Day 30: off to Singapore

We wandered about today through Little India, and there are lots of Chinese shophouses in the surrounding streets. They are deceptive as they look small, but they stretch really far back..
Lots of them are a bit shabby, but some have been painted really lovely colours and they make the streets look so nice.

Our hotel for tonight is near Little India, so we ate at one of the many food centres that exist here for dinner. Food centres are excellent - it's like eating at the food court in a shopping centre back home, but with better food. You wander round all the different stands and work out what you want, so everyone can get food they fancy. There is usually at least one veggie stand, so I'm covered, and dozens of others with weird and wonderful foods to keep JP happy. It takes some organisation as we have to split up, buy our food and then head back to find each other and a table, plus then organise drinks, but it is fun.

Day 29: just chillin'

Not much to report - a day of kicking back, enjoying the delights of a day without hauling ourselves round temples, trying to absorb history by the bucketload. Instead, we spent the day by the swimming pool and read. Having finished "Fast Food Nation", (don't read if you like eating at McDonalds, etc) I'm reading lightweight stuff for a bit, so this was a real treat day for me.

Getting ready for the next leg now and very much looking forward to the change in location. I liked Phnom Penh, but the rest of the trip has been hard work and Cambodia didn't stand a chance of winning our affections in the same way Vietnam did. Now we're looking forward to seeing the most developed nation in Asia and life being a bit easier, just in time for JP's birthday.

Day 28: finishing off the temple trek

Day three and yet more temples. As today was the royal ploughing ceremony, and most of the temples are on the same approach road as the ceremony and the agricultural show, we couldn't revisit any of the most well-known until afternoon so we headed off to a little known group in the other direction. They were nice enough to see simply because they were quieter and we were able to wander in peace. Didn't stop the hawkers though. We continually bombarded with requests from women and children at each site - "you buy something!!" Never a request, always phrased as an imperative, which you could argue is down to their ability with English, but then you can have an entire conversation with them about having kids (a very popular topic here as in Vietnam) or about why you don't need two more t-shirts. JP has a new tactic - distract them with showing them the pics on our camera, or taking their photo. We now have several photo's of two children's fingers holding their postcards thanks to this tactic (see photo above for an example).

On the way back into town, with the kids shouts still ringing in our ears, we were treated to a very Cambodian sight - two pigs being transported on a motorbike. "Moto" is the main transport here, and if at all possible, everything will be transported using them, but this was a real treat for us as it is the first time we've seen livestock on them. It was hard to see how the bike didn't topple over, but the pigs were pretty well trussed and although they occasionally wriggled their snouts, they didn't really seem keen to move.

In the afternoon we decided to head back to Angkor Wat again, to see if it was any more impressive the second time around, as I felt like we didn't get the most out of it the first visit. I can now appreciate that it is an impressive achievement, but I don't love it the way some people do. Each to their own, I say.

All done now, tomorrow is an easy day and we are looking forward to a day where we don't have to be on the road by 7am. Sad to say goodbye to Ton, our tuk-tuk driver, but all good things come to an end, and he'll be taking us to the airport the day after for our transfer to Singapore - we finally sorted out our plans today and we're going for some developed world sanity now that Thailand is not an option.

Day 27: More temples

Day 2 of our Angkor passes so we were off to see more temples. It was a much better day as there were less tourists and we were going under our own steam, without a guide, which was much nicer. Don't think temples make interesting reading, so am skipping over that bit though.

We did see something particularly good - the river of a 1000 linga. A linga is an ancient Angkorian fertility symbol they used in water purification rituals to encourage the crops, and it looks like the gherkin building in London. [JP says I'm not allowed to write "willy" - oops, :) ] Anyway, the people around the river decide to carve hundreds of them into the river bed to encourage the gods to look favourably on the river and ensure it would never run dry. Right the way down a stretch of the river you can see all these carvings in the shallows as it is the dry season at the moment, but in the wet season, they will all disappear again. The waterfall is really a trickle, but was a nice point to paddle in, hence JP looking a little damp in this photo.

We saw the making of palm sugar candy on the journey back to town. I didn't know palm trees had fruit other than coconuts, but clearly there are lots of different types of palm trees. The juice from the fruit is somehow extracted and then it is boiled up and then set into little moulds to make tablets like rounds of kendal mint cake, but more like the taste of barley sugar. Yum!

On the "home front" we also moved hotel rooms to the more upmarket bit of the golden Banana (yep, that's the name of where we're staying). It has a swimming pool, and much nicer rooms. Having spent a night with a dodgy tum in the dodgy room, I couldn't face another one.

