Amazing Angkor
Trip Start
Jun 14, 2008
1
62
93
Trip End
Jun 20, 2009
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The crazy road to Siem Reip
. Defintiley a wise decision. Atrocious the road is, although the description road is a little misleading; its more of a dirt track. Although there were parts of it being worked on, at very sporadic intervals! Like Thailand, the motorcyle is king here, sometimes a whole family spanning four generations will be sitting on one bike, the infant precarious, not a helmet between them. Our driver is wordless and sits on his horn for the three hours it takes us to get there beeping frantically at traffic approaching on the wrong side of the road. The passing scenery is a jumble of street stalls thrown together with corrugated iron and bits of wood. They sell our first world cast offs; second hand clothes, electrical appliances, childrens' bikes. The whole country is like a rubbish tip, there is litter EVERYWHERE. It's an ecological disaster. There are no pavements and everything is covered in a film of dust and dirt. In the rice paddies, the houses small houses are on stilts, presumably for floods during the rainy season. The cows wandering about look malnourished (endorsing my recent and temporary conversion to vegetarianism), to say nothing of the people who are knee deep in water in the fields, thowing their nets into large brown puddles fishing for god knows what.
Finally we arrive into Siem Reap
3 amigos
. Our accomodation is on the outskits of the town. At four dollars each a night it's a steal. Clean, with AC and satellite tv with BBC news. As soon as we've dumped our bags we get some money out (the ATMs only dispense dollars in Cambodia) and try to find pub street...for all the obvious reasons! The westernized part of Siem Reap (which encompasses pub street) is fairly compact and clean, sporting many good bars and eateries. Many of the shops selling expensive products have their signs in English. Funnily they are still allowed to advertise cigarettes here (nice new market for the companies to exploit) so billboards extoll the virtues of fags declaring "Life is rich" when you smoke. Give me a break. There is even a store with Gucci, Versace and YSL for sale. You have to wonder what sort of a market they have here! Everywhere you walk there are people scouting for business, honking at you to try and entice you into their tuk tuk, offering you menus or cheap drinks. There are also lots of amputees wandering around selling rip off guide books and books on the history of Pol Pot and the killing fields, or mothers begging with their babies in their arms. This is probably the place we've been so far where the poverty is most visible and it's really sad. It's hard to say no to people who look for money, but you can't say yes to everyone. You want to afford them their dignity, but sometimes its hard to even look them in the eye, which is a bit shameful to say
The Funky Monkey on pub st.
. Its really heart breaking, I don't know how I am going to cope with India. I'm not sure if I want my heart to grow too hard to it all either. After settling in we went about organizing a tour to see Angkor Wat. It's the largest religious temple in the world and our experiences of Tikal etc in Central America convinced us a guide was worth paying for. We opted for the sunrise option hoping the temples would be quieter and also cooler.
The next day it was a bleary eyed half four start which reminded me of my breakfast show days! We ran into a hitch when we found the large front gate to our digs locked firm with a huge padlock. Eventually we located a staff member asleep under the front desk and we were released into the dark morning. We sped along in a tuk tuk for 15 mins until we arrived at the entrance. After handing over our very reasonable 20 dollar entrace fee we strode along in the semi-darkness, some of the the stars still visible to find our place in front of Angkor Wat...one of the main and iconic temples of the whole complex.
The sun rise was beautiful, the temples reflected in the water in front of us (all of the temples are surrounded by moats, although some of them are dry now) as shades of navy and blue turned to pink and yellow
constantly working on the mad streets
. It would have been really serene except for a load of tourists yakking loudly behind us, but sure you can't win them all. The bank of the moat was chock a block with tourists and cameras (as you can see from our snaps) We headed into the first temple Angkor Wat. The next seven hours were magical. The light in the morning was amazing, you could see golden beams reflecting off the buildings. Our guide was excellent, explaining the hindu / buddist origins of different scultpures and temples in the complex. The story of how parts of it were expanded and deserted, the legends and tales behind the different characters adorning the walls. It's incredibly ornate, hard to believe it was completed in 37 years! Sure how long are we working on the bleedin' M50 now? The khymers could teach Dublin City Council a thing or two. Luckily the temples escaped the ravages of the Khymer Rouge and although they were used as work camps for the population they weren't destroyed as many other temples / cultural institutions were. The last temple we visited was where they filmed Tomb Raider. It looked like a film set, talk about art imitating life! Huge trees growing out of falling down temples, huge slabs of stone littered everywhere and tangled in vines! Tourism is really still in its infancy here. Angkor Wat currently gets around 2 million visitors a year. Sounds like a lot, but consider that every year the Eiffel tower sees nearly 7
little markets
. There is defintiley room for growth, and growing it is. In the year 2000 our guide told us there were only 2 large hotels in Siem Reap. Now there are dozens, and hundreds of cheaper guesthouses of the kind we were staying in. I hope that tourism can offer this country some hope of bringing itself up out of poverty, because Angkor Wat is definitely one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. The rest of our time in Siem Reap was spent pigging out on the delicious food (one good thing about being former conquests of the French is the delicous cuisine on offer) shooting pool and downing 50c (that's US not Euro cents!) beers. Despite the litter and the poverty, Cambodia has been enchanting so far...and its people so warm and friendly. It's remarkable to find that especially given their recent tragic and violent history. This country has so much to offer and I am already glad that we decided to visit.
Travellers Tips
We stayed in the Jasmine guest house on the N6. All the digs appear to be cheaper out there and they are only a 2 dollar tuk tuk ride or 15 min walk to pub street. We paid four dollars each for a double room, we had AC and satellite TV
all-important Krama
. It was very clean, price included breakfast but we got up too late to have it. Unforatunely they were full the next day so we moved a few doors down the street to kroma, a japanese guesthouse. A little pricier at 6 dollars a night each (!) but had same facilities and staff were great here as well.We would recommend getting a guide for Angkor Wat, we used a guy called Taing Lyheng - you can contact him on lyheng2002@yahoo.com or on 855 92 3000 46. He was fun and friendly and really knew his stuff. Good english too. We booked him through a travel agent so you may get it cheaper if you go direct to him but we paid 16 USD each. That was for 3 of us to have a private tour with tuk tuk transport. Totally worth it.
The funky munky is a great bar, plays some banging tunes and has free pool. The food in the Irish bar is absolutely delicous, bit more expensive but worth it if you are after a taste of home.
