Arrival/Phnomh Penh
We decided on the slowest and least efficient mode of transport to bring us over the border from Vietnam, thinking it being in keeping with the gist of the place. Our "boat" chugged its way upstream along the Mekong. It was fairly uncomfortable, and about 30 degrees. Along the banks delicate wooden houses on stilts emerged from the undergrowth and receded again into watery oblivion. Water buffalo lounged around on the shore chatting together about the US presidential race. Apparently they reckon Obama has a fighting chance.
The passport control office consisted of an all mod cons concrete bunker housing a disgruntled guard, six dating stamps and a dog. I could have got through on Sarah's passport.To celebrate our 5th visa (and to make the rest of the trip a little more bearable) we had a couple of floating cans of Angkor with Ben, a French fella who was making his way slowly back to Paris having worked for Greenpeace in Beijing for 6 months. Sounded like fairly interesting work - trying to get the Chinese to adopt re-usable chopsticks!!
After a further 4 hours we finally arrived at our drop off point about 30km from Phnomh Penh in torrential rain. Now its fair to say that we're no strangers to precipitation, but this was ridiculous. Under our respective loads the three of us slipped and fumbled our way along a greasy plank to shelter and our awaiting bus.We passed naked children playing in puddles on the side of the road, a guy on a moped with an AK-47 strapped to his back, and a car crash on our way to the capital. A typical scam unfolded - the guides on the bus insisted we stay in one of their hotels/guesthouses (all the others being full/crap/closed of course). Now this kind of stuff irritates us so we refused to be bullied and hopped a pair of tuk-tuks (Sarah and I in one, Grainne and Ben - who had decided to tag along - in the other) to the lakeside backpacker area Boeng Kak. We had a meal (incredibly stoned waiting staff) played a few games of pool in a bar next door to our hotel and hit the hay having booked a bus to Sihonoukville for the following morning.
Sihanoukville
..is a kip. It's on the coast about 4 hours south west by bus from Phnom Penh. We stayed along the Serendipity Beach area which is a jumble of bored tuk-tuk drivers, beach bars, restaurants and hostelries. The weather was crap - overcast and intermittent cats and elephants falling from the sky. Every morning at about 8am the weather system washing machine would crank up to fast spin and our room was lifted off the ground for about half an hour. Fact.
Our hotel was actually quite comfortable apart from the dampness - we ended up changing rooms a few times during our stay. There are a couple of cool bars and beer is damn cheap (about 35 cent a pint), so there are definitely worse places to kill a few days in the rain. Our saving grace, and probably the best thing about the whole kippy town is Top Cat Cinema - run by Chris, an enthusiastic American ex-pat. We rented the private room there a few times which is basically a suped-up living room with a widescreen and surround sound (and a fridge full of bevvies!). He's got an incredible selection of DVD's so we whiled away more than a few hours there between trashy comedies and classic Vietnam war flicks ("I looove the smell of napalm in the morning" haha)
So our stay was less than productive.I uploaded a heap of albums to my I-pod - courtesy off Boom Boom Music for about a dollar a pop. Every time I left the hotel and wandered out onto the roadfront I was accosted by the tuk tuk drivers and moped boys. It's low season and they're desperate for a bit of business. This gets pretty annoying after a while - but you have to bite your lip and remember that Cambodia is the poorest country in the region. Let me assure you that that's pretty poor indeed. I couldn't help but loosen my lip one morning however when the usual mayhem accompanied my arrival into the daylight.
"Morning Sir! Tuk Tuk? Moped?"
"No thanks lads, your grand. Savage weather we're havin though wha?!"
One fella refuses to be budged and follows me down the road a bit.
"Marijuana?"
"No thanks, but you're a star for asking. It's far too early in the morning". Irony lost.
"Pills?..Opium?...Girl?"
He's annoying me now.
"Boy?"
"Do me a favour and feck off now will ye? Good man"
"Gun?"
Now I stop in my tracks.
"What did you say to me? Are you seriously trying to sell me a fecking gun on my way to the supermarket to buy a fecking yoghurt you moron?!"
He backed off. Apparently I can be quite scary when angered. Dave had a similar experience a few days later and pressed them on exactly what kind of weaponry was on offer. They could only muster a 'small gun' for him, so he said he'd wait because he had his heart set on a semi-automatic. You know how it is.
So after about five days of this carry on, many G&T's, some very tasty Khmer food and a lot of movies it was time for Grainne to hit the road back home. It was great to catch up with her and we'll miss her and her talks about emotions!