Dinner turned out to be a spectator sport as we went to a restaurant which served BBQ, Cambodian style. JP chose the "degustation menu", which was four meats and some veg, brought to the table raw, but with a gas burner and tray so that he could cook it himself at the table. I was thrilled, as you can imagine, especially when it turned out that the meats in question were snake, kangaroo, crocodile and ostrich. Apparently most things still taste like chicken, although in the case of the snake, it has a fishy texture. As usual when we go out and something exciting happens, we didn't have the camera with us, so no BBQ photo this time.

Day 26; let the temples begin...

Day one of the "templing" - apparently it has been made into a verb by those who go on the Angkor Wat experience - and we were up bright and early to get the most out of the day. We hired a tuk-tuk driver and a guide for the first day, which is a bit pricey, but we figured there is no point skimping when you've come half way round the world to see it, especially not for the sake of $25, which is all that one day of a guide costs.

There are dozens of temples in this area, and they each have their own merits, but most are ruined as the Angkor empire moved it's capital from here to Phnom Penh in about the 15th century, and the place was left to the elements until the French colonials discovered it in the 1860's and started to restore it. As a result of all the efforts to save it from the forest, many of the trees that were growing on the buildings have been cleared and on some temples, there are replacement parts, slowly weathering to look the same as the originals.

First on our list for the day was Ta Prohm, the temple used in Tomb Raider, so lots of people have seen it on film at least. Have to say, although I know I have seen it, I didn't remember it at all. It is supposed to be one of the most atmospheric temples, one of the few remaining which are ruined and overgrown with trees, but the busload of Vietnamese tourists that were there at the same time really didn't help the ambience. Most of the trees have been removed except where the roots are so intertwined with the structure that to remove them would destroy the building, and those show how long the building lay fallow.

Then it was on to the next place, Bayon temple, which was the central hub of the capital city of the time, Angkor Thom. I've never seen anything quite like it, and it was my favourite of the day. In each temple, there are towers, and the towers in this one are composed of faces. There are four giant faces on each one, facing the four cardinal directions, i.e. N,E,S & W. The scale of the place was impressive and although it was getting hot and I was already flagging, it was well worth the time spent there.

By this point it was only 11am, but we were starving, so after a stop for lunch, we then headed for Angkor Wat itself. At this point, if anyone reading this is a die-hard Angkor Wat fan, they should stop reading, because I'm about to commit the ultimate faux pas... I wasn't blown away by it.

I know that this is supposed to be the ultimate achievement of the Angkor kings, that nothing else is as big or as splendid, blah-blah-blah... but it didn't wow me. I agree it is big. It is sort of splendid in a crumbling manner of speaking. This was number 2 in my top 3 "places-to-see-before-I-die" list, so I'm really disappointed.

We trekked through the complex in the midday heat, which didn't help, and I learned a lot about the number of people it took to build it (300,000), how many elephants were used (6000), how long it took (37 years) and more besides, but not once did I feel the sense of awe that I've felt looking at other man-made wonders like Macchu Picchu or the Colosseum.

So there you have it. Clearly I am an uncultured heathen. More temples tomorrow so we'll see if I feel any better about them.

The one other event of note today was that we saw the dress rehearsal for the Royal ploughing ceremony. Each year, the king leads a pair of oxen in a ploughing ceremony in order to herald the coming of the wet season. He can delegate to a senior official, but they take their job seriously here, so it is usually the king himself. It is normally in PP, but this year it is here at Angkor, and the preparations are impressive. There is the equivalent of a county agricultural show taking place at the site as well as the ceremony, and the tents and stands are being erected at the moment, although the event is three days away. I'd like to see it, but it will be crazy busy and we'll lose most of a day with it, so i have to make do with seeing the dress rehearsal instead, hence the photo.

Day 25: Temples ahoy

...and thus begins the part of the trip we have long anticipated - the journey to Siem Reap and the delights of the long-lost Angkor empire. Angkor Wat was the reason for picking this part of the world, so I have high hopes that this will remedy the low spirits which set in after the crash.

Another six hour bus journey (see self-portrait of us on the very pink bus) and we're in Siem Reap, capital of all things temple-oriented, and VERY westernised. It's filled with tourists like us, all obsessed with getting the best temple experience ever. There is a "Pub St" (or "Bar St" if you're an American) and surrounding it are streets filled with restaurants, doctor fish places (yep, people really pay for fish to eat their feet), souvenir shops, tuk-tuks and anything else you can think of that a tourist might buy.

The ethnic mix of tourists has balanced out here though - it seems everyone in developed nations sends tourists out here for their fix. Busloads of Japanese tourists throng the streets by day, although we haven't worked out where they go in the evening yet. I think they ship them out to themed restaurants, or else to certain hotels where they have 5-star luxury, but we have no confirmed evening sightings so far.

