Cambodia - amazing but struggling
Trip Start
Aug 22, 2007
1
17
27
Trip End
Aug 21, 2008
Strung Treng,
Cambodia
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The crossing of borders from Laos into Cambodia was and adventure in itself! It seems that both parties have decided to use this crossing to exploit tourists, and you have to tip everyone you come across a dollar to get through the process! So if (like us) you don't have a great collection of one dollar bills you could be in for some fun!
We arrive to get our departure stamp at a poor excuse for a shack. We are literally in the middle of nowhere - it seems that all that separates these two countries is a long dusty dirt track road. Behind the desk in this shack sit three guys all dressed in army uniform and all holding rifles and all looking like they would shoot you just for looking at them in the wrong way.
Now, whilst still in Don Det we had learned about this 'border-tax' scheme, and we were determined not to get ripped off by turning up with a new $20 note each just so there would be no confusion. Once we saw these guys though, we quickly retracted that decision. Kyle offered to pay for us as we didn't have any other dollars, so we approach the desk, hand in our passports and kyle gives the guy $10
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. He stamps 2 of them and puts them in a drawer and asks for some money. Darren's there going, "you haven't even stamped mine yet', and his is put to one side unstamped. The guy asks for money again, and Kyle insists we have already paid and we need $7 dollars change. From the smirk on the guys face and his colleague's reactions were sure signs this guy was ripping us off. Things start to get a little uncomfortable and we go back and forth for 5 or 10 minutes. In the queue behind us are two German men, keen on photography who seem to think that taking photos of this little set-up won't upset anyone. All of a sudden the three guys (and their guns) jump to their feet - we are still at the front, now crapping our pants - and start screaming at these guys who try but fail miserably to deny they were taking photos. We quickly pay some more money, and head down the road.(It later turned out that in fact the guy HAD given Kyle his money back, but he didn't realise this at the time, his bad). So, with that out of the way we approach the Cambodian arrivals counter where, again, they add on an extra dollar willy nilly. When it gets to my application the guy insists, despite my protestions, that the departure guys didn't actually stamp my passport at the shack of death. I don't wanna go back there, no one does, but grudgingly me and Darren trek back down the road and have to interrupt the gunmen having a cup of tea (surely they will kill us?) where one of them patiently points out my departure stamp in my passport - i wanted to kill the Cambodian arrival man!! Finally, after we had 'tipped' some local police who didn't seem to have anything to do with the whole operation - we were on our way!We headed to Strung Treng, the main transport hub in the North of the country , and the first thing me and Darren did was to get separated from the bus which had our luggage on it, and could have gone in one of 5 different directions
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. After about 45minutes Kyle found us and took us to our luggage (a lot of the time when you get tuk tuks or minibuses in Asia they decide to drop you off at their friends restaurant or guest house in return for commission. Its always somewhere out of the way so you are more inclined to purchase a coffee, and never anywhere remotely helpful like the bus station!). So we rick up at this busy restaurant which can't cope with the sudden influx of people, get a free dinner because they are so confused they dint know what is what. We change our plans and buy a ticket to Phonm Penn, and then get our money back when we see how crammed the bus is (the guy is making people sit in the aisle) and decide to stay the night here. The next morning we get up early to make our way to the Ratana kiri province, one of the lonely planet's - now known as the Lonely Liar - highlights , where we want to go and see a massive crater lake, (we were under the impression it was a volcanic crater but also heard rumours it could be a meteorite crater - either way it just looked like a massive lake with no crater-like qualities and it really wasn't worth the most scariest journey of my life to get there).
From the start it was obvious our minivan driver liked to speed, bearable when in Strung treng as there are actual roads, but once you get out onto the dirt track road to our destination things got a little bit hairy. Our guy was overtaking and undertaking everything, driving on the wrong side of the road and taking blind corners without any consideration for oncoming traffic
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. Every time something came the other way a massive cloud of dust came up, obscuring view but did he slow down? no. After almost taking out an unsuspecting motorcyclist and a near head-on collision with a bus that was flashing its lights at us, we yelled at him to slow down, w e don't like it. Less than 5 minutes went by before we were the first to come across a horrific accident where a van similar to ours had flipped, over turned and was now laying on its side, blocking the road near a corner with all its windows smashed. If we hadn't yelled at the driver there is no doubt we would have hit it. It was terrifying, the people were all crying and bloody. We all got out to help and miraculously no one was killed, we made room for the injured and took them to the nearest town, but our drivers driving made us blow a tyre which took ages to repair and was replaced with a very old worn one without any treads, it was ridiculous! We all breathed a sigh of relief when we got there in one piece and had to have some beers and chain smoke to calm ourselves down!!!We checked into a guest house where all the staff were celebrating something and were bundled in a circle in the hall thrashed and happy and singing, they loved us but we still are not sure what the celebration was about!!!! As i mentioned above, the bike ride to the lake was enjoyable, although we got ridiculously lost again and i got about 30 tiny thorns stuck in my toes, but the lake itself was.....just a big lake, although we had a nice swim! Again, we explored the town , with two finish guys who were with us on the scary bus, we went to the local market and had a cheap but disgusting breakfast that gave Darren bad guts but it was fun watching kyle try to pretend he was really enjoying it!
