The "Kingdom" of Cambodia
So I've had a little nearly 2 full months to sit and ponder my real feelings on my 3 day trip to Cambodia. Upon re-entry back into Thailand I had left Cambodia with a bad taste in my mouth. While Angkor Wat was truly spectacular to see and is a totally worthwhile experience that I would recommend to everyone, the rest of the country is wrought with just enough uncomfortableness and disturbing imagery that its hard to not let that overshadow the wonderful things that the country does have to offer.
I've described Thailand to friends as a southeast Asian version of Mexico; great food, gorgeous beaches, unruly but manageable as long as your aren't a bumbling idiot about it. It is seemingly a place where anything can happen. Most people I know describe Mexico and Thailand with an ear to ear grin on their faces, the kind of smile that says please, please PLEASE ask me about my debauched time in so and so place... Cambodia, though, is a place where truly anything can, and usually does, happen.
Starting out with our entry into the country, where we were constantly reminded that smuggling drugs into the country is punishable by death and that the sexual abuse of Cambodian children is an offense that is highly punishable as well, we were instantly spit into a border town described in a guide book as the safest of the available border towns. We had just finished our 3 and a half hour trip by van from our hotel in Bangkok to the Cambodia/Thailand border. It was here that we would get completely bent over on our conversion of Thai Baht to Cambodian Real and would also change modes of transportation from a van with roughly 10 passengers to a Toyota Camery fueled by a propane tank.
The wonderful little road to Siem Reap
I should set this up properly. We had gone to a travel agent in Bangkok to see about getting a flight into Siem Reap, home of the infamous Ankor Wat. Since we were traveling during the high season, the flights we wanted were a little out of our price range. So he told us that for roughly $130 he could book us a package that included round trip taxi fare from Bangkok to Siem Reap (approx. an 8 hour trip we were told), the necessary visa to enter "the kingdom of Cambodia," (a $30 value depending on which conniving border douchebag you asked you asked, even though the value printed on the visa says $20...) and three nights accommodation in a fairly reputable hotel in Siem Reap, which included air conditioning and breakfast. Now I'm sure many of you asked yourself "Why in the hell would you take an 8 hour taxi ride? Surely a bus or train would be cheaper..." And I'm sure it would have been. But, from what we had read and what other travelers had told us, the trains in Cambodia are absolutely ridiculous. First, they don't operate out of every border town, so you must go out of your way to a much more dangerous border town, and then when you get on the train, you come to realize that it is essentially a box car with some bolted down ancient park benches...so trains were out. The bus was our initial choice, but then we heard the horror stories of the road leading to Siem Reap from the Thai border, tales of roads so bad drivers sometimes chose to go off road and drive through rice paddies rather than stay on the road.
*An interesting side story, one which I have not yet confirmed but doesn't sound that implausible, is that the reasoning behind the road being in such sorry condition is that Thai Airways, in an effort to persuade more people to fly directly into Siem Reap out of Bangkok, actually pays the Cambodian government to neglect the road, thus leading to the horror stories which in turn lead to more Thai Airways passengers. It doesn't sound that far off to be honest, but whether or not that is 100% percent true I don't know. (We were told this story by our guide at the border who more than likely told us this story in an effort to gain out trust so that his next story about Cambodian real getting better deals than American dollars seemed believable, which is laughable to even consider now. In short, we were totally fucked on our conversion. It's a hustle I'm sure he runs all day, every day...gotta eat I guess...).
So we chose the taxi, had arrived at the border and were getting out first lungfuls of fresh, crisp Cambodian air (by fresh and crisp, I'm sarcastically implying that it is neither fresh nor crisp. It is actually a horrible, putrid air teeming with so much pollution that your boogers are black when you blow your nose...think more along the lines of "the bog of eternal stench" from Labyrinth instead...). We actually got our first of many scares about a minute or so into the car ride when the taxi driver went off the main road and started driving through town. He pulled over abruptly (all of this without telling us what in the hell was going on) and starts unloading our bags in the middle of this muddy ass street. As it turns out he was simply replacing the propane tank to fuel the car (it was located in the trunk). We almost got out of the car to investigate, but the brief moment the car door was open allowed us to get a whiff of THE most horrible smelling air ever, bar none. This may sound overly dramatic, but it was literally bad enough for us to justify to ourselves that we could amply investigate what was going on outside without opening the door, let alone go outside. Our luggage was simply not worth us stepping outside and breathing in heaping lungfuls of that noxious concoction.
As soon as we hit the infamous road to Siem Reap, it was about as bad as we expected, no more, no less. Nearly the entire car ride consisted of endless bumping up and down and aggressive swerving to avoid the crater sized pot holes (we actually never went off the road though, so that should be considered a plus). We did make one stop at a town along the way so the driver could take a piss, but we all elected to stay in the car with recent memories of border smells running through our nostrils.
The carpool lane on the highway to Siem Reap
What really stuck me about the country side was just how isolated it was. It reminded me a lot of driving through the seemingly endless deserts of New Mexico, Arizona or Eastern California, where you see absolutely nothing but the occasional dirt road jutting across more endless desert. That's what Cambodia was like, a bizarro Death Valley, with waist high grass and gray skies for as far as the eye can see instead of sand and dirt. It gives you an eerie sense of loneliness, or at least it makes feelings of desperation easier to conjure up.
