone was evacuated from Phnom Penh to work in Pol Pot's communist agrarian utopia, they converted it to a place of torture and imprisonment. Respect for the dead prevents me from making any comparisons to its previous use. Bizarrely they have "no laughing" signs everywhere. I woudn't have seen anything funny under normal circumstances, but a no laughing sign is about the best thing I can imagine to get people laughing; especially in a school.

No laughing sign at the Genocide Museum

So we spent half the day finding out about how the French screwed things up, then the Americans made everything worse, then took communism as the signal to commit human rights abuses and atrocities galore. A familiar story in the region, although in this case they would have had a better case against the regime than in Vietnam, were it not for the complete hypocrisy displayed by fact they (and the rest of the UN) then went on to support the Khmer Rouge after they were defeated and forced into the bush by the Vietnamese army. Apparently they were afraid of communist expansionism. Well it's clearly much better to support the brutally genocidal communist than the liberators from that, isn't it?

Rules from S-21 prison camp (at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum)

Back in Phnom Penh we met a couple of South African girls who had been refused visas for Vietnam. We couldn't work it out.

written by

The Happy Couple on March 1, 2009 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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Having been thoroughly depressed by the current wealth gap and the former
brutality of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh, we were glad to be escaping the next
day to the rich cultural landscape of Angkor, Siem Reap being the nearby town
where we stayed.

Siem Reap is the tourist capitol of Cambodia. It is obvious that many people who
go there see nothing else of the country, and IF my memory serves me correctly,
someone or other told me that indeed 50% of the country's tourists go only to
Siem Reap. The town itself was OK. Nothing special. Houses on stilts, which we
hadn't seen much of further south, but now we were in the environs of Tonle Sap
(Lake), which acts as a massive backwash when the rainy season comes and the
flow Mekong reverses into the Lake due to the extent of the rains. I read that
90% of the water in the Mekong drains out during the dry season. I'd love to
return to the area during the rainy season and see what the river having 10
times as much water does to the landscape. It made me think that people in
England should maybe start thinking about building their houses on stilts, so
that they don't have to ask for disaster relief every year when their houses
flood.

At least here there were some local food stalls where we could save some money;
much needed after paying the pass to see the temples at Angkor at $40pp for 3
(consecutive) days, and the tuktuk driver to take us around: $12, $15, and $25
for the three days, respectively. Our budget was bust again in Cambodia. And the
beer was dearer than Sihanoukville.

Bayon

I really don't know what I can say about the temples we spent three days
visiting: they are incredible. Visiting each one on its own would be a fantastic
experience, but we saw 16 in three days. We really needed about a week with rest
days, becauase by the end, we were thinking "yeah yeah bas relief. Again! Blah
blah Shiva blah blah nagas". Not one of them was boring, but it's too much to do
three full days of fantastic ancient temples in a row. The number of photos we
took is testament to how impressed we were. I've uploaded only a modest selection
of the best ones... I don't know whether you all know, but there are more photos than those embedded in the blog. Just click on "photos" at the top page of the blog (or else follow this link http://blogabond.com/Photos/PhotoBrowse.aspx?UserID=4545) where you can bore yourselves silly with the extra photos than couldn't appear in the text!

Our tuktuk driver (Rak) told us that (in another triumph of capitalism) the
temples were operated by a Korean company. Originally Cambodians were charged to
visit "their" temples until crowds protesting persuaded them to change the
rules; now they get free entry, although the still have to pay about 300 Riel to
use the toilets, although this is much less than the 2000 Riel tourists without
tickets have to pay.

Terrace of the Elephants

For the record, our first day took in: Angkor Thom (Bayon, Baphoun, Phimeanakas,
Terrace of the Leper King, Terrace of the Elephants, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm, Banteay
Kdei, and Prasat Kravan). Joanne ran out of batteries near the start of the day and those we bought showed "running out" as soon as they went in her camera. "Copy" batteries are apparently as much of a problem in Cambodia as copy everything else.

Anyway, after our first day of temples we discovered happy hour in "Pub Street",
but had terrible food in the only place we could afford, since we hadn't yet
discovered the local food stalls.

Close up of Terrace of the Leper King

The following day we had an early start: Angkor Wat for sunrise, somewhat
confusingly on Rak's advice, since the previous day he'd told us that the light is better in the
evening. Sure enough it was very disappointing! Angkor Wat was supposed to be
the ultimate in temples, but as the sun rose behind it, rendering it in total
silhouette, the disappointment in the (obediently at the proscibed place) crowd
was palpable. I'm sure it would have looked much more impressive for sunset.
Some people paid to go up in a balloon which I decided we should do for sunset
one evening. It's on a fixed line, so not a "real" balloon flight, but I've
never been in a hot air balloon before, so it seemed like a nice idea, which we unfortunately never got around to doing. The rest
of Angkor Wat was, of course, incredible, but the sunrise was a real letdown.

