The Backpasher: Angkor WHAT?!?

Looking across the moat of Angkor Wat

13.06.2003

37 °C

My last night in Phnom Penh was spent having dinner with Leila (a Canadian I've been travelling with since Kampot) and our moto drivers, Ya Ya and Banha - who we had thought to be pretty decent motos. Neither of us are big fans of Khmer food as it's a little too 'raw' - for example, if you get chicken, you get it with meat, skin, cartilage, blood vessels and bones. But we thought it might be a fun experience nonetheless. We wound up in a Khmer beer hall in the suburbs of Phnom Penh...and as soon as we sat down, we had 8 or so "beer girls" surround our table - a little strange... I'd heard of the beer girls from friends who had travelled through Thailand but never really seen them in action. I think YaYa selected the girl he thought was the hottest (the Becks girl) and she was our waitress for the evening - funnily enough, plowing him with Khmer wine, rather than copious amounts of Becks. And yes...YaYa was supposed to be one of our drivers!!!!

Amazingly, our stomachs survived the food, our whole bodies, the ride home in the Phnom Penh madness and our tempers, the 'sting' at the end of the night when our drivers, who had pigged-out (to put it mildly) expected us to pay for their gorging. It was one of those awkward situations - we knew vaguely where we were staying, but were a fair way away from that point right now; we didn't know where we were, as we were somewhere in the burbs, and yes, perhaps both YaYa and Banha had had a little too much to drink....in retrospect, it could have been a really bad situation, and we maybe should have made a plan earlier, but sometimes when you travel, you are very much at the liberty of others....anyway....

The following morning, at the crack of dawn, we jumped on the boat to Siem Reap. I'd been told that the boat ride up to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh was the way to go and thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the roof (with sarong wrapped around head, sunnies and sunscreen lathered on my legs) for the 4-5hr journey. The boat cruises up the Tonle Sap river (a rather unique river as during the wet season the flow of the river changes direction) and for the initial stages of the journey, you pass by quaint little villages, large, floating villages, and then finally hit a vast expanse of water. It was an expensive trip for Cambodia at US$25 but very comfortable up on the roof!

The spoiler was upon arrival at the docks, about 10km from Siem Reap. As the water was shallow, we had to jump on to smaller sampans (canoe type boats) to go in to shore. And on those sampans were about 20-30 touts from different guesthouses, vying for our monetary affection. If you've never had the pleasure of being touted before.....here is not a good place to start. I'd been told they were a little pushy but these guys were totally relentless!! Leila and I had about 10 of them standing around us at once telling us that their guesthouse was the best, and that all the other one's were bad, dirty, unfriendly, expensive (blah blah) and that we would get free moto there - even if "we no stay". hmmm maybe not....anyway, it was a little hectic...

In the end, we found some moto drivers who seemed pretty decent blokes and told them exactly which guesthouse we wanted to go to.....and they were like "Yeah, fine, we take you there, we no try and sell you business". For one dollar for the both of us...we should have known better but anyway.....the first 5-10 mins were fine, and then they started on the hard sell. Telling us our guesthouse was "crappy", that it was very far from town, their guesthouse was better..... grrrrrr.......I'd tried to explain to my driver in the nicest possible way that touting is not a great way to win over most travellers - that all it does is make them upset and frustrated... but I dunno.....it didn't seem to click.

Our guesthouse turned out to be superb though. Sure, it was on the edge of town but for US$3 a night each in a really nice room (with clean towels and sheets daily, big window and private bathroom with toilet paper!!!!! of course it was pink). And they threw in a ginormous breakfast as well as free moto around town too! The place is new so they are not getting so much business...but word of mouth spreads quickly so they'll certainly be drumming it up pretty quickly.

After lunch and a sluggish afternoon, we hot-footed it out to the temples of Angkor. We first cruised down the leafy boulevardes leading up to the Angkor complex, and then we swung round the corner and caught our first glimpse of Angkor Wat......

Wow.....the sun was starting to sink by this time so the fading sunlight on the front of Angkor Wat, mixed with the smoky haze that lingered in the air made for an awesome sight. We didn't hit the inside until the next day.....as the place to be, according to our drivers, was Phnom Bakheng, the first of the templed mountains built around Angkor. As far as sunsets go, it wasn't too high up on the richter-scale, but was still a pretty cool place to watch the sun fade away....

So a little about Angkor Wat (yes, I have a guidebook on me - I'm not quite the oracle)......it's the largest and most renowned Angkorian temple; it was thought to have been built as a funerary temple for one of the Kings to honour Vishnu, the deity with whom the King best identified; it may have also functioned as a general temple for the King Suryavarman II; it is surrounded by a 200m wide moat, where kiddies go for a dip on a hot day (i.e. every day); the bas-reliefs stretch for 800m around the walls of the central temple complex and tell stories of the history of the Khmer empire. Also, Angkor Wat is just one specific temple in a complex of dozens, and Siem Reap is one of several places where ruins from the Khmer empire lay - there are some other pretty sweet ones in Central Vietnam and Southern Laos.

At about 4.45 the next morning, we arose so we could make it for sunrise at Angkor Wat - quite spectacular as we viewed it overlooking one of the pools (barays) that lies at the front of the main temple...We then wandered through the temple for a couple of hours - doing all the tricky stair climbs in the early hours before the heat became too overpowering and the package tour hordes arrived after an evening of copious insobriety at overpriced restaurants.

