Part 2b: Cambodia
The bus out of Saigon took forever. It’s not easy to weave through all those motorbikes, apparently, even with a loud and annoying horn to beep at them every few seconds. Once we got out into the countryside it was a lot smoother going though. It took about an hour and a half to get out of Saigon, and then another hour and a half to the border. That might be a bit more illustrative if a) I hadn’t just guessed the times and b) I could remember how far away the border was from Saigon. Anyway, we got there alright, and it was a really classy border crossing, it looked like a temple or a palace. Crossing was fairly straightforward, there was a weird custom though whereby we had our passports processed and got back on the bus, then about 50 metres down the road we had to stop again, alight from the bus, cross the border on foot (I think, this was never made clear) and then get back on the bus. Oh, and then 100 metres further down the road the bus pulled over at a roadside stop and we all got off again. Mo and I didn’t really fancy working out what food was what, so we bought a bag or tangerines the size of my head for about 50p and ate them on the bus.
Several hours later we pulled up at the bus station in Phnom Penh and into a maelstrom of tuk tuk and moto drivers. They were literally pulling at our sleeves as we disembarked. We sought sanctuary inside the tour company office/café and tried to get our bearings, but without much success. We then tried to walk to the hotel area, but didn’t meet with much success, mainly due to constant hassle from moto drivers (and derision, when we told them we were going to walk more than two blocks) and the complete illegibility of the street numbering system, not to mention the inadequate signage on top of that. In the end, after Mo yelled at me for not having a better working knowledge of the streets of Phnom Penh (yes buddy I’m being childish, surprising no-one) we were persuaded by a very tenacious tuk tuk driver who offered to take us where we wanted to go for $2. I think was also the first successful instance of my burgeoning talent for haggling by simply walking away. Mo and I kind of had a good cop bad cop thing going on with her looking considered but doubtful and me being a boorish oaf, but it never totally gelled. No matter, we got to a hotel down on the lake and checked in.
The hotel itself was kind of cool. I said it was on the lake, and that’s literally what it was. The whole thing was stuck up on stilts and out over the lake. It wasn’t floating, but it felt a bit like it, and it was certainly swaying, particularly at night, something we either remedied or exacerbated by drinking lots of Angkor beer, the pride of Cambodia. We thought we’d hit gold for a bit that first night, as we sipped tasty Angkor beer, chomped down on spring rolls, listened to reggae that wasn’t just The Best of Bob Marley and later, someone put on a DVD of the first series of I’m Alan Partridge. A-ha! Oh we were having a ball. Later, however, (or perhaps the next night, my chronology isn’t the best) some of the more annoying guests at the hotel decided to blare out shitty dance music from their ipod through the stereo. I had my earplugs in and enough beer that I managed to drop off, but I think Mo said she didn’t drop off until after the whole of Nevermind. Ah well whatever, might as well air all my grievances now as bit by bit and rant about the neo-hippies and neo-druggies. Firstly the neo-hippies, these fucks who swan about in their sandals and pantaloons, maybe with a handkerchief tied around their heads, acting all superior, like their experience of South Asia is somehow more legitimate or deeper or something because they bought a load of pantomime nonsense duds from the Punch and Judy do Aladdin surplus store. Yeah pals, sneer all you like, you’re still staying in the same hotels as we are, eating the same food as we are, and moreover, I didn’t see too many of you Jefferson Airplane motherfuckers eating at market stalls outside the tourist restaurant district. Moreover, half of them seem to be obsessed with updating their facebook pages daily, not to mention the snooty bitch in Siem Reap who threw a fit because we were desperately trying to change our flights and she wanted to faff about with her email. Not that she’d look us in the eye and say anything mind you. The neo-druggies weren’t so numerous, but there are really not many more tedious things than someone basically just listing all the drugs they’ve taken are there? And even when they quit with that delightful diversion, well, there were the rape jokes, dull and erroneous trivia, and the complete reluctance to allow for any silence in the conversation, or just interrupting at any point when things got remotely interesting. Oh and they hated us too, for good measure. I recall walking into the Phnom Penh guesthouse on a couple of occasions and just getting a bunch of dirty looks. I think it was the straw hat that tipped it, combined with the khaki shorts. We weren’t too bothered not to be invited to join the club though. They weren’t like us, not the Breakfasty types, y’know? An accusation that could not be levelled against the scuttly mouse that gnawed through Mo’s handbag and took a nibble at our bread rolls and cashew nuts. At least we think it was a mouse as we heard it pitter pattering across the floor but didn’t actually catch a glimpse of the mischievous little thing. No matter, Mo broke the end off the bread and we ate the food anyway, and the next night when it came back I hung the bag of food from a peg on the wall and didn’t hear anymore from it. All part of the ‘charm’ I guess.
