Siem Reap - Angkor's Away!
Trip Start
Mar 03, 2005
1
21
235
Trip End
Ongoing
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Friday, May 6, 2005
The ticket and sign showed a sleek, fast speed boat, and even used the term 'express'. And even though it also said 'US$25' and the bus was only US$6, I thought I'd give it a crack, as I'd heard the roads weren't 100% up to standard as yet. My hotel told me I had to leave there by 6am to make it to the jetty, so I did, arriving at 6.18am 'just in time' for the 7am departure of the bus. I'm not a morning person (remember this - I'll state it again for reference for future days in Siem Reap - I'm not a morning person) and its worse when you have to be up early only to be told you could have slept for another 42 minutes.
Hang on a sec - he said "of the bus". Its the hot dry season, and hence the river is currently low. Hence we have to catch a bus for the first 90 minutes to Siem Reap. Hence I should have caught the bloody bus for US$6.
Three hours into the 90 minute bus ride, the bus pulled into a small village that looked like the set for a World Vision donation pledge advertisement. There were shanty bamboo shacks stretched along a dusty roadway, with garbage and plastic bags littered in piles everywhere. Small filthy children were running everywhere while their parents sat in their huts lazing in the late morning heat. In fact, there were some 4WDs for an organisation called 'Connect' which looked very much like a United Nations ration convoy. And there was a small shallow body of water, green with algae, floating with rubbish and flies and mosquitoes. US$6 for the bus hey....
Things are clearly not going to plan. The driver and attendant are frantically making mobile phone calls. The kids are circling, not like vultures, but out of curiosity as to why there is a bus of 9 Westerners in their town.
Its almost 10.30am, and I'm 4.5 hours into the day. The Khmer word for two is 'Pee'. Hence in Cambodia when you need to take a whizzer, its a number twos. The Khmer word for ten is 'Duop'. Close enough. Thankfully I only needed a Khmer number twos and not a Khmer number tens, but I sure couldn't find the letters "WC" emblazoned anywhere. There were no trees in this dustbowl of a commune. Thus, I was holding on.
Finally there is some action. The attendant points and says "boat". We look out into the cesspool to see, a boat, coming towards us. So its not as swanky as the picture on the ticket, but at least its a boat. The only problem was in front of the cesspool that was the river, was another smaller muddy cesspool. If you looked closely, you could see the bacteria forming the words "Cholera" and "Dysentry" in an infectious glow. And that was between us and the river.
There were initial discussions as to us crossing it by foot. Not on your life I thought, but thankfully I didn't have to work out how to say that in Cambodian, as they decided to drive the bus through the initial cesspool. Thankfully it didn't get stuck in the bog, and after climbing across another boat, we made it onboard the 'Siem Reap Phnom Penh Express'.
I still needed to Khmer number twos it. But there was no Loo onboard. And I didn't want to scare the two children from the Gernam family who were also onboard. Thus, I was holding on, and no longer drinking fluids to top up the reservoir.
I suspected that since we'd gone so far in the bus, that Siem Reap was only an hour or so was wrong. We pulled into what could theoretically be termed a jetty, two and a half hours after leaving the commune, where we were told we had to get on another smaller boat to get to the real jetty. There was a small building, so I asked a sensible question - "do you have a toilet?". I was pointed to the back of the building. Over the edge were three pieces of bamboo stuck together, just on the water line. Apparently I was to hang down and stand on the bamboo and let it all out into the water. I needed to go, but I didn't need to go enough to stand in this sewerage river and add to its pollution levels. Thus, I was holding on.
After another 10 minutes we arrived at the 'main' jetty. We had to climb over a half dozen longboats, to clamber on to a skinny piece of wood stuck on bamboo poles, dozens of metres over a muddy slush. Its no Circular Quay or Station Pier is the Siem Reap jetty in the dry season.
Thankfully my guesthouse had said they were sending 'transport'. I thought 'car'. I found the friendly driver, who smiled and led the way to his Tuk Tuk. His Tuk Tuk. His frickin bloody motorcycle with a bloody trailer on the back. "Tuk Tuk" I said. "Yes Tuk Tuk!" he smiled. "How far is it to Siem Reap" I said. "Twenty kilometres, 45 minutes!" he smiled. "Is there a toilet here" I asked. "No!" he smiled, "but you can go in the trees!"
