So after spending 5 wonderful chill days in Siphan Don, Southern Laos with Erin and Tony, we headed for the Cambodian border, the only way we could, by tourist bus. Naturally we were a little sceptical as to whether, once we crossed the Cambodian border our onward ticket would actually be worth more than the scrap of paper it was jutted on. But we decided to buy a direct ticket to Ban Lung anyway. We had been pre-warned about the border guards on both the Laos and Cambodian sides trying to extort US$1 per person extra as stamping fees so we were prepared and told the entire bus the plan. Of course, when we actually got there, the rest of the bus just paid the fee, bitching and complaining as they did. When it came to our turn, I simply pretended I didn't have any money left and handed over the rest of our Lao Kip (7000Kip, or less than $1). They asked how many people and I gave them both of our passports and apologised with a big smile and bam, passports stamped and a friendly smile back. Easy!
Next came the Cambodian side. Cheeky buggers not only add an extra dollar onto the actual visa fee (you pay $21 but the passport only says you paid 20) but they then again try to charge you another dollar to stamp it at the gate! Again prepared, I apologised saying that I only had $21 and had already given the extra dollar to get the visa. Then I asked if they accepted credit card! The guard looked confused and waived me through, both of our passports safely stamped.
I know its not much, but it was a small victory in the war against corruption, and it felt soooo good!
So, now safely in Cambodia, it was only a simple matter of jumping on the bus that was there to meet us, change busses in Stung Treng and then we should be in Ban Lung by 4pm (it was 10am). EASY!! or not... The bus to pick us up was also there to pick everyone else up crossing the border that morning, which meant we got to sit by the side of the road for 2 hours waiting for the bus to leave. On top of that, the “guide” was a totally shoddy guy who tried to convince everyone to change their tickets and go straight to Siem Reap, of course charging an exorbitant amount extra! The poor people who had only bought a ticket to the border were of course stung bad. We had our tickets which we were assured were valid, however the connecting bus wouldn't pass through Stung Treng until 3pm so we wouldn't be there til 7pm. Oh well we thought and so we sat and waited. At about 11.30, with most of us suffering from heat stroke and starvation (as there was not a single building aside from the immigration offices in sight) we finally boarded the bus and left for Stung Treng. After the essential flat tyre, we finally arrived in Stung Treng at about 12.30. We were already over it and decided to go to either Kratie, or our original destination Ban Lung, depending on which left first. In Stung Treng we were taken to a restaurant and told we would be there for an hours, but as 1, then 2, then 3 went past we all started to get quite agitated... Why were we waiting you might ask? Because the “guide,” the restaurant owner, the driver and several other arrogant pompous Cambodian men were busy getting themselves totally drunk! Naturally all of us money-paying clients were getting more and more irritated and asked for our money back, to which the “guide” would yell and tell us 10 more minutes. At one point he nearly hit me he was that angry that we dared to ask to leave. We of course missed our connecting bus to Ban Lung to which we were told we could pay an extra dollar to go to Kratie (even though Kratie was considerably closer and cheaper than Ban Lung) or we would have to spend the night in their “guesthouse” in Stung Treng. um.. NO! Eventually after much yelling and screaming and near fights, they arranged for a non-drunk man to drive us. After only 2 more “we need to check the car” stops for cigarettes and toilet breaks we finally arrived in Kratie, only to discover that the guesthouse we were staying at was owned by one of the other pompous arrogant drunk men from the meeting! And over the couple of days we were there we saw the same thing happen to other tourists, being stranded at our hotel on a daily basis.. great..
Nothing screams WELCOME TO CAMBODIA better than a scam on the first day!
All adventures aside, Kratie turned out to be a really nice little town and we hired bikes and rode out to see the Irrawaddy River dolphins. There are only about 200 left in the wild and chances of seeing them are pretty slim but within 5 minutes we were surrounded!! They looked sooo different to normal dolphins and had pretty much no rostrum (nose?), and completely different dorsal fins to normal dolphins. Very strange looking indeed, but we felt very privileged to actually see them.