Dave and Fitz were set to rendezvous with us having been up to northern Vietnam and then Saigon so we were pressed to stay another few days. Thankfully the weather turned and we spent some time on the beach which is actually beautiful when the sun shines! There is a five star resort (Sokha's) with a pristine private beach so we gave the arms dealers some business bringing us there and back a few times.
I should mention Utopia. This is a kiwi run bar/hostel close to the beach where they do free accommodation (which is basic enough and quite dirty but ok if you're a scabby bearded smelly backpacker) and happy hours (that last most of the day - 7 bucks all you can drink - it's hell.) We spent a bit of time there amongst the stoned kiwi's and played pool with the resident hookers. Fitzer got beaten by a ladyboy. Hilarity.
Anyway at this stage I thought I was going to lose my mind if we didn't get out of dodge so we took an all day bus north to Siem Reap. To put Sihanoukville in perspective - it's set to become the financial capital of the country once the current governor is replaced by the president's brother. A new airport is set to open and depending on who you talk to tourism is set to boom over the next few years. They really need to get their act together on a few things first though (for example most of the coral that would have enabled a diving industry was blown up by dynamiting fishermen). Madness. Our bus journey to Siem Reap was uneventful apart from the amazing Cambodian karaoke/soap pop videos that blared as we careered through the countryside.
Siem Reap
..is much nicer than Sihanoukville. It's cleaner, wealthier, has (some) decent roads and better nightlife. It's also the gateway to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. An area of over 20km squared, this was the ancient capital of Cambodia and had a population of close to 1m when London was a town of 50,000. Angkor Wat itself is the biggest religious building in the world. It's amazing. It was deigned that only the Gods could live in stone buildings, so all you have left of this (wooden) metropolis is a scattering of temples dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries (Tomb Raider was filmed there).
We hired a tuk-tuk driver, (based on his uncharacteristic subtlety and general soundness) Mr Phally, for the day and he brought us to the three main attractions. Having wandered around the corridors and ruins of Angkor Wat we moved on to the Bayon. This is where those huge iconic stone faces are - it's incredible. After lunch we crossed the Thom bridge into Ta Prohm, feeding wild monkeys a few banana's on the way! Then we wandered through the ruins for about an hour. The roots of trees have grown up through the structures of the temples here. Its bizarre to see nature's march and power of destruction - in parts its almost like the buildings were placed on top of trees - and not the other way around. Got some great photos.
One day was enough for us out there, but a lot of people do a three day pass. I was delighted that I had succumbed to Sarah's persuasion to come here - I thought I was all templed out after China! We hopped a bus back to Phnom Penh the following morning to spend our last days with Dave and Fitz before parting ways.
Phnom Penh ..again..
A long 9 hour bus journey. Fitz had discovered that his camera and a couple of hundred dollars had been nicked on the previous bus so we were all on our guard this time. Massive pain in the arse since about 800 photos are gone for good. The passing countryside was dirt poor. Water logged land, skinny cattle, disheveled people and wooden shacks. It seems that the only industry is agriculture and nothing else. We were informed that some families live on less than one US dollar a day out here.
We showered on arrival and hit the city, eating in a great traditional Khmer Restaurant before going to the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) on the waterfront at Sisowath Quay. This place is fantastic - a big breezy terrace bar overlooking the Tonle Sap river with leather loungers, a pool table and a decent menu. It's the kind of place you'd imagine Graham Greene was hanging out in while he wrote The Quiet American, or where boozed up journalists swapped stories about their experience of the various conflicts that have occurred in this part of the world over the years. Nowadays it serves as a haunt for the ex pat community (a lot of NGO heads and diplomats - the US Embassy here is huge) and the occasional tourist. Then on to the Heart of Darkness - allegedly the city's premier night spot. Nice club, pretty cool, but full of prostitutes and fat bald sweating western men riddled with STI's. We left after one drink.
The next day turned out to be one of the most moving and bizarre of the entire trip to date. Again, we arranged a tuk tuk for the day and set out an itinerary. First stop - shooting range. AK47's and Oozies were squeezed off at targets (mostly missed - not so accurate!). I couldn't believe how light the AK47 was. It's like a toy. Scary. So buoyed up by machismo and firepower (and having passed on the opportunity to create an instant hunk of burning beef by firing a bazooka at a cow) we moved on to Cheoung Ek - the Killing Fields. This is about 14km from the city centre.
The madness that occurred in that small corner of a field is incomprehensible. Pol Pot seized power in 1975 as his Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh forcing the city's inhabitants out into the country to work in the fields. His vision of a utopian agro-economy forced families apart and resulted in terror, genocide and massive man made famine. The intelligentsia - doctors, lawyers, journalists, diplomats, teachers, engineers - basically anybody with an education or opinion - were seen as a 'threat to the revolution' and were rounded up. 20,000 of them and their immediate families - newborn babies included - were brought on trucks to this site and slaughtered.