I looked into the jungle, and remembered reading the stories about mines and how today people still lose limbs to unexploded ordinance from the 70s, and how Siem Reap was one of the most heavily mined areas of the country. Thus, I was holding on. I was never good at biology, but somehow I needed to go a little bit less than before. Does your bladder eventually expand with pressure? Does Khmer number twos evaporate internally in the heat? I don't know the answer....
I eyed off the dusty road, repeated the words "20 frickin kilometres, 45 frickin minutes" and hopped aboard, hoping that the dusty road part would be short lived.
My estimation is that of the 20 kilometres, around 15 or so was in a constant state of flying dust, with trucks, cars and buses all travelling in the opposite direction, kicking up a storm, while I sit in an open vehicle.
I arrived at my guesthouse a darker shade of grey, with eyes stinging from the cloggy mess they'd been exposed to on the road. They looked at me and silently showed me to my room, where the driver then wanted to ask what I was doing that afternoon and if I'd need transport.
"What am I doing? Taking a piss. Having a shower. Hosing off my luggage. So go away." It was time to no longer hold on, or hold in.
I went down to reception after cleaning myself off and asked them if they had a car. He exclaimed "yes sir!" thinking I'd be interested in hiring it for a trip out to the temples for the afternoon. "Why didn't you send it to pick me up? Why did you send me out on the dusty road in a bloody Tuk Tuk?"
"Sir, when it rains, the car won't go on the road"
It would have been a sensible thing for him to say, if it wasn't the hot season, and if it had have rained during the last month and a half.
I found a driver near my guesthouse (yes, a Tuk Tuk driver) and hired him to drive me the 7kms out to Angkor Wat, the main attraction in the Kingdom of Angkor, which is apparently one of the seven forgotten ancient wonders of the medieval world. Thanks to Google for that.
My first taste of the sole reason to come to Siem Reap (outside of the wondrous boat trip) was truly inspirational. I was there perfectly in time for the sunset. Given it was built in the 1100's it has seen a sunset or two, and it delivered me a ripper. Its an initial wander over a long bridge to the entry gate of the Wat grounds, with the main area of the Wat another 150 metres further in from the walls. The main temple has five mountain-like peaks. You can climb to the middle section of the peaks, provided you don't mind a 75 degree gradient and steps of four inches wide for your feet, climbing up 20 metres.
I didn't mind going up, its going down that is the major issue. The local kids climb up and down like monkeys, whereas I, and the Japanese tour groups had to painstakingly crawl down. You're hot, you're tired, and you're life is in your hands, and in the tread on your boots.
They say "its not in the destination, its in the journey". Those people have obviously never caught the boat from Phnom Penh to Siam Reap, and have never been to Angkor Wat. The destination Khmer number tens all over the journey, to put it mildly.
I organised for my Tuk Tuk driver to pick me up early, as catching a sunrise at Angkor Wat is even better than the sunset. "Ok, here 5am" he said, as if that was a completely normal thing to say.
That meant a 4.45am start. You may recall I mentioned that I'm not a morning person. That's in reference to, say 7am. Now 4.45am is another level altogether of it needing to be a hell of a good reason for me to be doing anything other than throwing a few Zzzz's around.
I trampled down to the door of my guesthouse at 4.58am, to find it in darkness, and the front gate locked. So I woke up the guesthouse owner, who was sleeping only a few metres from the front door (quite a common occurrence in guesthouse's in South East Asia. Unusual if you go 5 star though. For instance you won't find either of the Hilton Sister's asleep on the couch at the Phnom Penh Hilton....)
My Tuk Tuk driver met me with a smile, and introduced me to another driver. "I'm busy today, but this driver will charge you the same for the day!". How different can they be. My new driver smiled way too cheerily for 4.59am and we sped off on the road to the Kingdom of Angkor.
The Kingdom is commonly known as Angkor Wat, but there is more to it than Angkor Wat. There are many temple areas scattered around Siem Reap's outskirts, with Angkor Wat being the largest, most famous and most beautiful of them all. And its the place to see the sun rise, which comes up just over the left shoulder of the peaks as you look at them. Thankfully it was overly crowded with tourists. You basically take a seat and watch and wait for the rise, with the sky changing color in the background.
