Farewell Cambodia – part 1

Three and a half hours of jostling, bouncing, bumping, and lots of uncomfortable adjectives later, we found ourselves in the city of Siem Reap, the final stop in our 7 week journey through Cambodia. The name ‘Siem Reap’ can be translated to mean ‘defeat of Siam (Thailand)’ and is commonly seen to refer to a significant moment in the long feuding history between the Khmer and Siamese kingdoms. Just how accurate this is depends on who you ask. In fact, a lot of history around here seems to depend on who you ask. Cambodian people and Thai people are historical enemies, just like the Cambodians and the Vietnamese, and the Cambodians and the Chinese, and the Cambodians and the Malaysians, and the Cambodians and the French, and the Cambodians and the Americans, and the Cambodians and the other Cambodians. Hmm.

For a city of just under 150,000 people, Siem Reap has a heck of a lot going for it. Some say its biggest draw is Angkor Wat, built during the 12^th century during the Khmer empire, for others it’s Pub Street, built during the 21^st century during the Angkor beer for $0.50 empire. We’ll leave it to your discretion to decide which is the main reason we came here. But more on that later. Our first full day we decided to go and visit the APOPO centre, the base of operations for a landmine clearing NGO that uses a rather unique technique in its daily operations: rats. African Giant Pouched rats to be precise. The rats were originally used in Mozambique both to help clear landmines and detect tuberculosis and helped the country to officially achieve its mine-free status in 2015. The rats are now used in Cambodia, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Columbia and have a 100% success rate. They can clear the size of a tennis court in just 30 minutes – something that would take humans with metal detectors up to 4 days. We got the opportunity to see one of the rats in action and it was really very impressive. The rat is hooked up to a harness on a rope with two handlers either side of the area to be cleared. The rat is then systematically led back and forth between the two handlers until it smells the explosive, at which point it will dig the ground, run to its handler for a treat, run back to the same spot and dig again, then run to the second handler for a further treat. They are trained only to sniff out the bombs and mines, so there are no false positives with scrap metal like there would be with humans and metal detectors. They’re also incredibly cute and I would like one please. Sadly, not all rats pass the training programme, and, in such cases, they are released back into the wild. We rather liked the idea that somewhere in Africa there are rats biffing about who are sort of ok at sniffing out landmines. They also retire when they get to about 7 years old and spend the rest of their days in an air-conditioned enclosure, eating, sleeping, and generally doing what rats do best. It’s a really worthwhile organisation and we were really impressed.

Something we weren’t so impressed with however was the Siem Reap night market. After doing a bit of research online we headed off to the one that looked the best, but actually turned out to be about 10 stalls of severely disinterested looking women, trying to flog the same old tourist crap that you see everywhere else in Cambodia. You want buy something lady? I have your size! You want a scarf? I have t-shirts – $1! Oh well. Given the expenses of the following 3 days, it’s probably for the best we didn’t find anything we wanted. We’d been in touch with a Tuk Tuk driver that we found on Reddit called Mr Lee and organised a 3 day private Tuk Tuk tour for the princely sum of $80. A 3 day ticket for Angkor Wat is $62 and we’d be needing one each. Bye bye surplus…

Mr Lee and his Trusty Tuk Tuk picked us up at 7am sharp and we headed off to see some of the temples further out into the complex. It had been raining heavily all night and the rain showed no signs of stopping as we rolled through the flooded streets. We had enquired at the reception desk as to the possibility of borrowing an umbrella or two but sadly none were available. Luckily when we stopped to purchase our tickets a nice woman was more than happy to relieve the two stupid westerners of $10, in exchange for 2 high-quality-definitely-won’t-fall-apart-in-five-minutes umbrellas. I chose a green one, naturally. No sooner had we parted with our hard earned dosh, the rain fizzled out into a light drizzle. It was looking like the most use we were going to get out of them was going from the ticket office back into the Tuk Tuk. Typical.

Our first stop was Pre Rup, a stepped pyramid style temple built by King Rajendravarman II in 961 AD. Dedicated primarily to the Hindu god Shiva, the laterite and brick structure represents the five mountain peaks of the sacred mountain Mount Meru; the centre of the universe in Hindu mythology. We heaved ourselves up the large limestone steps before exploring the top tier of the structure, occasionally falling into deceptively deep puddles and disturbing the odd bat from inside the stuppas. The best part was that we were completely alone. When Dave had told me we would have to leave that morning at 7am I was not best pleased, but Mr Lee was completely right, we had the whole temple to ourselves. Even the rain had held off while we explored.

Next we headed to East Mebon, another Hindu temple built during the 10^th century. East Mebon was built on a 120 meter wide man-made island on a 2 x 7 kilometre water reservoir called East Baray, and as such was only accessible by boat. Fortunately for us, the reservoir is now dry, and we were free to explore on foot. The second tier has an elephant statue standing guard at each of the four corners so naturally we spent some time visiting each of them so that none of them felt left out.

For the rest of the day, Mr Lee whizzed us around in his Trusty Tuk Tuk to temples that tourists rarely go to. I don’t think we were joined by more than 4/5 people at each site for the whole day. We saw huge trees growing over ancient buildings, an eerie lake with dead trees poking up from underneath the water, intricate carvings, stonework, and statues, oh and I got bitten by ants about 50 times. Dear reader I have never had much of an issue with ants, they are nature’s gardeners, but after being bitten by the big red *bleep*ers 3 times and a tiny black one once, I was starting to get a little bit fed up. Mr Lee naturally thought this was hilarious, explaining to me that they’ll only bite you if you step on them. You try telling them that Mr Lee! I actively avoid the blighters and was still getting injected with formic acid every few hours. It really hurts!