After Kratie we headed to Sen Monorom. Getting there was one of the most exciting trips we have had so far. For the first 2 hours we were on the roof of the tuktuk, which was heaps of fun, and not as scary as we had thought it would be, the road was pretty straight and the driver was really cautious. We then had to change vehicles and were confused when the driver wouldn't let us in the back of his ute. So we waited and waited and watched as more and more bags, and boxes, and chickens (live of course) were piled in and then up, and then up. Finally he put our bags on top, covered it with a tarp and rope and told us to get on. On to the roof of course. With all the luggage we were about 3metres off the ground with nothing to hold onto but the rope holding the tarp on. We managed to get 10 of us on top! The road started out okay, but as it got bumpier our knuckles turned whiter.. When the road disappeared and we were travelling only on random potholes of dirt, the real fun began. Then came the rain! So with one hand holding the ropes, the other held another tarp over top of us and the journey continued through beautiful jungle and rainforest and with barely another person, car, truck or horse in sight. After 4hours we finally reached Sen Monorom and spent 3 days chilling in a lovely bungalow with some other friends. Roh couldn't resist the call of the jungle and did a 2 day trek with an ex-Khmer Rouge guy and got attacked by thousands of leeches, but had a good time.
From Sen Monorom, we said goodbye to our travel buddies and headed to Kompong Cham for a night, then onto Siem Reap the next day. Roh had already been to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat before last time he was in Cambodia, so I rented a pushbike, grabbed a map and headed off on my own! 13Kms later and after somehow taking a wrong turn, I ended up at some secret side entrance and was greeted by baffled guards trying to figure out how I had gotten by the ticket booths without a ticket. So back I went for another 5 kms to get a ticket, to go back again.. The Angkor Wat ticket system is pretty impressive actually. No matter what pass you buy, if you buy it after 4.30pm the day before you want to go, you can go in on that afternoon aswell. So with not too much time to spend, I decided to hit the biggest temple of all, Angkor Wat. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed. After seeing Bagan in Myanmar, it was just too well preserved/restored and over touristed for me. It was definitely beautiful, but looked exactly like the pictures so I didn't find any elements of surprise anywhere. The next day I left pretty early and decided to do the “big circuit” plus some extras. The temples I visited on the second day were, in my opinion far far more interesting and awe-inspiring than Angkor Wat itself. My personal 2 favourites were, Ta Prohm – an amazingly big structure that has just been let go wild, and is now just an awesome sight, with trees growing out of roofs, and treeroots supporting crumbling walls. Some of the trees are 50+m high and its just amazing to picture how grand it must have looked in its prime. My other favourite was Bayon – a very well preserved temple with 216 giant Buddha faces carved into the walls, all of different styles and with different expressions. It was truly sensational and a very peaceful place. I visited a number of other temples that were smaller and less touristed and equally beautiful and I'm really glad that I got off the beaten track and hired a bicycle. The people I met and the random structures I saw made it truly a wonderful experience.
After Siem Reap we decided to head to Battambang, on the other side of the big Tonle Sap lake. With our 2 new travel pals, Robin and Erin, again from Canada, we took on some more beers on the rooftop, some awesome storms, more temples and a cave called Phnom Sampeau, into which the bodies of thousands of innocent Cambodians were thrown by the Khmer Rouge. It was a crazily eerie place with bones and skulls next to a newly erected beautiful big Buddha covered in incense.
