After what felt like a rather rushed 15 days in Vietnam, with our 30 day visa, Cambodia was an opportunity to relax. We relaxed accordingly in the sleepy capital of Phnom Penh.
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia, with a dark past but a promising future. It is clear after just a few hours that there are some major differences between Cambodia and Vietnam.
Compared to the mayhem of Hanoi and HCMC, Phnom Penh was a much lazier and relaxed city. In our first day, I assumed we had chosen to stay in a suburban area on the outskirts, but we were situated fairly centrally, only 10 minutes walk from the temple complex. A grid of wide streets about 1.5 km wide and tall is home to markets, monuments and some of Cambodia's only skyscrapers.
We took a walk down the side of the wonderfully huge Mekong river, and from this pleasant boulevard it is only a short walk to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, a complex of royal buildings constructed under King Norodom since the 1860's.
Most attention on 'Khmer' architecture is focused on the 11th-14th centuries and the styles of Angkor Wat and surrounding temples. But pre-modern architecture in Cambodia is also known as Khmer, despite no obvious stylistic similarities. The architecture of the palace complex, and most current Cambodian temples is of a pagoda style similar to that of Thailand, with flat, gabled, tiered roofs, long slender columns and elaborate, thin finials. This is in contrast to styles I have seen in Japan, China and Vietnam, which have dramatically curved, heavier looking roofs.
The recent history of Cambodia has more important things than gables and finials to dwell on however, and there are many sites in Phnom Penh which are shocking reminders of the atrocities that were conducted by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970's.
The Killing Fields
Choeung Ek, or the Killing Fields, is the site of a vast collection of mass graves. Almost 9,000 bodies were discovered here at the end of the Khmer Rouge regime.
The site is still home to their bones, the skulls filling the large central memorial, with other evidence scattered around the fields. The free audio guide told many harrowing tales from survivors of the regime's attacks.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Tuol Sleng is a former high school that was used as a secure prison during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. In around 4 years, it processed around 20,000 enemies of the state, with most of them ending up in the Choeung Ek killing fields or similar, and only 7 surviving.
Again, an audio guide guided us around though the converted school, through the interrogation rooms, where victims were chained to beds, and found in 1979 just hours after the prison had been abandoned .
And the cells, which were crudely built and very small, lined up in former classrooms, with a corridor knocked through the walls.
As well as this there were relics and accounts from survivors, a serious and upsetting look at a brutal regime, which only came to and end 38 years ago.
Sihanoukville
Onto slightly lighter material, Sihanoukville is a coastal resort to the south, which we passed though after a few days in Phnom Penh.
Sihanoukville wasn't the best place ever, it was a decent beach, and nice weather, but the area was rather touristy and seedy, with beach side clubs serving dubious vodka and a surprising number of suspicious looking western men. Only a short stop in this rather peculiar town though, as we were off to the island paradise of Koh Rong.
Koh Rong
Koh Rong, by description sounds mightily impressive; No roads, Huts on the beachside, un-explorable forest, empty white beaches.
And it was a magnificent and beautiful place to visit, so long as you were more than a mere 15 minute walk from the main pier. The problem is, Islands without roads, internet and cash machines also lack sewage systems, so there were some offputting black streams heading into the most central parts of the sea.
The weather was fantastic however and the beaches which could be accessed through short walks through the 'jungle' such as 4k beach and Long Beach were the most unspoiled i've ever seen.
Koh Rong Sanloem
It was nothing compared to Sanloem though. Koh Rong Sanloem is the more expensive of the two sister islands, but seems to have come through the tourism development more intact. Unlike Koh Rong, Sanloem doesn't have much of a real local Khmer population, and so its main development has been resorts and bungalows nestled behind the treeline, leaving the white empty beaches mainly as nature intended.
We could only afford one night though, unlike the $6 rooms in hippie huts, our private bungalow was an astounding $35. So it was back on the boat for an overnight bus to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat.
Siem Reap
It's hard to ignore the fact that the main function of Siem Reap is as a springboard from which to explore Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. But beacuase of 'Koh Rong belly' - a common side effect of a few nights on the island - the pinnacle of our trip had to wait a few more days before our adventure.
We got to Angor Wat by sunrise, having arranged for a trip for the whole day to take us around the various temples. One surprising thing was the cost. $37 for a day ticket, $62 for the three day pass. Not that this proved much of a deterrent, people don't go to Cambodia and not go to Angkor Wat.
Because of the scale of the site, this morning rush quickly fizzled out, and we were left fairly free to explore the main Angor Wat and all of the surrounding temples. And what scale it is. Angkor Wat is itself on a site of 1.6 square kilometres, but at the turn of the 1st millennium, the area now known as Angkor was a urban sprawl of at least 1,000 square kilometres. There are hundreds of temples and relics to see and it took us a whole three days to scratch the surface.
An exhaustive list of each temple however would ruin what little flow this blog has left, so for the sake of brevity, I will bring in my personal highlight, Banteay Srei, a relatively miniature temple, a good few kilometres off the main loop of temples, which is notable for its ornate carvings from red sandstone.
We visited Benteay Srei on our second of three days. We finished off the second day by visiting the 'floating village' on the edge of the giant tonle sap lake, which due to the dry season, and the famously wide flux or the surrounding water system was slighlty more 'on stilts' than it was floating.
There was a beautiful sunset which we could see over the great expanse of the lake.
On the third and final day, we were exhausted, having already spent two days looking at every single temple we could squeeze in, so we took a different approach, rented some cringey looking pea-green electric bikes and whizzed around Angkor under our own steam.
This turned out to be a great way of exploring, as beyond architectural minutiae (which is supposed to be my speciality!) the most inspiring experience was to experience the great scale of the city and the entire complex.
Battambang
The last place we visited in our 2.5 weeks in Cambodia was Battambang, supposedly Cambodia's second biggest city. We could have been fooled however, because it was much more village like, a reflection on the low level of development there is in this country.
It was one of our favourite places in Cambodia though, because although it was small and quiet, and despite constant power cuts, it was a place where you could feel closer to Cambodian life. On the first day, we took bikes aimlessly up the river, and came across so many school kids and average Cambodian houses (and incredibly loud weddings).
Another day, we took the tourist tour, wich took us, among other things, to a rather perculiar 'bamboo train', which was to be dismantled whenever you needed to let an opposing train pass.
The day finished off at Sampeou, a cave-riddled mountain famous for more than one reason.
It offered magnificent views over Battambang's surrounding countryside, which is extremely flat. At the top there is a pagoda, but also another look into the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, who used these caves as 'killing caves'.
But also it is a place of some fascinating natural sights, the many caves inaccessible to all but the most dedicated explorers are full of millions of tiny bats. Most tours end here at sunset so that tourists can experience them going out for their nightly feed. There was a constant steady stream of bats from the caves for the 25 minutes we watched them, and they kept coming!
Our most 'immersive' experience happened on the last day. We found a lady via email, Lumorng Ounh (lumorngph@gmail.com if you're interested!), who showed us around their village; Bospo Village; took us shopping, we had lunch with her, her husband and her kids. She was an english teacher in the afternoons, and her and the kids were very good speakers, and it was deeply interesting to hear their stories on their modern lives in Cambodia, and about much darker times in the past, and to experience their way of life.
That concludes my travels in Cambodia! The next day we arranged for a minibus to take us over the border to Thailand, and to the bustling metropolis of Bangkok.
This was the 5th of march so i've still got a long way to go in my summary. I'll be back soon hopefully!
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