Our first morning we spent the morning loafing about and reading, then in the afternoon left the guesthouse behind us for a stroll around the streets to the royal palace. The palace was dead fancy, of course; lots of finely turned out buildings scattered about some pretty gardens. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to see the apparently wonderful silver pagoda since we were accosted by Buddhist monks. Firstly I was approached by a couple of them as I was taking a picture of a big ornately-carved stone obelisk type of thing. They came up and said hello and introduced themselves, and we talked for maybe half an hour about all kinds of things. They said that they were big fans of football, and that although they weren’t permitted to play themselves, they enjoyed watching games from the English Premiership whenever they could, and that they were fans of Man United and David Beckham. Of course, that’s just the type of thing I expected to hear from a couple of Buddhist monks. We asked questions about each other’s countries and such, and we couldn’t always understand each other, but I think they were just happy to chat and practice their English. I found out that the palace actually had nothing to do with their religion; they were just there on a day trip. It was nice to chat with them though, I’ll admit that seeing all the monks walking about I had made assumptions that they all must be living austere but rewarding lives devoted to their faith. It didn’t occur to me that they might actually enjoy ‘real’ things, so it was good to have a reminder not to fall into such blinkered thinking. After a good long while I managed to get away from them, only to find that Mo had been accosted by a different monk. This one was on his own but had a little helper with him; I think the deal, more or less, is that monks are not allowed to speak to women face to face, amongst other things, so you tend to see monks travelling in groups, or else sometimes with male escorts, so to speak. Anyway this guy was another character, and when I arrived I think he was teaching Mo some basic Cambodian phrases and asking questions about English too. He asked us the usual questions about how we liked Cambodia and we asked him about the religious standards we should respect when visiting Angkor Wat, as we planned to do later that week. He also mentioned that his father, mother and (I’m sorry, I know I’m useless and horrible but I forget exactly) maybe his brother and sister were killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide a couple of decades prior. I suppose the monks must have taken him in and raised him.
The next day we headed out to the Killing Fields. Before we even got there I found it a little disturbing the way that people would hock the killing fields to us as an attraction with a smile on their face. “Hey! You wanna see the killing fields?” “Oh yeah mate, sounds cool!” C’mon, really. I know tourism’s a big industry, but it just didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t work out whether they were trying to be chipper to attract fares or to avoid moroseness. Anyway off we went regardless, two of us along with the driver on the back of a motorbike. Did Mo nearly have a heart-attack? Well, I don’t want to put words into her mouth, but she was pretty nervous. I was too at first I’ll admit, but once we got going it was fine and I even quite enjoyed the ride. The killing fields themselves were quite grim, as might be expected. The central attraction, if I can call it that, is a large memorial tower to the dead. Oh, and it’s filled with the skulls of the disinterred corpses. Yep, row upon row of skulls piled up high. It’s a chilling and humbling reminder of inhumanity and power run amok. From there we walked around the fields themselves, where the rags of the clothes that the slaughtered Cambodians had been wearing were protruding from the ground and flapping in the breeze. Also coming to the surface in places were some of their bones. It was pretty grim, but also fascinating in a macabre way, perhaps because it’s a scene of such inhumanity it’s almost unbelievable to stand there and see these skulls piled high and be able to walk along a path and actually touch bones in the ground. I found it hard not to stare.
And what was the first thing our moto driver asked us after we’d left the killing fields? “Hey, you want to go to the shooting range? You can fire gun, bang bang!” Err, no thanks. “AK47? Or maybe you want to fire rocket launcher?” A rocket launcher!? What the fuck! Err, no thanks mate. “Throw a grenade?” Eh, also no, thanks all the same, but we’re pacifists. “???” You know, cowards. “English people and Americans, they like to fire guns.” I’m sure they do, guy, I’m sure they do. Incidentally, there was also a shooting range at the Viet Cong tunnels museum, so obviously someone is into this kind of thing. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted by the idea of firing a rocket launcher, but it did just feel a bit wrong. After the museum we were dropped off at the ‘Russian’ market where I bought a bootlegged Tintin in Cambodia t-shirt and we ate food at a stall in the market where Mo asked the two teenage girls who served us, very specifically, for a vegetarian soup, and got one full of chicken instead. They were quite insistent it had vegetables in it; I don’t think they quite grasped the concept, bless. It was impossible to be mad though because they were so sincere and smiley.
