Cambodia: Not Enough Time... Again

When Colleen and I first started seriously talking about this trip, one of our first considerations was deciding how to approach it. Would it be a trip with fewer destinations that we would visit extensively, or would we try to pack in as many destinations as possible, spending less time at each. Ultimately we chose the latter. We both liked the idea of seeing as much of the world as possible, but in the end, I think it had more to do with an inability to cut anything out. We are definitely happy with our decision; we’ve seen and done loads of amazing things in the time we’ve been travelling, and we’ve been able to cross several items off our respective bucket lists. However, there are drawbacks to trying to pack in as much as you can. You end up spending a large portion of your time travelling from one place to the next which can be aggravating, uncomfortable and tiresome, but more importantly, time spent at any destination tends to be short as there is always the next destination to get to. This makes it difficult to really get to know a place as that takes time. A perfect illustration of these drawbacks would be our time in Cambodia.



Our Cambodian visit starts in Laos where we had just spent 4 days relaxing in a small thatch roof bungalow on an island in The Mekong river, maybe the most idyllic place on earth. I could have stayed for a month, but as usual there was the next place to get to, in this case Cambodia, first Phnom Penh, then Siem Reap (Angkor). We didn’t have much time to give to Cambodia, but decided that we just weren’t willing to give up a chance to see Phnom Pennh and the ancient temples at Angkor, so we gave ourselves a week at most to see as much as we could. The next few days went something like this.


Pnom Penh street



We left our riverside paradise in Laos in the early hours for a longboat ride up river to the village where we were meant to catch the bus to Phnom Penh. The bus was late of course, so a few hours were spent waiting on the side of a dusty road, wilting in the midmorning heat. I spent as much of my remaining Kip (Laotian currency) as I could on snacks for the ride, and exchanged the rest for Riels (Cambodian currency) at a ridiculously unfair rate (rates get worse the closer you are to a border). The bus finally came and we took a short ride to the border where we got off, collected all our gear, qued up at the Lao border post to be stamped out of Laos, then walked up the road to the Cambodian border post where we paid three separate bribes for the privilege of being stamped into Cambodia (they were only a couple of dollars each, but still...). By the time all of the border formalities were done, it was lunchtime, so we had some awful fried noodles and a lukewarm beer at a roadside stand in no man’s land between the Lao and Cambodian border posts, and waited for the bus that would take us from the border to Phnom Penh. When the bus finally arrived, it was overbooked, so small folding chairs were placed in the aisle for those unlucky enough not to have grabbed seats early. The 10 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh was crowded, hot, uncomfortable and loud, but we finally arrived in Phnom Penh around 11 pm. I say Phnom Penh, but it was really somewhere on the outskirts of town. Turns out the bus driver was in cahoots with the taxis. He let us off in the middle of nowhere, where the taxi drivers are waiting to charge an outrageous price for a 5 minute ride into town. We were too tired to argue, and it was late so we grabbed a taxi with a guy we had met on the bus and headed for the backpacker ghetto where we found a moderately clean room with in a moderately dingy hotel in a moderately seedy neighbourhood.

Cheong Ek Killing Field Memorial

We only had only given ourselves one day to spend in Phnom Penh, so early the next morning, we hired a tuk tuk driver to drive us around town for the day so we could catch the sights. First, we drove out to the Cheong Ek Killing fields, probably the best known of the sites where the Khmer Rouge regime perpetrated their genocide. We spent about an hour there, then rushed back into town to another genocide memorial, the Tuol Sleng prison, where the Khmer Rouge held and tortured people it deemed a threat. Our driver let us off in the centre of town after that, and we rounded out the day with a walk around town, some book shopping, a close encounter with an elephant, lunch on the main drag overlooking the Tonle Sap river, several close encounters with local traffic, and sunset drinks at a rooftop bar while watching the movie “The Killing Fields”.

Siem Reap

The next morning, we were up early for a tuk tuk ride to the bus station and another bus ride to Siem Reap. Only 6 hours this time, but every bit as uncomfortable. We were surprised to find someone waiting for us in Siem Reap with a sign with my name on it. Turns out our hotel in Phnom Penh had sold our name to a tuk tuk driver in Siem Reap so he could try to make some money off us, an enterprising if somewhat devious scheme. We spent an hour or so checking out several hotels before deciding on a nondescript hotel a little ways off the main strip. Siem Reap itself wasn’t that interesting. Like so many other towns we’ve been to in Southeast Asia, it was set up to cater to tourists; hotels and bad food, shops selling curios and souvenirs on every corner, and drunken tourists outnumbering Cambodians 3 to 1. The only reason to go there is that it is the gateway to the temples of Angkor. There are over 1000 temples in the Angkor region spread over 400 square kilometers, so it was impossible for us to see all of them, but we did our best. We rented ancient bicycles from our hotel (mine had a basket and a bell) and spent the next three days exploring as many of the ruins as we could fit in. I lost count, but I think we saw something like 15 or 20 temples, and we must have covered at least 75 kilometers on our bikes. Highlights included sunrise at the Bayon temple, and the jungle growing out of the ruins at the Ta Promh temple (think Indiana Jones). Lowlights included explosive diarrhea from a bottle of dodgy water we got from a roadside stand, and sore bums from all the bike rides.



Sunrise at Bayon

Our temple visits out of the way, it was time to move on, this time Bangkok. So, on the morning of our sixth day in Cambodia, we got up early for yet another long bus ride. There was a little excitement when a half our into the ride I realized we had forgotten our shoes at the hotel. The bus driver didn’t want to go back, but he did have to stop to wait for more passengers. So I got off the bus, hailed a motorcycle taxi, jumped on the back, sped back to the hotel, collected our shoes and made it back to the bus before it left again. Colleen didn’t even realize I was gone. Other than that, the bus ride was every bit as unpleasant as the two preceding it, possibly more so. It started with a regular bus ride to the Thai border, followed by all the requisite border nonsense (no bribes this time). There was a new twist after we crossed the border in that instead of a regular bus, 12 of us were crammed, along with our luggage into a minivan with inadequate air conditioning and a driver who seemed to be intent on making someone vomit if he didn’t kill us all with his crazy driving.

Jungle at Ta Promh

So that was our Cambodia experience, lots of unpleasant travel, followed by rushed, albeit amazing, sightseeing. I can put up with the unpleasant travel, but rushing through a place is difficult. I would have liked to have learned more about Cambodia’s genocide, the history of Angkor, and the culture and history of Cambodia itself, time just did not permit. Unfortunately this has been true of many places we’ve visited, while we’ve seen and done amazing things, we have almost always wished we had more time to get a better understanding of what we were seeing. No regrets though, we’ll just have to come back some day with more time to spend.

We are in Australia now and having a blast, but more on that in future posts (if I ever get to them).


Michael
East Melbourne

Australia