Anlong Veng is a fairly dingy town on the Cambodian-Thai border. It is also the location of Pol Pot's house, Ta Mok's house, the remains of the building where Pol Pot was tried by the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot's grave and the last real stronghold of the Khmer Rouge. Anlong Veng is where it all happened.
There's not much happening in Anglong Veng now though. Two years ago the Omniscient, presentient Lonely Planet Guide predicted that tourist interest in all things Khmer Rouge would lead to great expansion in Anlong Veng. They were wrong: content to visit the various Killing Fields, Toul SLeng (the genocide museum) and the shooting range most tourists seem to forego the delights of the infamous little town on the Thai Border where Pol Pot met his ignoble end.
The government obviously figured on Lonely Planet being right, because whereas in 2004 the road was described in quite unflattering terms and transport options were given as truck, motorbike or share taxi in 2006 we found 'tourist' buses available.
As an aside most tourist buses in Cambodia are not particularly flash and involve a 'free' tuk-tuk ride to the bus station for about a 60% markup. In fact they are not realy tourist buses at all, they are something in between and are patronised more by locals than tourists. The buses are flash by local standards, mediocre by tour bus standards and belt a long at quite a respectible pace given the state of the unkempt dirt Cambodian roads. It's a decent system, especially if you get yourself to the bus station under your own steam (a fifty cent tuk-tuk ride) and avoid the mark-up.
So the road had been somewhat upgraded and buses were now leaving for Anlong Veng once a day at the very civilised time of 1pm. Except that since lonely planet were a wee bit optimistic in their predictions for Anlong Veng's future development our guesthouse knew there was a bus but seemed to have absolutely no idea when it left. With a little prompting we got a perplexing answer of 6 or 7 am. We emerged from our room just before 6 and were not-particularly-promptly informed of the actual departure time of the bus. Needless to say we very promptly returned to bed.
Obviously Anlong Veng differed radically from Siem Reap--there wre no tourism driven foreigner ghettos, no all you can eat Indian curry joints, no 'Happy Pizza' (happy pizza it what you get if you use illegal herbs in your pizza sauce) and no constant stream of women and children selling books. Also in Anlong Veng, possibly the poorest town I've been to in SOuth East Asia, there were no beggers. It was a strange little town full of wide eyed kids, startled motel receptionists and idle moto drivers. Most folks, unsure what to make of us, simply ignored us. The Music Restaurant, where the elite of Anlong Veng dined, served us some of the best food I've had in Cambodia. The swampy pool of stagnant water which dominated the town was the filthiest, smelliest body of water I have ever encountered: and I've cruised the fetid canals of Bangkok. The people were a bit guarded, some just plain surly or sour-faced. Despite their tragic history I've found Cambodians to be wonderfully cheerful and optimistic people, but these folks were not so much. Easily the result of larger than life foreigners being an as yet uncommon encounter it is tempting to attribute it to the effects of the (still present and still supported) Khmer Rouge; either in the form of suspicion towards 'capitalist running dogs' or in terms of a deeper sadness and suspicion caused by fear and atrocity. As we got further out into the rural frontier along the Thai border I noticed more and more suspicious looks, and not a few stern glares. We passed a few folks wearing black pajamas, the uniform imposed by the Khmer Rouge when they were in power, sometimes the full set but more often just the bottoms with a more clourful shirt. Lewis spotted an old veteran in black pants with no shirt, a trademark Khmer Rouge scarf and an AK-47. The real deal? Hard to say. There's plenty of scope for over-active western imaginations.
The trip out to Prasat Preah Vihear was an adventure of no small water. Literally. About an hour out of Anlong Veng (~6:30 am) it started absolutely pissing down. We're talking rainy season torrential thunder and lightening storm. The dirt roads turned into unstable mush submerged by puddles and sheets of surface water. We pulled off into a school and took shelter under a thatched gazebo-type-thing in the playground. I hadn't brought a jacket. Astonishingly, neither had the moto drivers. We waited an hour or so in the rain to the eery sounds of cracking thunder and a funeral going on two fields over before it eased a little and we decided to push on. It was a mistake: the rain surged again and we crawled through the sinking mud and skated across the surface water. I was absolutely terrified. Several times we almost spun out but my driver was both slow on the road and quick to respond. Lewis' driver was going much faster but seemed more experienced on wet roads.
Eventually the rain did clear and we arrived at Sa Em for breakfast almost dry. As we slurped our fishy noodle soup we watched baby monkeys play in the yard. We headed on and finally arrived at the bottom of the mountain where we paid our entrance fee and swapped to better motorbikes more able to handle the 35 percent gradients and rough terrain on the way up. By better motorbikes I don't mean something sensible like dirt bikes or even particularly off-raod capable scooters; no, we upgraded from a 100cc bike to a 125cc bike with a home made cooling system. Madness.
The road was apalling. Smooth slabs of concrete at ridiculous gradients, pools of mud, jutting rock obstacle courses--you name, it was there. It was great fun, but I wonder about the half life of those bikes going, as they do, up and down the road several times a day. After thirty minutes of getting uncomfortably intimate with my driver I was relieved to get off and head to the temple. From the stairs up to the temple you can see the access road from the Thai side of the border. Cambodia agreed to a day-pass only border crossing for Thais to reach the temple and now this is the easiest way to get there. The Thai government built a super-highway all the way to the bottom of the steps, tried to close down the Cambodian market there and are systematically edging their border closer and closer to the temple. Compared to the route we took Thai access is a cake walk. We knew this when we left Siem Reap but preferred to pay our money to poor Cambodian locals than to rich Thai tour operators.
Prasat Preah Vihear is a quite breathtaking mountain top temple. It's not particularly dilapidated, neither is it particulalry restored; just a crumbly structure on a hillside. The most breathtaking element is the view: all the way to the horizon, on one side across Cambodia, on the other across Thailand. Travel makes places seem small, but the view from Prasat Preah Vihear reveals the vastness of the lanscape. The odd flat top mountain emerges from the jungle, but it's otherwise flat to the horizon.