I get a bit confused about the timeline here, but I don’t think it would be missing out anything other than my poor map-reading skills if I just said we got fucked off with the people at the hotel and decided it was high time to head on up to Siem Reap and see Angkor Wat. The guy at the hotel said that they would sort our bus out for $4, but we decided to save 50c and go to a travel agent, not to mention we weren’t really feeling the love and didn’t much want to give them the satisfaction of a colossal 25p bonus.
Yet another crummy bus ride put us in Siem Reap, where the bus station was located several kilometres out of town. It was also surrounded by some of the more threatening looking moto drivers I’d seen on our trip. Luckily, we already had a ride waiting for us, as due to the previously mentioned practice of passing business along, we had allowed our travel agent in Phnom Penh to phone our names ahead to a hotel in Siem Reap, who then sent a tuk tuk driver to pick us up free of charge (by the time we arrived, Jon Griffiths begat Mr. Jon begat Mr. Jan on the drivers’s paper sign). Allegedly it’s a free ride if you decide you don’t want to stay at the hotel upon arrival, but I’m sure in practice someone somewhere along would have tried to wheedle a couple of dollars from us. Anyhow, after driving for quite a while we got to the hotel, which proved to be a large complex with some 60 rooms I think, situated about a 5 minute walk off the tourist strip. The room they showed us looked fine; nice high ceilings, good fan, cleanish ensuite shower and toilet. Night time, as ever, made a mockery of all this pleasantry, as music played into the wee hours, followed by some dumb as shit roosters who started crowing about two hours before dawn, and not to be outdone, the local mosque had to get their freak on too, with chanting and some sort of melodic percussion as accompaniment. Oh yeah, and while I’m at it, this was yet another place that didn’t have any sheets on the bed. It was actually warm enough that sheets weren’t strictly necessary, but I can be a very light and uneasy sleeper and I like to be covered. After the first night back in Phnom Penh, I ended up sleeping in my hoodie and jeans with a towel over my feet. I still kept on waking sporadically and felt a bit exposed, but that seemed to be the best I could do. Mo had a travel blanket that she’d received as a gift from her mobile phone company in Japan. I was jealous.
Waking up early the next day we met our tuk tuk driver who drove us to Angkor Wat. Dating back some 900 years, it’s an incredibly old collection of temples spread over a wide area. Angkor Wat is both the collective name used for the group and the name of the central holiest of holies temple. It was really impressive, and I could happily have spent several days exploring all the myriad temples. With hindsight, I might have preferred it if we had taken the 3 day passes, rented bicycles and explored everything in our own good time. However, at the time we were thinking of the budget (O wretched budget) and just decided to do the one day main temple tour. The disadvantage of this of course is that you just get to tramp along the most beaten of paths and perhaps it’s this feeling of constantly being in the middle of a tourist circus that takes some of the magic away from the experience. I’m not a remotely spiritual man, which may have a bearing on this, but all the guidebooks promise something that, for me, just didn’t materialise. ‘It’s impossible to be moved’ I believe the Lonely Planet say with reference to approaching the central Angkor Wat temple by the walkway over the moat. Well, it’s certainly hugely impressive, for one thing the moat is about 100m wide and marks out the border of a square kilometre, and it’s very imposing with it, but moving? I just didn’t get it. However, looked at purely as a work of ancient architecture, I found it peerless. The carvings in particular were exquisite and the towers imposing, even in such a dilapidated state.
It was this evening, after returning to the hotel, that we reached a decision about coming home early. I hope she won’t mind me saying, but Mo’s mother was quite ill and she was getting mixed messages from family members so she wanted to go home sooner. Our budget was also crumbling, fast, so we spent a couple of hours poring over various flight options (and getting leered at by hippies desperate to check their facebook profiles and send what were doubtless inane emails about their wonderful new pantaloons) and eventually settled for a flight to Singapore the next morning. We’d bypass Thailand and head for Malaysia earlier and our flight home from Kuala Lumpur. By cutting the trip short we’d also puff up the budget for the remaining days too. That was the theory anyway, though I think we were deliberately engaging in fanciful self-delusions: in practice it plainly didn’t work. This done, we washed our hands of the whole faux-slumming affair and went out for dinner at a restaurant, the likes of which you might easily find in the centre of Cardiff. I think we picked it because it was named The Soup Dragon, and we wondered if there was any kind of connection with the children’s TV character of the same name from The Clangers. Turns out there wasn’t.
The next day we headed out super early for the airport, and after checking in and paying our ‘airport tax’ of $25 each (boy were they smiling when we handed that over), we ate sandwiches in a refreshingly generic and globablised airport café, and soon after were on our way to Singapore.