If this wasn't enough of a reminder of the horrors, our next destination was Phnom Penh. I don't even know how to describe S-21 and the killing fields. They simply defy words. Imagine a school, like you would see anywhere (very similar to a Japanese high school setup if you have been), and that is what S-21 looks like at first glance. Then you see the graves in the corner. Then you see the barbed wire over the verandahs to stop people from jumping off to their death. Then you enter the classrooms and see beds and shackles and propaganda on the blackboard, and bloodstains on the walls and floors - in every room. Then you enter a different building, and you realise that all the windows have been bricked in and the entire floor turned into tiny prison/torture cells, no bigger than a metre wide and long. And of course with shackles attached to the floor so you cant move. When you enter the playground you see swings and jungle-gyms and imagine the kids playing on them when S-21 was just a school. Then you see the pictures of how they were used to torture innocent people. In another building you are confronted with room after room of wall to wall mugshots of all the men, women and children, some still suckling their mothers breast, that were brought there and subsequently killed. Only 13 people are known to have survived out of the 10s of thousands. From the moment we entered until the moment we left, I had goose-bumps and cold shivers up and down my spine that I cant explain, and that I cant forget.
The killing fields were equally disturbing and peaceful at the same time. A beautiful park, with trees full of bullet holes, and hundreds of holes in the ground, like grass covered sand-bunkers at a golf course. Then you see the bones jutting out of them. Then you see the pieces of clothing half buried, half wrapped around a flower. There is a beautiful monument there dedicated to all who lost their lives, and hundreds of skulls are on display. You don't have to be a forensic scientist to recognise the difference between a bullet hole and a crushed skull. They say that most of the people were killed from being hit over the head with an axe or hammer or rock, anything they could find, to save bullets. Again the shivers and goose-bumps stayed with me the whole time, and, only when I visited Auschwitz, have I ever felt a tingling down my spine as strong as I did walking amongst the bones, massgraves, clothing and hundreds of butterflies.
After the sadness of Phnom Penh, we headed down south to Sihanoukville for some much needed beachtime! Only we happened to arrive on some national holiday and were greeted by literally thousands of people!! So we gave up on the swimming idea and had some beach-side cocktails instead! We hired a boat the next day and decided to retreat to Bamboo Island, off the coast for some quiet time, and that is what we found. It was a nice enough island, no real snorkelling, and with rather dodgy accommodation that made me sick, but it was still a nice retreat, and hey, a beach is a beach! So after a couple of days on the island, we headed back to Sihanoukville for some more cocktails on the beach, and then crossed the border once again into Thailand.
Cambodia was a really interesting place and I am glad I have been. I found it shocking, yet amazing to see everybody so happy and friendly (apart from the “guides” on the first day) considering all they have been through. I was born in 1977, and the Khmer Rouge killing reign ended in 1979. That means that every single person older than me, has to some extent witnessed, been subjected to, and survived it. If that doesn't make you thankful for your upbringing, I don't know what will.
Next came the Cambodian side. Cheeky buggers not only add an extra dollar onto the actual visa fee (you pay $21 but the passport only says you paid 20) but they then again try to charge you another dollar to stamp it at the gate! Again prepared, I apologised saying that I only had $21 and had already given the extra dollar to get the visa. Then I asked if they accepted credit card! The guard looked confused and waived me through, both of our passports safely stamped.
I know its not much, but it was a small victory in the war against corruption, and it felt soooo good!