About the time of Pol Pot's death Hun Sen (still Prime Minister of Cambodia) ordered an attack on Anlong Veng to root out the Khmer Rouge once and for all. After the attack the remaining Khmer Rouge guerillas retreated to Preah Vihear province and drew the governement soldiers to Prasat Preah Vihear for their last stand. From Anlong Veng to Preah Vihear the areas beyond thirty metres from the road are still heavily mined. SOme areas, closer to the temple, have been part of a demining programme and the fire damage to the trees is still visible from the slash and burn defoliation required to make the area accessible to demining crews. A new crop of undergrowth has emerged, lush and green and just above knee height. With so few people left to claim the cleared land it is slowly being reclaimed by the jubgle. At the temple itself reminders of the last Khmer Rouge war remain in the form of a couple of bunkers and a disabled piece of artilliary. Perhaps a metre either side of the stairway down to the Thai accessway (the Thai get to enter via the main staircase, from Cambodia you enter from the side at the top of the staircase) are signs indicating that the jungle beyond that point is still not completely demined.
On our way to the Thai border we completed the Anlong Veng Khmer ROuge tour. We drove past Ta Mok's house and caught a fleeting glimpse; we peered across the marshes in the general direction of Pol Pot's house and we glanced casually at the grey branch-pillars that mark the remains of the building where the Khmer Rouge tried Pol Pot for the betrayal of Son Sen. Responsible for the slaughter, starvation and pestilence which killed somehing like 2-3 million of his own people the only trial Pol Pot would ever endure in his lifetime was at the hands of his own second for the purging of the former director of Tuol Sleng prison. He was then held by the Khmer Rouge until his death, apparently caused by the shock of the news (which he, like everyone else, learnt from the TV) that the Khmer ROuge had had agreed to hand him over to the goverment for formal trial for crimes against humanity. Not five minutes by moto from the Thai border is the site where his body was cremated on a pile of old tyres and rubbish. Nowadays there is a corregated iron roof grave with a small shrine, testament to the fact that he has surviving family, friends and supporters. A plain blue sign announces the last resting place of Pol Pot and a few minutes is alll that is really required to soak up the minimal ambience.
Onward to Thailand we went. We managed to catch a ride with some Thai doctors who do some kind of volunteer work in Cambodia and were returning to Si Saket. We spent a night in Si Saket, feasting on Chicken-on-a-Stick in the rambling SUnday market, and got a train the next morning to Bangkok. SInce Ben, Jen and Ossie had already been there a few days Ben and Jen departed a couple of days later for the south, ending our two month, two country alliance. Both Lewis and I spent a day each with Bangkok Belly, although I suspect it was actually the soup we ate in Sa Em that caused it. Lewis, Ossie and I booked Laos visa and tried to contact our friend Sarah who we are supposed to visit in Thailand but to no avail. Since we will be back in Thailand after finishing in Laos we decided to move on and try and catch her when we get back.
The reason we will be returning to Bangkok after Laos rather than going on to CHina as planned is lack of funds. No, we are not giving up, merely rearranging our achedule. We will now return to Korea for about four weeks over the summer schooo period to try and get sufficiemnt funds behind us to finish the trip. Also due to lack of funds both India and Europe are on the chopping block, but I suspect the result will be that we still go to India but avaoid Europe by flying direct from Turkey to the UK. SO we intend to lose a month in Laos, return to Bangkok to arrange jobs in and flights to Korea and after earning our bank we will once again take a slow boat to China, this time hopefully to somewhere further south so we can cover the south and west of CHina before crossing to Nepal.
Having gotten our Laos visa we booked an overnight sleeper train to Nong Khai where we breakfasted before heading to the border. It was a short and fairly smooth border crossing differeing from previous crossings only in that it was much busier and more officious. A couple of hours later we were in Ventiane, Laos' chilled out capital, chilling on the waterfront eating barbequed meats of various kinds and slurping Beer Laos, our packs safely checked into a decent budget motel. Sorted!
It's been difficult to get to an internet cafe and get anything done due to time constraints, isolation and expensive unreliable connections. Also, without the laptop to resize our photos we haven't been able to get any up. On these slow connections it would take too long at full size, but we haven't yet located any windows friendly software to enable us to resize more than one photo at a time. I'm working on that now, I've just installed winxp powertools app imageresizer which is resizing my angkor wat photos as we speak! Yay!
From Phnom Penh we headed to Kratie (May 11) by bus just to break the journey to Ban Lung. We left early the next morning in a share taxi which we expected to take about six hours. It took three and a half hours including lunch and a flat tyre. The driver attacked washboard roads, gravel, debris, decrepit plank bridges and gaping holes with reckless abandon. I surrendered my prime seat in the front just to avoid having to look. The original driver had swapped out no more than five minutes from town so it wasn't our man's car, and it became evident when we reached Ban Lung and he unloaded our packs, shook hands, and then immediately got back in the car and started back for Kratie why he had been in such a hurry. We were happy to arrive three hours early but happier to arrive at all.
Ban Lung is the not-so metropolitan capital of Ratanakiri Province, which is home to the largest protected area in Cambodia--Veracheay National Park. It is the emerging ecotourism centre of the country and has a couple of fairly plush guesthouses and several more fairly grubby ones. Power is flaky and generally off between 6pm and 8-10am; our guesthouse (Tribal Hotel) had a generator which they kindly ran from 6pmil until about 6am but it didn't always last the night either. Air con cost $5 extra but would inevitably disappear for some if not all of the night so it was an outright rip off. The staf were friendly if a little lax and forgetful and the place was at a discount as soon as Lewis dropped the name of a family friend/nephew in Kratie who had recommended it to us.
