Angkor Angkor Angkor
Trip Start
Nov 26, 2007
1
16
44
Trip End
Apr 17, 2008
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Sunday, February 3, 2008
I managed to get through most of the cycling activity injury free...I did have one moment of stupidity upon forgetting that the basket on the front of the bike was attached to the handlebars meaning that when I rammed my water bottle into the basket, after thinking I was in the Tour De France sipping away while cycling, the handlebars jumped out of my hands and I steered myself into the ditch at the side of the road...much laughing from tuk tuk drivers and small children ensued. I also lost my Khmer Rouge scarf in the manouver too, well gutted I was but got a few more now.
My only other cycling humor was the day I decided to go to Angkor for sunrise so set off in pitch darkness at 5am. Always thinking ahead I bought a baguette (yeah the French spirit lives on out here with them selling baguettes etc all over the gaff) from a street seller. This all worked out fine till I got to the pot holed bit of the road near Angkor, every time I rammed into a pothole in the pitch dark my baguette would fly out of my little basket onto the road and I would have to park up and go on a baguette recovery mission like a right pillock. As I had an aversion to paying for a motorbike taxi or tuk tuk I also cycled to the furthest away temples; 80km round trip in 35oC on a bike with no gears is not for the faint hearted. Its just as well I have my Mediterranean complexion or I would have to be applying sun block all day. It took until I went out cycling on my own for the day to notice that nearly every car in Siem Reap is a Toyota Camry; the only ones that aren't are Toyota pick ups or Lexus (also Toyota). The other thing I noticed is that most of the big flashy Lexus's have military or state number plates on them - yet another sign of the crappy corruption which goes on in this country.
Siem Reap and Angkor are little oasis's of capitalism in the middle of 3rd world Cambodia. They even have people cleaning the streets. The ride out to Angkor is dominated with 5 star hotels (e.g. Raffles Angkor) and posh new apartment blocks. If only they could apply such principles to the rest of Cambodia what a beautiful country this could be. Even the Angkor ticket is high tech with a photo being taken and printed onto the pass!! Amazing when most of the country can't write!! Angkor dominates everything here, every bar etc has some kind of Angkor name. The Cambodian people are clearly very proud of it (lets face it they need something to be proud off). It's quite interesting to see that most of the mines (and a lot of the temple reconstruction round Angkor) have been cleared by Japanese donations - not seen a single cleared zone from America, Russia or China who caused the damn problem in the 1st place. You see a few landmine victims around here, nearly all doing something (selling books round town or playing in the little land mine peoples bands near the temples) but not begging since that has been deemed them bad for tourism so they have been removed. To understand a little bit better I went to the land mine museum; started by a former Khmer Rouge boy soldier who laid landmines for many years before being employed by the UN after the defeat in the late 90's. He has made it his mission to clear landmines using a stick and a knife and reckons he's cleared 50,000. The museum contains all sorts of ordinance he's collected over the years; it comes from a variety of places - mainly US, Russia, China and Vietnam. There are currently 6 million landmines left in Cambodia (one for every person) and apparently 1 in every 236 people is an amputee...makes one think doesn't it.
Despite it all though nearly every person has a smile on their face, and no matter who it is you speak to, just by saying hello in Cambodian big grins spread across their faces.
The Angkor site is vast. There are about 20 different temple complexes built at different times by different rulers. Angkor itself is a km by km square surrounded by a proper moat. But the really amazing thing is the intricacy of the engravings - every piece of the sandstone is covered by some kinds of engravings. I couldn't really get into the religious significance of all the various temple business; it sort of switches from Hindu to Buddhism back and forth as time goes on. To me that isn't why I came here, I get much more of a buzz looking at how they might have constructed the things and trying to imagine what they would have looked like back in the day (for example you can see walls that were keyed to hold sheets and sheets of copper and some used 100's of kilograms of gold in their construction - that must have looked just like something the gods had built to some peasant who'd never seen a stone building before). It becomes impossible to imagine the amount of resource that must have went into constructing these things.
