Exploring Cambodia: the hard way!

Hello and welcome to our blog again.

For this edition I will tell you about our hectic week in Cambodia - the country of manipulating kids and wondrous sites. We left the thousand islands in Laos to cross the border into Cambodia, also leaving behind the Laos Kip and moving onto the expensive American Dollar. Its strange to think my first time using dollars isn’t America but in Asia…..well I think it’s peculiar anyway. Crossing the border is an expensive business as you need to pay $1 to have your Laos visa terminated, then $25 to have the Cambodia Visa stamped in the passport then another $1 to have it restamped when crossing the invisible border line, at which point you are then allowed to enter the country.

Our first bus ride towards the city of Siem Reap set the tone for Cambodia perfectly as the bus supposedly broke down and we were transferred, along with our luggage, to a more cramped and even more broken bus (we then found out that the only reason they made us change buses was because they ‘needed’ our bigger and better bus to carry some wood somewhere else!). So between the border and our destination we broke down twice more, but that small problem was overshadowed by the fact that at this point it was midday and the buses air conditioning was just an open window. Not exactly what you would call a VIP bus as described by the travel agency it was booked through.

We eventually arrive in the humid and busy outskirts of Siem Reap where there are 50+ tuktuk drivers waiting to ferry us to our hostels. We decide to choose a small talkative guy who had the ‘ideal’ guest house that has fans and cold showers (you avoid hot water rooms everywhere in Asia). After the overwhelming heat of the bus this sounded perfect so we jumped into the tuktuk and were whisked off to ‘Green’ hostel, which turned out to be my very favorite of the whole trip so far. It’s all built around self service, each room is given a book which you record all the food and drink you consume at the hostel meaning you can keep a close eye on your budget and not get fleeced of an extra couple of dollars.

Siem Reap is beautiful, if anyone comes to Cambodia you should make the city your first destination, it’s not as crowded as the capital, Phon Pheng, but has plenty to offer including the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat, another world heritage site. The entry fee is $20 per day so can be very expensive, but once you see the sunrise at the main temple it all becomes worth it. The only drawback of Angkor is the children and food sellers. As you walk around each temple there isn’t a single second where you aren’t being harassed to buy worthless postcards and bracelets. You simply want to enjoy the temples but are constantly hounded for your dollars, they don’t seem to realize we are tourists not walking cash machines…… heartless aren’t we. I can’t say we did very well on our first day with the children, as they managed to sell us two random bracelets plus a postcard… I also made this one child cry and she was actually really mad at me because apparently she spoke to me first and we ended up buying from a different little girl. On top of this, this one other girl pretended to only have one eye by covering her left one with a patch in order to get more sympathy from the tourists! They are evil!! Apart from this incident we managed to only give our money to musicians who are victims of landmines.

After Siem Reap we moved onto the capital where we could see some scars left by Pol Pot’s regime in the 1970’s. However, the bus journey there was an experience in itself. Before setting off we decided to have an omelet baguette (yes omelet baguette) for breakfast, BIG mistake. Sara spent the next 6 hours hugging the coach toilet, vomiting every 10 minutes. For days afterwards I would have to spell ‘egg’ or ‘omelet’ as she would gag if anyone would mention it- eggs are no longer part of her diet. We eventually arrived in Phon Pheng and were greeted by the strongest smell of sewage I have ever encountered, this forced and few dry gags from Sara, so we swiftly left for the nearest hostel on another tuktuk.

The city has many memorials to the people killed by the evil dictator Pol Pot, but the worst scene we saw was the orphanage. It was our last day and Sara had a strong urge to go see all the children, to give them gifts of rice and pens. We were driven to one of Cambodia roughest and poorest districts where the people are so poor they can’t afford to keep their own children, so off load them at this orphanage. Before we arrived we imagined a playground made of concrete, maybe a few buildings with boundaries. What you greeted by are some huts made from corrugated iron which has the same welcoming feel as an Austrian cellar. However this does not affect the children, they are some of the happiest most playful people I have ever encountered. They climb all over you as though you’re their favorite uncle and go wild for ice…. just plain ice. We left after spending an entire afternoon with the kids, learning some phrases and generally fooling around but its one of the bitterest, but sweetest memories we have.

Thank you for all the comments left last time, its lovely to hear from you all.

Arkon

Tom & Sara