Le Cambodge

I have left my blog for a little longer than anticipated and since my last entry we have completed our time on the island of Phu Quoc, travelled through Cambodia (Le Cambodge in French-love that name) and are now in Bangkok for two days before we fly to India!
Our time on Phu Quoc mainly consisted of chilling out on the beach which is what we wanted. Our room was a large bamboo cabin near the hotel’s private stretch of beach so we just ambled down in the mornings and swam in the beautifully warm sea. The island, like a few other places in Vietnam, is most visited by Russians (an old Communist chum no doubt) so all the signs are in Vietnamese and Russian. Not to generalise, but all the Russian men we saw wore very small Speedos and had amazingly committed and strange sunbathing regimes- many of them were pretty red too! After our first full day of chilling, and the obligatory beach massage, we decided to go on a night squid fishing trip. The trip didn’t start well with us being passed from company to company as two men argued who we were meant to be going with. As we experienced a lot in Vietnam, the hotel had promised us to a more expensive operator but had actually booked us on a cheaper one for a higher percentage of commission. Anyway we sorted it out and boarded our boat...error! We were two of eleven tourists on the boat- one Vietnamese family of four, a Portuguese couple with a young baby, a German couple and us. Within ten happy smiling minutes, the very choppy sea claimed its first victims- the mother, father and son of the Vietnamese family were being violently sick on and off the boat. Then the mother of the young baby was taken down but then the poor little baby started being involuntarily sick and screaming as she didn’t understand what was happening to her body. After about 20 minutes at sea, incidentally catching no squid either, we made a group decision to abandon the trip and head back to land. The tour guide misjudged the crowd and suggested we stay on the boat for dinner; everyone just walked away glad to be on still land and trying to settle their stomachs. A bit of a disaster but quite funny in the end!
The next day we went on a much less rough snorkelling trip. To be honest the water was pretty dirty, with Jonny emerging from the sea with a small oil slick down his face, so I stayed on the boat mostly and entertained myself fishing. I never knew how much I love fishing! I caught eight fish (the boat record and many more than Jonny!) and they cooked some of them for our lunch. That night we went for a lovely dinner before leaving for Cambodia the next day. We liked the little old lady we arranged our trip from Phu Quoc to Cambodia with, but little old ladies can be deceiving! We got the ferry to the Vietnamese mainland and a bus through the Cambodian border and travelled on to a town called Kampot where we were told we had to change to a taxi. It seemed odd as we’d paid for a bus all the way to Phnom Penh, the capital and when they attempted to squeeze 7 people into the car to travel for around four hours, we protested. The travel agent shrugged her shoulders and told us we’d missed the bus- which incidentally with the set ferry crossing and journey to Kampot we never had a chance of catching (damn little old lady!). After nearly an hour of trying to get them to do something the travel agent took us to a local minibus and said that would take us to Phnom Penh. It looked like a tro-tro from Ghana so we weren’t that concerned- a pretty beat up, 12 seater minibus- fine, we thought, we’ve done this before, just suck it up and we’ll be there soon. That was until they packed 27 people in, including 8 people sat on the luggage which protruded out of the boot and even one person sat underneath the driver!!!!!! At one point the driver was weaving in and out of traffic at break neck speed, with someone underneath him, on the phone and watching the drop down television he had in the front!! I was beside myself and felt very, very relieved to reach Phnom Penh alive (sorry Mum!). We were exhausted when we arrived and jumped in the nearest tuk tuk to get us to our hostel. Phnom Penh is a maze of streets without names, only numbers and no one seems to know where anything is. After 2 hours, 2 different tuk tuks and much frustration we finally found our hostel, a full 15 hours after we’d set off that morning. We had a good sleep and prepared ourselves for what was going to be a pretty emotional next day.
