Archive for the 'Cambodia' Category
The trip into Laos was somewhat predictably slow. We had to change buses about 4 times, taking two ferries in between, and finally a small boat to Don Det island. The introduction to Laos seemed fitting, our guide fell asleep waiting for us at the border and we were left standing around for about 45 minutes. Finally he found us, got us to the driver, and promptly handed us each a beer, along with 2 for himself, and say “Cheers! Welcome!” And we were off. Until about 15 minutes later when we ran out of gas. We got out and walked over to some locals in a small hut who were happy to have us hanging out, though no one spoke English of course, we were an interesting sight for the day. Finally a motorbike arrived with a can of gas, and again we were off towards the boat.
Arriving on the island, we were dropped off in a small village on the northern tip and I set out to find a guest house. I looked through a few, finally finding a good one on the recommendation of a couple girls I ran into, and got settled in just in time for one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.
The 4000 Islands area, Si Phan Dong, is a group of small islands (I don’t think there are really 4000, just a lot) in the Mekong river in the south of Laos. Some of the larger ones are populated with villages, and a few have decided to make good on Laos’ blossoming tourist industry by building guest houses, really just huts along the riverbank. Most of them are nothing special, basic facilities for cheap prices, but the atmosphere is what draws in the people. Swaying palm trees line most of the islands, and the interior is bright green, covered with rice paddies.
I spent the next day walking around the island, Don Det, on which I was staying and enjoying the scenery. There is an old railroad bridge to a nearby island, Don Khon, which is a leftover from when the French ruled this area and were trying to establish a trade center here. The rails are all but gone, but the bridge remains, as well as an old steam locomotive sitting on some tracks just as you arrive on Don Khon. I walked around the island for a few hours, saw a waterfall that was more of a series of rapids crashing down a hillside rather than a sheer cliff of water, and then walked back for some lunch.
In the afternoon I joined up with a German family on a sunset “cruise” around the islands. The four of us got into the boat belong to the old woman running the tour, and she had enlisted the help of three young local boys to carry all the supplies and provide entertainment (I don’t think the latter was in the original job description, but they were eager to have fun).
The boat drifted slowly through the islands in the hot afternoon sun, and after about an hour we arrived at a small village on one of the smaller islands. We went under the house of some locals while our guide helped them prepare a BBQ of fresh fish and vegetables and we walked around a bit.
We came back just as the food was ready, and had a delicious meal of grilled catfish of some kind, onions, pineapple, and tomatoes. After dinner the sun was getting lower, and we got back in the boat. The woman took us all to a tiny island, not more than 20 feet across, that was entirely sand, a “private beach”. We got out and the boys all jumped in the water and starting playing around, so the rest of us followed suit. As another beautiful sunset set the backdrop, the German father and I took turns throwing the kids up in the air as high as we could, helping them do back flips, and trying to see who could swim the fastest. Eventually it was time to head back and a great day came to an end.
In the morning I caught a local bus up to the provincial capital of Pakxe. In Laos, a local bus is really nothing more than a large pickup with 3 rows of benches going longways in the back and an overhead covering to keep out the rain and hold luggage. I was the only westerner there, sharing my journey with loads of freshly caught fish and a number of chickens, in addition to the locals who all looked at me like I was crazy (there’s a private mini-bus that does the same trip for a couple extra dollars, but where’s the fun in that?). I was glad the trip only took a couple hours though, and by the time we reached Pakxe I was aching to stretch my legs.
I made it through Battambang and Phnom Penh to my intended destination of Kratie with my health intact. The morning after arriving in the capital city I felt much better, so I got on a bus heading north to the small town of Kratie. The boat ride to Battambang was long and unpleasant, which was unfortunate because it was supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the country. The tour company decided to pack in as many people as they could, however, and yet again lied saying the ride would take 3-6 hours. After almost 10 hours, we arrived, and on inquiry found out that we came in at around the normal time. With a fever and headache, in addition to having my knees pushed into my chest with hardly a break for 10 hours, enjoying the river scenery didn’t really happen.
Back to Kratie, after a day on a boat and then two days spent in buses, I arrived at the jumping off point for travelers heading into Laos. Also, I knew I would be celebrating my birthday here, and my Scottish friends Kirsten and Eilidh came to meet up with me and celebrate, also spending a bit of time sightseeing in Kratie. We met up for dinner the first night, but feeling still just slightly off, I called it an early night to save my energy and not be sick on my birthday.