After talking to a local tour guide about jungle treks through the national park we cleaned ourselves up and headed out to gather comparative quotes. Not a great success:since there were no tour offices we tried guesthouses, which usually run tours themselves, and found only one willing to step up to the challenge. Alas he clearly had no idea about the park, didn't regulalry run such tours and was evidently making promises withoutany real information. After that we headed out to a local restuarant where we had 'Volcano'for dinner. It's a bit like Korean Barbeque: you get a portable gas range on your table with a metal grill-plate over the top. Grease the plate with pork fat, dip your meat and veg into the lime/soy sauce and flame it up. Awesome! At seven-ish we headed back to Tribal Hotel and talked turkey with Mr Sitha. Sitha clearly knew his shit back to front, his English was excellent and he came across very well. We all agreed that his more expensive (but heavily reduced) quote was more appealing than the other guy's much cheaper but likely shambles of a tour. We agreed to leave for the jungle the day after next (Sunday 14 May).
The next day (Saturday) we headed to the market to pick up small gifts for the folks of the minority village we were to stay at. Books, toys and trinkets for kids, cake and beads for the women and cigarettes for the men. In the afternoon we hired one moto and did pillion trips back and forth to Boem Yeak Loam, a crater lake of no small water. The lake is so large and perfectly round that some say it was formed by a meteor, but it is more generally accepted that it was once a large volcano. It's a lovely place, surrounded by trees and jungle, somewhat muddy like Lake Wiritoa near Wanganui, and very, very deep. The water was almost bath temperature but still refreashing so we splashed around for a while and gave up silly thoughts of walking around the lake. Dinner at Tribal was a raucus affair involving football, laptoppery and fish n chips. The fish n chips were the best I've had since leaving New Zealand and Lewis'Pork Cream Tarragon Sauce with Fries was the envy of all.
So the next day, bright and early, we were picked up by Sitha, six of us in his rented Camry, and went via the market to get more convincing sized bags for Lewis and I. The problem for all except Ossie was that while our packs are far too large for a three day jungle hike our day-packs are far too small. Ben and Jen's were a little larger than ours so the stuck it out and strapped the hammocks to the outside of their packs. Ossie, who didn't have a day pack at all, had bought one the day before. Lewis and I got up, tried to jam our single change of clothes, two 1.5l bottles of water, hammock and blanket into our silly-small bags and realised we would need to upgrade. A quick trip to the market supplied two shit-as-you-like rip-off bags (North Farce and Low Alpine) for about five bucks each. No sweat! Another stop at Sithas place to pick-up his flip-flops (i,e, jandals) and his father, who was to drive the car back from the drop off point. Now we had seven in the car: the driver, two in the front passenger's seat and three whities and one scrawny Cambodian in the back. We were very close friends by the time we got to the village where we swapped the car and Sithas father for a local guide from the village. Mr Ngai was a hard-as-nails little geezer with a short tubby dog who never stopped smiling. The whole time in the jungle the dog ran circles around us, occasionally returning to check in, and whenever we stopped for lunch or for the night he did nothing but sleep like the dead until we left again. As for Mr Ngai, he was tireless, drunk little water and carried all his gear and some of ours in an open-top woven basket-backpack on his back. He said very little but showed us a great deal.
We trekked through new farmland (product of slash and burn) for a bit and Mr Ngai gather long stright lenghts of bamboo and cut walking sticks for us. Soon we face a serious uphill hike in direct sunlight with no cover. The redness of the dirt and the sparseness of the scrub and burnt trees magnified the sense of heat. We struggled up and stopped in the shade of Mr Ngai's hut at the top. The freshly cleared hillwas to be his families new farm. As we sat there guzzling water Mr Ngai changed his small day-basket for a bigger, sturdier three-day-basket. There was a sudden CRACK and a small scream from Jen. She'd shifted her weight and the raised floor beam we were all sitting on had snapped under our combined burden. Poor Jen was mortified but it was soon discovered that the beam was thoroughly termite eaten and not in the best shape anyway.
Soon after this we entered the light forest at the edge of the jungle and things cooled down a little. We had water breaks evey hour or two but I had a camel pack (a water bladder with built in drinking tube to enable drinking on the go) so I kept fairly well hydrated. Lewis wasn't feeling well and by the end of the first day he was nauseous, vague and crampy. We put it down to dehydration and loss of salts through sweating and precscribed mega-salt on dinner.
Okay, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that my favourite past-time isn't trekking. I agreed to go on the damn trek because Lewis really wanted to go and he refused to leave me by myself for three days (even though the worst that could possibly happen to me at Tribal was that I might eat myself to death from their fine menu). I also agreed to go on the proviso that we work in a trip to the Chunchiet(Khmer minority) cemetary on the Tonle San (river). The first day was the biggest day and it was only really six hours so I was pleasantly surprised by how hard is wasn't. It was hot and sweaty and constant and at times quite boring (I'm no nature girl) but at no point did I really struggle. That first hill was the only really serious hill of the day and the only unbearably hot section of the trek. That said, the trek was enjoyable. Not the walking bit, that was just bearable, but some of the interesting information and sights along the way. We saw rake markshigh on tree trunks from the claws of brown bears, large millipded bowling around or curled up tighly in little spirals on the jungl;e floor, millions of very beautiful butterflies large and small, swarms of termites carpeting the ground, lizards, and, of course, jungley jungle. We tried wild lychees, tea bark, bitter-sweet snack bark, water from inside tree branches, sticky rice cooked in bamboo lengths and a most excellent stew of meat and veg. Mr Ngai brought along his crossbow but, alas, there was nothing to catch. The area of the park we were in is called the community jubgkle because it is home to a series of minority villages who control and use e territorial sections of it. It is fairly well hunted. To get to the realwilderness takes at least four days, just to get in.
