Friday 30 March: Welcome to Siem Reap
7.00pm: It has
been a lazy afternoon after arriving to Siem Reap, in the north of Cambodia.
The thermometer showed 35+ degrees at the airport. Visa and passport control is smooth and if you don’t have a
passport picture at hand they charge you an extra 1USD and that sorts it. Total
USD21 to get in the country. It is sunny, with no wind and feels sticky. Sweet.
David and I head off into the old town, apparently Siem Reap has a decent
nightlife. Let’s find out.
9.00pm: We are having dinner on one of the street
food places near the appropriately named Pub
Street - Pub Street is about 100 metres long with pubs and restaurants at
both sides, crucially there is little or no traffic here and pedestrians can
cross the street at leisure, kind of; heaven. Street food prices vary between
the ultra low USD1.00 for one fried rice with vegetables and chicken, pork or
beef, to a budget killer USD1.50 for something similar. As I say, madness.
Drinks are also one or two bucks, enough said. We are also sweating, A LOT, and
David tells me some people are staring at my eating skills – yes, I was hungry.
It all comes in at under USD9. Love it.
10.00pm: We walk
around this busy part of town and there are plenty of restaurants, bars and
pubs. There are two louder clubs, opposite to each other, and there are two
other pubs showing live an English Premier League football match on these large
screens – they show the Premier League
every day, all day, any time, any where. There are some crazy young kids
dancing in between the clubs, tourists love them, and they have the moves –
very funny, although one cannot escape the reason why these kids are on the
street at this time at night, with no adults supervising them, night after night.
We have a few drinks at various spots, all fun and lively but head back at a
reasonable time.
Saturday 31 March –
Siem Reap Temples Day
10.00am: We
arrive to Angkor Wat, the site of the biggest temples in Cambodia. Temples are a big deal here, or at least
they were when they were built but for different reasons. Our great tour
guide, Uy Sankar, is not only very
knowledgeable, takes us around the quieter sides, but he is very funny too and
just a few years younger than us; he makes for a very enjoyable visit.
 |
| Angkur Wat Temple - the biggest one, simply magnifcient. |
Temples were built between the year 950 to 1,185. On average
they took around 20-30 years to be finished. That depended on the king in
charge and war. It is estimated some 200,000 workers built the main temple of
Angkor Wat. Buddhism and Hinduism
dominated temples and fought each other for centuries... But for anything else in the history of the temples, please go to
Wikipedia, google or just jump on a plane and come over. You will love it.
Back to what we saw: a
wedding couple is having their pictures taken in their beautiful white outfits
and golden umbrellas, to protect from the sun. It is a another hot morning,
some kids doze on the walls of this magnificent monument. There are many
tourists, as you would expect, so Sankar takes us around one side, which is lovely
quiet and incredibly beautiful.
12.00pm: It is
difficult to take a boring picture here. THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND INSPIRING.
From the little towers, to the paintings and works on the stone. So many little
details, so much history. IT IS TIME TRAVELLING in real life. The place is so
huge we spend about two hours here and you know you can stay all day. This is a Buddhist temple, so it all is
about going up, closer to heaven. It is very vertical and we have to climb
up the steep steps every now and then, fun!
1.00pm: We are
looking for Angelina Jolie or Lara Croft, Harrison Ford or Indian Jones. One of
them will do. This means we are at the temple where they filmed the movie Tomb
Raider. What is so special about this place? It is not only the architecture,
the ruins or the colour of the stone. It is also Mother Nature. How trees grow
everywhere, literally anywhere... Their roots are so strong they break stones
easily and expand everywhere, even grow up hugging first and strangling to
death later other trees. There are trees of 100, 200 or 300 years life. Some
have fallen recently and broken some more stones. It is a delicate balance between
restoring history and leaving history follow its own natural path. This
place is simply stunning, it is also Hindu place, so it is more about being
horizontal and many small towers – around 32 spread on the ground.
3.00pm: At a new
temple we learn that the Chinese Prime Minister, or someone as important, will
be visiting the temples tomorrow. So they have gotten rid off the street
sellers and built some tents for some speeches, particularly some last minute
work is going on at one where the Chinese government has helped restore.
I notice how there
are many countries helping restoring the heritage including China, India,
Germany or Czech Republic. We all live in the same world after all.
4.00pm: I climb
one last temple where local kids are really fast. I tell myself I used to be
able to that at their age and it is fun. Here
I am climbing this temple of 1,000 or more years old, just like a kid, but
a little slower. We also see free, wild monkeys hanging around like they own
the place – and who says they don’t. They are so relaxed and calmed you have a
feeling they have been here for centuries.