So we finally arrived in Siem Reap, the tourism capital of Cambodia, and it quickly becomes apparent how it has received such a title. Amidst all the squalor and poverty juts out these mountains of capitalism, these huge five-star resorts. While the golf resort rested on the outskirts of town among the brush, the rest of the Western palaces could be found dispersed all throughout the city, literally next door to crumbling buildings or brothels. Whereas in Thailand at least the resorts are off the beaten path and hidden from the miserable normalcy of Thai life, this was not the case in Cambodia where the impression is that separation is a luxury that is chiefly ignored. To call the dynamic stark is an understatement of monumental proportions. Even our own hotel, which was off the main road and down two perilously dark streets, was outfitted with iron gates, marble floors and massive teak furniture. The rooms themselves weren't anything to write home about, but I literally saw naked, starving kids running up and down the street we were staying on.
(I found it hilarious that all but the two nicest places we stayed in had mismatched linens on the beds, everything from My Little Pony discarded sheets to flower printed pillowcases. It was what I would imagine camping out in a garage sale would be like. And also, no blankets...hardly anywhere...)
Now, a note on the kind of people that visit Cambodia. I must say that I met numerous friendly people from all over the world in Thailand/Cambodia, but Cambodia definitely attracts the more adventurous crowd. The first notable people we met while waiting at the border were two British guys named J.P. and Thom. This is where my education on English culture and accents formally began, wherein my friend and Newcastle native Rich would be my guide. J.P. was a "cockney," meaning he has a London accent and speaks with unimaginable speed and is always involved in "the game, the fuckin' hustle mate." Thom was from Middlesborough if I remember correctly, which puts him the "Smog Monster" or "Smoggy" category, a name referring to the noticeable pollution in the Middlesborough air (this is also a name which apparently they hate, and understandably so). Physically, they were a sight to behold since J.P. was maybe the size of a 7th grader whereas Thom was a hulking, blonde brute whose caveman features went deeper than mere physical appearances. J.P. and Thom both lived in London and were rival drug dealers who decided to go on vacation together, traveling all over Cambodia and who would eventually make their way up the river to allegedly see some nearly extinct river dolphins and smoke copious amounts of opium with the hill tribes, granted that they weren't blown up by any land mines along the way. But first, a few days of relative safety in Siem Reap with us.
(A note on the oft publicized land mine situation in Cambodia. So from what I was told, land mines are still very prevalent throughout the country, something like 4-6 million land mines dot the countryside, except in the areas most visited by tourists, so Siem Reap and the capital Phrom Peah are ok. But outside of those areas going off the beaten path is highly questionable and dangerous. It starts to sink in when you catch your first of many glimpses of mine victims that inhabit every portion of Cambodia. There was even a band made up entirely of land mine victims that played every night in the streets of Siem Reap. Nothing quite tugs at the heart strings like a bunch of limbless dudes plucking away at modified guitars and drums.)
Our first night together in Cambodia consisted of drinking a few pints at a local travelers bar, "Angkor What?", and then looking for weed. Now, to say I was freaked out doesn't quite capture my feelings at the time of our quest. Rich knew I wasn't going to smoke, and I had let him know before our trip that any and all drug use in Thailand/Cambodia was out of the question for me, but whatever they wanted to do was fine with me, so he knew how nervous I was. It also doesn't help that every single bookstore you walk by always has on display 10-15 books about Thai prisons, drug smugglers in Thailand or wrongly accused people who spent time in a Thai prison. Needless to say the titles nor the descriptions were flattering. But, there I was, one of 5 in a glorified cart being pulled around by a wheezing dirt bike, looking for the finest in Cambodian dirtweed.
The night ended with the group of us going back to the hotel and the four of them smoking in their room. We had agreed that the next morning we would all wake up and get over the Angkor Wat for sunrise, apparently the ideal time to visit the temple. So we went to bed, or at least most of us did. (When we went down to J.P. and Thom's room to wake them up, we discovered that Thom had stayed awake all night smoking and listening to the only 2 cds he had brought with him.)
I won't much go into the visit to the temple simply because there isn't a lot to talk about. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves. There were wild monkeys running around but I didn't get them in any of the pictures. Typical of SE Asian weather, it was beautiful in the morning, then dumped rain for about 25 minutes then abruptly stopped...nothing too out of the ordinary.
To briefly sum up the rest of my relationship with J.P. and Thom I'll just paraphrase the rest of our shared experiences:
Thom picked up two chicks having dinner together at a food stall by sitting down with them, grabbing one of their bowl's of soup and having at it, to which J.P. replied in his lovable cockney accent, "He's a caveman, a fuckin' animal. No manners whatsoever..."
J.P. professed his undying love of Aerosmith, proclaiming its the only thing the states have given him thats been worth a damn...
Riding around with J.P. in a private tuk-tuk only to find out later that he didn't have a dollar to his name to pay for it. His elaborate scheme was to sell some of his pot to the travelers at Angkor What?, citing his love of "the game," and "the fuckin' hustle." I never found out if he was successful with that business venture, but I did see him leave arm-in-arm with the tuk-tuk driver. I have no idea how that turned out for him.
I think this is my favorite picture I took...
To be continued...
...also, I'll post the rest of the pictures eventually.
