Last year, while traveling in New Zealand, I ran in to a Brit living in Thailand. His name is Alan Puzey. We exchanged email addresses, and stayed in contact. While I was in Thailand and India, he was crossing the USA.
On Wednesday, I received an excellent report on his recent trip to Cambodia.
You will find a copy of his message by pressing the "Continue reading" link below.
From: Alan Puzey
Subject: CAMBODIAN REPORT
Date: Mon, February 23, 2004 10:13 am
To: Bill@Sundstrom.us
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02 - CAMBODIA
When you delve into the Lonely Planet guide, you may be daunted by the ten pages on health issues; hepatitis, HIV, Dengue Fever, malaria, rabies, cholera - all the usual suspects - plus leeches, snakes, worms; and if these don't get you - landmines, street crime, scams, begging and road accidents still might!
So, it was with a little trepidation that Bryan and I embarked on an eleven day trip, taking in Siem Reap, Angkor and Phnom Penh, little knowing at that time what a successful trip it would turn out to be with nary a mishap and much enlightenment en route.
A President Airlines (Cambodian) round trip; Bangkok > Phnom Penh > Siem Reap > Phnom Penh > Bangkok cost just $210, but to this had to be added another $37 as there is a charge for every Cambodian airport passed thru, regardless of whether you stop over. How these charges continue to mount up, all around the world! Every flight was in the same Boeing 737, so perhaps they just have the one plane; however, every flight was smooth and fine. Cambodia uses US dollars for all major transactions and a local currency (the riel, with 4,000 riels to the dollar) mainly for local people and minor items. We both took $500 for the eleven days and returned with about $50 each - so were riel millionaires for a while! Bangkok to Phnom Penh takes 70 minutes and Phnom Penh to Siem Reap 45 minutes.
A 25 minute taxi ride from the airport to Siem Reap was just $1 and we were taken to a couple of new hotels, one of which we chose at $17 for a twin. It was fine and one of a number of very new hotels recently built for the influx of tourists to the Angkor sites. Siem Reap proved to be a charming little town for a stay, with a 'frontier' atmosphere of dusty, dirt-track roads, little or no lighting at night and pockets of activity around the tourist areas.
Our evenings here were taken up with choosing which of the fifteen odd 'local' restaurants to eat at - all of which proved tasty and very good value, imbibing the local 'Angkor Beer' which was very good, playing some pool and watching televised football. There were plenty of police on the streets around the tourist area and no signs of trouble.
The first couple of days were spent settling in, exploring the town (doesn't take long, but it was hot of course) and finding our feet. The next three days were centred on viewing the Angkor sites. The first two days we got there and explored under our own steam, on hired bicycles, and on the third day we hired a rickshaw wallah to drive us around the outer sites. Tickets to enter Angkor are $20 for one day, $40 for three days and $60 for a week. We chose the happy medium and most people do, for after three days, most people are 'temple-ed out', interesting though the sites are.
Angkor's hundred or more temples were built at the height of the Khmer empire between the 9th and 14th centuries AD and during that time the complex occupied an area greater than that of London. All the other buildings that go to make up a city were made of wood and have long since decayed and disappeared. As the Khmer civilization came to an end; the temples were overgrown by jungle and virtually forgotten until they were discovered by French colonialists in the 1860s. Since then, some sites, such as Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom have been uncovered, re-erected where necessary and restored with freshly sculptured replacement stones; whilst other sites - such as Ta Phrom and Preah Khan, have been partially uncovered and left with the foliage growing over them and, in some cases, with giant trees growing out of and over the temple buildings.
It is an awesome experience, walking and climbing around these sites; quite equal to visiting the Pagan and Shwedagon Pagoda sites - both in Burma. Bryan and I did a lot of photography during these three days and it was an exhilarating experience, enhanced by spending some of our evenings reading up on the history of these great monuments. Neither Bryan nor I are early risers and it was hard work exploring Angkor in the heat of the midday sun, and we both agreed - having seen an exhibition of past photographs of the site - some taken in the rainy season, that it would indeed be nice to experience the temples in such conditions. I can only imagine how difficult it would be clambering about the building remains in the wet, however!