7.30pm: At a
hotel near ours to attend an Apsara Dancing
show – this is a typical Cambodian dance. In addition to the amazingly
beautiful and elaborated outfits, the actual dance is highly skilled. To me it seems like a combination of yoga,
on those heavy outfits, with acting and some smiles. We also have a large buffet dinner and I make the most of it
with about six different plates.
Outside there is a huge storm
unfolding, water and lightning all in serious amounts – but life doesn’t stop
here for that, not at all. It lasts less than two hours.
10.00pm: Pub Street, hello: First night proper out in Siem Reap. We have a drink at the
Red Piano pub, famous for Angelina Jolie hanging out there when she was
filming. It is an ok place but maybe they need to move on from the AJ tagline.
Some of the other bars and pubs are a lot nicer. You can hear the louder bars
in the distance.
11.00pm: We meet
two English girls who live here teaching English to young children at an NGO
school. They have been in the country since Boxing Day (26 December) and love
it.
Sunday 1st April – Siem Reap night and more Temples
01.00am: We are on the dancing
podiums of one the loud bars. We have had a couple of buckets too. A
“bucket” is basically a large container where they throw in the cocktail you
have asked, in large quantities. One drink is USD2.50, a bucket is USD10.00.
And they prepare them well... It is also an excuse to celebrate David’s
birthday, which is on Tuesday. We party for another couple of hours.
10.00am: Sankar is ready to take us for our long day. We are not THAT ready, but as I learnt
years ago “ONCE A PROFESSIONAL, ALWAYS A PROFESSIONAL”. So we just get on with
it. We have thousands of years of history to discover today. We can sleep
another time, or not.
11.00am: There are two main
types of homes off the road and they are all are very humble.
Ones are mostly made of metal,
tin, plastic and some wood. They are more huts than anything else. Some have
also satellite TV, huh? This is a shared sight with Vietnam. The other ones are
built on stilts, for the wet season when there is regular flooding. I wonder
how do the first ones deal with flooding that time of the year.
Although there some elderly
people, most population is under 30
years of age. You can see kids everywhere, free animals everywhere. And it
is all green and a bumpy road.
1.30pm: We stop at a small Anti
Landmine Museum. It is run by a former soldier, aged today 36. Among the
many atrocities of the Civil war, the landmines have left scares for life in
the people, in the country and in their culture... We mustn’t forget. But it
seems we do in other parts of the world as weapons have been brought from
Russia or the USA, and other countries. He tells the story of how he had to shoot, to kill, his uncle a few times from
far away, as they were both fighting on different sides... He missed, on
purpose, and told his fellow soldiers his sight that day was blurry – he was
the best sniper of his squad. Thankfully, his uncle escaped that day and only
many years later his nephew told him the story.
WAR, STUPID WARS.
2.00pm: We stop at a local
village to take some pictures. It is quite a nice village, with most
buildings built on stilts. Now in the dry season people just hang out under
their homes in hammocks and on tables.
A few kids spot us and come to
sell us their souvenirs...
“One dollar (they say ‘dolla’) sir! One dolla!”
I am getting used to this. It is
sad in a way, as kids shouldn’t have to work at these young ages. At the same
time, I cannot change that. But I can try to help a little bit. I engage with
some of them, try to be difficult offering very little money and asking for
many things, to see how they react.
Most are quite sharp and creative. Some are in a different class,
they are natural traders, but also great sales people. You forget their age and
try to get the best deal. They want to sell you something, a bracelet, a flute,
a necklace but what they really want is at least that ONE DOLLA that will make
their day a better one. Some give up early, some do not. They are younger than
10 and have been working for years now. I buy two flutes and five bracelets,
and received many big smiles in return.
Sankar tells us he did that too as a kid, always trying to help his
family. He worked as a little boy every day and then share the money with his
family. He then completed his university studies in business and married within
two years of college. He also explains how he had to raise an incredible
USD5,000 to pay to his fiancé family, before being able to marry her. They have
now been married for two years. Kids will follow, one day, he tells me with a
cheeky smile.
4.00pm: Floating village:
we are on a small boat to visit the famous floating village where over 5,000
people live, or was it families? Either way those are a lot of families. The
small, brown water canal takes down to the big lake in about 20 minutes. Life
on this canal is busy, with many small, long boats up and down the stream
constantly. There are big posts along the way on the dry land, about 6-7 metres
high, and we are about 3-4 metres below those posts. Sankar tells us that at
the peak of the wet season those posts are covered about more than half, with
water.