The next morning, I woke up and got a motor bike ride out to a boat for watching the rare local river dolphins. The ride through the countryside was a wonderful experience in itself, along a little back road winding through villages and shaded by trees most of the way down. I got to the docks and hired a tour boat with a Dutch couple who happened to be there as well, which allowed us to pay less money each.
The boat ride to the area known for dolphin sightings took about 20 minutes, and was another great view of the Mekong river. Once we arrived at the area known as the “dolphin pool”, almost immediately I heard the sounds of water being blown and spotted some of the animals breaking the surface. The engine was switched off and our driver paddled us around the immediate vicinity for almost two hours, with groups of dolphins intermittently popping up every few minutes. Unfortunately, they never got very close to the boat, as unlike most species of dolphins, these ones are quite shy. Maybe they know there are only a few dozen of them left.
I got back to town around mid-day and met the girls for a late breakfast. We decided, after having seen the beautiful country road to the dolphins, that we should spent the rest of the day just exploring the countryside. The best way to do this was by motorbike, so we rented two, me on one and the two of them on the other. I quickly got the hang of driving (it helped that unlike most Southeast Asian cities I’ve been to) the roads here were not at all busy, and we were off. We started by driving up the same road towards the dolphins, taking a side road before that point up to a temple on the top of a hill. We climbed up the deceptively large amount of steps and walked around. The grounds were obviously not used to a large number of visitors, and the jungle seemed to already be reclaiming parts of the temple, though there was a restoration effort beginning at the top.
We ate our packed lunches we had brought with us at the temple, and then set off again in the other direction. We passed through Kratie and continued south this time, to a large bridge over one of the river’s tributaries. Passing over this, the road became dirt and we passed what appeared to be a checkpoint, . We continued on for a while, stopping every now and then to take photos but mostly just enjoying the open road. We stopped and chatted with some locals by the river at one point, one woman eager to practice her English skills. By the late afternoon rain clouds were looming in the distance and we started to head back. We could see them approaching rapidly as we got in to town, and as I turned the corner onto the street where we were returning the bikes, I could see what looked like a wall of rain heading straight towards me. Just as we were about to get off the bikes and run inside it was on us, and in 5 seconds we were soaked.
In the evening, after a shower and change of clothes, we had dinner at what amounted to the fanciest restaurant in town. Pretty much the only option besides the food stalls and one guest house with a mediocre restaurant, I was able to get chicken wings, fries, and bleu cheese sauce. Quite a delicacy considering where we were. The girls made it a great birthday, they got me some gifts from the local market and even managed to scrounge up a real birthday candle from somewhere. We had a bunch of drinks and laughed the night away, and early the next morning I got on a bus heading into Laos while they stayed behind to sleep off the hangover for an extra day.
From the very start, Siem Reap was one of the most antagonistic places I’ve yet visited. As the bus pulled into the station, tuk-tuk drivers literally were beating the sides trying to shout and push past each other to take people to whatever hotel they wanted. After managing to get my bag in the mess, I picked a guy who seemed less pushy than the rest and told him where I wanted to go. He offered me what I thought was a good but fair price into town, and we were off. Then about halfway there, he stops and says that everyone offers this price only if you will do a 3 day tour of the temples with the same driver.
Now this tour was exactly why I and every other tourist on that bus had come, but I’m not about to encourage such bold-faced lying to try and entrap tourists, so I told him I would find another driver for the tour and give him the small amount extra he asked. Frankly I would have been happy to pay the full price to the hotel and then arrange the tour for the next few days, but like a lot of people I’ve encountered in the Cambodian tourist industry, lying to trick a tourist into potentially giving you more money is favored above honesty, and I just wanted to do what little I could to discourage it.
I arranged the 3 day tour with a driver at my hotel, and the next morning set off to see the first group of temples. As you enter the grounds from Siem Reap, the first temple you run into is the massive and famous Angkor Wat. The reputation of Angkor Wat for being one of the most spectacular man-made sites in the world is well deserved. Surrounded by a massive moat, a large stone path leads into the temple grounds, divided by large hallways surrounding the three sections, each reaching a higher point towards the heavens. The intricacy of the carvings on such a massive structure is mind-boggling, and during the few moments of peace I had when one tour group had left the area I was in and the next had not yet come, the feeling of standing in silence in such a place is magical.