The first night we stopped about three or four at a camp sit that the guys use fairly regularly. By campsite I mean the bare bones of a shelter and the remains of a fire. There is also a slow moving stream that provides a fairly stagnant watering hole in which we cooled off after the trek. The stream becomes more of a river in the wet season and the watering hole becomes an idyllic jungle pool. Hot and tired as we were it was close enough. The guides put the canvas over the bamboo skeleton of a shelter and strung tup he hammocks with their built in mosquito nets. What luxury! After dinner we sat around drinking rice wine (which tasted like rum) and talking, comparing our respective national traditions and the like. Most slept very well in the hammocls but I found them not so good for a bad back (although both Cambodians and VIetnamese swear they're very good for your back) and slept fairly brokenly.
We left fairly late the next day, perhaps 10am, as we had only three hours trekking that day to get to the minority village where we would stay the night. It was a fairly solid three hours with a bit more uphill this time and one bloody great never-ending sun-exposed hill at the end. We arrived at the village and were thrilled to discover that the chief was too busy sacrificing buffelo and getting pissed to formally receive us so we were allowed to head straight for the watering hole. We had been dreaming of this watering hole all day, especially since the one at the first night's camp had not been everything we'd hoped for. We were grubby and hot and looking forward to just soaking in a nice cool pool. Of course we were sking for the impossible. It iwas, after all, the dry season and this was an isolated tribal village. The watering hill was a dribble of warm water spurting from a bamboo pipe into a brown mosquito larvae ridden puddle. We arrived to find three village girls doing their washing and having their daily bath, complete with laundry powder, shampoo and soap. They emerged looking as clean as if they had bathed with Cleopatra but we had a hard time following suit. One at a time we showered under the bamboo outlet and reminded ourselves that we were lucky that there was water at all.
We were staying in the meeting house so we piled our gear in and hung wet clothes out to dry on the porch. WHile doing this poor Ben managed to fall through the floor boards of the stilted building. He was left hanging by one arm trying to scramble back up while dozens of children looked on in astonishment. The floor in the meeting house was fairly precarious, yet the local jumped and skipped over it as if it were concrete. Lunch consisted of sardine and tomato slop with rice. It was delicious and restored a fair amount of salt to our aching bodies as well.
The deputy chief turned up, quite inebriated and sat down for a chat. Since he couldn't speak English and we couldn't speak Khmer Sitha translated as he asked leading questions and talked a bit about his life. It turned out that he had fought with the Vietnamese against the Khmer Rouge and, like so many Cambodians of his age, had lost most of his brothers and sister to the Pol Pot Regime. Eventually the chief finally turned up and it was revealed why he had been off drinking at two in the afternoon when we had arrived. The night before he had had a very bad dream in which a village couple had killed and eaten their new born baby and in light of such a bad omen he had peformed a buffelo sacrifice for the meeting house (he felt sure that the problem was the meeting house) and broekn out the rice wine. He was a chuckling old geezer who said very little and even less that we could understand, and soon toddled off back to his party.
The lads pulled out the football (soccer ball, well technically it was actually a volleyball) Lewis had picked up at the market and had a bit of a kick around with the onlookers. At first only Sitha and the chief joined in, but one by one the curious bystanders rescued a stray kick and then stepped forward into the circle. It was good fun for all involved until one villager tried to turn it into a volleyball match instead, which nobody else seemed to want to play; that was the end of that!.
Dinner was fried dried beef, sliced cucumber and tomato, and rice. The meat was prepared by Sithas wif eand was most excellent. After dinner a jar of rice wine was brought out and the gifts were gathered together and distributed by Sitha. The rice wine was fairrly benign except for the method of drinking. They have a big jar, like knee high, with a big belly full of fermented rice mash and water. When your turn comes up you sit on the seating platform in front of the jug and start sucking for all your worth on the straw. The Server will take one cup of water and slowly pour it into the jar as you drink. When there is no liquid in the cup and the jar is level your done. If it were a matter of slurping it down in a couple of quick swigs it wouldn't be so bad, but the long painful process of drinking a cups worth through a straw leaves a kind of sickly, heavy feeling in your stomach. Since everyone else had been drinking the stuff all day they soon stumbled home leaving us warm and fuzzy and a little confused. We slept on the raised platform under mosquito nets that night listening to the cows snuffle and the pigs grunt as barrelled around, free range as you like.
The next morning we woke up with the cows and the chickens and the villagers heading out to the fields. The clothes we had hung out on the porch had been in danger of being eaten as soon as the cows came home so they had been moved up higher to a 'bald spot'in the roof. IN the morning when Ben put his pants on he made a shocking discovery. SOmething bit him. He whipped his hand back out of his pocket and swore a lot. He said when he squeezed it white stuff came out. After a fair bit of whining he finally realised he was still wearing his pants and whatever was in the pocklet was awfully close to the rest of his body. He asked Jen to remove the compromised pants but she wasn't going anywhere near them. Eventually he ripped them off himself and threw them on the ground. Lewis used a stick to pry open the pocket and usher out the world's smallest scorpion. As we all crowded around, more interested in the exotic scorpion than poor Ben's condition, Sitha strode over and mushed the scorpion into obscurity with his bejandalled foot. Not sure if he was going to drop to the floor foaming at the mouth any second Ben asked Sitha if he was going to die or not. Sitha claims to have been bitten by many a scorpion and reassured Ben that although it would hurt like hell for a bit it would cause no serious injury.
From the village we drove to a small Laos village on the Tonle San and grabbed a couple of outboard canoes for the trip to the cemetary. it was a nice day on the water, including a swim at a Chinese village, and the Tompuon cemetary was hanuting with its wooden effigies and elephant tusks. We returned to Ban Lung and the Tribal Hotel in the late afternnon and went our separate ways to freshen up. We met up later for another Volcano dinner, this time at Tribal with Sitha. It was a good night, I had many an interesting conversation with Sitha to add tothe many more we had had in the jungle. Lewis Sitha and I formed a warm friendship and Lewis and I agreed to put together a website for him the next day.