Phnom Penn was our next stop, and although beautiful, it was very depressing once you took in all the sights connected to the Khmer Rouge Rein
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. We went to what is now know as the Killing Fields situated in just outside of Phnom Penn. This was where thousands of men women and children were take and secretly executed under the Pol Pot regime of the 70s. I have never seen a more upsetting area than this, massive holes in the grounds showed the mass graves that were uncovered, one with all the bodies missing heads, and another full of tiny skeletons. The building in the middle holds some remaining clothes, as well as an overwhelming collection of skulls all resting on top of each other, some large some small. You see the tree where they hung a speaker to play music and drown out the cries of execution, and the fact that it happened only 30 years ago makes it seem all the more unreal, it was awful. To keep in with the depressive yet educational theme for the day, our next stop was the S21 prison, a school the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture prison once they had emptied the city of it's inhabitants. Thousands were captured and brought here to be interrogated, then murdered,and most of them were innocent of any crime except knowledge - Pol Pot killed off the entire elite of society - scholars, doctors, teachers etc as well as anyone with any connections to live outside of Cambodia. Only 14 people are known to have entered S21 and come out alive. It's awful seeing the building blocks and the courtyard because it is easy to imagine this as a place of fun where children learnt and played, except now in the playground lie the graves of the last people to die here (whose bodies the Vietnamese found when they stormed the city)
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. Where the classrooms used to be are now empty rooms featuring just an empty metal bed, some instruments or torture and , in a few, splatters of blood still visible on the walls and ceilings.The blocks were all surrounded by barbed wire fence to prevent escapes and suicide attempts, and in another block the cells were so small there wouldn't be enough room for a grown man to lie down in, the prisoners here must have been so scared and miserable. The worst part was the collection of mug shots which helped compile S21's archive, records of some (but not nearly all as much paperwork was lost) of the prisoners who were brought here. These mug shots cover hundreds of boards that take up an entire floor of an entire block, there are thousands and thousands of photos of men, women, children and babies and they all have a look of doom on their faces except the occasional young child who obviously is unaware of what lies ahead. Apparently many survivors came here looking for photos of loved ones missing after the Khmer Rouge were toppled just so they would know what had happened to them. As well as all the awful things, there were some impressive works of art here, and some transcripts of interviews with survivors, guards, torturers and family members. It was all in all, a very very depressing day.
Away form the sad stuff, it was funny when we checked into the guest house where we stayed in the backpacker Lakeside area, as the guy was over friendly and was offering weed with the room, it was one of those , "just the room ,ta" situations you don't want to be in
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. They also offer 'happy pizzas' on all of the menus across the city for an extra 30p or something stupid! Apart from the mosquitos which were all over the shop being so close to the lake that we were, accommodation was ace, smack bang in the middle of Lakeside. It was nice that little local boys about 10 or something came along every 15minutes and peered over the side asking if 'you want come boat? $5?'. The lake itself was a bit skanky so the answer is always no, but it's nice to be asked!As well as getting our camera fixed (pesky puppy!) we also ended our long search for guitar cases here - this time though they are a it too small so we had to cut them and get socks involved. We had a couple of poker nights with the finish guys - I won one and daz won the other so we made some money and one night we got dragged to the notorious 'prince of darkness' club, which was random but good! We think the finish got laid that night - with the same girl! It was all rather random, but they both had a smile on their faces the next day!
When we get some photos up we have them to thank for sharing their photos so thanks guys!
Our next and final stop in Cambodia was of course the Angkor temples in Siem Reap. We got bombarded getting off the bus from people desperate to take us to a guest house it was mayhem I even got poked in the eye by one guy. Darren was trying to fight through the crowd to get to me while I just stood there screaming trying to get these people away from me!!!
Somehow we got stuck here, not wetting up in time to have a whole day there but hell we explored Siem Reap and brought some souvenirs! We were wandering down by the river one day and came across a enormous Duracell battery just randomly placed by the river - we were like "Come on! Who's great idea was this?".
The place where we stayed had a random collection of dogs who had bred and made some mongrel puppies who were at that 'playful' stage, eating and stealing everything The puppies were all bigger than their tiny mother and gave her hell! One morning I was having breakfast and received some heckling coming my way from a table of Tasmanian guys
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. Thinking nothing of it I realized why when I saw the empty bottle of Jack Daniels on their table - it was like 10:30am!!! Later that night they invited us for a drink and what an eventful night it turned into. Turned out, there were to brothers, both in their 40s and both still competing with each other! The other guy was their granddad, and they were a random bunch of characters, being taken around the country by about 4 locals, and they obviously needed that many to keep them in order. I had a very long and very drunken chat with the granddad who was a nice guy who'd had a tough life but that didn't excuse his racism, sexism and homophobic attitude, I kept going, "er.........no, sorry, that's not right" but there was no chance he was so stuck in his ways. One of the grand'kids' was obviously a bit not right and took offense to every single thing his brother said and they ended up having a massive argument with me and Darren (well, mainly me, Darren just sat there enjoying it) trying to get them to shut the hell up! They were strange but very very entertaining! We rang home that night in our drunken states and it turned out to be mothers day so everyone got a nice drunken earful of 'I miss you'!!!We finally dragged ourselves to the temples on our last day, and although we couldn't have done (or afforded) more than a day each they were pretty spectacular, we especially liked the one with the faces but I can't remember off the top of my head what its called. We were going to bike but Kyle warned us it was long so we found a nice friendly man who took us in our tuk tuk although we did have to get out and push at one point!!
And that,my friends, was our experience of Cambodia, still struggling to redeem itself from its tragedies, but a very much worthwhile visit!!!