A middle aged man showed us around. Both his parents (doctors), his uncle and his sister were murdered here. He had come in 1980 in search of them, helped excavate the mass graves and has worked there since. He brought us to a Stupa (a kind of overground tomb) full of human skulls - almost 18,000 - at the entrance to the site. Some were completely shattered. A lot were missing teeth which were pulled out during torture. To save bullets most of these people were beaten to death with hoes, bamboo canes, shovels. He told us of how he had shown Kofi Annan, Mitterand and Putin around the site, and of the tears that Annan shed there.
As you wander through the pits of the mass graves there are still fragments of bone, teeth, and torn shreds of clothing on the ground. I have never been anywhere like it and hope never to be again.Back in the city and into the Genocide Museum at Teul Seung or "S21", a secondary school turned into a prison/torture facility/hell hole by the Khmer Rouge. At this stage I had enough. I think all of us welled up at some point or other. It's predictably eerie, shocking, disgusting, depressing, terrifying, baffling. People are capable of incredible lows.
We got back to the hostel and decided to try and lighten the mood. It was to be the last night the four of us would be together on the trip and we needed to celebrate! The Elephant Bar at Raffles Hotel was the perfect setting. It's opulence is almost garish considering the poverty on it's doorstep, but we managed to struggle on and entertain ourselves over a few games of snooker, lots of shite talk and a few Singapore Slings (invented in Raffles Singapore).
We slipped out to the lobby one by one to do a short summary of the trip on camera - it will be interesting to see the contrasting descriptions in a couple of months! A bar crawl ensued - The Green Vespa, Riverside Lounge, Zeppelin (where the owner sits playing old 70's vinyl - including Rory Gallagher - me Da would have loved it!) and Chilli's (more pool with hookers and Swedish meatballs).So it's bye bye to Dave and Fitzy who are of to Melbourne for ten days via Bangkok and then home. Russia, Mongolia, China, Thailand and Cambodia. Three months of whirlwind amazement, lots of laughs and the occasional tear. It's been the best experience of my life.
As for myself and Sarah, we are lucky enough to have about 4 weeks until we fly to Sydney - so watch this space.J
We decided on the slowest and least efficient mode of transport to bring us over the border from Vietnam, thinking it being in keeping with the gist of the place. Our "boat" chugged its way upstream along the Mekong. It was fairly uncomfortable, and about 30 degrees. Along the banks delicate wooden houses on stilts emerged from the undergrowth and receded again into watery oblivion. Water buffalo lounged around on the shore chatting together about the US presidential race. Apparently they reckon Obama has a fighting chance.
The passport control office consisted of an all mod cons concrete bunker housing a disgruntled guard, six dating stamps and a dog. I could have got through on Sarah's passport.To celebrate our 5th visa (and to make the rest of the trip a little more bearable) we had a couple of floating cans of Angkor with Ben, a French fella who was making his way slowly back to Paris having worked for Greenpeace in Beijing for 6 months. Sounded like fairly interesting work - trying to get the Chinese to adopt re-usable chopsticks!!
After a further 4 hours we finally arrived at our drop off point about 30km from Phnomh Penh in torrential rain. Now its fair to say that we're no strangers to precipitation, but this was ridiculous. Under our respective loads the three of us slipped and fumbled our way along a greasy plank to shelter and our awaiting bus.We passed naked children playing in puddles on the side of the road, a guy on a moped with an AK-47 strapped to his back, and a car crash on our way to the capital. A typical scam unfolded - the guides on the bus insisted we stay in one of their hotels/guesthouses (all the others being full/crap/closed of course). Now this kind of stuff irritates us so we refused to be bullied and hopped a pair of tuk-tuks (Sarah and I in one, Grainne and Ben - who had decided to tag along - in the other) to the lakeside backpacker area Boeng Kak. We had a meal (incredibly stoned waiting staff) played a few games of pool in a bar next door to our hotel and hit the hay having booked a bus to Sihonoukville for the following morning.
Sihanoukville
..is a kip. It's on the coast about 4 hours south west by bus from Phnom Penh. We stayed along the Serendipity Beach area which is a jumble of bored tuk-tuk drivers, beach bars, restaurants and hostelries. The weather was crap - overcast and intermittent cats and elephants falling from the sky. Every morning at about 8am the weather system washing machine would crank up to fast spin and our room was lifted off the ground for about half an hour. Fact.
