Category: Cambodia

Things Betwixt

James here with my first attempt at a country summary post. Why do we write these? Well, personally I think it’s because Alex wanted to write a bit more about her beloved Peru at the start of this trip and now we’re stuck needing to write one for each country! On a more serious note… Partly it’s because we want to remember some extra details that don’t fit naturally into a blog post. Sometimes it’s things we remember after publishing. In some ways it’s because it’s these little pieces that make up the jigsaw puzzle of travel or dare I say it, even the soul of a country. Finally it’s because it’s these memories, snapshots of time that hit you out of the blue years later. It’s easy to remember the sight of Machu Pichu or the silhouette of the Fuego volcano erupting into the night sky. But years down the line, my subconscious mind will remind me of shopping for walking shoes in a Colombian mall with Gojo our friendly taxi driver; the leathery old man asking us for money on the Isla Del Sol or get hit by his cane; that horribly sweet “Churchill” drink in Costa Rica; trying and failing to ride a manual motorbike while a Filipino man with three teeth shouts “DOWN” “DOWN” over and over again; the fact that Bruno Mars was spotted as an Elvis impersonator in Honolulu. Etc.

We rushed through this little sibling of Thailand in just five nights, staying in only two locations. A mere blink of an eye on the scale of our trip. The reason was partly because I had been here before and Alex only really wanted to see Angor Wat. Mostly though it’s because the thermometer was easily over 40 degrees from around 8am to 6pm every day and barely cooling down at night. Add in the high humidity and lack of any cool breeze and it’s a recipe for boiled Westerners. So without further ado, here are our favourite moments, random musings, odd sightings and mild frustrations from Cambodia.

Rule of Three

Highlights (Alex): finally getting to experience Angkor Wat, amazing accommodation, guide Collins planning everything for me

Highlights (James): the hotels we stayed at, much more luxurious than where I stayed last time I was here. Being tour guide for Alex. Rooftop drinks and a nice Indian curry.

Lowlights (Alex): old faithful – the heat, learning new ways humans can commit horrific acts against their own kind, bus journey between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh

Lowlights (James): Songkran continues (dodging constant water fights is only fun for so long). The heat, I feel like we always complain about this, maybe we should have toured the Antarctic. Uncomfortable bus rides.

Takeaways (Alex): Same atrocities, different countries, different moments in time, still going on today. In hindsight, it’s obvious to identify the oppressors in these countries, but this is becoming harder and harder with our inability to trust anything we see or hear, how many lives will be lost due to misinformation and people trying to figure out what is true? The genocide was only 50 years ago, what Cambodia has managed to achieve despite it all is really impressive

Takeaways (James): Memories can be deceiving. Regimes appear to start with good intentions (usually in response to foreign intervention) but they quickly become extreme, tunnel visioned and very paranoid, often descending into unspeakable violence. In a country with a lot of poverty we still felt welcomed and safe.

Description (Alex): Beautiful and tragic history, touristy but not in an aggressive way, weirdly more expensive than Thailand (but still cheap by England standards)

Description (James): Sweaty. Great temples, the best in SEA. Sad history which should be recognized.