Occasionally locals come over for a chat to keep you occupied. Um (that was his name) managed to have us laughing by asking people where they were from. I got the compulsory "G'day mayte, no worries" from him. A British girl got the "lovely jubblies" call. I'm not sure if Um was a cooking fan, or if it was just a general statement about her. He new that Tony Blair had won the UK election before any of the Brits did. Um was first with all the news.
The sunrise was as spectacular as anticipated.
Next stop on my jaunt through the Kingdom was Angkor Thom, which is only another 5 minutes away. By this stage it only just on 7am, but the crowds are thinning, and the heat of the day is setting in. No one should be this sweaty this early.
Angkor Thom is a temple city that features the magnificent Bayon, right in the middle of it. The Bayon's stupa's are all four-sided, and each side has Buddha's smiling face on it, in supersize form. You can't quite work out why Buddha is smiling - is it because there are no Japanese tour groups here?
The next temple is the Baphuon, and it is currently under reconstruction. Thankfully that does not mean a slap of Dulux, rendering of walls and a few sheets of colorbond roofing, as per where the Forbidden City appears to be heading. Give the buildings here in Angkor are over 1,000 years old, many of the stone walls or features have collapsed, or are in semi-collapse. The restoration here will be putting the pieces back together as they were and fixing them together a little more solidly. The original architects built the temples very cleverly. Each individual stone has ridges, holes or slots that slide into the next piece. It's remarkably similar to an ancient form of Lego. Hence those doing the reconstruction are marking down the pieces individually and putting the puzzles back together and securing them. Its slow work, but it appears that it will actually be a positive form of reconstruction for the future.
A few more stops were the Terrace of the Elephants, the Terrace of the Leper Kings, Banteay Kdei, Ta Keo, and a personal favourite, Ta Prohm. This is where some of the film "Tomb Raider" was actually shot. Or Angeline Jolie has been here. Or kissed Brad Pitt here. Or something like that. Anyway, she's had something to do with it because the restaurants in town features cocktails named after her and signed posters are on their walls. Ta Prohm is as close to a jungle temple as you can have here now, as there are vines hanging down and around the buildings and large hundreds of years old trees throughout the grounds.
By this stage, its only 10.15am but I've been out and about for five hours, and the heat and growing tour group numbers tends to wear you down. So rather than fall off a temple out of tiredness (a ten metre drop to hard stone isn't gonna be a pleasant experience) I headed back to the hotel for a rest, shower and food.
Its strange to use the term "my driver", but what the hell. My driver picked me up at 4.30pm to go back to the Kingdom for another sunset. Unfortunately the clouds hid most of the sunset, until the dying seconds when the sun burst through between a gap for a few moments before disappearing for the day.
Today's Tuk Tuk driver had been exceptional until we were on the way back to the guesthouse. He said to me "you want massage. I think you should try out a Cambodian woman".
He delivered this as if he was offering me a taste of a new French Onion dip recipe, or offering me a test drive of a new car. So I decided to revert back to my original Tuk Tuker for tomorrow.
Perhaps it is sheer madness, but I decided to do it all over again the next day. Exhausted, I dragged my sorry arse outta bed at 4.45am and headed off to the Kingdom of Angkor for another spot of templing. I returned to Angkor Wat for the sunrise (watching from a different spot for variety), and then headed to a few new temples which I hadn't seen the day before closing with a late morning return back to my favourites in the Bayon and Ta Phromn.
Although its only two days, I've falling straight into a schedule. Wake up at 4.45am, see sunrise, return to guesthouse by 10.30am, eat a combo breakfast-lunch double meal, return to guesthouse for afternoon kip, wake up at 4.30pm, see sunset, return to guesthouse....
But the strangest thing happened on day two - it rained.
The sun was scorching in the early afternoon when I hit the sack, but I woke up 90 minutes later to the sound of thunder and blanketing rain. Even the locals were looking outside inquisitively. Rain in May? Never.
Thus my scheduling was a mess. We couldn't go back to Angkor Wat for my final sunset in the Kingdom until 5.05pm.
But I was there in time for my final viewing of Angkor Wat at sunset. Its worth a look, really it is. I love it when a plan comes together.
