Coup d'état

Well, we are near the Thai border hoping that is stays open long enough for us to travel through. It had been closed, but things seem to have calmed down now. We have been reading the Bangkok Post every day and there are pictures of tourists posing with the soldiers in front of the tanks and everything seems to be very calm. Our hotel owner who has lived out here for 10 years and writes the most popular website in south east asian (talesofasia.com) says that this is just the way that Thai's work out there problems.

No worries!

The dancing monk

Today we visited a Pagoda at the request of two young monks who we met at Angkor Wat. I don't know what you think of when you imagine how a monk lives, but this certainly wasn't what we were expecting. One monk showed us to his room - complete with pictures of Ronaldo and the English football team on his wall. The crazy frog theme was playing on his stereo and he asked Garry if he liked to dance. Thankfully his firm answer calmed the young monk down.

We talked about football and English lessons and about what it was like being a monk, and then the dancing monk said that he had to go out with his friends. Another, calmer monk took us to his room which was a lot bleaker. He had no mats on the floor and just slept on wooden slats. Nothing in his room but a kettle and books. He told us that he was very poor and the only way that he could afford an education was to go to the pagoda and be a monk. He told us about the 21 precepts that he had to learn and we told him about the 10 commandments.

He had just bought a book to do his studies in. He said it was very expensive for him, but he needed it. We asked how much it was and he said 5000 riel (just over a dollar). We said that we would give him the money for it. His name was Sam.

Angkor Wat?

Siem Reap is a funny little town with a river running through it and a big tourist area. We are about a 15 minute walk out of town down a muddy track, out of the way of the beggars and hawkers.

Our first experience of the Angkor Wat area was to go out to Banteay Srei - the woman's temple. Some great carvings in an intricate temple set amid the rice paddies. We spent an exhausting day touring round another 5 temples before collapsing back at the hotel with an Angkor beer.

The 2nd day was spent in Angkor Wat itself and Angkor Thom - both architecturally amazing. We somehow lost each other amongst the faces of the Buddha in Bayon temple and spent an hour wandering round the complex thinking that we may never get out! Thankfully we met up again before we died of exhaustion.

Day three was a little easier as we were exhausted from the previous days and it was pouring with rain. We both agreed that Ta Phrom was the most impressive temple. They have allowed some of the jungle to continue eating the stones away. It is also the temple where Angelina Jolie picked a flower in Tomb Raider and then fell through a hole into Pinewood Studios!!!

There is still a lot of restoration work being done on the temples and it is a constant battle with the surrounding jungle. It didn't help that the documents that French arhictects had been working on for 20 yrs or so were burnt by the Khmer Rouge. After 1979 they got back to find 10,000 pieces of rubble lying around and no plans to give them any clue of how they all fit together.

Phnom Pehn

The capital city of Cambodia is a mix of apparent affluence and desperate poverty. Our main reason for staying here so long was to soak up some of the recent history we have been reading about.


We stopped in a hotel by the river with views of the National Museum and Royal Palace. Our first outing was a cheery visit to the Killing Fields where thousands of Cambodians (and some foreigners) were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. All that is left now are skulls and bones. It was an eiree place and we did not linger.


Our pleasant tuk tuk driver then took us to the genocide museum for some more fun! The cells where the Khmer Rouge tortured its 'enemies' were still in the same condition as they were when the Vietnamese captured the city in 1979. Complete with torture racks, weapons and blood.... and a photo on the wall of a real life torture session just in case you haven't got the picture yet!!



We saw the French Embassy where the last of the foreigners baracaded themselves in after the KR emptied the city in 1975 and we searched for Don Cormack's church in the centre of the city (see http://www.omf.org.uk/content.asp?id=12768), but think it is a house now.


We visited an orphanage with 250 children -really, really sad as they were living in a hoval. There are some good parts to the city. The Central and Russian markets were a great place to shop and the lake and river front are pleasant places to walk or sit.

Cambodia's premier beach resort

Sinahoukville is set on the coast in the south of Cambodia. We stopped at a great hotel called Orchidee ($15) - owned by a 2 Dutch brothers and their Cambodian wives. If we weren't on the beach, we were by the pool and if we weren't by the pool, we were in a cafe somewhere drinking fruit shakes. A great place for a holiday!

National Parks

Kampot should be a really lovely town, set on the river with lively markets and several impressive Wats. It is however home to many poor Cambodian families and incoherent western druggies and drunks. It is dirty and characterless, which is a shame because it has loads of potential. The only thing of interest apart from talking to the locals is Bokor National Park in which the king used to reside many moons ago and where the Khymer Rouge had an impressive stronghold.

We decided to do a tour with 'Monkey tours' who took us up in a 4WD on an atrocious road through the most amazing scenery. The journey up took 3 hrs, but we were rewarded with an amazing view from the Black Palace, which looks more like a war bunker these days. After a traditional Khmer Curry (see photo) we went to a Casino and a haunting church. All now derelict, but impressive none the less.

On the way down our4WD spluttered to a stop and in true Cambodian style the driver simply said, "We've run out of petrol". Two hrs later a man in a truck arrived with a can of gas and we were off again down the bumpiest road in existence. Our sunset cruise turned into a moonlight cruise and we got back to the hotel exhausted at 8pm. Great experience tho!

Ream National Park is near Sinahoukville in the south of Cambodia. We had a much more relaxed day here. A peaceful cruise past the mangroves and women neck deep in water looking for cockles and then a walk through the jungle, to the beach for a swim.

Panicked monkeys sprang through the trees as we disturbed their slumber and sea eagles hunted near the boat oblivious to the noise of our motor. The only school for the 45 families within the park is one funded by the Korean Church and children walk for 4 hours at the start and end of the week to go.

3 boats, 2 buses and no sign of Charlie

Our departure from Vietnam started with a short bus ride from out hotel in Chau Doc to a small boat powered by a tiny Vietnamese crazy woman. We stopped at a muslim village and then boarded another boat (Garry did an Indiana Jones impression and ran across 2 boats diving into the boat!) to the Cambodian border. The border crossing was uneventful and involved a walk through a muddy field to a small building, where we got our stamp and they took $50 from us. We walked over another muddy field into the Kingdom of Cambodia.


We boarded another boat which took us up the Mekong to a bus for the journey into Phnom Penh. Not exactly the same experience as Martin Sheen had in Apocolypse Now, but it was certainly an insight into life on the Delta.


Phnom Pehn was a bit of a culture shock at first, especially coming out of a modern city like Siagon. We arrived in the dark, which never helps first impressions, and there were hoards of beggars and kids trying to sell you postcards and motorbike drivers pestering you for a lift and the streets were dirty and smelly and to top it off our hotel had let our room because we were late.


The next day however we were feeling a little less tired and more equipped to face the city. It seemed a little brighter and friendlier. The city is poor and the people are more desperate than in Vietnam. The Cambodians are more reserved and wary and come across as unfriendly and sometimes rude, but you have to take into account the horrors that happened not 30 yrs ago.