Entertainment

TV: Fallout ☢️, Clarkson’s Farm 🐄

Books: The Drawing of the Three, The Women

Podcasts: [the usual], The Rest is Entertainment

Where We Stayed

Residence 1960: 5 ⭐

Khmer Surin Boutique Guesthouse: 4.5 ⭐

Cutting Room Floor

• What I don’t remember from Cambodia is that US dollars are widely accepted, in most places prices are either entirely shown in USD or USD and Cambodian Riel are side by side.
• If you pay in USD you’ll likely get your change in Riel. Leading to much confusion over how much change we should be getting. 4000 Riel is around $1.
• ATMs can give out $100 bills but it’s risky. You might get a ripped or damaged bill which definitely won’t be accepted and even if it’s new and crisp, that’s a lot of change for a $6 lunch.
• Grab (similar to Uber) thankfully saves on any awkward Tuk Tuk negotiations. Without the app you’ll be quoted at 3-4 times the price of what locals would pay and you end up bartering to somewhere in-between. Usually it gets to the point where you end up arguing over a 20p difference which isn’t worth the hassle.
• In a similar vein, this also happens at the markets where there is no app option. Nothing has a price sticker and instead there are many calculators lying around which are used to show you a made up price. A fridge magnet price starts at $1.50 and before you know it, with minimum negotiating you’re being offered two magnets for $1.
• The money we “saved” on the fridge magnet was almost immediately donated to a poor lady on the bridge who was severely disabled. It’s hard to imagine there is much support for people unable to work here and she gives me a heartwarming smile as I hand her the small amount of change.
• While in the Killing Fields I spot Alex waving at someone. I assume it’s a small child but it is actually the Canadian couple we saw two days ago on the Angor Wat tour.
• Like in most SEA cities, the traffic is mental. Traffic lights are rarely obeyed and a system of vehicle size and/or confidence seems to be the rules of the road.
• While there are occasionally pavements, these are often filled with street sellers, plastic seats from a nearby eatery, lines of parked scooters or giant 4×4 cars taking up the entire width.
• Another country with huge wealth disparity. Locals hack away with machetes at coconuts (dangerously balanced on their knees!!) in the sweltering heat, often adjacent to humongous high rise offices or flats, no doubt air conditioned to a fridge like temperature.
• Local beer is often as cheap or in fact cheaper than soft drinks. Half a pint of coke or half a pint of beer, which is less healthy?
• Mr. T takes great pleasure in telling us about “Happy Soup”, essentially chicken soup with marijuana added for “flavour”. “Happy pizza”, “Happy cookies or brownies” will mean they also contain extra “flavour”.
• While marijuana is technically illegal, like in a lot of countries it’s not particularly enforced. Usually though locals would not smoke it but digest it through edibles.
• Sticking with taboo practices for a moment. There is a problem with an illegal sex trade here. Women of all ages are often forced into it against their will or out of sheer desperation. Thankfully a charity called “Daughters of Cambodia” exists to help women escape this trade and instead learn skills for safer work environments.
• The delicious food we bought outside the Phare circus also goes towards helping local poverty.
• The mincy and flamboyant circus performer who certainly seemed to be in tune with his feminine side made us wonder on the attitude to LGBTQ minorities here.
• In the hotel pool a local family try to prevent their infant daughter from joining us in the swimming pool. Toddlers are very determined though and she eventually sneaks a toe, then a foot, then a leg onto the pool steps. Watching her with curiosity her parents/minder observe then jump in when she inevitably face plants into the deep water.
• The Cambodia border where a security guard yells at us to go ahead, to then have a security guard ahead yell at us to go back. Everyone yelling at us. Us unable to communicate. Thankfully the first guard manages to tell the second guard he’s wrong and we make it passed his barking. To the next person who yells at us for not knowing where to go.
• The horrible bus journey from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh where 5 of us are cramped into the back row of the bus, that means the seats don’t recline, and are above the engine, so we’re sweating and sticking to one another, whilst a few seats in front they are chilling in their cool, reclined seats. Probably for the same price. We just lucked out on getting the final two.
• As with pretty much every country we’ve been to (except Hawaii) headphones don’t seem to be popular. Everything from phone calls to games, movies, TikTok and beyond is blasted out at full volume. The people seem not just unbothered but also unaware that the entire bus/public space may not want to listen along with them. I don’t think it’s a cost thing as all of these people obviously have phones. Just a complete lack of self awareness I guess!
• The woman in Phnom Penh walking down the middle of a busy street with a pre-recorded screech advertising her wares. What is she selling? Snails covered in oil and chili.