Angkor Photos
You are seldom alone at Angkor. There are bus loads of Chinese and Japanese equipped with every piece of Canon and Nikon hardware they can carry. They also get great amusement for (a) getting ginger haired Scots boys to pose for photos with their birds and (b) posing with 2 fingers held high at every photogenic site in Angkor (you soon learn how to take a picture in the 1.25 seconds a ruin is 2 finger free as it takes about this time to rotate from one Chinese to the next one). Europeans tend to get tuk tuks - mainly as they try to get through every day on their holidays without engaging in conversation with anyone they are not traveling with. There were 2 exceptions I met, Cecile (see below) and the 81 year old (mixture of Australian, Swedish and Irish from what I could tell) geyser in our hotel with his Swedish Grandson who cycled to the site every morning who was an advert for all peoples with a saga tour addiction.
However, I was pleasantly surprised with how quiet Angkor was - I was expecting mayhem after reading the guide books but with the exception of climbing to the top of the only hill for sunset one night with half of Beijing and Tokyo it was always possible to find some peace and quiet.
However, peace and quiet can never be found when close to the entrance of a temple complex when one's nice western complexion is greeted with scores of girls and women rushing over to you trying to get you to sample their cold water or lovely food. This starts as mildly amusing but can become rather annoying after a few days. Myself, I can never get bored of a bit of patter with the locals, especially the kids. The kids (average age probably 5) running around Angkor selling stuff have an amazing grasp of some English:
"Sir, you wanna buy a scarf"
No I already have a scarf
"One more sir"
No thanks
"One for your girlfriend sir"
No thanks
"One for your mother sir"
No thanks
"One for your mother in law sir"
"Sir, you want cold drink'
No, I have already
"Maybe later sir"
Maybe
"Sir, you need cold drink make sure you come to me"
"Sir, you want a guide book"
No, I have already
"Sir, you want Cambodian history book"
No, I have already.
"What you want then sir"
Nothing
"Ah, nothing cost $10 sir"
"Sir, what you want to eat"
I want nothing
"OK, we can make nothing"
"If I tell you the capital of Scotland will you buy from me"
No
"OK, the capital of Sweden is Stockholm"
"Sir, why you no buy?"
I don't need it
"Why you no need, you need help me"
"Sir, why you no buy?"
I don't have room in my bag for it
"Oh, no problem sir, I come with you and carry it"
Although Cambodians are lovely people they have an uncomfortable obsession with money. It seems to be the only thing that drives these people which isn't pleasant. The other thing that I find personally annoying is that they have totally different prices for everything for locals and tourists. I can recognise that we are much richer than the locals but it does just feel like someone is constantly taking the piss out of you. However, my book of the moment is a biography of Pol Pot (Anatomy of a Nightmare its called) and I'm starting to realise why this lot don't behave like we would back home.
On the second or third day I was in Siem Reap I had an email from Bas (travel by land from Amsterdam to Australia Dutch heart surgeon boy) saying he was in Thailand but getting bored and was wondering about coming over here. He arrived a couple of days later. Was good to see him again though he didn't really seem to have realised that the Porn party was well and truly over and Simon was now early bed boy...We had one night out (though a night out here is a 12 finish, nothing like the party all night carry on in Thailand thank goodness) but the rest of the time wandered round the temples together trying to work out how they had built the things etc.
I also met a nice girl, Cecile, who was staying in my hotel. She's a Parisian naturopath (heals people doing something weird or something like that) rock chick who was here on 'holiday' but had managed to fill up every day doing massage classes in the morning and teaching impoverished children in the afternoons. We had tea together most nights (and breakfast most mornings at 7 or 8am with my new early rising routine) including a night eating very strange pizzas. We tried to go somewhere away from all the tourists one night so went to this little cafe across the river; it was looking good with mainly Cambodians for company but suddenly there was this moth infestation and we had to leave, really weird experience - see pictures. Mostly we just sat an talked (in English) about our lifes and how neither of us knew what turn to take next when we went home.
All in all I have been thinking a lot myself about what the hell I'm gonna do for a living when I get back. I have realized since being here that all that being financially and career driven for the last 10 years myself didn't make me happy. I've been much happier here just plodding along on 500 quid a month living with 4 T-shirts and one pair of trousers and Phil's I-pod speakers than I ever was in recent years back home. I have been thinking a lot about what I'm gonna do when I get back and jump from similar stuff to being a diplomat to a journalist to working in a bar to starting a business to banking...any tips appreciated!! What it has all made me realize is that perhaps I could be happy anywhere; I was convinced before that I would never leave Manchester but now I'm not sure.
Other pics from Siem Reap.
