sendeuros

Matt and I have tried to keep the blogging pretty balanced – taking turns to give our perspective about the places that we visit and the things that we have experienced. Matt has begun this blog three times and has been unable to finish it because in his words “they were too negative”.

Cambodia!

I think that so many myths precede visiting here that it is hard to come with an open mind. Pictures of Khmer Rouge, the killing fields, mugging on the street, sex tourism and land mine victims. But a lot has changed in Cambodia over the last five years and there is definitely hope here. That is not to say that you do not see land mine victims begging in the street every day and hear terrible stories of corruption that make your blood boil.

Actually pretty much everything that we saw on our first day in Phnom Phen reinforced our preconceived ideas. Walking off the plane from Bangkok the second billboard that we saw read “Sex with children is illegal – 940 people have been prosecuted and imprisoned – UNICEF”. What is this place that we are visiting?? Matt and I bought a book from a landmine victim entitled “Off the Rails in Phnom Phen – Guns, Girls and Gunja” – a book that details what expat could get away with in Phnom Phen in the 90’s. So at this point we were ready to sit in our hotel room until our Vietnam visas had become valid on the 7th of March. That same day, while we were walking through a market a drunk/mental ill man hastled Matt and dad – they were lucky to get away only with nipple cripples…then later that evening some very interested, sleezy boy tried to pick me up until he realised that my big burly dad was sitting next to me…actually that didn’t really slow him down that much either! Reading the Phnom Phen Post the next day didn’t help either – as they detail all the crime that has occured over the two weeks – like the classified at home. The pages were filled with grenades going off and police men accidently shooting themselves and their friends dead when playing with their guns while drunk.

But our anxiety settled as we talked with expats and local at our hotel (ironically the Hotel California2) and we began to venture a little further out and see another side to Cambodia. We visited the royal palace and the silver pagoda – what a beautiful palace amongst such decay! Later that day at the central market we bargained hard – Matthew was ready to disown dad and I – rightly so, it seems trivial when you are quivalling over one US dollar.

After a few days in Phnom Phen we caught the boat up the river to the major lake in Cambodia (the name of which escapes) – as the tide was low we had to transfer to a local boat and we travelled through a floating town – it had everything from department stores, milkbars and a church! When we arrived at the muddy bank our driver Rou was there to meet us – what a gem he turned out to be! In his semi-proficient english he was able to answer many of our questions. His honesty and frankness was a breath of fresh air. From local politics and customs, to translating Khmer music, to organising our itinerary for the four days of visiting the Angkor temples he was a God send! That day he drove us to our guesthouse situated in Siem Reap while filling us in on the illegal imigration of Vietnamese people into the area and their “electric fishing” methods that were making the locals angry”. Our guest house was very comfortable for a mere US$15 a night, complete with TV and A/C.

Siem Reap is the town closest to the Angkor Temples, at any given time I think that there is almost as many foreigners as locals! Rou took us out to the see the sunset the same evening we arrived – it was the first time we viewed Angkor Wat (the most well know of the temples), it was one of those take your breath away moments. They rank this engineering feet up there with the pyramids and when you read the specs on this building you understand why. The photos cannot really capture the grandness of this building that is over 1000 years old, and once was the “capital of the world”. We walked up a very steep hill, to see a very ordinary sunset, over very amazing buildings. Over the following three days we visited about 15 of the 100 temples – everyone of them was worth visiting. The temples are huge and not close enough to walk between so we had lots of conversations with our driver Rou. How posh does that sound “our driver”, we actually found it a little uncomfortable – but you can get used to anything.

I will not bore you with the details – other than saying WOW and if you come to Cambodia for no other reason, this is a good reason to visit! On the final evening we took Rou out to dinner to say thank you – we asked him where he wanted to go and being the typical obliging Khmer person, he took us to a place that he thought that we would like – it was to the shadow puppet theatre restaurant. We had had plenty of conversations about this on previous days as Rou happened to have travelled to France and Japan to perform in the shadow puppet theatre. Aside from this he also taught the local children in his village English and had a vision of opening a centre for children one day which could teach them about Khmer culture (something that was lucky to survive the Khmer Rouge times). What a top bloke! It was a pretty emotional goodbye – we exchanged contact details and promised to keep in touch.

The plan was to depart from Siem Reap this morning to Phnom Phen, but unfortunately I became unwell yesterday morning and decided to bring up the content of my tummy – for everyone that knows me it will not be a surprise that it was quite a lot. So under orders from Matt and dad I spent the day in bed, which was wise because everytime I got up I felt queasy again. Dad caught the bus as planned this morning (as we had non refundable tickets) and Matt stayed behind to look after me. I feel heaps better, and had to break out of the guest house because staring at the yellow wall was driving me crazy. I have had my first real meal in 48hours this evening and am still feeling fine – fingers crossed. Matt and I decided to treat ourselves to a bit of luxury and have booked a flight to go back to Phnom Phen tomorrow, rather than braving the bus.

So that brings us up to date. Sorry about the big gap between entries. It sometimes takes us a bit of time to process our own experiences. We will be travelling to Vietnam early next week.

Hope all are well!