• “Thank you” in Cambodian is “O Kun”. Much easier to pronounce than “Khap un kah” in Thai which usually came out in a mix of krap/krab/kun/uhn/kar.
• Fast food prices here can quickly reach $10 per person. Basically Western prices. Only foreign visitors would go to KFC etc as locals can get their street food for $1 or less.
• No one has a Fitbit charger in Cambodia. The search continues.
• Porridge oats for $11 in the “Super value Mart”
• A heartbreaking line from a child beggar in Angor Wat: “I don’t have money for school”. Whether this is simply true or a line he’s been told to say to make tourists feel guilty is equally rotten.
• Giant spiders on sticks. Horrendous to look at. Even more horrendous to wonder where they are sourcing these from.
• Speaking of which, apart from the odd horror seen in the wild. We’ve not had any eight legged room intruders across our trip. (Please don’t curse it now).
• We really do need to have a list of guide sayings at some point. Some of Mr. T’s favourites… “Ok family …”, “Chop chop” “Lovely jubbly” as well as “Take a foe-tow” his best attempt at a British accent.
• Dogs playing around at the side of the lake
• Breakfast in the minivan on the way to Angkor Wat
• Some last bits about the Khmer Rouge… the leaders included people who were educated in France. Enticed by Marxist theory, promising an equal society.
• However, only they were allowed to be educated, ordering all ‘educated’ people to death.
• One of the leaders even wore glasses, one of those other deadly ‘features’ for the public that would identify you as an ‘intellectual’ and get you killed.
• Their idea was, seemingly, was to restart the country from scratch, they called it year 0, starting anew without the problems of the past, apparently brought about by imperialism and capitalism.
• And there were a lot of problems with society pre-Khmer Rouge, the disparity of wealth was huge. They had been under French rule for decades. The rural people had been bombed away from their farms by the USA, living in poverty in the cities, whilst the wealthy elite enjoyed luxury lives.
• There are, of course, a bunch more complicated reasons, which involves understanding the Indochina war, something I didn’t know existed until this trip.
• The Khmer Rouge promised to re-empower its people, to redistribute the wealth, to create an equal society once and for all, to defend its people from the imperialists who had been destroying and ransacking their country for decades. You can understand why so many joined up straight away and supported the cause.
• The start was to get everyone into the fields, focusing on crop production. When everyone is a farmer you don’t need to many of your intellectuals… do you?
• However, how do you re-level the playing field without taking from those that have? Their approach, to kill them and eliminate the problem. Seen as enemies of the state benefiting from the situation of old.
• Here come three huge failures in their plan. City-folk don’t know how to farm, sending them to farms to produce food will not yield good results. Farming-folk don’t know how to be doctors, or engineers, that were actually needed to make the country run. Having killed all the educated who did know how to do these things, they were left with uneducated trying to run things in the same poor way a bunch of educated tried to run a farm. The third folly was that not all land is suitable for farming, but the Khmer Rouge demanded the same output from every single area. If you didn’t produce, you were clearly against the state’s plan, and would therefore be killed.
• Paranoia became a huge issue, which led to many more than the “original” enemies of the state being slaughtered (this all sounds very familiar to Chile).
• A large contribution to the famine that wiped out so many people was that the food they were producing was being sent to China (also reminiscent of the Irish genocide during the famine where they were producing plenty of food, but were forced to sell it all to the UK).
• The product more valuable to the Khmer Rouge than food to feed their people?… guns.
• Perhaps the plan could have worked were it not for Cambodia trading so much of its produce to China, and starving and killing so much of the population. But how do you force people to follow your deadly regime without guns? And how do you invite Vietnam without them?
• Note to leaders, if you have to kill and threaten people to fall in line with your ideals, you need to look at them again. Perhaps they aren’t as good as you thought.
• When Vietnam came and liberated the people from the Khmer Rouge, the UK was one of many countries that refused to recognise the new leadership, saying the Khmer Rouge were the rightful rulers of the country. Whether they knew what the atrocities were going on in the country at the time, I don’t know, but in hindsight it was a huge error on our part.
• Sometimes an invading force is the better force. But I’ve got to say that this does seem to be in a minority of circumstances when the current leaders are committing a genocide.
• That being said, apparently the reason the Vietnamese took a stand wasn’t because of the genocide, but because they were attacking their borders and trying to take back old territory. It’s scary to think how much longer it might have gone on had they stuck to their own borders.