Our hotel was actually quite comfortable apart from the dampness - we ended up changing rooms a few times during our stay. There are a couple of cool bars and beer is damn cheap (about 35 cent a pint), so there are definitely worse places to kill a few days in the rain. Our saving grace, and probably the best thing about the whole kippy town is Top Cat Cinema - run by Chris, an enthusiastic American ex-pat. We rented the private room there a few times which is basically a suped-up living room with a widescreen and surround sound (and a fridge full of bevvies!). He's got an incredible selection of DVD's so we whiled away more than a few hours there between trashy comedies and classic Vietnam war flicks ("I looove the smell of napalm in the morning" haha)
So our stay was less than productive.I uploaded a heap of albums to my I-pod - courtesy off Boom Boom Music for about a dollar a pop. Every time I left the hotel and wandered out onto the roadfront I was accosted by the tuk tuk drivers and moped boys. It's low season and they're desperate for a bit of business. This gets pretty annoying after a while - but you have to bite your lip and remember that Cambodia is the poorest country in the region. Let me assure you that that's pretty poor indeed. I couldn't help but loosen my lip one morning however when the usual mayhem accompanied my arrival into the daylight.
"Morning Sir! Tuk Tuk? Moped?"
"No thanks lads, your grand. Savage weather we're havin though wha?!"
One fella refuses to be budged and follows me down the road a bit.
"Marijuana?"
"No thanks, but you're a star for asking. It's far too early in the morning". Irony lost.
"Pills?..Opium?...Girl?"
He's annoying me now.
"Boy?"
"Do me a favour and feck off now will ye? Good man"
"Gun?"
Now I stop in my tracks.
"What did you say to me? Are you seriously trying to sell me a fecking gun on my way to the supermarket to buy a fecking yoghurt you moron?!"
He backed off. Apparently I can be quite scary when angered. Dave had a similar experience a few days later and pressed them on exactly what kind of weaponry was on offer. They could only muster a 'small gun' for him, so he said he'd wait because he had his heart set on a semi-automatic. You know how it is.
So after about five days of this carry on, many G&T's, some very tasty Khmer food and a lot of movies it was time for Grainne to hit the road back home. It was great to catch up with her and we'll miss her and her talks about emotions!
Dave and Fitz were set to rendezvous with us having been up to northern Vietnam and then Saigon so we were pressed to stay another few days. Thankfully the weather turned and we spent some time on the beach which is actually beautiful when the sun shines! There is a five star resort (Sokha's) with a pristine private beach so we gave the arms dealers some business bringing us there and back a few times.
I should mention Utopia. This is a kiwi run bar/hostel close to the beach where they do free accommodation (which is basic enough and quite dirty but ok if you're a scabby bearded smelly backpacker) and happy hours (that last most of the day - 7 bucks all you can drink - it's hell.) We spent a bit of time there amongst the stoned kiwi's and played pool with the resident hookers. Fitzer got beaten by a ladyboy. Hilarity.
Anyway at this stage I thought I was going to lose my mind if we didn't get out of dodge so we took an all day bus north to Siem Reap. To put Sihanoukville in perspective - it's set to become the financial capital of the country once the current governor is replaced by the president's brother. A new airport is set to open and depending on who you talk to tourism is set to boom over the next few years. They really need to get their act together on a few things first though (for example most of the coral that would have enabled a diving industry was blown up by dynamiting fishermen). Madness. Our bus journey to Siem Reap was uneventful apart from the amazing Cambodian karaoke/soap pop videos that blared as we careered through the countryside.
Siem Reap
..is much nicer than Sihanoukville. It's cleaner, wealthier, has (some) decent roads and better nightlife. It's also the gateway to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. An area of over 20km squared, this was the ancient capital of Cambodia and had a population of close to 1m when London was a town of 50,000. Angkor Wat itself is the biggest religious building in the world. It's amazing. It was deigned that only the Gods could live in stone buildings, so all you have left of this (wooden) metropolis is a scattering of temples dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries (Tomb Raider was filmed there).
We hired a tuk-tuk driver, (based on his uncharacteristic subtlety and general soundness) Mr Phally, for the day and he brought us to the three main attractions. Having wandered around the corridors and ruins of Angkor Wat we moved on to the Bayon. This is where those huge iconic stone faces are - it's incredible. After lunch we crossed the Thom bridge into Ta Prohm, feeding wild monkeys a few banana's on the way! Then we wandered through the ruins for about an hour. The roots of trees have grown up through the structures of the temples here. Its bizarre to see nature's march and power of destruction - in parts its almost like the buildings were placed on top of trees - and not the other way around. Got some great photos.
