Passport stamps, bruised heads and breathtakingly beautiful children...
Yesterday was a long day! It's strange how doing nothing but sitting on a bus can be so tiring! We woke up at 6 am (after only 3 hours sleep!) and caught a taxi (with the help of a hotel receptionist who acted as a translator) to Humphalong Train Station. We had a quick breakfast and jumped on our big cushy vip bus. Luke and I sat at the front of the top section (it was double decker) surrounded by huge windows.. what a great way to watch the world go by!
The first part of the trip took about 5 hours (during which we watched The Amityville Horror) and we stopped for lunch at a restaurant/travel agency where everyone had a chance to get their Cambodian Visas (we had already organised ours in Vientiane). We jumped back on the bus for another 15 minutes or so and then we said goodbye to our cushy bus, donned our backpacks and forced our way through dozens of children and started the dusty walk over the border.
We walked for about five minutes until we came to a little room with a big queue and a much welcomed fan. We waited in line to get our departure stamp then crossed the road to make our way to the Cambodian arrivals section. We passed two hotels and four casinos on the way and eventually found ourselves in a small garage-like room, open at one end with a door off to the side and glassed off counters at the far end. We stood in another queue and got another stamp (after smiling into a webcam) then walked outside and sat in the shade.
We were herded by our travel company into a tuk tuk and driven to a bank, which wasnt really a bank but a man sitting behind a glass cabinet filled with huge stacks of Cambodian reil, where we changed our money and then we walked next door to await the arrival of our bus.
Eventually the Cambodian version of our cushy VIP bus arrived - a very small and very dusty mini bus. We piled inside with an Australian couple from Torquay, a Swedish couple who ignored everyone all day, two boys from the UK who reminded me of smithy and made me a little home sick and three Cambodian men. They squished all our luggage inside and off we went! We weren't incredibly comfortable but when we saw the local transportation we were all very happy to be squished inside our mini bus. The locals travel in a dump truck!! You pay extra to sit in the cab with the driver but if you cant afford it (or the seat is already taken) you pile into the back of the dump truck and squash your way between the tens of people already on board. If your lucky you get a rice sack to sit on but mostly you lean on other people! And the road was so dusty! I don't know how they could even breathe! Everything as far as the eye could see was covered in a thick red blanket of dust. The trees looked like they were on the verve of autumn, mostly red, with only small patches of green showing through.
The trip from the border (Poipet) to Siem Reap was 180kms but the first 50kms took over two hours! The road was in incredibly bad shape and we spent two hours with our teeth chattering in our skulls and our heads banging on the roof, there were pot holes the size of bathtubs! It was bumpy but beautiful.. after driving through Laos and Thailand where we were almost always surrounded by mountains it was strange to be able to see the horizon! For huge stretches of time there would be nothing to see at all except a lone tree against the blue sky. Other times we drove through villages filled with huts held together with hessian bags and rope where children outnumbered the adults (and from the looks of it worked just as hard. Not once did we see children playing like we had in Laos, all of them were carrying huge bags or buckets of water or they were working in the fields with their parents).
After our first two hours we stopped at another restaurant for a much needed caffeine fix and a toilet break then we squished back into the mini bus and bumped our way down the road. Our driver assured us that the road got better from there on in and he was partly right. For about an hour we drove in relative comfort (by no means smoothly but better nonetheless) we watched the sun set over the fields and then no sooner than we were all starting to drift off the sleep the road jumped up to remind us that it was there.
After another hour of bumped heads and bruised shoulders we finally arrived in Siem Reap. We drove down the main street and what a shock after the poverty of the villages! The streets were lined with hotel after hotel after hotel. Hundreds of them, all massive concrete structures with countless rooms and spotlights trained on them. Each with an ugly statue out front, the size of an elephant, begging attention. Fountains and fairy lights and columned entrances galore.. it was almost perverse!!
Eventually we left the main street and wove our way through the smaller streets until we came to the Angkor View Guesthouse. We hadnt planned on staying there but in the end it was too easy. We couldnt be bothered finding ourselves anywhere else, so for $6US we got ourselves a room. It's actually a really nice place, more like a hotel than anywhere else we have stayed.. they have room service for god's sake!!