Angkor Wat set the stage for the rest of the day. The next stop was an area called Angkor Thom. Essentially a large wall surrounding a number of different temples, I spent several hours walking along paths through the jungle visiting as many temples as I could find. Tour groups seemed to stick to the areas near the main road, so venturing into the more remote parts led me to ruins half-covered in foliage with only the sounds of the jungle to accompany me.
After leaving Angkor Thom, my guide took me to a couple temples which have been half demolished by massive trees which have sprung up in the middle of walls. The roots alone are two or three times my size, and it puts into perspective how quickly nature can reclaim an area. Unfortunately, the afternoon rain came quickly and suddenly, and I decided to head home since the cloud cover would obscure my plans to watch the sunset over Angkor Wat.
On the following morning I did get up early for the sunrise in the same spot, however, and was a little disappointed with the result. I didn’t think the Chinese and Korean tour groups, of mostly old women, that descend on the temples with their loud cackling and oblivious nature would be up that early, but sure enough as I entered the gates they were there. At one point, as I was setting up to take a picture, a group of old Korean women got right in front of me and started doing a series of bizarre stretches and exercises. Why they even came is beyond me, they certainly weren’t paying attention to the sunset or the temple. Eventually I was able to wait the people out, however, and the buses departed leaving me and a handful of other backpackers to watch the temple in the now early morning light in silence and peace.
The next temple on the circuit that morning was another that had been massively overgrown by trees. Even better, I think the tour groups all went to bed after sunrise, because when I arrived there was not another person around. For half an hour or so I was able to forget about everyone else and almost imagine what it would be like to discover a temple like this in the middle of the jungle. I wandered through dark hallways that converged on ruined pedestals illuminated by skylights above. Large entryways were flanked by massive, partially destroyed protector statues of some kind. Then I was brought back to reality by the sounds of busses outside and knew it was time to go.
I spent the rest of the day was spent trying to keep one step ahead of the tour groups that can easily ruin the experience of these temples. Having started so early, it wasn’t too hard, though by the last couple I visited around mid-morning, I could no longer escape. We finished early in the day having started at dawn, and I was ready for a nap.
My final day seeing the temples brought me to only two, and really only one of note. This is known as the “far temple” to the locals. It’s about 35 km from town, which is a long hour and a half by tuk-tuk. Once we arrived it was easy to see why people make the journey. A small site, this temple had by far the best preserved and most intricate stone carvings covering every piece of rock that I had seen in the whole tour. The day was particularly clear then, and the morning sunlight did well to highlight the beautiful work that artisans had done so long ago.
Finished with the temples, I was anxious to get out of Siem Reap. Being by far the most tourist visited spot in Cambodia, the city has become something of a tourist nightmare with a constant onslaught of tuk-tuks and tour agents getting in your face and tryig to rip you off. In addition, parents from the surrounding area send their children to work the temples and city with falsely-desperate sounding crys of “you buy water?” or “postcards?” Everywhere you go, someone is hounding you trying to rip you off, and while I understand there is poverty here the likes I have never known, other countries I’ve been to such as Nepal have similar poverty levels and yet tourists are not hassled at nearly the same rate. Ironically, this makes me ready to spend money and give more.
On the morning of my last day I began to feel a little sick, a fever, headache, and body aches, which are known symptoms of either malaria or dengue fever. The later is much more common, especially in the area, and having been bitten by a decent amount of mosquitos (no amount of repellant seems to stop them all in Cambodia), I was worried I might have one of those. I had booked a boat to Battambang that day, and planned to get on a bus back to Phnom Penh the next, where I knew there is a good foreigner’s hospital, so I just had to hope things wouldn’t get too much worse until then.
The lakeside district in Phnom Penh is a good place to relax for a few days. The fact that Cambodia seems to have the heaviest and longest monsoon rains of any place I’ve yet been didn’t help in getting me motivated to leave either. I spent the larger part of the first day lounging on a couch, drifting between reading a book and watching whatever movie happened to be on at the time.
