Wednesday, 5 December 2007

Cambodia and The Temples of Angkor

Between Glandyfi and Machynlleth, the borders of Ceredigion and Powys are clearly visible in wintertime as a line across the road, as Powys have always gritted up to their side of the line and Ceredigion have not. Similarly, the border between Thailand and Cambodia is clearly visible - the tarmac road stops and turns into a rut-filled dirt-track. The distance to Siem Reap from the border town of Poipet is only 100 miles, but it took 6 hours in an old shed of a bus, our teeth chattering together as we loped from side to side and up and down. The dust was incredible - it was just like taking part in the Paris - Dakkar rally in an old jalopy, and to make matters worse, the door of the bus didn't close. Marc was trying to read and had to stop from time to time to wipe off the thick layer of red dust off his glasses! Having said all that, the landscape was beautiful - very flat with green fields of rice as far as we could see. We eventually found our guesthouse and were taken under the wing of Sky - a tuk-tuk driver and complete star, who would be with us for the whole of our stay.


On our first day Sky took us to see The Temples of Angkor and he timed our visits to the different temples to avoid the dozens of tour-groups. First of all, we went to Angkor Thom - a large site 3km square with many amazing features such as the Terrace of Elephants, The Terrace of the Leper King and my favourite of the whole lot - The Temple of Bayon, while Sky dozed in the tuk-tuk awaiting our return. It is difficult to put into perspective how long these temples have existed, then you see a wall that a root system of a massive tree has grown around and you begin to realise they've been there a pretty long time. After seeing Ta Phrom (very Lara Croft), we came back to Angkor Wat and marvelled at the structure, the carvings in the sandstone walls stayed until sunset.

Siem Reap is far from the back-packer scenes that we have mostly encountered so far on the trip. There are many luxury hotels and it is a very cosmopolitan place, with excellent restaurants and nightspots, catering for a whole range of budgets. Khmer food is excellent - still quite spicy but in a far more subtle way - not so many pouty lips!

We were up early on the second day and left the guesthouse at 5.30am to return to Angkor Wat to see sunrise. We joined literally hundreds of people gathered to watch Angkor Wat silhouetted against the changing colour of the sky just before sunrise but I'm sure that not many had a warm banana pancake to eat for breakfast while they waited, courtesy of Sky. We saw more amazing temples before travelling south to Lake Tonle Sap and a trip on the lake to see the people of the Floating Village carrying on their daily business. There were floating shops and shop-boats that just stopped outside your window; a floating school; floating police station; floating garage for boats; floating tv repair workshop and 4 pigs floating in a bamboo pen on a raft and a whole lot more. On the way back, Marc was invited to take the helm of the boat - he didn't need asking twice, but I can't understand why I wasn't asked too.

Our third morning was spent in the brand new museum at Siem Reap, seeing the Room of a Thousand Buddhas and many other interesting exhibits and information which put a lot of what we had seen over the last two days into context. We went to see the Siem Reap monument to people who had died in the Killing Fields at the hands of Pol Pot - a chilling experience. After haggling for a last few souvenirs at the market (Marc is getting better at it as we go along - I think it's because he does it with a big smile and good humour) and another superb Khmer meal, we called it a day.

We thought that the trip to Siem Reap had been bad, but it was a doddle compared with the return journey. In a nutshell - Sky dropped us off at the bus station. Turns out there is no bus and some local guy with attitude who seems to be running the show expects all the tourists waiting for the bus to get into taxis instead - no problem but he expects 6 people, plus luggage in each car! He says it's company policy and Cambodian people fit in no problem! We all protest and end up having to pay more money to travel with just 4 passengers ... eventually. All went well until 10km from the border when we had a tyre puncture. The wheel was removed after a big struggle and lots of jumping on the wrench and advice from Bea, the German lady sharing the taxi (she can teach Carwyn a thing or two about mechanics) but guess what ... the spare tyre was also flat! The taxi driver called his brother to pick us up and take us the rest of the way but fortunately for us (at this stage) an aquaintance of the taxi driver happened to be passing and took us to the border, where ... we tried to get all the rucksacks out of the boot, but the boot wouldn't open and all our stuff was stuck inside. They tried to get it out through the back seat and to lever the boot open, but nothing doing. Marc then had to go with the driver to a local garage (incase that was the last we ever saw of our rucksacks) to get the boot open whilst Nia stayed at the border with the other two passengers. Finally, we crossed the border back into Thailand with a huge sigh of relief and thankfully the remainder of the journey back to Bangkok was quite uneventful and our familiar hostel was a very welcome sight.

1 comment:

ickle bruv said...

You just keep getting adventure after adventure, we just get floods hail and wind, i'm sure you both miss my wind.
Keep on having great adventures, loads of people say HI.