Foe-tows

Warning: This post contains content that some readers may find upsetting

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Capital Punishment

As excited as I had been to show Alex around Bangkok, Khao Sok and Siem Reap, I was silently dreading a return to Phnom Penh. My memories of this city were of desperate poverty, streets filled with litter, an awful hostel experience and a stench of hot sewage that followed you everywhere you went in this boiling concrete jungle. Picture my surprise when we cross the river into the modern capital city filled with huge glass towers, modern high rise apartments and expensive restaurants of all cuisines lining the streets. As we step off the bus I expect to be welcomed by that dreadful smell of rubbish left to rot in the burning sun but it doesn’t come. Hmm.

A fellow Brit we’ve suffered through the sweatbox bus with kindly allows us to piggyback on his SIM data and we take a Grab tuk tuk to our hotel. We’re greeted by a small army of hotel staff and are shown to our room on the 9th floor of this massive “guesthouse”. £25 a night goes a long way in Cambodia. It’s another beautiful big room with a giant tv, huge bed and even a balcony. I figure we’d pay 10x this amount for an equivalent stay in Europe.

Both starving from another long journey we quickly make tracks to a local eatery humourously called “Pu Rock Cafe”. It is neither a Rock Cafe nor is it Pu as we enjoy fresh Lok Lak and mango fried chicken.

Returning to the hotel we decide to checkout the rooftop terrace on the 14th floor. There is no one else around as we cool off in the refreshing pool and make ourselves comfortable on the sun loungers. For the rest of the evening we bathe in the luxurious comfort of our air conditioned room and put our feet up.

The Killing Fields

On my last visit to Phnom Penh I made sure to visit S21 the infamous prison of the Khmer Rouge but for one reason or another I never visited Choeung Ek AKA “The Killing Fields”. Eerily, our hotel is close to S21, so we take a ride across the capital, which for many thousands of innocent Cambodians was the last journey they would ever make. As we arrive I’m somewhat surprised to see the site is not a bleak empty field or graveyard but a thoughtfully curated memorial ground. However, as we will discover, the darkest depths of the human condition are hidden within the shade of these Chankiri trees. Out of respect, there are only two photos from this location. This stupa serves as a memorial tower to remember the millions of people that brutally lost their lives to the Khmer regime. Almost a quarter of the country’s population at the time.

For those who don’t know, the Khmer Rouge emerged as an extreme communist party in response to Western Imperialism coupled with countless bombs dropped by American warplanes along the border with Vietnam. These bombs killed and maimed thousands of farmers and peasants as what America would call collateral damage from their war with Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge army stormed the capital of Phnom Penh and rounded up everyone in the streets. At best you were chosen to serve the revolution by swapping your perceived easy life in the city for a gruelling fourteen hour day turning the country into a giant rice paddy. At worst you were recognized as a government worker, a spy, an intellectual (if you wore glasses, had soft hands or pale skin or spoke a foreign language you were considered an enemy of the state), a teacher, a doctor, a monk or just looked at someone the wrong way. For these people, and we’re talking tens of thousands, you were brought here to where we stand now (or to one of many other sites like this), perhaps after weeks or months of torture at the S21 prison.

Prisoners would be placed in shackles in a pitch black room alongside dozens of their brethren. Unable to see, the only sounds they could hear would be the diesel generators and the loud speakers hanging from trees blasting out music of the revolution. This was not to brainwash them but to drown out the sound of what was happening mere meters away. As some of them knew already, they had been sent here to be executed. Bullets were expensive so the guards would use crude farming equipment and even sharp branches of a tree to hack, slash, bludgeon and break the skulls of their own people. The bodies would be tossed into a mass grave of up to 450 people and doused in DT. Partly to mask the smell and partly to finish the job if somehow the victims had survived the brutal execution attempt. During the beginning of the regime, a handful of trucks carrying prisoners would arrive each month. Towards the end, multiple trucks would arrive per day, up to 300 people at a time. So many that the guards could not keep up with the amount of murder required.

We pause for some reflection next to a peaceful lake where fish bob around and birds gracefully swoop by us, unaware of the horrors that occured here. We listen to stories of some of those guards who were part of the regime, and those who survived it, and how even if they are now physically recovered from the malnutrition, disease and starvation, their minds are broken beyond repair.

As we continue the grim tour we pass another mass grave where hundreds of headless remains were discovered. This was the site where traitors, or anyone suspected of being a traitor met their grisly end. The regime message of “Better to kill an innocent person than to risk letting a guilty person live” is almost too barbaric and nonsensical to believe, yet this was their slogan.

The next site is almost too difficult to write about but I feel it’s important for people to know the atrocities that happened here. In the hope that it shows how a country devastated by such acts can recover and find a brighter future. Another mass grave. Here women and children had been tossed into a pit, often naked after being raped. Next to the pit is a tree covered in hairbands, toys and teddy bears. The guards used this tree to bludgeon children and babies to death by holding them by the legs and smashing them headfirst into it. “Better to cut out the roots so the trees of revenge cannot grow” another heartless motto. 

As we approach the end of the site we are invited into the tower. Seventeen levels of cracked skulls and bones fill the tower from floor to ceiling with a frightfully macabre sight. The sheer scale of these atrocities can hardly be described.