So, now safely in Cambodia, it was only a simple matter of jumping on the bus that was there to meet us, change busses in Stung Treng and then we should be in Ban Lung by 4pm (it was 10am). EASY!! or not... The bus to pick us up was also there to pick everyone else up crossing the border that morning, which meant we got to sit by the side of the road for 2 hours waiting for the bus to leave. On top of that, the “guide” was a totally shoddy guy who tried to convince everyone to change their tickets and go straight to Siem Reap, of course charging an exorbitant amount extra! The poor people who had only bought a ticket to the border were of course stung bad. We had our tickets which we were assured were valid, however the connecting bus wouldn't pass through Stung Treng until 3pm so we wouldn't be there til 7pm. Oh well we thought and so we sat and waited. At about 11.30, with most of us suffering from heat stroke and starvation (as there was not a single building aside from the immigration offices in sight) we finally boarded the bus and left for Stung Treng. After the essential flat tyre, we finally arrived in Stung Treng at about 12.30. We were already over it and decided to go to either Kratie, or our original destination Ban Lung, depending on which left first. In Stung Treng we were taken to a restaurant and told we would be there for an hours, but as 1, then 2, then 3 went past we all started to get quite agitated... Why were we waiting you might ask? Because the “guide,” the restaurant owner, the driver and several other arrogant pompous Cambodian men were busy getting themselves totally drunk! Naturally all of us money-paying clients were getting more and more irritated and asked for our money back, to which the “guide” would yell and tell us 10 more minutes. At one point he nearly hit me he was that angry that we dared to ask to leave. We of course missed our connecting bus to Ban Lung to which we were told we could pay an extra dollar to go to Kratie (even though Kratie was considerably closer and cheaper than Ban Lung) or we would have to spend the night in their “guesthouse” in Stung Treng. um.. NO! Eventually after much yelling and screaming and near fights, they arranged for a non-drunk man to drive us. After only 2 more “we need to check the car” stops for cigarettes and toilet breaks we finally arrived in Kratie, only to discover that the guesthouse we were staying at was owned by one of the other pompous arrogant drunk men from the meeting! And over the couple of days we were there we saw the same thing happen to other tourists, being stranded at our hotel on a daily basis.. great..
Nothing screams WELCOME TO CAMBODIA better than a scam on the first day!
All adventures aside, Kratie turned out to be a really nice little town and we hired bikes and rode out to see the Irrawaddy River dolphins. There are only about 200 left in the wild and chances of seeing them are pretty slim but within 5 minutes we were surrounded!! They looked sooo different to normal dolphins and had pretty much no rostrum (nose?), and completely different dorsal fins to normal dolphins. Very strange looking indeed, but we felt very privileged to actually see them.
After Kratie we headed to Sen Monorom. Getting there was one of the most exciting trips we have had so far. For the first 2 hours we were on the roof of the tuktuk, which was heaps of fun, and not as scary as we had thought it would be, the road was pretty straight and the driver was really cautious. We then had to change vehicles and were confused when the driver wouldn't let us in the back of his ute. So we waited and waited and watched as more and more bags, and boxes, and chickens (live of course) were piled in and then up, and then up. Finally he put our bags on top, covered it with a tarp and rope and told us to get on. On to the roof of course. With all the luggage we were about 3metres off the ground with nothing to hold onto but the rope holding the tarp on. We managed to get 10 of us on top! The road started out okay, but as it got bumpier our knuckles turned whiter.. When the road disappeared and we were travelling only on random potholes of dirt, the real fun began. Then came the rain! So with one hand holding the ropes, the other held another tarp over top of us and the journey continued through beautiful jungle and rainforest and with barely another person, car, truck or horse in sight. After 4hours we finally reached Sen Monorom and spent 3 days chilling in a lovely bungalow with some other friends. Roh couldn't resist the call of the jungle and did a 2 day trek with an ex-Khmer Rouge guy and got attacked by thousands of leeches, but had a good time.
From Sen Monorom, we said goodbye to our travel buddies and headed to Kompong Cham for a night, then onto Siem Reap the next day. Roh had already been to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat before last time he was in Cambodia, so I rented a pushbike, grabbed a map and headed off on my own! 13Kms later and after somehow taking a wrong turn, I ended up at some secret side entrance and was greeted by baffled guards trying to figure out how I had gotten by the ticket booths without a ticket. So back I went for another 5 kms to get a ticket, to go back again.. The Angkor Wat ticket system is pretty impressive actually. No matter what pass you buy, if you buy it after 4.30pm the day before you want to go, you can go in on that afternoon aswell. So with not too much time to spend, I decided to hit the biggest temple of all, Angkor Wat. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed. After seeing Bagan in Myanmar, it was just too well preserved/restored and over touristed for me. It was definitely beautiful, but looked exactly like the pictures so I didn't find any elements of surprise anywhere. The next day I left pretty early and decided to do the “big circuit” plus some extras. The temples I visited on the second day were, in my opinion far far more interesting and awe-inspiring than Angkor Wat itself. My personal 2 favourites were, Ta Prohm – an amazingly big structure that has just been let go wild, and is now just an awesome sight, with trees growing out of roofs, and treeroots supporting crumbling walls. Some of the trees are 50+m high and its just amazing to picture how grand it must have looked in its prime. My other favourite was Bayon – a very well preserved temple with 216 giant Buddha faces carved into the walls, all of different styles and with different expressions. It was truly sensational and a very peaceful place. I visited a number of other temples that were smaller and less touristed and equally beautiful and I'm really glad that I got off the beaten track and hired a bicycle. The people I met and the random structures I saw made it truly a wonderful experience.