The next day we spent all day, except for a brief jaunt to a waterfall, working on the site. Lewis did basic set up using a blogspot at blogger.com and I wrote allthe text and by the end of the day when the slow-as-hell USD@-per-hour only-one-in-town internet cafe closed for the night we had all the text up but no photos added. We promised Sitha we would put them up when we reached Siem Reap where the internet is cheap, and that I did: you can see the result at www.jungletrek.blogspot.com
On Thursday 18 May we tried to leave for Kratie to get an onward bus to Siem Reap but encountered a large snag. Since the boot wasn't big enough for all five packs to fit in laying down Jen's pacl was perched on top with the boot chained shut over it. As it turns out the chaim wasn't all that: with all the debris and gaping holes in the road it broke and Jen's bag bounced off somewhere along the way. Alas, we didn't notice for a while that it was gone, so we had to drive up and down a fairly long stretch of road looking for it. As it got dark and started to rain we gave up and headed back to Ban Lung to file a police report and see what could be done. Tribal Hotel felt a bit like the Hotel California but we returned there anyway and stayed another two nights while Ben and Jen got together lists and police reports for their insurence claim. Of course the bag never turned up.
SO from Ban Lung to Kratie to Siem Reap. We;re staying at a place called Good Kind Guesthouse where the moto and tuk-tuk drivers play nine ball on the pool table at two thousand riel per person for the pot. Siem REap is a nice manageable city; by that I mean it's fairly easy to walk around. A couple of markets, a 'Bar Street', a river with several bridges. The roads are dusty and red and the footpaths are decrepit but in the throbbing tourist heart of the city--Bar Street--it's all bright lights and grand terraces.
Of course the main attraction here is ANgkor Archaeological Park--AngkorWat. On Tuesday Lewis and I dragged our weary bones into a Tuk-Tuk at 6am and bounced our way north to the soul of Cambodia. It's on the flag, it's the National Beer, the same picture hangs in every reception area, every restaurant, every shop. Angkor is very much the symbol of Cambodia,both for its historical and cultural meaning and for its resilience through weather, time and the atrocities of war. Angkor has been in a variety of hands through the course of history, but now its back in Cambodian hands and the focus of much pride and patriotism.
It is also the focus of a great deal of money. Tourist money, specifically. At twenty dollars a day it's an expensive ticketb by Cambodian standards, but truely a bargain for tourists. The park is huge with dozens of ruins, forest, jungle, monkeys, elephants and picturesque waterways. Apparently now that it is earning so much money the specialists formerly populating the Angkor Conservation offices have been steadily replaced with politicians keen to get their share. Nasty nasty.
We spent the whol day there, ~6:30-6:30, wandering, pausing, talking, listening. Ben, Jenny and Ossie went separately at the more civilised hour of 8am so it was just the two of us and it made a very nice change. We did things at our own pace and in our own way and took in as much as we could and it turned out to be the best day I've had in South East Asia.
We started at Bayon (in the Angkor Thom complex), a maze of a temple from whence all the photos of big stone faces originate. Buddhas draped in orange cloth were tucked into alcoves and revered with gold dangley things and incense. Old lady monks sat in the morning sun warming their bald heads. Out the front row ater row of stone slabs, giant puzzle pieces waiting for a home, lay in front of the temple neatly. We wandered around Angkor THom. taking in the striking Terrace of the Elephants and clambering up the Phimeanakas, the royal temple where the King slept with a serpent-woman every night to prevent disaster from being visited upon the Kingdom. We then headed to Preah Kahn, a lovely monastic complex with many dark passages and collapsed wings and the smell of old old stone permeating everything. I spent a bit of time here watching a squadron of large blue-black ants trooping around in tight formation. Ants are cool. Next was Neak Pean, and island currently in the middle of a struggling lawn where surrounding trees craeated the kind of shady spots that you absolutely must sit down in. After that we headed to Ta Som, a small temple where every single Apsara has a different pose, a different expression and, in fact, entirely different features. East Mebon was surrounded by jingle and had large impressive elephants at each of the four corners. Here we stopped and listened to the jungle and Lewis saw a snake. I thought I heard a bear or a tiger, but perhaps it was a buffelo or an old man playing a strange instrument. We gave water to the kids and bought a trinket off the old man sheltering from the midday sun in a doorway. Pre Rup was tall and imposing and had furnace rooms and cows grazing around the edges. Ta Prohm was enchanting, full of wooden causeways, tumbledown towers and probing tree roots. It was probably the most enjoyable of the temples that day. As we stood outside looking at the amzing frieze near the rear door we heard rain approaching. When it comes to jungle you can quite clearly hear the wind and rain as it moves. And boy does it move. Asmall rainstorm flew overhead and was off in the distance before anyone could pul, an umbrella.
We finished the day at the King of Temples: Angkor Wat. So staggering is the scale and the feeling that it is hard to describe. Huge stone hallways, ompossibly steep staircases, fine carving, looming towers and incredible bas-reliefs. It was late when we got there and we were awaiting sunset, so we failed to walk around the outside of the first level, thereby missing the most famous bas-reliefs on the exterior walls. Still it was breathtaking, and as we sat out on a ledge onthe top floor we thought we were on top of the world. Alas Nagkor Wat closes before the sunset and the guards are firm. Imagine fifty (asian mostly) tourists trying to descend down a precarious staircase after dusk. Not a good idea. SO while said fifty tourists queued like lemmings and descended one by one along the berailed far edge of one starcase I lowered myself step by step--bum, feet, bum, feet--by another. We sat at the entrance under an imposing naga head drinking beer and feeling quite satisfied.