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Happily, the sky opened up once we reached Preah Khan and we were delighted to be able to use our amazing-top-quality-definitely-worth-$5-each umbrellas as we ducked under doorways and scrambled over the ruins. We even saw a really good spider and for our last stop of the day Banteay Srei, the sun came out! Banteay Srei translates roughly as “temple of women” or “temple of beauty” and is one of the more fleshed out of the sites – providing visitors with context via an information centre, and of course the opportunity to purchase tourist toot as well. The temple is built from pink sandstone and with the afternoon sunshine now blazing down on us, it gave the whole complex a golden colouring. The site was re-discovered by French explorer Henri Marchal who, as is so often the case when white people find something they like, promptly chopped a load of bits off and sent it to Paris to be displayed in various museums there. A lot of what he took is still in France and many of the statues that can be seen are reconstructions. As much as I hate to admit it, the statues in museums are probably in much better condition than they otherwise would have been had they been left here. The weather is so changeable, and I can imagine that blistering sunshine one minute followed by monsoon crazy rain the next isn’t exactly conducive to preservation. Sweaty after our adventure, we were glad for the cool breeze that the long ride back to Siem Reap provided.

There isn’t much in the world I am willing to wake up at 4am for and given that I’d done it for Machu Picchu it seemed only fair that Angkor Wat receive the same honour. The night before our first day it had rained for about 10 hours and given that we’re slap bang in the middle of monsoon season, it was likely that we’d have to skip sunrise over Angkor Wat as there isn’t much point when the only thing you’re seeing is various shades of grey. Once again though, and as has been the case for a vast portion of this year, lady luck smiled on us and we awoke to moderately clear skies. I must admit part of me was hoping that when the alarm went off at 4am it would be chucking it down so I could go back to sleep, instead we met Mr Lee outside our hotel just before 5am and we were soon on our way. As we got closer and closer to the site, the traffic became less and less comprised of locals on motorbikes, until we were in a seemingly never-ending motorcade of white people on tuk-tuks heading out to watch the sunrise. We bid au revoir to Mr Lee and followed the steady stream of people heading into Angkor Wat. When Dave visited 7 years ago you entered via the main sandstone causeway, but this seems to be undergoing renovations so we plodded over the odd plastic contraption over the 190m wide moat, which let just enough of the surrounding water over your feet to be annoying, but not quite enough to make you think the whole thing was sinking. Still, we made it over, entered through the gate and there in front of us, surrounded by a sea of inky blue sky was Angkor Wat. Behind us, the moon illuminated the grounds like a spotlight; I have never seen a moon so bright.

We headed down to one of the reflecting pools, passing palm trees and stone towers as we went, joining the already sizeable group of tourists waiting for the perfect picture. As we have travelled this past year, we have constantly been amazed at people’s ability to observe extraordinary phenomenon through a camera lens, instead of, you know, real life, given that they’re actually there experiencing it. By all means take a few pictures, some of the ones we took are actually not too bad, but if you’re going to pay $62 to stare through your phone for 2 hours then there’s this really cool new thing called the internet where if you type in “Angkor Wat Sunrise”, you’re treated to almost 3 million results – much cheaper.  After taking a few moments to laugh at stupid people, we stood and watched the sun rise over the 12^th century temple, appreciating just how lucky we were to be able to see it. As the sun rose and the moon began to disappear, the mist and haze surrounding the temple lifted and the intricacies of the façade’s architecture began to appear, making every moment more magical than the last. In spite of the very loud annoying Irish/American couple to the left of us talking very loudly and annoyingly about camera exposure and night mode settings, the experience left both Dave and I breathless. While the bulk of the other tourists were still watching the sunrise, we took the opportunity to sneak off and enter the temple a bit early to avoid the crowds. We hung around and explored the outer walls until the middle section opened to the public. Climbing in incredibly steep steps we were one of the first to reach the central platform. The views from the top are spectacular, opening out from each side over the Cambodian countryside, the sea of green stretches out for miles, dotted with palm trees and the odd temple stupa. Not even the ever present smell of bats was enough to drag us away from the cool breeze offered at the top of the platform, and we spent a good 30 minutes trying our best to cool down. Despite the early hour, it was setting out to be a spectacularly hot day, the air was incredibly still, and we were constantly chasing the breeze. Descending from the tower, we settled onto a step on the outer wall of the main complex to cool down. Later Dave explained that if I hadn’t got there first (mwahaha) he probably would have proposed there, which is very sweet, but I’m also glad I won’t forever associate our engagement with the lingering smell of bat pee. It truly is an impressive complex and it’s easy to see why it’s often referred to as the 8^th wonder of the world. I’m not sure how the Coliseum made it into the top 7 and Angkor Wat didn’t, but there we go. It’s a very well maintained attraction, there are staff everywhere, ushering tourists away from places they’re not supposed to be, sweeping leaves and debris off the paths, assembling committees to make the smallest of decisions. The French influence is very prevalent here. As the sun rose ever higher and the heat increased, we headed off through the East gate to re-join Mr Lee and continue our adventure…

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