After Siem Reap we decided to head to Battambang, on the other side of the big Tonle Sap lake. With our 2 new travel pals, Robin and Erin, again from Canada, we took on some more beers on the rooftop, some awesome storms, more temples and a cave called Phnom Sampeau, into which the bodies of thousands of innocent Cambodians were thrown by the Khmer Rouge. It was a crazily eerie place with bones and skulls next to a newly erected beautiful big Buddha covered in incense.
If this wasn't enough of a reminder of the horrors, our next destination was Phnom Penh. I don't even know how to describe S-21 and the killing fields. They simply defy words. Imagine a school, like you would see anywhere (very similar to a Japanese high school setup if you have been), and that is what S-21 looks like at first glance. Then you see the graves in the corner. Then you see the barbed wire over the verandahs to stop people from jumping off to their death. Then you enter the classrooms and see beds and shackles and propaganda on the blackboard, and bloodstains on the walls and floors - in every room. Then you enter a different building, and you realise that all the windows have been bricked in and the entire floor turned into tiny prison/torture cells, no bigger than a metre wide and long. And of course with shackles attached to the floor so you cant move. When you enter the playground you see swings and jungle-gyms and imagine the kids playing on them when S-21 was just a school. Then you see the pictures of how they were used to torture innocent people. In another building you are confronted with room after room of wall to wall mugshots of all the men, women and children, some still suckling their mothers breast, that were brought there and subsequently killed. Only 13 people are known to have survived out of the 10s of thousands. From the moment we entered until the moment we left, I had goose-bumps and cold shivers up and down my spine that I cant explain, and that I cant forget.
The killing fields were equally disturbing and peaceful at the same time. A beautiful park, with trees full of bullet holes, and hundreds of holes in the ground, like grass covered sand-bunkers at a golf course. Then you see the bones jutting out of them. Then you see the pieces of clothing half buried, half wrapped around a flower. There is a beautiful monument there dedicated to all who lost their lives, and hundreds of skulls are on display. You don't have to be a forensic scientist to recognise the difference between a bullet hole and a crushed skull. They say that most of the people were killed from being hit over the head with an axe or hammer or rock, anything they could find, to save bullets. Again the shivers and goose-bumps stayed with me the whole time, and, only when I visited Auschwitz, have I ever felt a tingling down my spine as strong as I did walking amongst the bones, massgraves, clothing and hundreds of butterflies.
After the sadness of Phnom Penh, we headed down south to Sihanoukville for some much needed beachtime! Only we happened to arrive on some national holiday and were greeted by literally thousands of people!! So we gave up on the swimming idea and had some beach-side cocktails instead! We hired a boat the next day and decided to retreat to Bamboo Island, off the coast for some quiet time, and that is what we found. It was a nice enough island, no real snorkelling, and with rather dodgy accommodation that made me sick, but it was still a nice retreat, and hey, a beach is a beach! So after a couple of days on the island, we headed back to Sihanoukville for some more cocktails on the beach, and then crossed the border once again into Thailand.
Cambodia was a really interesting place and I am glad I have been. I found it shocking, yet amazing to see everybody so happy and friendly (apart from the “guides” on the first day) considering all they have been through. I was born in 1977, and the Khmer Rouge killing reign ended in 1979. That means that every single person older than me, has to some extent witnessed, been subjected to, and survived it. If that doesn't make you thankful for your upbringing, I don't know what will.