The long awaited sun

The rest of that day: Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, and Pre Rup. Luckily for everyone my camera ran out of batteries shortly after Angkor Wat, and I'd been reserving them even at Angkor Wat, so there are probably a few thousand photos less than there outherwise would be. It
was 37C that day and about 60% humidity. Walking around in those tempratures was
not particularly comfortable, and every time we got back in the tuktuk, Rak took
the time to pause, turn around, look concerned, and say "are you alright" with
real feeling. It was all I could do not to respond "I would be if you got this
f-ing thing moving instread of acting so concerned". Not very charitible I
confess, but every second the cool breeze from the tuktuk's movement was delayed
seemed like a second closer to boiling point. He kept it up though, every stop;
he seemed to think it was dangerous for him to drive while we were so red-faced
and obviously uncomfortable. It was about that day I noticed that Cambodians
don't sweat. I actually asked Rak about it and he said, yes, if he was doing
heavy work in these tempratures he would sweat, but other than that 37C is just
normal for him.

Bas relief

Everywhere you go around Siem Reap there are people trying to sell you things;
more often than not they are children. It was there in Sihanoukville and Phnom
Penh, but here, where the tourist concentration is highest, it is incessant.
Cambodian kids are incredibly cute, and those hawking things have learned to
emphasise those aspects with expect precision. It's very hard to say no, and the
Lonely Planet emplores you to say no as they should be in education instead of
earning money, and the money probably goes to some VIP boss figure, not them.
I'm not sure about the bosses, but it's hard to see how working is depriving
them of schooling if there is no state-provided education anyway. Rak thought
that they probably were going to school, but only if they earned enough money
each morning (or the previous afternoon) to pay for school they next half-day.
Apparently this is difficult for them to do bcause the police extort bribes of
$3 per day from the kids to ensure they are not moved on from the tourist areas. Nice.

Kids climbing Ta Keo

Not wanting to break with tradition (erm annoy their shady spying superiors I
mean) we bumped into Jochem in the supermarket in Siem Reap. The regularity of
this was now passing unfeasible, so to celebrate we agreed to have dinner the
next night. We had more luck with the food that night and discovered Cambodian
street food for the first time: cheapish and OK, but not a patch on Vietnam...
more luck at the supermarket where I discovered a litre of pastis for only $4.

The last day of temples consisted if Kbal Spean ("the riverbed of Lingas"),
Banteay Srey, Banteay Samre, and Phnom Bakheng for sunset. We also managed to
fit in the Landmine Museum, which is a small museum full of deactivated mines and bombs of
various sorts, kindly left there by the Americans. Why is there not some international treaty
obliging the nations responsible for the mining to be responsible for the clean-up and care of
the injured? - oh yeah, because there would be no point as the Americans wouldn't sign up to it,
just like they haven't signed up to the current Mine Ban Treaty (along with China, India, Russia, and so on).
During the day I asked Rak a little bit about the
politics in Cambodia. He didn't know what Socialism was, but when I tried to
descibe it, was fairly certain that the CPP governing Cambodia were not any such
thing (as they claim to be); in fact he said "government is to keep the rich
rich". When trying to explain why people (apart from the rich) vote for the CPP
he cited peoples fear of change; since the time of Pol Pot things in Cambodia
have been better, and it has been the CPP in power, so they are scared to change
anything in case something like Pol Pot happens again. They know things are not
great; they could be better, but they really know how bad things can get, so the
CPP will do because they are not that. Confusing he then went on to tell me
about his own politics: "I like the idea of Pol Pot", which rather surprised me.
He went on to explain further than he likes the idea i.e. everyone is equal, but he agrees there
were a few problems with the implementation, like killing lots of people. I'm sure it can't be a very
common view in Cambodia (surely?).

Kbal Spean

Naturally, we bumped onto Marty, Jochem, and Marty's cousin at the top of Phnom
Bakheng, where we had all gone for sunset, just a couple of hours before we had to meet them for dinner.
We met up for cheap market food again, then went on to "Angkor What?" bar, where they have a happy hour(s)
special of 50 (US) cent beer and cheap buckets (buy two get a free t-shirt). A fun night was had by all,
during which we managed to secure three free t-shirts.

Those with the best view of Angkor Wat

Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

a travel blog by The Happy Couple

Sihanokville, Cambodia

Snoozing in Snooky

Sihanokville, Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Back in Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Angkor What!?

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Recovering in Siem Reap

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Kampong Cham, Cambodia

Koh Paen, agrarian paradise

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Dolphins in Kratie

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