After three days of exertion, we relaxed and had a wonderful 'Seeing Hands Massage', at an organization raising well-deserved funds for the excellent blind masseurs. This was followed by a tour of the best hotel in Siem Reap, the 'Grand Hotel d'Angkor', part of the Raffles chain, so you may imagine the opulence which was quite out of place in Cambodia. Next day we strolled round the market, bought a few things, then packed and made our way to the airport to take the afternoon flight to Phnom Penh.
At Phnom Penh airport, all the taxi drivers wanted to take us to 'the best hotel' which, as usual didn't coincide with our choice from the Lonely Planet guide. We got our driver to try two hotels of our choice, which were, in fact, full that night, so we had to go to 'his hotel', 'The Hawaii', for at least the first night. This was not in the best part of town and was 'shabby round the edges' with a non-working elevator that would be 'fixed tomorrow'. A long-staying guest confirmed our suspicions that tomorrow never comes at this hotel!
However, next morning we were able to check out, and into the 'Cozyna Hotel' where we had originally wished to be. This is in the one small, clean, modern area of Phnom Penh, by the riverside, that contains almost all the tourist hotels and restaurants and abuts the Royal Palace, Museum and garden area of town. A veritable oasis within a desert of squalor and neglect.
Few countries can have suffered as much as Cambodia during the past few decades and fighting can only be said to have finished in around 1997, leaving a country with shattered infrastructure, no money, no business and cities and roads that are on their last legs. Bangladesh and Burma even look a notch above poor Cambodia. Rubbish is everywhere on the streets (apart from the palace/tourist area) and the smell of shit is pervasive.
We did find a great expat and tourist bar, 'The Temple', about five minutes walk from our hotel. A three hour 'happy-hour', plenty of good looking bar girls, two pool tables and a DJ with a penchant for 60s and 70s music made it my kind of place. We spent most of the remaining three evenings there, chatting with some of the expats, many of who had moved on from Thailand to the cheaper, wilder frontiers of Cambodia. I played a lot of pool and made friends with Ut and Sorphorn, the best two players there, learning a little about their life in Cambodia at the same time.
One day I walked alongside the river to the 'Friendship Bridge', built by the Japanese, where I photographed an area of riverside slums - only to see in the Bangkok Post this week, that most of the area was recently destroyed by fire, demolishing 500 homes and making 1,000 people homeless (Interesting figures, I would have thought that there were more than 2 people to a home in the slums!). However, just what they didn't need.
The following day I took a rickshaw to the Tuol Sleng Museum and The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek; which provided me with undoubtedly one of the saddest days of my life. I already knew broadly what had happened under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, but going to these two places put it into harsh context. The Tuol Sleng Museum was originally a high school which was taken over by Pol Pot's regime and turned into Cambodia's largest prison and torture centre; the dreaded 'S21'. The museum now stands much as it did during these times, with added notes and photographs that leave little to the imagination. IT WAS HORRIBLE. Approximately 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned and tortured here, and then taken the 15 kms to the Killing Fields where, if they were not already dead, they were mostly bludgeoned to death, TO SAVE BULLITS, and thrown into the 129 mass graves there. 7 of the 17,000 prisoners survived! It is impossible to type this without tears forming in my e! yes, just as they did as I walked around these places. So sad, it is almost beyond belief.
On our final day in Phnom Penh, Bryan and I visited the Royal Palace, its gardens and the Silver Pagoda. Not very interesting really, having visited many finer similar buildings elsewhere. A taxi to the airport and another uneventful flight took us back to Bangkok. It had been a perfect little trip to a previously unvisited country, and I will remember the sleepy 'frontier town' of Siem Reap, the Temple Bar (my kind of bar!), the ruins of Angkor, of course - but most of all, I will FOREVER remember the 'S21' museum and just how cruel humankind can be.
Addendum:
Cambodia is still a very lawless place; here are just a few examples taken from 'POLICE BLOTTER' - translated from Khmer newspapers, that week.
'Police said four gunmen entered his house and shot him four times with an AK-47'.
'Police said the 16 year old boy raped a 4 year old girl while her parents were collecting wood from the forest'.
'Chey Thai, 32, was taken to Calmette Hospital for treatment after being axed three times in the head in a night-time robbery'.
'San was knifed in the neck and died on the spot after he came to stop an argument'.
'A witness told police that a group of gangsters were angry and chopped Siha several times after he stepped on the foot of their friend whilst dancing'.
'Min Laim, 75, was knifed to death while lighting a candle at Tuol Yrea pagoda. Police are investigating for the motive'.