Cambodia Part bi

Okay. I’m going to be honest. I have no idea how to tell you about the seven months I spent in Cambodia. I could do it by places I visited. I could do it through time order. Both of these are quite sensible I think….but I was there for 7 months and I took no notes…crap.

Okay here goes.

I arrived in Cambodia on the night of the 10^th December 2009, after flying from London town to Bangkok on the 8^th, having a night in Bangkok (I never enjoy those) and then catching various buses and bikes to the border town of…where the Cambodian dust roads, stray dogs and general craziness were a welcome relief to clean, fresh cold air of home.

Partying on the streets of Bangkok

 Christmas tree in the hotel in Bangkok

The strangest motorway toilet I've ever been to...

The next day was another bus journey to Sihanoukville which was done on a surprisingly good road (see previous Cambodian blogs). Here I met my friend Grant who I’d met in Beijing in 2008 but who was now called Harry and who was living and teaching in Phnom Penh. I then spent the next week chilling out on a beach, watching the sun set while swimming in the sea, eating my fill in freshly caught sea food and indulging in the odd beachside massage.

And so, the standard was set for a very hard life in the next 7 months.

A quick aside on Sihanoukville before moving North. I have already said in Cambodia Part Mui that I visited Sihanoukville for the first time in 2006. I stayed on what was then known as Weathertop Hill but is now known as Victory Hill. Back in 2006 there were very few people staying there and the beach that was almost private compared to the bigger beaches in the main part of town. The main street in Weathertop Hill was little more than a few bars, guesthouses and restaurants with the hill walk down to the beach completely empty.

Arriving there in 2009 for a few night time drinks and some games of pool it had completely changed. Building work has changed one street into many and bungalows and high rise hotels follow the track down to the beach. The main drag itself is now somewhat…girlyfied.

Travelling from Sihanouville to Phnom Penh was like being in a different country to the one I had seen in 2006. The land grabs that were beginning to take place then were everywhere with massive Korean and Chinese clothes factories being very prevalent on the road into Phnom Penh. Massive sections of roadside land had had walls built around them but no building work had yet taken place. What has happened to the farmers that once cultivated this land I can only guess at and I would hazard a guess that there payment for the land would not have been substantial.

There is probably a better place for a rant at Cambodian political ways and this perhaps not it.

I only went back to Sihanoukville once during my stay in Cambodia and that was for International New Year’s Eve.

There were three of us who went to Sihanoukville on New Year’s Eve; Harry and I had bought bus tickets previously having presumed that it would be busy. Our friend Barry had not. Getting to the bus “station” (little more than a side street next to the Post Office with a few private bus operators on it) Barry asked for a ticket. No, the bus was full. Okay, can I sit in aisle. No, today this would not be possible.

With 5minutes to go until the bus left Barry talked to the bus driver and said he would give him $7 if he could please get on the bus.

You pay the bus driver, but that corruption, and this Cambodia. Hahaha. Eight dollar okay?

And with that Barry got on the bus quick sharp before the people whose seat he had taken turned up, and with that, we were off.

Five hours later we arrived in Sihanoukville to meet Harry’s girlfriend and to attempt to find some accommodation. Everywhere was full. Shit. Having searched the main drags we made our way up the hill, to find a bungalow place with female Cambodian manager fuming that her clients were already late in turning up and she was delighted to check us in, take our money and head off to the beach to join the party. Leaving the bungalows our selves after showers and what have you we saw a taxi turn up with four rather annoyed people in it.

After a few beers in a few bars we made our way down to the beach for the New Year countdown and this is what we experienced.

And so, life stayed like this for three days before we made our way back to Phnom Penh to start work, and life, proper.

Retrospective Cambodia: Part Bii

A photoBlog of my brief 4 day visit to The Land of Wonder in 2008:

Poipet in all its glory: 2008

One of the main roads through Cambodia.  En route to Siem Reap.

Shooting range at Siem Reap.  Bit pointless if you ask me but some people like it.

Hotel balcony view in Siem Reap

Floating village on the Tonle Sap lake.  This photo was taken from a very low lying/sinking boat.

Temple kids surround our Tuk-Tuk.