S21

Having visited S21 last time I was here, I leave Alex at the door, audioguide in hand. Over to her…

S21 was security centre 21. One of many across the Khmer’s rein of terror:

Formally a school, once everyone was kicked out of the cities, this school was transformed into a torture centre. A rope climbing frame was transformed into a torture device, one of many.

18,063 prisoners (including women and children) came through these doors, only 12 survived. The rest ended up at the killing fields we were at this morning. After all, this was not a murder camp, but a torture camp.

Those running the site went to great pains to keep the people alive to be able to fake confessions and information, to ratify tallies of people. They would even bring in ‘doctors’ to try and keep people alive (although all trained doctors had been killed as enemies of the state, and there was no medicine). Indeed, any prisoner who died here was a big problem, and not for the loss of life, after all they would end up at the killing field anyway, but because then the balance sheets of humans wouldn’t add up. If someone died on the watch of one of the guards, that guard could end up here themselves. Because of this, there is significant photographic evidence of the horrors inflicted on the people here, to ‘prove’ the person died here, and could be written off the books. These photos are displayed in this museum, I’m not including them.

When the city was liberated, all they found here were the slaughtered remains of the torture camps final victims, still shackled to the beds they were tortured on. Photos of these final victims are on display as evidence to the true horrors of what happened here. Captioned at pains to prove the photos are of the rooms you are standing in. The beds still in place. I wonder how we will manage in the future of deep fakes to ever know what to believe when (and I say when rather than if intentionally) this happens again.

On arrival to this place, for many who were completely innocent with no idea why they were there, there began a process of dehumanization, they were no longer he or she, they were ‘it’ (a little reminder of why pronouns are important and not referring to people as it). Names were only used for confessions and executions, otherwise they were only referred to by their number. Biographies and measurements were taken of each individual, cutting their hair, swapping their clothes, documenting their final existence. A researcher in fascist regimes explains that this process of not just dehumanising the prisoners, but breaking down the process into steps, enables the people responsible to psychologically distance themselves from the full atrocities they are a part of. “I’m just a biographer”, “I just cut their hair”… is what these people can tell themselves, they’re not hurting these people after all, they’re just cutting hair. It’s tactical, it’s calculated, sadly, we’ve seen it work time and time again.

When the Khmer Rouge took power, they encouraged Cambodians overseas to come back and help rebuild the country from the evil imperialists. But this was all a ruse. They all ended up here to be tortured and killed.

One documented captive was an Australian (Kerry Hamill) who was sailing around the world at 27, brought to and interrogated in S21, forced to identify spies from the CIA and KGB. Just as many others were tortured to give information they did not have. In his documented and signed confession, he gave names from popular culture (such as Colonel Sanders) that the Khmer wouldn’t recognise, given as an example for the pointlessness of gathering information through torture.

The ruthlessness of the man in charge here, Duch, was such that if a sculpture of pol pot was not good enough, the artist was killed. Duch signed off on every captive sent to the killing fields. He wanted to prove his dedication to the cause.

The audioguide explains that this museum exists to share the stories of what happened here, so we may all strive for human dignity compassion and peace. As German Ambassador Joachim Baron von Marschall said at the inauguration of this place, it serves to “Remind us to be wary of regimes that ignore human dignity. No political goal or ideology, however promising, important, or desirable it may appear, can ever justify a political system where the dignity of the individual is not respected” (http://genocidewatch.net/2015/04/20/germany-cambodia-and-a-dark-past/).

This message, that closes the audioguide on this tragic place, is sadly something that keeps being forgotten, including at this exact moment in time. How many museums have we now been to exposing the horrors that humans can inflict on one another for the good of a political power or idealogy? How many more will be created for the atrocities happening right now across the world? How is it that all we seem to learn is how to commit these crimes more ‘efficiently’, rather than the message Von Marschall gave here eight years ago? Will we ever learn it?

Back to James.

Perk me up

We regroup for lunch at a Vietnamese place offering Pho (basically a broth) for lunch. We’re both melting in the heat and humidity so decide against a trip to a local market and instead spend the afternoon relaxing and reading by the hotel pool.

To perk us up from all of the bleak stuff today, I find a rooftop bar nearby and we enjoy cocktails and views on the 25th floor. Afterwards we head to an Indian restaurant for a change in cuisine. I haven’t had a proper Indian curry all trip and having recently heard about one on the Off Menu podcast I am craving one! We order a chicken curry, chickpea curry,  butter naan and rice. I tuck in and savour the tasty and rich flavours. Alex meanwhile is streaming and asking the staff if they have any yoghurt. I had somehow forgotten about her total intolerance to any level of spice and feel slightly guilty about bringing her here.