Yesterday we went to the Land Mine Museum which was both heart-breaking and inspiring. Aki Ra does such amazing work finding and disarming mines and bombs, and still manages to adopt young victims ten at a time, send them to school, and arrange them overseas sponsors to pay for their university tuition. What a guy. It's nice to know there are people like that out there.
So tomorrow we head for Anlong Veng, the final resting place of Pol Pot. Ossie, Ben and Jenny have already left for and arrived in Bangkok, so we will meet them there. At Anlong Veng we intend to make a day trip over to the mountaon top temple of Prasat Preah Vihear which is easily reached from the Thai side via a superhighway made especially for the purpose, but a bit of a pilgramage from the Cambodian side. Apparently arrival from the Cambodian side prompts such shock and bewilderment from the guards they they often forget to charge the $5 entranace fee! After that it's off over the border to Thailand: wheee!
Walking around Phnom Penh inevitably exposes you to the sales pitches of tuk-tuk drivers. This is nothing new for Asia. What is jarring though is the cries of "Hey lady; you go Killing Fields, shooting range!" At the shooting range it is possible to fire all manner of weapons including Ak-47s and, wait for it, hand grenades. The combo tour of the killing fields and the shooting range produces the kind of juxtaposition that simultaneously sickens and fascinates me. Using our better judgement we decided to combine the Killing Fields with Toul Sleng (the Genocide Museum) instead.
A trip to the Killing Fields is not exactly a fun filled day, and the stay started of suitably macabre. As we were trying to arrange a tuk-tuk to take us to Toul Sleng and the Killing Fields respectively we noticed a small herd of sheep huddled on the side of the road, panting in the heat and clearly suffereing terribly for lack of food and water. They possibly qualify as the most miserable critters I have seen in Asia. Some were laying in the gutter, others were leaning against each other for support. Jen and I both looked around for a container in which to give them the dregs of our bottled water, our hearts bleeding in spite of the knowledge that they were doomed to furnish that night's mutton korma at the restaurant we had patronised the night before. Life is hard and the food chain is something I don't usually interfere with, but was it really necessary for dinner to die in the gutter? Perhaps the knife would be no less cruel but there we were, crying over spilt sheep. Alas there was nothing handy and the tuk-tuk soon whisked us off toward the farm where thousands of other sacrifical lambs were prepared for the slaughter.
It's dramatic, I know, and the Khmer Rouge killings were not unprecedented nor even an extremity in the recent history of the world. The thing many people don't seem to get is that it's not a competition. People remark about greater atrocity or numerically superior genocides but it's a difference of degree not of kind. While being wary of the possibilty of a garish carnival sideshow atmosphere we went anyway as a show of respect for the dead and ain order to make real the truism that history texts and made-for-TV documentaries have created.
We made the right choice.
Toul Sleng was once a school but under the Khmer Rouge it became S-21, a prison complex for the interrogation of enemies of the regime. The complex was surrounded by heavy, electric, barbed wire. The classrooms were converted into cells using roughly constructed brick or wood walls. Interrogation cells were also installed and the windows were barred. Estimates put the prisoner count between its creation in 1975 to its abandonment in 1979 at between ten and seventeen thousand. At least two thousand were children. As the Vietnamese closed in on Toul Sleng during the liberation of Phnom Penh in 1979 the last fourteen prisoners to be executed by S-21 were tortured to death. Of all the prisoners to be detained in Toul Sleng only seven survived.
As a museum Toul Sleng is a chilling memorial. The remains of the last fourteen bodies have been interred in the courtyard and photos of the bodies as they were discovered are hung in the interrogation rooms. It is less a museum and more a shrine: very little has been changed except to preserve what remained. Floors are kept swept but the blood stains have not been removed. The interrogation cells are bare except for the cot and a few tools that were found in them. Frames have been added to prevent the brick cells from collapsing. There has been very little sprucing up or sanitising.
The bulk of the exhibit, other than the structures themselves, are the thousands of meticulously documented victims. The Khmer Rouge took mugshots and wrote bios and recorded faithfully the false confessions of every single prisoner. Wandering through classrooms scanning endless rows of haunted/haunting faces is a gruelling experience. What is most stiking is the breadth and depth of emotion frozen on the now immortalised faces. Suspicion, fear, shock, horror, confusion, incomprehension, exhaustion, hate, anger, resolve, defiance and even amusement. What is most shocking is the age of many of the victims. Thorough as you like the Khmer Rouge rounded up whole families and executed them to avoid leaving behind vengeful relatives.
Of course none of this is news to anyone, but it's in the seeing that things hit home. Some call it reification, some call it realisation; either way it involves making the abstract concrete. Similarly, the Killing Fields themselves are just a collection of shallow pits until you have been to the museum. Kids sat under shady trees trying to get paid to have their photo taken, a large gecko stalked a lost butterfly in the bone pagoda, roosting chickens were defended by agressive roosters and a lone farmer drove a herd of cows through a barren field. Amidst all this perhaps ten foreigners wandered through a maze of mass graves wondering what to make of them. One pit had filled with murky water and some kind of strong wind had come along and blown all the tall grasses at the edges forward into the water, all pointing toward the centre. They lay there, still green but the seeds were all rotting in the stagnant water. For me it was a poignant image, more so than many of the arty, tasteless photographic exhibitions created by well-meaning foreigners and on display back at the museum. I considered taking a photogarph myself, but it seemed somehow inappropriate.
Despite continous complaining by Lewis that we were staying in too many tourist nmeccas throughout SE Asia he managed to steer us into the heart of tourist darkness on a skanky ond. Actually our motel is interesting: no air-con at all, cheap rooms, no extras, just a bunch of young chaps who think they're the the height of young Cambodian urbaness. I've not seen a single staff member over 25mat this place. Free pool table, awesome sunsets across the lack, medoacre food and naff western hip-hop on repeat all day and night. It's nuts. Within five minutes of us arriving the 'boss' had offered to sell us weed and we were sitting watching aforementioned sunset avec beers whilst the staff lazed in hammocks. THEY"RE FRIENDLY guys, but they get a bit shirty if you ask them to do anything which in anyway resembles their job. Loving it!