We slept in this morning and spent the afternoon lounging on the balcony reading and playing pool. (I won 2 out of five but I suspect Luke was letting me win). At 4:30 we made our way downstairs and met with Mau who we had spoken to the night before as we ate dinner. He had agreed to be our driver for the next few days, we got him to drive us to the bank to cash in some travellers cheques and then he took us to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset.
We will be exploring the area properly over the next two days so we didnt have too much of a look around but what we did see was spectacular! The place is massive and the stone work is incredible!! so intricate! Its hard to imagine that the whole place was handcarved out of stone! We wandered around for about an hour and watched the sun set behind the temples and then we made our way back to Mau. The instant we hit the Angkor Wat entrance we were bombarded with children.. so many children! All with dirty faces, torn up clothing and the biggest shiniest smiles you have ever seen. They were selling postcards and jewellery and countless other things. They grabbed at our clothes and tugged our arms and begged us to buy whatever it was they were selling. We had already bought some postcards from a young boy inside so we said no and all but the most persistent left.
Luke was followed by a little girl of about ten and I had a little boy, probably around 6 or so. He looked up at me with his giant brown eyes and his massive smile and told me how beautiful his postcards were and how different they were from everybody elses postcards, he followed me all the way to the tuk tuk where I climbed in and turned back to face him (I was feeling guilty). He stood by the tuk tuk smiling up at me and tried to convince me to take his postcards but by now he knew I wasnt going to buy them. I was ruffling his hair and telling him that they were indeed beautiful postcards while luke combatted his own child. A girl named mau who asked him where he was from and then proceeded to tell him everything she knew about Australia (she was actually pretty knowledgable too!). Luke promised mau that when we came back tomorrow we would buy some postcards from her and climbed inside the tuk tuk next to me. Just as we were about to leave the little boy took hold of my hand and asked for one of my rubber bracelets. I slipped one off my wrist and handed it to him just as we started to take off. I wanted to go back and bring him home with us! He was so sweet and gentle. I can't help wondering what will become of him...
Mau (our driver, not lukes little girl) asked where we wanted to go and we asked him to take us to a supermarket where we stocked up on chupa chups and other such lollies to give to the kids tomorrow. I know it's not going to make anything better for them but I don't think giving them money for whatever they are selling will either. At least this way they get a treat and maybe we will get some smiles.. a fair deal I think!
We are meeting up with Mau tomorrow at 8am for our tours of the area. I am sure there will be hundreds of photos.. enough to bore you all to tears anyway!
Until next time...
The first part of the trip took about 5 hours (during which we watched The Amityville Horror) and we stopped for lunch at a restaurant/travel agency where everyone had a chance to get their Cambodian Visas (we had already organised ours in Vientiane). We jumped back on the bus for another 15 minutes or so and then we said goodbye to our cushy bus, donned our backpacks and forced our way through dozens of children and started the dusty walk over the border.
We walked for about five minutes until we came to a little room with a big queue and a much welcomed fan. We waited in line to get our departure stamp then crossed the road to make our way to the Cambodian arrivals section. We passed two hotels and four casinos on the way and eventually found ourselves in a small garage-like room, open at one end with a door off to the side and glassed off counters at the far end. We stood in another queue and got another stamp (after smiling into a webcam) then walked outside and sat in the shade.
We were herded by our travel company into a tuk tuk and driven to a bank, which wasnt really a bank but a man sitting behind a glass cabinet filled with huge stacks of Cambodian reil, where we changed our money and then we walked next door to await the arrival of our bus.
Eventually the Cambodian version of our cushy VIP bus arrived - a very small and very dusty mini bus. We piled inside with an Australian couple from Torquay, a Swedish couple who ignored everyone all day, two boys from the UK who reminded me of smithy and made me a little home sick and three Cambodian men. They squished all our luggage inside and off we went! We weren't incredibly comfortable but when we saw the local transportation we were all very happy to be squished inside our mini bus. The locals travel in a dump truck!! You pay extra to sit in the cab with the driver but if you cant afford it (or the seat is already taken) you pile into the back of the dump truck and squash your way between the tens of people already on board. If your lucky you get a rice sack to sit on but mostly you lean on other people! And the road was so dusty! I don't know how they could even breathe! Everything as far as the eye could see was covered in a thick red blanket of dust. The trees looked like they were on the verve of autumn, mostly red, with only small patches of green showing through.