The magnificent Angkor Wat

Boat racing during the water festival on The Tonle Sap river, Phnom Penh.

View of the light boats from a restaurant on Preah Sisowath Blvd, Phnom Penh.

Inside S-21; the infamous school that got turned into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Classroom/torture chamber: S-21

That's all folks...

Retrospective Cambodia: Part Mui

I first arrived in Cambodia as a, relatively, wet behind the ears 19 year old as part of a two month backpack around South East Asia. After having had my senses and sweat glands punished by three days in Bangkok I had acquired the a Cambodian visa and an exuberantly overpriced bus ticket from Bangkok to Siem Reap via the Poipet border crossing.  I should add that the person that financially screwed me on that first day in Bangkok taught me a well learned monetary lesson; don't trust no one in transport at face value.

I have never liked Bangkok and I guess I never will.

Poipet was, and still is, hub of smuggling in South East Asia.  Everything, from timber sadly to children, is reputed to go through this town on the way to who knows where.  My first experience was of being dumped off a "luxury" coach onto an minivan and then from a four lane motorway onto a dirt strip in what appeared to be the middle of a market. mmmmh.  The crossing itself from Thailand was then a no man's land, where street urchin children piled up rubbish next to the bridge you walked across  and then begged not for money but for a bottle of water.  This all happened under the shadows of the giant casinos set up for rich Thai business men who cannot gamble in their own country.  It was hot, it was humid, it was harrowing, it was going to get worse.

Poipet 06/2006

At that time it was my experience that Cambodia had three tarmacked roads.  They were between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh to the Vietnamese journey.  It is 8hours between Poipet and Siem Reap on an old rickety bus, traveling on dirt roads without any air conditioning.  You have two choices for the journey; open the windows and be slightly cooler but get covered in red Cambodian dust, or, keep the window closed and become unnecessarily hot and dehydrated.  These are you 2 choices for EIGHT hours!

Siem Reap, made famous by Angelina Jolie/Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, is the oasis in the desert.  You reach it at night and can feel and hear the bus gliding onto tarmac.  The lights of the giant hotels light up the streets and you feel as if you've discovered the world again.  In 2006 though the gap between poor and rich was probably worse than it is now. It was a city being built rather than a finished product; I attempted to use the only ATM in the country but it didn't accept my card.


Angkor Wat's construction began in 900AD and finished two centuries later when the city was abandoned.  Almost 1000 years later it is helping to build Siem Reap town again.  Of the thee ancient sites I've visited; The Great Wall, The Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat, Angkor still remains my favourite.  It is huge for starters but it is the feeling of discovery you get walking round that makes it what it is (just ignore the mass groups of Japanese and Korean tourists).  It feels like you are walking around a site that was lost to the jungle and only now, when you turn the corner is it being seen for the first time in centuries.  There are problems though.  That it is such a significant tourist pull means that there is an unequal amount of beggars, more often than not children, selling you cheap tat or asking for the obligatory $1. This can be a) irritating b) draining c) emotionally difficult.  My advice is have a laugh with them, ignore them, don't buy anything and don't promise to buy anything.  However if you can suppress all of the above emotions Angkor Wat is, quite simply, magnificent.

Angkor Wat (south entrance)

Phnom Penh from 2006 is a strange beast to remember because like most tourists who visit the city I never got under its skin but somehow really enjoyed myself.  There were visits to the Killing Fields an area outside the city where mass graves were, barely, dug for the people killed under the Khmer Rouge.  They are still trying to find everyone who was killed there and when you walk over the paths around the pits rags and bones can be seen under the dirt; it is a truly distressing and depressing place.  There was also a visit to S-21 which is the school that was converted into a prison during the Khmer Rouge reign.  Here up to 30,000 Cambodians were imprisoned and sent to their deaths and the school museum is kept in the same way today as it was then; you can famously still see the blood on the floors of some of the torture cells.

Sihanoukville is Cambodia's beach side resort.  At the time there was building work going on a plenty and certain areas of notoriety today weren't so back then.  It was, and still is, a friendly place much out of keeping in some ways to the rest of the country where time can feel to go backwards when you're sat on the beach eating lobster and drinking 50cent beers.  Life is hard sometimes...