They say the sunsets from the rooftop restaurant/bar at Mealy CHanda are supurb and they are right. The foodis also excellent. The Saraman (a subtle beef and peanut curry) is absolutely to die for. There is a young chap here who is much younger than he looks, a general dogs body, who broke out his English picture dictionary and swapped English for Khmer with us over dinner the first night. The staff are friendly and helpful, the rooms are basic and cheap. Fans are the order of the day and while they've got nothing on air-vcon they are still infinitly better than braving the night heat.
Real life intrudes again upon catchup: it's 7:45pm and Lewis just brought me a big plate of chips for dinner. The staff here think I am mad but keep bringing me beers nayway
The road to the national park is short and fairly bumpy, but the road to the Hill Station inside the park is approximately 30 kms of sheer madness. THERE IS A GENTleman's agreement that you only go up before midday and you only come down after 2. We wondered about that gap between 12 ANd 2 during which nobody seems to be doing anything: it's because it takes an hour and a half to get up the bloody road. At some point in its past, probably whileit was a French Hill Station and getaway, the road was sealed, but the seal has degraded and the dirt beneath the seal has degraded and the whole thing is just a bloody great mess. It makes for a romping great pick-up ride thoug: siting on Asian arse deep padded seats which have seen infinitely better days, dodging thorned bushes and giant pre-historic ferns and just generally trying to stay on!
The hill station itself is a ghost town. Rambling French villas (of the sprawling not towering kind) lay gutted and empty with fluorescent orange fungus adorning the walls like paint. Shells of churches and casinos and grandiose hotels litter the dry, craggy terrain. Bullet holes and rubble describe the fate of the vast French paradise as the Khmer Rouge successively fought the french and the Vietnamese here. Ben claimed to have seen spiders like dinner plates, but no-one else can verify ther existance. The Lonely Pranet tells of a three legged tiger and the rangers at the ranger station where we stay talk about logger and poacher gangs fighting for control of the less accessible areas.
After cooling down at a waterfall which must reach significant proportions during the rainy season we get a fire going and begin to prepare the supplies we brought with us from Kampot. The locals look on and laugh as we attempt to skewer and grill our way to heaven. As our beef and pork chucks char and remain raw in their little cages their frogs cook quickly in their split-stick skewers. After the frogs but before the feast ominous thunder and lightening turn into a downpour. As we watch the fire steadi;ly get washe3d away two poles tuen up with photosof a twister at sea that they spotted in the twilight from the ex-motel's balcony. The locals settle down to cards as we stir fry our marinated pork-beef concoction and shareit with the poles who have been existing on bread and peanut butter for weeks. Ghost stories petter out and become bullshit stories as the generator switches of, the locals head for bed and what remains of the fre gets stoked high by the avid pick-up driver.
The trip doen the road the next day was far worse than the trip up in the aftermath of the rain. It takes two gruelling hours.
From Bokor we headed to Kep, a ghost-beach-resort also of French origin. After a fantastic dinner and sunset we returned to Kampot in the dark only to find the rickety bridge that the buses don't cross had collapsed. The detour back to the national highway from Phnom Penh to Kampot is a thrilling windswept trip through the darkness of Cmabodian countryside at night. What a blast!
As expected Cambodia is far less developed than Vietnam. AIr con is always twice the price, no hot water (which you don't need anyway), frequent power cuts and far less traffic.
Mucked around trying to arrange jeeps to Kampot, the souther city we had intended to head to from the border but had decided was easier to get to from Phnom Penh. Jeeps not easy or cheap from here so headiong by bus to Kampot tomorrow. Phoned a motel there which does 4WDtour of the national park (Bokor) which we want to go to but they only use the 4WD on tours. However, they do hire our their pick-up so we're heading to Mealy Chenda Hotel to hire their ute and driver. As it happens they are a sister motel the one we have here so we even get a minibus pick up from the bus station.
The tour began at 7:50am when a cyclo turned up to pick up our packs. I had been instructed, while booking the tour the night before, that we were to put the gear on the cyclo and follow it on foot to the ferry terminal. When I relayed this information to my compatrriots much discussion had ensued.Were there to be 5 cylos, and if so why couldn't we ride on the vehicles with our packs? Could one cyclo possibly carry all five packs in one go? How would we keep up wioth the cyclo/s as it/they raced off into the distance with all our worldly possessions?
As soon as the (one) cyclo appeared it all became very clear. The first thing that became clear was that we would not be alone on the boat.The second thing that became clear was that we would have no trouble keeping yp with the cyclo driver as he peddled around fifteen large backpacks to the terminal all by himself. As we were contemplating such a feat we heard yelliunng and whistling from down the street and thus meet our guide and the rest of the tour group. Two abreast we marched around a corner and down to the waterfront in a very orderly fashion indeed. CHau DOc residents, had they been paying any attention at all, might have been astonished and or amused to see fourteen tourists and one small Vietnamese girl rolling down the street behind the most heavily laden cyclo in all of Asia. And cyclos do get pretty laden.
The guide, perhaps in her early twenties, was bright, lively and informative. Although full of good humour she clearly took her job very seriously and spent much of the trip to the border fiulling out paperwork in multiples I couldn't even begin to fathom.
We stopped in at a fish farm and a Khmer village in order to fulfill the 'tour' aspect of the trip. The fish factory was little more than a barn on stilts with holes cxhopped in the floorboards but it certainly seemed to be producing fish in astounding quantities. The guide threw several handfuls of feed down a few holes and the water immediately became a thrashing, churning fury of fins and tails. In the background a diesal generator grumbled and shool the floorboards as it turned rank smelling mash into rank smelling fish food.
