Holiday in Cambodia

Siem Reap

Well we've made it to Cambodia... and it's hot! Here in Siem Reap it's been into the mid to high 30s with high humidity as well. We flew in on Air Laos (unpublished safety record for some peculiar reason!) and not only were the seats bolted down put the plane made it here in one piece as well.

The first day we spent most of the day wandering around different parts of the city, just getting our bearings. With the exception of a filthy river, it's quite a nice looking city, with a crazy mixture of architecture. They have signs along the river saying "Clean Our Water River". It would appear that is the only measure they've taken to clean it up and it's not really working for some reason. That night we had dinner for a bit over a dollar each. This 12 year old entrepeneurial genius convinced us to come and have dinner at his family's street stall (instead of one of the other several dozen set up). Half the fun of eating there was watching this crazy little kid work his magic. He was very good with the customers (excellent English learnt from just listening to tourists) and didn't stop working the tables and the streets the whole time we were there.

Cambodia is a more like Thailand rather than Laos, sales-pitch wise. Everyone shouts "Hey Mister" or some catch phrase as you walk by. Always with a smile on their face mind you. They seem a bit cheekier than the Thais and will just laugh when you turn them down.

Day two was an amazing day, spent touring Angkor. See below.The rest of the time has been pretty relaxed, as we've seen all the major things we wanted to see here. There are a lot of markets around and plenty of very good food to try so that should keep us busy enough. After a couple more days of not much we'll be heading to Phnom Penh for a look at the other side of Cambodia. Also, new South East Asian Record: six people on one motorbike (110cc)! Bettered the old record by one, it was one adult and five tiny kids.

Angkor

One of the must do's on the trip was to go to the Temples of Angkor. Most people choose to see it by car or tuk-tuk but seeing as we are poor and like to do our own thing we decided to get a couple of bikes and spend a day out there. Most of the guide books recommend taking 3 or so days to do the temples, but with cost being an issue again we decided that with two bikes, energy to burn and the fact that my attention span is comparable to that of a blow-fly, one day would be heaps.

Jumped out of bed at 5:something in the morning and hired some mountain bikes from our guest-house (these had the added luxury of gears and brakes which are not standard over here!). Someone had told us that the sun came up over Angkor Wat at 6:30am and by the time our guest-house had dicked around pumping up tyres and finding the keys to our locks it was already after 6am. The temples are about 8-10km out of town, so the next 20 minutes became the Cambodian leg of Le Race as we tore through Siem Reap and out to the temples, even managed to overtake a couple of motorbikes in the process!

Angkor Wat is the main attraction of the temples and because it faces pretty much due West is the prime spot to watch the sunrise. We got there and piled in to find that apparently other people knew about this too as there must have been 2000 odd tourists inside! The temple is pretty amazing. First off it's surrounded by this moat which must be a few hundy metres across. Then there is this massive gate and walls, you go through these and the wat is another 1km in. The detail on the wat is amazing, the walls are covered in carvings of various buddhas and bas-reliefs and the shear size of it is mind-blowing. Once into the main part of the wat you can climb the ridiculously steep stairs and get a great view from the top. It's sorta hard to describe how cool it was in words without using a host of elaborate adjectives, but it was pretty awesome! The fact that it was built 900 years ago with some probably pretty simple tools and sheer man power is also pretty impressive. The good thing about the temples is you can pretty much go anywhere in them as there are no roped off sections, just a few warnings about climbing the stairs at your own risk!

So tracking back a bit we got to Angkor Wat with anticipation of getting some great sunrise photos, yet as time went on it got lighter and lighter but no sunrise due to the fact it was really overcast (this turned out to be a blessing as the sun didnt kill us on the bikes until after mid-day). At 7am we gave up waiting for the sunrise and went exploring in the wat. After a bit of brekkie we hit the road on the bikes and started on the 27km circuit around the various temples. I wont go into detail on each one but most of them were pretty impressive, just with the sheer size and detail invloved.


The only downside to the temples is the fact that everywhere you go someone is trying to sell you something. As soon as we pulled our bikes up anywhere we would be swamped by women and children yelling at you "Hey Mista, you buy a t-shirt" or similar, or some little kid trying to sell you the same postcards or bracelets. These people are only doing what they can to make a living but after 10 or so hours we got over it a little. The other frustratrion was the busloads of predominantly Japanese and Korean tourists, who sure have the same right to be there as us, but seemed to make a habit of stopping in large groups to block the entrance/exit to a temple or walking in front of you when you try to take a photo!

So after 10 or so temples and a fair bit of biking we got to Angkor Thom which is an old walled city with a whole lot of temples inside. Had some lunch and a much needed drink then pushed on to see Bayon which has the carved faces staring down at you. This temple was pretty cool as it is pretty run down giving it the whole "ruins" feeling but most of the faces are still in good nick. By this stage we were pretty buggered and had nearly done the whole circuit but we had a few hours til sunset and some people we had met recommended a temple called Ta Prohm that was off another circuit, so hauled ourselves back on the bikes and headed there, via another few temples - one that had the worlds most ridiculously steep steps! Ta Prohm was cool as the jungle is starting to grow back into it and there are some great areas where massive trees are growing with thier roots running right through the stonework. Apparently the Tomb Raider movie was shot here (woopdee shit!) so the place was crawling with other tourists, noteably our favourite bus tours were present.


Biked from there back to Angkor Wat (odometer count by now was probably in the region of 40kms) and waited there for the sunset. Took some shots there then jumped on the bikes to head home. The bike ride home was kinda fun, there was a ton of traffic and while the trucks and motorbikes saw the various speed bumps as a sign to slow down, the two idiots on the bikes saw them as a chance to get airborne, hence we made the trip back into town faster than most of the motorised transport on the road! Not surprisingly we were a bit tired after 14 hours riding bikes and climbing temples in the 30+ heat, so our attempt at a big night out failed around 9:45pm...