One day was enough for us out there, but a lot of people do a three day pass. I was delighted that I had succumbed to Sarah's persuasion to come here - I thought I was all templed out after China! We hopped a bus back to Phnom Penh the following morning to spend our last days with Dave and Fitz before parting ways.
Phnom Penh ..again..
A long 9 hour bus journey. Fitz had discovered that his camera and a couple of hundred dollars had been nicked on the previous bus so we were all on our guard this time. Massive pain in the arse since about 800 photos are gone for good. The passing countryside was dirt poor. Water logged land, skinny cattle, disheveled people and wooden shacks. It seems that the only industry is agriculture and nothing else. We were informed that some families live on less than one US dollar a day out here.
We showered on arrival and hit the city, eating in a great traditional Khmer Restaurant before going to the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) on the waterfront at Sisowath Quay. This place is fantastic - a big breezy terrace bar overlooking the Tonle Sap river with leather loungers, a pool table and a decent menu. It's the kind of place you'd imagine Graham Greene was hanging out in while he wrote The Quiet American, or where boozed up journalists swapped stories about their experience of the various conflicts that have occurred in this part of the world over the years. Nowadays it serves as a haunt for the ex pat community (a lot of NGO heads and diplomats - the US Embassy here is huge) and the occasional tourist. Then on to the Heart of Darkness - allegedly the city's premier night spot. Nice club, pretty cool, but full of prostitutes and fat bald sweating western men riddled with STI's. We left after one drink.
The next day turned out to be one of the most moving and bizarre of the entire trip to date. Again, we arranged a tuk tuk for the day and set out an itinerary. First stop - shooting range. AK47's and Oozies were squeezed off at targets (mostly missed - not so accurate!). I couldn't believe how light the AK47 was. It's like a toy. Scary. So buoyed up by machismo and firepower (and having passed on the opportunity to create an instant hunk of burning beef by firing a bazooka at a cow) we moved on to Cheoung Ek - the Killing Fields. This is about 14km from the city centre.
The madness that occurred in that small corner of a field is incomprehensible. Pol Pot seized power in 1975 as his Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh forcing the city's inhabitants out into the country to work in the fields. His vision of a utopian agro-economy forced families apart and resulted in terror, genocide and massive man made famine. The intelligentsia - doctors, lawyers, journalists, diplomats, teachers, engineers - basically anybody with an education or opinion - were seen as a 'threat to the revolution' and were rounded up. 20,000 of them and their immediate families - newborn babies included - were brought on trucks to this site and slaughtered.
A middle aged man showed us around. Both his parents (doctors), his uncle and his sister were murdered here. He had come in 1980 in search of them, helped excavate the mass graves and has worked there since. He brought us to a Stupa (a kind of overground tomb) full of human skulls - almost 18,000 - at the entrance to the site. Some were completely shattered. A lot were missing teeth which were pulled out during torture. To save bullets most of these people were beaten to death with hoes, bamboo canes, shovels. He told us of how he had shown Kofi Annan, Mitterand and Putin around the site, and of the tears that Annan shed there.
As you wander through the pits of the mass graves there are still fragments of bone, teeth, and torn shreds of clothing on the ground. I have never been anywhere like it and hope never to be again.Back in the city and into the Genocide Museum at Teul Seung or "S21", a secondary school turned into a prison/torture facility/hell hole by the Khmer Rouge. At this stage I had enough. I think all of us welled up at some point or other. It's predictably eerie, shocking, disgusting, depressing, terrifying, baffling. People are capable of incredible lows.
We got back to the hostel and decided to try and lighten the mood. It was to be the last night the four of us would be together on the trip and we needed to celebrate! The Elephant Bar at Raffles Hotel was the perfect setting. It's opulence is almost garish considering the poverty on it's doorstep, but we managed to struggle on and entertain ourselves over a few games of snooker, lots of shite talk and a few Singapore Slings (invented in Raffles Singapore).
We slipped out to the lobby one by one to do a short summary of the trip on camera - it will be interesting to see the contrasting descriptions in a couple of months! A bar crawl ensued - The Green Vespa, Riverside Lounge, Zeppelin (where the owner sits playing old 70's vinyl - including Rory Gallagher - me Da would have loved it!) and Chilli's (more pool with hookers and Swedish meatballs).So it's bye bye to Dave and Fitzy who are of to Melbourne for ten days via Bangkok and then home. Russia, Mongolia, China, Thailand and Cambodia. Three months of whirlwind amazement, lots of laughs and the occasional tear. It's been the best experience of my life.
As for myself and Sarah, we are lucky enough to have about 4 weeks until we fly to Sydney - so watch this space.J
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