After a quick breakfast back in town, I hit the temples again for another 7 hours (crazy!!!!!) and lingered about the temples of Angkor Thom (the remains of a huge fortified city which was built by the greatest Angkorian king, Jayavarman VII). Angkor Thom contains some of the most interesting monuments of Angkor - the Bayon, where 200 enigmatic, gargantuan faces peer down at you from above and you can see over a km of bas reliefs; the Baphuon (currently under reconstruction ), which is purported to represent Mt Meru, the dwelling place of Shiva; The Royal Enclosure and Phimeanakas, fronted by the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King (fingers missing on one hand only!), The Kleangs (formerly homes to lingas and statues); Banteay Kdei (rather groovy Buddhist temple with some nifty garudas fronting the gates); Sras Srang (an ablution pool opposite Banteay Kdei) and finally Ta Prohm.

Ta Prohm seems to be everyone's favourite as it's been left to be swallowed up by the jungle that surrounds it. The temple complex is shrouded by huge trees, and over time, the roots of the trees have intertwined with the temples so that the trees in many cases are actually growing from beneath the temples. When I went that afternoon, the monks within the complex had lit some fires and the smoke that meandered through the old corridors, crumbling doorways and lichen-coated bas-reliefs made it really photogenic.

I was back at Angkor Wat with Leila, Sheila (another Canadian) and David (Pommie) for sunset. This time I actually took some time to look properly at the bas-reliefs that ring the outer temple walls - astonishing stuff, really! After dinner and a few drinks at the Angkor What? bar, we headed home, in Pissing down rain...like nothing I´ve ever seen before. We had arranged for our drivers to pick us up from there at 10pm. When it started lashing down...we weren't entirely sure what to do. We didn't have the phone number for the guesthouse to call them to tell them to come a little later, and given the extremity of the sudden deluge, didn't fancy walking back in the rain. But sure enough, come 10pm, they came to pick us up. There they were, smiling happily as we greeted them at the entrance to the bar! No problem for them, so no problem for us either! So we jumped on board, and drove back to the guesthouse in 3ft deep water....soaked right through, but having enjoyed the experience!

I spent Friday visiting some of the more remote Angkorian temples. First I went out to Banteay Srey, the Citadel of Women (967AD). Because this temple is so far out of town (37km), it's not so touristed and until 1998 was considered too unsafe to visit as their were major pockets of Khmer Rouge nasties in the area. It has also missed out on much of the looting after the collapse of the KR back in 93 so is in quite good condition. It's quite pretty as it's made from pink sandstone and the bas-reliefs here are superior to any of the others seen in Angkor temples. It was about an hour each way on moto but definitely worth it. After that I headed to the Rolous Group of temples, about 12km away......Rolous served periodically as the capital of the Angkorian empire and there are some pretty awesome ox sculptures there.....not that I'm a big fan of oxen or anything. I got chased by a little snake here....I initially panicked cause I had heard that highly poisonous Hanuman snakes hung about many of the temples.....but the vendors assured me it was ok and after my moto driver ran over it's head (hey, not my idea!!!), I felt pretty safe from harm. I'm going to refrain from regaling the story about the kid with the knife...aside from saying that I called his bluff and it was all fine in the end...phew...After about 5 hours of temples in high 30s heat, and at least half of that on the back of a motorbike....I was done for the day.

We decided on Saturday morning to rehit some of the more interesting Angkorian temples..... Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and finish up the day at Angkor Wat for sunset. We started at the Bayon (at the centre of Angkor Thom temples), where we were chased about by a monk who was intent on massaging a small linga (phallic totem) and giggle as he did so. He explained to his, through gesture mostly, that the hole in the roof above the linga was so the rain could fall upon it...and that men came here to aid their virility. We also took a closer look at the bas-reliefs which lined the walls of the temples - some include pictures of Chams (Vietnamese Hindus) fighting against the Khmers, people playing chess, cockfights, a woman, people picking lice from other people's hair, Khmers getting drunk, and King Jayavarman VII riding atop a horse whilst being followed by a legion of concubines - every man's dream perhaps. We also took time to look at the rather enigmatic smiling faces that are all over the complex (200 or so of 'em). We were really keen to go back to Ta Prohm as it's so different from most of the other temples....and this time we were lucky enough to meet one of the monks that (i think) lives there. He's the one on the cover of the most recent Lonely Planet Cambodia edition (not the pirated old I got in Saigon). We went to the "Hall of echoes" where he likes to hang out - it's quite cool there as you get another person to stand on the opposite side of the hall and you both take turns pounding your chest and listening to the echo come back at you. We found him feeding one of the local dogs and sweeping the pathway - "I tidy up", he said. He's 83!!! Very very rare for a Cambodian. I think the average life expectancy hovers around 50.....

On our last night in Siem Reap, we hit the Beatocello concert at the big children's hospital in Siem Reap. It's put on by a Swiss paediatrician, who has been based in Cambodia since the early 1970s. In between items, Beat told us a little about the history of the hospital and about the health situation in general in Cambodia. Even now, there are still kids getting sick and dying every day because of malaria, dengue (haemmorrhagic) fever, tuberculosis, Hep A and B, encephalitis, and land mine injuries. And you have people from the WHO and other international organizations saying that US$2.10 a day is too much money to provide per child for health care in Cambodia. They of course are having $345 a night rooms at the Sofitel Angkor down the road.....honestly....you can get a room for $3!!!! Music was pretty good too. As Beat is Swiss, he is multinlingual so performed in about 6 different languages - a mixture of Bach, and some ditties he had written himself. Some of it was a little zany.....i think the hot climate and ex-patriate life-style has gotten to him somewhat. A group of us met up at The Red Piano afterwards. It was the cafe/bar where the Tomb Raider crew hung out when they shot the film back in 2000. Good food, good company - but the only piano you see is a 20cm wide toy one stuck on the wall above the photos of Angelina Jolie, who is a national hero here!

Next it's on to Battambong - second largest city in Cambodia but somewhat off the tourist map. Let's just see how I cope with the 4 or so hour speedboat trip.

Ciao

Belinda