Done, done, onto the next one!

Onwards with yet another long bus journey and crossing another border… Vamos a Vietnam!

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Adventure – Crossing the road. A lot of important learning.

Excitement – Big TV in the hotel room to watch Fallout on. Peaceful rooftop pool area. Cocktails with a view.

Trauma – another reminder of how cruel humans can be to one another, and how we continue to repeat the same mistakes. A mildly hot curry (Alex)

In order to save pennies from our splurge of Khao Lak, instead of flying from South Thailand to Cambodia, we’re going to take some buses. It’s the first night bus we’ve taken since Argentina, and the journey is significantly more of an ‘adventure’ than we anticipated. The route was meant to be:

• Car to Khao Sok (1h)
• Bus to Bangkok (10h)
• Bus to Siem Reap (8h)

What it ended up being was:

• Car to Khao Sok (1h) ✅️
• Elaborately decorated shuttle bus to Surat Thani (2h) 🤷🏼‍♀️
• Street dinner – provided 👍, with rats for company 👎 (1.5h)
• Bus – have “Montanatip” yelled at us by various people as staff realise we’ve been dropped at the wrong bus station, different people yell at us to get on the bus, no wait here, no get on, no wait here, in Thai 👎👎👎 (5m)
• Tuk Tuk arranged by people who were yelling at us before to some other bus station in Surat Thani – get asked for a 100 baht tip 👎 (10m)
• Bus to Bangkok – more being told to get on, no don’t get on, no wait here, no get on ✅️ (9h)
• McDonalds breakfast 👍👍 (2h)
• Bus to Siem Reap ✅️✅✅ (6h)

When we left Khao Lak, Songkran was completely over, and we were pretty relieved. It was fun for the couple of days we got to experience it. When we arrived to Bangkok, the party had clearly still been going strong and was just wrapping up. Thankfully the university age students dripping wet, covered in white paint and fully armed were kind enough to not soak us and all our stuff. Phew. When we arrive to Siem Reap, new year celebrations are definitely still going strong. We find out today is actually the last day of celebrations here. Our tuk tuk driver reassures us we’ll be fine, and indeed, as we drive through the excited shrieks and squeals of people still spraying each other with water, he holds out his hand like Neo in The Matrix, and our assailants drop arms. We arrive to our Siem Reap hotel bone dry from water, but of course dripping from sweat from heat. They hand us a wash cloth as we wipe 25 hours of grime away, the cloths no long white. We’ve made it.

For whatever reason I have just two expectations of Siem Reap. Both were somewhat surpassed. The heat has once more been oppressive and life-sapping. But Siem Reap hugely surprised me as a city in itself. I expected some poor, filthy shanty-town, buildings one atop the other. What I found was your classic tourist city, but even more beautiful. With a river running through it, pretty lights strewn everywhere, quaint and unique hotels, bars and restaurants everywhere, plastic seating out front, and trees lining the streets. The city is alive with people. Our hotel here is just as beautiful, and a much needed bit of peace and tranquillity after the journey:

Our first night is spent recovering and relaxing at the hotel, and then braving town for dinner. We only just make it through the gauntlet without a soaking by snaking through the backstreets.

Our first full day in Siem Reap is reserved for a lie in, buffet breakfast, relaxing by the pool, and me getting my first Thai massage. It was certainly an experience! Started off by putting on the giant pyjama-like clothes with no idea how to tie santa-sized trousers around me and needing the massage therapist to dress me like a child.

That evening we go to Phare, a popular circus founded to provide training and work to disadvantaged communities. We get to enjoy some chicken and mango cooked in lemongrass, and a curry, with some tiny incredibly sticky donuts before we head in.

We’re all handed a fan on entry to try and counter the still sweltering evening heat, they know their clientèle:

What follows is a fantastic show of just eight performers displaying a variety of skills, from clowning around, acrobatics, strength, tight-rope walking/unicycling, immense balance, and a monk who comes in every so often to provide a blessing (maybe he’s still in training!)

