A Very Strange City Tour – Cambodia

A Very Strange City Tour
Cambodia

October 31
Most of today was spent at Angkor. We didn’t get there at sunrise because our pancakes weren’t ready. Our hotel manager kept apologizing for that but not a big problem. Puhn, our guide from last night took us. We saw a series of temples, but the most impressive is Angkor Wat. Several others have trees growing through the temples as the forest is reclaiming its ground.

Even more interesting are the beautiful people. I feel fortunate to be here now because in a few years with the onslaught of tourists it will be ruined. We met a teacher who had escaped from the Khmer Rouge with 30 other people, he was one of two to make it to Thailand.

What is odd is to watch the movie The Killing Fields with the locals. They are proud of this movie as it is the only Hollywood movie about Cambodia, but it shows the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. With nearly a third of the population being murdered that means nearly everyone knows someone who has been murdered or someone who did the murdering.

November 1

The beauty of Angkor Wat

Second day at Angkor. This time we did make it for sunrise, which is stunning. We went back to the woman with the family that we met yesterday. We hung out there for three hours and played around with the children. One child is only seven but her mother is just 20, not uncommon here.

We doubled back to some of the temples to the north and east of Angkor Wat. We ran into a couple of Buddhist monks at one of the temples and talked with them. The temple by the lake was popular as it was hot today and many jumped into the lake. Sunset at Phnom Bakheng overlooking the temples is the main place at sunset.

November 2
The boat to Phnom Penh, the capital, is the best option as it only takes four hours as opposed to taking a bus that may take two days. The boats are similar to the long canal boats used in Amsterdam. The trick is to get on early, if not sit outside on top of the cabin. However, today was warm and sunny so it was a good day to be on the roof. I actually got a little burnt.

After leaving the boat, we were met by heaps of people that offered to take us to hotels. I knew where I wanted to go and picked out a guy to take me. He seemed like a good guy so we agreed that he would give me a city tour tomorrow on his moped for six dollars.

I went by myself to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. My camera was jammed, didn’t advance, so I found some guy on the street that fixed cameras. After visiting the Palace I found him back somewhere and he fixed it, good deal.

Then to the Central Market which was extremely hot and crowded on the inside. I had to take care of money issues, too. This is the only country I’ve been with no ATM and even Travelers Checks are hard to cash. So I’ve been relying on US dollars, which is easily accepted and preferred, I haven’t even seen the local currency yet. But I’ll have to get more dollars when I’m in Vietnam.

November 3
The Parachute Headquarters is on the west side of the city. I was given a menu of weapons I could use. I shot off an AK-47 and a grenade. For $200, I could have shot a rocket launcher at a live cow but I passed on that.

Trees overrun a temple in the Angkor complex

Next stop was Choeung Ek, The Killing Fields. What is odd is that I heard schoolchildren singing and it is so peaceful. But, the monument is full of skulls due to the Khmer Rouge. There is a souvenir shop but I wasn’t exactly in the mood after seeing all that death.

The next part of this very strange city tour was the S-21 Museum. It was an old school that was transferred into a prison. There were four buildings that included the rules of the prisons including “No crying when getting electrocuted.” Also included is a map of Cambodia made of skull and bones.

Moving east I visited the Russian Market, which is very smelly and fishy. Then on to the Independence Monument. My final stop was near the Royal Palace to stop and reflect.

November 4
The old capital of Cambodia is Udong. My driver, Mark, from yesterday took me out there, which was painful hour and a half ride. Mark had offered to just give the moped to me for the day but then when he saw how poorly I drove he decided against it.

There are a series of temple to see, all of which would have been interesting had it been the first thing I saw in Cambodia. However, after the last couple of days it was a bit anticlimactic. Some of the new temples were built in 1999. A lot of them have snakes in and around them, I’m not really sure of the significance. He also showed me the “subway” which is an underground but for just humans to walk not trains.

The road back was a race to beat a violent thunderstorm. We did make it back in time. I had a couple drinks with a Danish couple at the Hard Roach; the sign looks like the Hard Rock. The people at Siem Reap and the country are friendlier than here in Phnom Penh, more guarded and more tense feel here.

November 5
The supposed eight-hour trip to Ho Chi Minh took twelve. At the border, there was a small kickback, 2,000 Dong, which was less than a quarter. We continued on to Saigon and there were a lot of people here, seemingly all driving on mopeds. I looked around a little bit today with a Kiwi I met on the bus. We went to an ATM and stocked up on Dongs and dollars, then we got something to eat.

November 6

A map of Cambodia made of skulls and bones shows the destruction of the Khmer Rouge

Today was my day to get organized, which took a surprisingly short amount of time. I booked my flight to Beijing and my bus trips to Hanoi. I then went to the post office to send something back and this took a surprisingly long amount of time, over an hour. This is where the big bureaucratic, Communist government really kicked in. There were seven different lines. The first was the customs censorship list, where they looked through my goods and made sure there is nothing they don’t like. They looked at some of the woodcuts and books but left everything through. The next line is more forms and stamps followed by more stamps, then they wrote something on one, the next taped everything together and eventually it was mailed out.

I went to the Revolutionary Museum with the top floor dedicated to fighting the French and the Americans. This works in combination with the History Museum, which takes Vietnamese history up to 1930.

The War Remnants Museum, called the War Atrocities Museum until Clinton normalized relations, has memorable photographs. They really stressed the use of chemical weapons by the Americans. There are several photos of these as well as deformed fetuses in pickling jars. I returned to my hotel and prepared for my tour tomorrow of the Cu Chi Tunnels.