Many readers of this blog will have been to this part of the world and/or know the history of Cambodia, but for those who don’t, this is the little snippet I have learned. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia led by Pol Pot, or Brother number 1, who had ambitions to make Cambodia into the ultimate Communist country. He wanted the entire country to be remodelled into a purely agricultural, peasant- led society based on communes and self-sufficient sharing. Tragically, like Communist leaders before his time, this meant that anyone that questioned the authority and omniscience of the Khmer Rouge was an enemy who had to be wiped out. For Pol Pot’s regime this translated into anyone who wasn’t a peasant- educated people, teachers, artists, religious leaders, monks and their families were murdered on mass. They estimate that almost a quarter of the population, 1.7 million people, were killed by this regime in the 3 years they held power. The insanity and brutality of the time is brought home by S21 museum in the capital. It is a school which was converted into a prison and torture camp by the regime. Thousands of men, women and children were tortured there before being taken to their deaths and the numbers escalated as the regime got increasingly paranoid. Only 7 people survived the camp, ironically mostly by being artists and painting portraits of the leader and we met one of the survivors the day we visited. We moved on to Cheoung Ek, which lies just outside the city and is known more commonly as the Killing Fields. Here, the Khmer Rouge brought those they wanted to exterminate from S21. As we walked around, you could see the depressions in the ground that are mass graves of the victims. The keepers of the ground have unearthed thousands of skulls and bones which are displayed in a memorial Stupa but have decided to allow nature to unearth the rest and dig no further. As the rain comes and earth washes away, more bones and rags appear out of the ground and you see them as you walk around. It is a difficult and heartbreaking place but one I feel is essential to visit.
It is crazy that while the developing world rocked out to the Rolling Stones, grieved the end of the Beatles and were being terrified by a shark film, so many people were being massacred in Cambodia. It begs the question of what human rights violations we are still blind to and what our government actively chooses not to see- China, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Guantanamo...the list goes on but this is not a political blog so I will move on!
Our final two days in Phnom Penh were spent visiting the very impressive Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda and Independence Monument. We also took a drive out to the slums to visit a non-profit project we read about in the town. We met an Aussie guy who has set up Justees (http://www.justees.org/) which employs disadvantaged young Cambodian men to print t-shirts with justice messages on. It was great to chat to him and see the process and we bought a couple of t-shirts- check out the website!
We moved on to Siem Reap and the wonder of the world that is Angkor Wat. We hired a lovely tuk tuk driver called Saly and started very early to visit all the temples. I didn’t know before going but the complex of temples is huge with structures dating back to 800AD. We spent 8 hours visiting the temples we wanted to see and it is breathtaking. My favourite was the slightly further out Banteay Srei which was set in tranquil rice paddies and had incredibly intricate carvings all over it. We explored all the temples including the tree temple, made famous by Tomb Raider, which has huge trees somehow growing out of the rocks, Bayon, which is a temple made of huge heads and of course Angkor Wat, the national symbol. It was a fascinating and very hot day but well worth the visit. We were staying in a really nice and cheap hotel that offered in room massages so I decided to have one to ease my sore legs while Jonny relaxed by the pool. The lady who arrived did not seem very happy to be massaging that day and I found out why when she rushed to the bathroom after 10 minutes and threw up. When she was done she wanted to carry on- I of course told her she was sick and needed to go home and gave her a couple dollars as a token. Amazingly she protested and tried to charge me the full amount for the massage- a very surreal event all in all!
The next day we visited a photography exhibition which happened to be connected to a children’s hospital set up by a Japanese-American. The hospital was in desperate need of financial donations and blood...so Jonny stepped up to the plate and gave them 350ml of the red stuff. We took a trip out to a temple which was also used by the Khmer Rouge and had a lovely dinner at Madame Butterfly’s set in the oldest colonial house in Siem Reap.
In the morning we took a bus to Battambang and, having only one day there, packed it full! We started by taking the bamboo train- the most fun thing I think we’ve done this trip! The locals use the old French train track still and we sat on a plank of wood which had two axles underneath, propelled by a small motor engine. We were hurtling down the rickety track which had warped and bent out of shape in the heat, at about 25mph, until we met another train coming the other way. At which point, our driver made us dismount, took the wooden plank off, removed the wheels from the track, allowed the other train passed and reassembled our train once they’d gone. It was amazing fun! We then visited a temple on a hill which has been built to mark the caves where the Khmer Rouge threw people to their death. Again, a very sad and chilling place. We hung around until night fall to see tens of millions fruit bats leave the cave to hunt in a long line which looked like billowing smoke. We raced back into town to see the youth circus- it is a non-profit organisation for disadvantaged Cambodian kids to learn circus skills. We’d read that the adult team, of which a few have been selected for Cirque Du Soleil, were on tour and so we would see the kids’ team. We expected an entertaining hour but nothing mind blowing- how wrong we were. The kids were absolutely amazing; doing contortion, tight rope walking, acrobatics, clowning, juggling- it was a fantastic night. Just as we were leaving an almighty storm broke and soaked, we grabbed a takeout pizza and retreated to our hostel. After a very long journey yesterday we arrived in Bangkok where we will explore for a couple of days before embarking on our final leg of the journey...India!