The trip from the border (Poipet) to Siem Reap was 180kms but the first 50kms took over two hours! The road was in incredibly bad shape and we spent two hours with our teeth chattering in our skulls and our heads banging on the roof, there were pot holes the size of bathtubs! It was bumpy but beautiful.. after driving through Laos and Thailand where we were almost always surrounded by mountains it was strange to be able to see the horizon! For huge stretches of time there would be nothing to see at all except a lone tree against the blue sky. Other times we drove through villages filled with huts held together with hessian bags and rope where children outnumbered the adults (and from the looks of it worked just as hard. Not once did we see children playing like we had in Laos, all of them were carrying huge bags or buckets of water or they were working in the fields with their parents).
After our first two hours we stopped at another restaurant for a much needed caffeine fix and a toilet break then we squished back into the mini bus and bumped our way down the road. Our driver assured us that the road got better from there on in and he was partly right. For about an hour we drove in relative comfort (by no means smoothly but better nonetheless) we watched the sun set over the fields and then no sooner than we were all starting to drift off the sleep the road jumped up to remind us that it was there.
After another hour of bumped heads and bruised shoulders we finally arrived in Siem Reap. We drove down the main street and what a shock after the poverty of the villages! The streets were lined with hotel after hotel after hotel. Hundreds of them, all massive concrete structures with countless rooms and spotlights trained on them. Each with an ugly statue out front, the size of an elephant, begging attention. Fountains and fairy lights and columned entrances galore.. it was almost perverse!!
Eventually we left the main street and wove our way through the smaller streets until we came to the Angkor View Guesthouse. We hadnt planned on staying there but in the end it was too easy. We couldnt be bothered finding ourselves anywhere else, so for $6US we got ourselves a room. It's actually a really nice place, more like a hotel than anywhere else we have stayed.. they have room service for god's sake!!
We slept in this morning and spent the afternoon lounging on the balcony reading and playing pool. (I won 2 out of five but I suspect Luke was letting me win). At 4:30 we made our way downstairs and met with Mau who we had spoken to the night before as we ate dinner. He had agreed to be our driver for the next few days, we got him to drive us to the bank to cash in some travellers cheques and then he took us to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset.
We will be exploring the area properly over the next two days so we didnt have too much of a look around but what we did see was spectacular! The place is massive and the stone work is incredible!! so intricate! Its hard to imagine that the whole place was handcarved out of stone! We wandered around for about an hour and watched the sun set behind the temples and then we made our way back to Mau. The instant we hit the Angkor Wat entrance we were bombarded with children.. so many children! All with dirty faces, torn up clothing and the biggest shiniest smiles you have ever seen. They were selling postcards and jewellery and countless other things. They grabbed at our clothes and tugged our arms and begged us to buy whatever it was they were selling. We had already bought some postcards from a young boy inside so we said no and all but the most persistent left.
Luke was followed by a little girl of about ten and I had a little boy, probably around 6 or so. He looked up at me with his giant brown eyes and his massive smile and told me how beautiful his postcards were and how different they were from everybody elses postcards, he followed me all the way to the tuk tuk where I climbed in and turned back to face him (I was feeling guilty). He stood by the tuk tuk smiling up at me and tried to convince me to take his postcards but by now he knew I wasnt going to buy them. I was ruffling his hair and telling him that they were indeed beautiful postcards while luke combatted his own child. A girl named mau who asked him where he was from and then proceeded to tell him everything she knew about Australia (she was actually pretty knowledgable too!). Luke promised mau that when we came back tomorrow we would buy some postcards from her and climbed inside the tuk tuk next to me. Just as we were about to leave the little boy took hold of my hand and asked for one of my rubber bracelets. I slipped one off my wrist and handed it to him just as we started to take off. I wanted to go back and bring him home with us! He was so sweet and gentle. I can't help wondering what will become of him...
Mau (our driver, not lukes little girl) asked where we wanted to go and we asked him to take us to a supermarket where we stocked up on chupa chups and other such lollies to give to the kids tomorrow. I know it's not going to make anything better for them but I don't think giving them money for whatever they are selling will either. At least this way they get a treat and maybe we will get some smiles.. a fair deal I think!
We are meeting up with Mau tomorrow at 8am for our tours of the area. I am sure there will be hundreds of photos.. enough to bore you all to tears anyway!
Until next time...