The Khmer village had that sideshow feel that minority villages in Vietnam always seem to acquire. Paraded as freaks to the tourist but essentially given fuck all in return for having dozens of people a day invade their home and inspect their lifestyle the villages basically serve to illustrate all the reasons why the government wants to Vietnamise all the minorities. Dirty, under-developed, full of cruse, antiquated or just plain barbaric customs these people represent everything that the new Vietnam is not. The Khmer in Vietnam, along with what remains of the Cham people (who built Indianised ruins similar to but on a much smaller scale than Angkor Wat in Cambodia), have been pushed south and have all, somewhat curiously, converted to Islam. Perhaps due to the fish famrs or perhaps due to the tourist buying their amazing silk scarves and shaewls, much of the village looked fairly prosperous and the Mosque was a picture of healthy financial contribution.
Sorry to interrupt, but here in the current world of the internet cafe where I am currently stationed a small gecko has just chased down and devoured a large dragonfly apparently lacking in any kind of self-preservation instinct. WQhen the dance began I was sure that the gecko was dreaming but, as it turns out, it's not that difficult to catch a flying insect that doesn't really need to be anywhere near you, the wall bound predator. Further, the gecko didn't just wait silently for the dragonfly to foolishly land near him (or her), he ran frantically back and forth across the wall mirroring the dragonflies erratic flight pattern until the stupid bug just kind of flew into his mouth. Mesmerism? Well maybe.
SO anyway, the trip to the border, in this little long boat weighed down by fourteen big foreigners and all their gear, took a good couple of hours and offered some of the best scenery I've seen yet. The Mekong Delta is now my A1 favourite place in the world, and the boat trip was better than the bus trip because, well, we were on a boat. SO we'd seen the roadside view and now we got the view from the water. Rice factories spilled down the bank and into the water so the surface was littered with little yellow specks. Dense towns turned into dense villages, wooden shanties into bamboo, thatched huts. The river is wide and sustaining and all the reasons wall the major ancient civilisations flourished along the banks and in the deltas of mighty rivers were laid out before us. In Europe resources were plenty and folks got by on subsitance for a very long time, but many of the early civilisations--in mesopotamia, in Egypt, and along the mighty Mekong throughout CHina, Vietnam and Cambodia--found limited fertility outside of the river region. ANd them came irrigation. The thing about irrigation is that it rewquire centralised goverment and infrastructure on a massive scale. Thus ther first big cities and onwards to the first big Empires. In the delta today you can still see locals banding together to support, supplement and ultimately survive.
Another interruption: How many Cambodian women does it take to open a carton of cigarettes? Three apparently. One to fail to open the ends. A seconf to fail to open using the easy-open tear strip round the middle and a third to provide a pair of scissor which the first two struggled to utilise effectively. ANd two manky ginger cats which were in mortal fear of being patted by the strange white lady standing by.
At the border itself we fourteen disembarked and had lunch while the guide spent two hours negotiate\ing immigration on our behalf. The local kids know a good deal when they see one and milled around trying to sell amateur massages and clean up left-overs and generally be friendly and beguiling. From the russians (who had complained that the boat was too budget because it lacked air-con and other such luxuries) they got food, from us they got jokes, games, a soft ball and Ossies manky sweatband. All were happy and when we dragged our packs through the not-very-intimidating customs they followed along, lobbing passes and rescuing the ball from the mighty Mekong where necessary.
Every time I hit the shift key it get stuck, which is very annoying because it effectively puts the caps lock on. More annoyingly shift-backspace calls the help file while I'm in the middle of typing. Further, the keyboard drawer is unstable and as I type the desk rattles and makes it seem that I am quite frantic.
We then transferred to a different boat. We had originally been given instructions for the five of us to board a blue and white boat while the others split intp similarly small groups and boarded various boatsof their own. Rumours led us to believe these would be speed boats which would race us to Cambodan immigration and then onto Nek Luong, the Cambodian ferry terminal in Phnom Penh, at great speed. Alas something came up, as it always does in Asia, and we got added to a different tour that involved a large steel converted grain barge which was essentially a great big oven meandering slowely up the Mekong. The RUSSIANS WERE NOT AMUSED. There goes the shift key agaon.
The Cambodian end of the cruise was similarly amazing but for very different reasons. Whilst the VIETNAMESE side was incredibly well populated and utilised the Cambodian side was nigh on empty. The water was an amazing colour and clean as you like, and the banks were vast plains punctuated by occasional farms and villages. Kids herding cows waved on the horizons as did folks washing/bathing/swimming in the river. Long stretches of scrubby banks made it seem like the middle of absolutely nowhere.
At Nek Luong we transferred to a bus at which point the poor bus-boy tried to seat the most obnoxious of the russian girls on the back seat with us. Just as I was about to calmly point out the seat was actually taken by Lewis, currently overseeing the loading of our packs onto the bus, the precious russian princess spat out: "no, I can't sit next to them, I don't know them!" She then rudely demanded that paying Cambodian customers be shifted arouns such that she could sit next to her boyfriend and her silly friend be aloowd the same. As we mumbled our astonished disapproval at her pampered expectations two young Cambodian girls in front of us twigged on and started giggling uncontrollibly.
Despite the notoriously rocky road (which wasn't that bad) and the air in the break disappearing and causing a bus change just ten minutes from town we eventually made it to Phnom Penh, checked into a motel and prepared for our first real day in Cambodia.
Back to three our heroes now brave the land of the lotus eaters: the lazy Laos People's Democratic Republic 20060602-present.
In which the now five, intrepid exlorers drink their way southward through Vietnam to CHau Doc, just short of the Vinh Xuong land border with Cambodia 20060405-20060501.
In which three intrepid exlorers set out upon an overland journey from South Korea to the British Isles and safely reach the Vietnamese border. 20060131-20060405.
...liminil...