The evening provides a brilliant bit of hilarity and entertainment as the “clowns” make us laugh but also show off amazing acrobatic skills. James even gets a wink and a kiss thrown his way for good measure (from a male performer of course). Alongside the on-stage performers are of course the musicians, front-of-house and backstage staff, the whole operation providing invaluable training and opportunities to people. It’s nice to know your money is being put to good work.

Angkor WAAAAT

Our other day in Siem Reap is spent exploring around four temples of the famous Angkor Wat complex. A site made famous by the Tomb Raider computer game and film franchise, we enjoy many a pose and joke.

Our tour guide today is Vuthy (or Mr T), who has brilliant English, energy, and humour. He keeps his, and everyone else’s, energy going despite the climbing heat. We’re also aided by our driver, T2, who welcomes us back to our minivan after each venture out with a cold bottle or water and wet cloth. Sorry pachamama, we’ve undone a lot of good on this day!

The first stop is to watch the sunrise over the main Angkor Wat temple. We’ve chosen the sunrise tour mostly to avoid the heat, so this is a nice bonus. I expected swarms of cruise ship tour groups akin to the Acropolis and Tikal but I guess the cruise ships can’t get their passengers over that early. We’d also heard bad things about loud Chinese tourists, but we have none of it. It’s a fairly respectful affair, of people clustered together trying to get the famed reflection photo. James, having been here before, is on photographer duty so I can just enjoy the experience.

After this it’s time to learn…

• The Khmer Empire stretched across modern day Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. It largely had Hindu influences, and so much of the symbolism here has roots more similar to India. When Mongolia invaded China, it forced them to move south, into here. What remains is a mix of Hindu and Buddhist.
• The languages of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia derive from Buddhist pali, so they can all understand each other quite well. This is not the case for Vietnamese, which didn’t have the same Khmer Empire influence, and so they can’t understand each other’s languages in the same way, the script is totally different, and there’s less (if any) Hindu influence in the version of Buddhism followed there.

• Angkor Wat is the area of many temples, but there is also the Angkor Wat temple.
• The whole area of Angkor Wat is 200 hectares.
• The main temple is the biggest temple in the world.
• Angkor Wat temple was built 900 years ago, a place for people come and pray. They lived outside, this was not housing.
• The temple of Angkor Wat is the youngest site.
• There are more than 1000 temples here, we only go to four.
• The name is actually from the 16th century, we don’t know it’s original name. The current name means temple city or city of monasteries.
• It took 40 years, and 300,000 people to build. 1 or 2 people from each family were part of it, but not forced or enslaved. They were paid or did it for good karma with the gods to have a good life in their next life (convenient for those in power needing free labour 🤔)
• They used about 4-6000 elephants to transport sandstone from the mountains 60km away.
• In rainy season when the animals couldn’t transport materials, they used rafts transporting it down the mekong.
• They used lava stone, from 35km away for foundations, and sandstone for the engraved parts.
• Pulleys and scaffolding were used to lift the stones to the top of the temples.

• The design and architecture was by his high priests, or king guru, they were smart and intellectual people who knew about astronomy. The sun rises at the main tower of Angkor Wat in relation to the equinox. 176 hands front (days), 189 hands back between left and right side towers (days until the next equinox) in this photo. This adds up to 365. The design marks the equinoxes, like in Chichen Itza and stone henge.

• More than 2000 tourists would come here pre-covid. 30k are here during the equinox.
• Most temples face east, but the main one faces west. Sunrise and sunset.
• Inside, there are four sections that look like swimming pools, but these were actually used as drainage pits to feed the moat outside. The moat protected the site from the weather, preventing flood damage.

• In the main Angkor Wat temple, there are three galleries, the first is dedicated to education, with engravings showing the history of the empire. The second to meditation. The third for the VIPs.
• This is the king, you can tell because of the many many umbrellas, his crown, his elephant also with a crown, his five wives, and all his concubines. The king has crown and 15 parasols. Elephant also has a crown:

• The king was based on the bloodline, or by whoever kills the king. They did not sit in the palaces leaving their armies to battle for them, they fought to retain their power. As Mr T tells us, “that is a sexy king”.
• There were about 28-30 kings in the 4-500 years, until it was abandoned.
• This is not the king, there are many umbrellas, but no crown. The more umbrellas, the higher the rank:

• These murals were painted. But there wasn’t a roof, so the colours got washed away.
• The stones were originally pink or white.