Our hotel is not so glam. We booked into a place on the recommendation of the two women we met on the Mekong boat trip, but I don't think they stayed in the same part of the place that we are in. There are three bits, and we're in the most basic, so I think we'll upgrade tomorrow. The room is shared with many mosi's and I found a weird worm in the shower, so not really my preferred standard of accommodation.


Food: the cculinary delights of Cambodia are mainly around the variety of fruit and vegetables available here, since I'm not a fan of BBQ meat, but JP is in his element. The photo here is a type of unripe fruit (not sure what) which is served sour, in vinegar and with chili on top. Haven't tried it as I'm not a fan of sour things, but am trying to persuade JP :)

Day 24: Back to civilisation

Although I quite enjoyed the river trip in the end, I'm not sad to be leaving. We booked to go on the coach back to Phnom Penh, which is a change from the planned itinerary pre-crash, as we're a bit freaked out and want to be back in civilisation again. The coach is 6 hours rather than the 4 hours in a car, but neither of us is keen to get in a car here for a while.

The coach was fine, slow but steady, and whilst the incessant loud, tinny ringtones of the other passengers mobiles was a bit irritating, my ipod made everything better. The decor was very bizarre - everything was covered in a chintz pattern, even the televisions dotted through the length of the coach. Even the toilet, designed for midgets, was ok. We could only use it if bent double, but it was better than waiting for the alternative - what I shall refer to as "French toilets" at the next rest-stop.

Once in Phnom Penh, we booked to stay at the same place as last time, "The 240" B&B. After the hotel in HCMC, which was really big and impersonal, we'd much rather stick with smaller places as then you feel more comfortable, which is nice when you're away from home for this length of time. It has amazed me how helpful the hotel staff are in this part of the world. In Vietnam the staff at various hotels organised flights, booked day trips, made phonecalls for us, and all for free - as JP would say, "brucie bonus!"


Once we'd dropped off the bags, we headed out again and I was really pleased to see "our" tuk-tuk driver outside the B&B. Phin is a student at the university, studying medicine to become a doctor, but he runs a tuk-tuk to earn money to fund himself. Whenever we see him he has a textbook with him, which are always in French as apparently that is the language he is taught in, despite being a Khmer university. We've used him a couple of times before and he'll take random detours to share something with you. I didn't get a photo of him, so here's JP on the tuk-tuk!

Today's destination was the Russian market, tourist central, but the best place to get a lot of souvenirs in PP. Here's our purchases for the afternoon. I love markets in the east, they're dark and smelly and you need to watch your footing, but they are packed with stalls filled to the rafters with treasures, some tat and a lot of smiling people keen for "you lady, you buy something!", a familiar refrain which starts to haunt you after a while. It's a sensory overload as the noise and the smells overwhelm you at first, but after a few minutes you start to get used to it, and I like seeing all the random stalls in the market. In the main central market in PP , we've found aisles selling motorbike parts, we've found the aisle with the "beauty salons" (ordinary market area with sinks added), food stalls piled high with what looks to be hundreds of types of dried fish, and so much more besides.

$20 lighter, and with replacement sunglasses, new flip-flops and lots more, it was back to the hotel to clean up, before we were off for "sundowners" at the Foreign Correspondents Club. The FCC is something of an institution here, at least for expats, of which there seem to be many in PP. There is a two-tier system in both Vietnam and here in Cambodia, whereby the expats seem to stay separate to the locals, but maybe that's an outsiders view. There are certainly enough westernised (i.e. expensive) places to support that, plus there is separate medical provision. Apparently the expats have regular get-togethers of their own national communities and then there are monthly get-togethers for the entire lot. Who says the days of national empires are over?

Then it was back to "Friends" for dinner, the charity place we went to on the first day in PP, as I'd been craving the aubergine dip. I hate aubergines normally, but if they are turned into babaganoush, i love them. They don't call it that here, but it is the same stuff. By the time we were headed back to the hotel, it was dark, and we were surprised to see that the Royal Palace and several other places in the city were all lit up in honour of the Buddha's birthday. As this is a buddhist country, it's a big deal, and there are two big ceremonies at important shrines, but everywhere celebrates with a national holiday and they all go to their local shrines and give offerings and thanks. We saw lots of families having picnics on the open park in front of the royal palace, near the two small shrines on the riverfront. The shrines were heaving with people, very chaotic and heavily scented with incense. I watched for ten minutes and could not fathom any order to the throngs of people trying to get into the tiny shrine buildings, which could probably hold 10-15 people, but had dozens trying to get into them. I took several photo's to try to show the chaos, but none of them do it justice. As with most events here, it all follows rules I can't see in practise, but which keep everything ticking along all the same.

All things considered, Phnom Penh turned out to be a good city to stop in and we've liked it as much as we did the cities in Vietnam. Off to Siem Reap next - another 6 hour bus tomorrow.