As we enter the lake this endless aggregation
of floating houses and buildings span all over the lake. They have everything
they need. From schools to minimarkets,
from bars to churches or even a sports centre. I mean EVERYTHING. There are
thousands of these floating buildings and life goes around them like in any
other village in this part of the world. Interestingly, Sankar tells us that
most of them are Vietnamese, but I fail to remember what do they do in the wet
season, sorry.
We stop at one of the bars and see
some young crocodiles in small wooden cages, of about 1.2 to 1.5 metres long. They
sell them when they grow a little more, as you do.
6.00pm: We are back in town and I go for a walk. There is a night
market which opens later on, Pub Street is its usual self, including the louder
bars. It is a lovely evening and I
manage to get lost a few times, before admitting defeat and taking a $1
tuk-tuk to take me to the hotel; it was just around the corner, you muppet.
10.00pm: Watching a Tottenham Hotspur game in one of the loud bars.
After two drinks, we feel it is our last night in Siem Reap and get a $5 bucket
of some sorts of cocktail. What the hell, why not. About four hours later I am
back at the hotel, I think.
Monday 2 April – Road trip Siem Reap to Phnom Pem and meet
Pablo!
12.00pm: After a slow start to the day for reasons difficult to
remember now, we are on our way to Phnom
Pem (PP), capital of Cambodia. We are told it should be a 4.5 to 5 hours
journey. We will also meet Pablo, aka Pableras
or Pabs, a Spanish friend of mine who has been living in Hong Kong for five
years now.
1.00pm: One hour in and this IS GOING TO BE INTERESTING. It is like
a long straight road down to PP, just the two lines and the shoulder, sort of. It
is also a very busy road. Our driver speeds at around 60 mph or 100 km/hr. On an old bumpy road with push bikes, tuk-tuks,
motor bikes, cars, buses, trucks, cows, buffalos, chickens, pigs and people
going up and down, right, centre or left. I lose count of the times I really
come close to screaming or telling him to slow down, while he also smiles when
I get tense. But, somehow, NOTHING BAD HAPPENS. Despite our speed, the old
road, the ridiculous traffic or the driver handling two mobile phones at the
same time at times, we just go along the way. It must be our lucky day.
4.00pm: After a brief stop to have some food we start to find more
traffic as we get nearer to PP. The scenery is a combination of green, palm
trees, huts off the road, rice fields and small towns. There are also big work
roads that go on for more than 20 kilometres. The country is going forward, but
I wonder how they will manage to get all this done one day.
6.30pm: We finally arrive to the hotel, safely, in one piece, thank you very much. Not quite the 5 hours
but more like 6.5. I wonder how much the bus must actually take when they say
it is just 6 hours. And there he is, Pableras, by the hotel pool bar with a couple of
beers waiting for us. He has been in PP for two days already and, as the born
natural survivor he is, he has been out and about discovering the non touristy
parts of town. At first sight PP reminds me of Saigon but with a little less
traffic, and crossing the street does not seem as crazy.
8.00pm: The Pink Elephant
and its Happy Pizzas. For those of you who may not know, Happy Pizza does what
it says, it makes you happy in a good spirited way; it must be the seasoning. It
tastes marvellous too, which always helps. I strongly recommend trying this
place, just the one small pizza and not the two medium ones we had, if you ever
happen to be in PP. Having Pabs around also makes you happy as he comes up with
some crazy little stories of what he has been up to in PP, including riding a
push bike in the middle of the road, genius. All in all, we have a very happy
dinner and an early night as we want to discover the city tomorrow.
Tuesday 3 April – Phnom Pem tour, dull.
12.00pm: My head is still happy from last night though maybe happy
is not exactly how it feels. The day starts a little slow, thankfully I am not
the only one. Pabs has arranged for a dedicated tuk-tuk driver for all day to take
us around. The driver also happens to run an NGO
looking after orphan children and
seems like a good man. We visit a couple of the civil war related sites which confirm,
once again, that WARS ARE STUPID. I will not
enter into the detail but you should spend five minutes on it. We also visit
the curiously named Russian Market. It looks like the Spanish “Ensaladilla Rusa”
and we don’t really know why it is called Russian, but there you go. To me, it
is another market.
There really is not much to see in
PP otherwise, which is disappointing. I did not know what to expect, but
considering it was a ghost town for more than three years during the war – as in
they literally destroyed the city and no one lived there- the place really is
not a tourist friendly city. They have
more important things to deal with for now.
11.00pm: We have an early night and get ready to travel to
Sihanoukville on the south coast, it is beach time.
No comments:
Post a Comment