In the mid-afternoon, during a pause in the rains, I walked down to the central market to look around. While the goods offered were not much different than any of the now countless other markets I’ve visited in Asia, the building in which the whole thing was contained was a gargantuan piece of architecture that drastically stood out from the surrounding smaller structures.
The following day, feeling rested and ready to see the city, I found a tuk-tuk driver, haggled down to a decent price, and was off. The first place I went was the S-21 Toul Sleng museum. Formerly a school in the capital city, S-21 was used as a prison and torture center by the Khmer Rouge government during their brief and horrible tenure ruling over the country. It’s hard to describe the feeling of visiting such a place. The grounds consist of 4 separate buildings, each with 3 stories containing 4-8 rooms of various size. Inside most of the rooms there is simply an iron bed frame, some shackles, and on the wall a grainy picture of a person who may have been kept there. Large blood stains are easily distinguishable on the floors, and some of the walls have what appear to be finger marks dug into them. Other rooms are more of a museum, containing mug shots of prisoners, paintings by one of the few survivors, and hundreds of skulls found near here. It’s almost impossible to imagine that such horrible acts were happening hardly 30 years ago, and that any Cambodian person you meat over that age has lived through it.
In the afternoon I took in the Royal Palace, which struck me as similar to the palace in Bangkok, though less ornate. The grounds were a peaceful and pleasant time to while away the afternoon, and I even stumbled across a group of children putting on a concert of traditional Cambodian music. It was a nice diversion from the morning’s stoic theme.
The next day, I got on a bus for Siem Reap to visit the famed temples of Angkor.
Early the next morning I got on a bus to do a two-day tour of the Mekong Delta, ending in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. A few hours on the bus got us to the docks and onto a tour boat. We visited a floating market, essentially a group of small boats selling different fruits an d vegetables, with a sample sticking up on a bamboo pole at the back of the boat. Following this we visited a factory where locals made a number of different rice products, such as candies and paper. The whole day felt like a rushed tour and I wasn’t too enthralled, especially with the knowledge that there was yet another day to go before it was over. Before I knew it we were back on a bus, heading to our stop for the night, Chau Doc.
Chau Doc is a port town so fortunately we could just get straight onto a boat in the morning. We were split into pairs and each boarded small boats to tour a floating village. Piloted by a Vietnamese woman standing in the back, and powered by nothing more than two large oars, she expertly guided us through the narrow channels meandering between the small huts floating on empty oil barrels or the bottom half of an old boat. This part of the tour was more like what I was hoping for, and the morning spent slowly floating through the villages was excellent.
Around 9:00 am we stopped at a village built on solid group to await the slow boat that would take us into Cambodia. It arrived about 45 minutes later, and we were off. This boat was still fairly small, thin and wooden with two rows of folding lawn chairs for seats, and a tarp hung over the top in case of rain. The pace again was slow and I had a great time kicking back and watching the river banks drift by. It took about 3 hours to reach the border, and there we had to stop, get our passports stamped, and wait for the Cambodian boat to pick us up. “Conveniently”, there was a restaurant there so we could have lunch while we waited. Then, once again very conveniently, right as we finished our food, didn’t want anything else, and paid our bill, the boat showed up and was ready to go.
The boat from the border into Cambodia wasn’t quite as nice of an experience, mostly because the afternoon rain was particularly strong that day, and the waves and wind were strongly rocking the boat from side to side. The mostly missing windows meant that rain was blowing in everywhere. This boat was much bigger and made of metal, however, and one of the Cambodians on board told me it was good it was so large, as a smaller vessel would have to pull to the side and wait for the storm to calm down instead of pushing through it as we were. After a long day, I had to agree, as I was ready for a bed and a shower.
We had one final bus journey from the docks into central Phnom Penh, which took another couple hours. One of the girls in the group and I, an American from northern California in fact, split a tuk-tuk (the larger form of transport in Southeast Asia, a moto with a covered trailer attached containing two bench seats) out to the lakeside area and found a room to split. The area is very backpacker, and all the accommodation is quite basic (no A/C, no hot water) but it’s hard to turn down splitting a room for $2 each. What the rooms lack the rest of the guest house makes up for, as each place has a floating terrace out on the lake with couches set up everywhere and a TV with DVD player showing the latest movies. It always strikes me as funny, the contrast of worlds you constantly see in the backpacker circuit in Southeast Asia.