• 60% of this temple was collapsed. As with many of the temples, most by the war or treasure hunters, but the rest just by time and nature. It has largely been restored and reconstructed.
• Many countries have returned many heads and statues stolen.
• Where people take the sunset photo from was where people lived. However, they were moved into the forest in 1992 when it became a Unesco site as you aren’t allowed dwellings on Unesco sites. Thankfully, there weren’t many people to move because…
• When the country was invaded by Siam, they abandoned the city and moved to Phnom Penh.
• In the 16th century, the city was once more liberated.
• Then it was invaded again. There were four invasions.
• In 1860, the French rediscovered the ruins of the site and protected it for 90 years from Siam and Vietnam.
• This was always considered a holy site, until the Khmer Rouge army made it home in the mid 1900s. No religion was allowed under their rule, and so many of the buddhas had their heads cut off. No-one really lived here after them.

On to the informally known, Tomb Raider temple…

Ta Prohm Temple

• The way this has happened is that moss grows on top of roof. The birds eat the moss, then they poop seeds onto the moss. The trees then grow from the pooped seeds. Roots extending down through the stone and rubble. The trees and rocks are supporting each other.
• They used to cut back the trees, but when they did, the trees and roots that were holding the structures together would die, and then the temple would collapse. So they’ve stopped cutting the trees. This was actually a similar issue in Tikal, it’s very hard to reclaim something back from nature!
• Before the movie they weren’t going to restore this temple, but because of the film India and Cambodia decided to work together to restore it.
• Here there is one little room not like the others. When you thump your chest next to the wall, it makes an echo. Nothing else echoes, just banging the chest. How anyone figured this out is beyond me, like the clapping with Maya civilisation.

It’s not even 8am and the heat is already taking it out of me. Vuthy is good at finding us places in the shade and spots to sit, but we’ve hardly slept and the air is so still, I’m already flagging. After a visit to two temples, we get some respite in an airconditioned restaurant for lunch, although it’s still only 10am, so perhaps this is still breakfast? Having been up since 4, we’re going all in for ‘lunch’ and try recommendations of Amock and Lak Lok, both are tasty, and we enjoy offers of additional helpings of rice.

Ta Nei Temple

• Mr T brings us here to see how the other temples would have been found, in their largely collapsed states. It’s certainly a huge undertaking to put these buildings back together
• This empire was the first in the world (apparently) to provide healthcare, this site is just one of 102 ‘hospitals’ discovered.

Bayon Temple

• The religion here is all about the odd numbers, back to the “Rule of 3”!
• We’re shown a stone in the middle of the floor with three parts to it. Apparently this is a fertility stone, with the trinity of a rounded top, oblong middle, and square base. Mr T calls it the “Holy dick”. Apparently it is thanks to this that he has his daughter. “Touch holy dick for free” he offers.

• In this temple there are 54 towers!
• It also has three galleries. Like the ‘holy dick’, the first is square, the mid is octagon-shaped, and the top a circle.

• It has four gates, each facing the different compass points.
• 4 faces on each side of towers for the 4 noble truths of Buddhism.
• Faces have a third eye, that’s Hindu influence.
• Perfect examples of the mixture of Hindusim and Buddhis.

• Pre-Covid there were 8k visitors a day, now there are only 4k, a couple of days ago only 2k.

And that’s that. Many people had recommended we cycle around, or do multi-day tours of this amazing place, and in any other weather I would love to spend days here exploring the many temples. But it’s just too hot and humid. I’m glad I finally got here, and I’m proud of us for surviving the four we did (another couple gave in after temple three) and eight hours in this chaos climate.

After some serious cooling off at the hotel, we try and give a bit back by way of dinner at a restaurant called Spoons, thankfully (or not?) nothing like Wetherspoons. A similar setup to the circus, profits are spent on supporting the community and staff and chefs all being part of their training system. The staff are so kind, friendly and gracious, and you can see they really take pride in their work.

We finish the evening with a trip to the famous Pub Street…

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Adventure – Exploring the temples of Angkor Wat, something I’ve wanted to do since growing up playing Tomb Raider many years ago.

Excitement – Finding our room had a HUGE bath. Surprise cocktails for lunch arranged by James. Finding out how beautiful Siem Reap is and coming across cute streets, temples and buildings all over

Trauma – The continuous theme of SE Asia… the heat. Being yelled at in Thai and given conflicting orders and not being sure if we were going to be left behind