Cambodia: A whistle-stop tour

Compared to most of the other countries we have visited recently our stay in Cambodia was short and sweet, lasting only 6 days and consisting of only 2 cities stayed in.

Having crossed the border from Vietnam, our first stop was in the city of Phnom Peng the capital of Cambodia. The city is of a reasonable size and is laid out in a grid formation. As well as having names all of the roads also have a number, with the horizontal roads in the grid having odd numbers and the vertical roads having even numbers, which made navigation around the city very easy.

Our hostel (named Nomads) consisted of fairly basic but perfectly usable dorm rooms and was approximately 5 minutes walk from the river’s edge. After taking the afternoon of our arrival to acquaint ourselves with our surroundings, we decided to spend the following day visiting the famous “Killing Fields” and the associated S-21 museum.

The day that we had was very comparable emotionally to the day we spent learning about the Vietnam war only a few days earlier, and it is still difficult to work out which had a greater effect on us. For those of you who are unaware, Cambodia suffered a mass genocide between the years of 1975-1979 that saw somewhere between 25-30% (over 3 million people) of the country’s population murdered by the country’s controlling party at the time; Pol Pot’s Khemer Rouge Party. The party itself came into power under a false name, claiming to have a very different ideology to the one that they would actually preach while in control of the country.

The S-21 genocide museum was in it’s original life a primary school, but within days of the Khemer Rouge taking power all schools along with many other types of buildings were closed and many were converted into prisons. People were driven out of the cities and forced to take part in manual labour out in rural areas, while any high ranking officials, intellectuals or professionals were arrested and taken to the newly formed prisons. Once inside a prison, prisoners would be brutally tortured and frequently made to confess to crimes that they had never committed so that the government could “justify” their captivity. On average 50 or so people would be loaded into a truck once a week (although this increased to once a day later in the Khemer Rouge reign) and driven away from the prison, never to return. They were of course taken to our second destination; The Killing Fields.

Building B at the S-21 museum: Once classrooms before becoming prison cells

The Killing Fields are in a rural area outside of the main city, and were originally used as an everyday cemetery for Cambodian people. Under the Khemer Rouge however the area would be converted into mass graves (in some cases 600 odd people to a grave) to dispose of all the bodies of the prisoners. The prisoners would arrive by the trucks, be bound and gagged before being savagely beaten to death using anything and anything to hand. Bullets were too expensive to consider using on the scale of people that were to be killed.

The memorial building at the Killing Fields, built in the early 80's

I could go on telling you all about the hideous details of what occurred during those 4 years, but it would take up a lot of time and space in this entry and I’m sure that you all want to hear about something a little happier.

The following day was Vicky’s Birthday, and compared to the previous day we had a relatively quiet one. We went and explored one of the temples which was quite close to the hotel, before making our way out to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. We would have seen a lot more of these had they actually been open, as it turns out they are shut for a few hours during the middle of the day when we tried to visit!! In the afternoon we headed out to the Russian Market (although nobody can work out what is Russian about it!) with Jay and Laura, where we took part in our regular activity of souvenir shopping. On our way back we stopped off at a little ice cream parlour by the riverside for Birthday ice cream, before we headed off for a group dinner to celebrate Vicky’s Birthday (a few cocktails involved naturally!)

Our third day was spent travelling on the bus down to our second and final stop for Cambodia; Siem Reap. 

Vicky tries a spot of meditation in front of the temple

Siem Reap is well known for it’s proximity to the temples of Angkor Wat, amongst other groups of temples in the nearby area, and it is visiting these temples that we spent our first full day in the city.

We set off from the hotel at 5am in an attempt to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, and although we arrived in time (along with far too many other tourists) the sun did not keep it’s half of the bargain as night turned into day behind a veil of grey cloud. The temples were impressive enough, but I can imagine a sunny day would have given them a little more in terms of the wow factor as opposed to looking at them against the grey sky.

Angkor Wat

Fortunately during the day we did get a few patches of sunshine amongst the grey, and we saw some  of that sun while visiting the Angkor Thom temples a short distance down the road. This site is 3-4 times the size of Angkor Wat, and you could certainly feel the heat of the sun taking it’s toll on you while you took the time to explore it all.

See if you can spot the faces in the temples at Angkor Thom?

The final set of temples we visited that day actually turned out to be my favourite, and they were the jungle temples at Ta Prohm. Although once again there was a large contingent of tourists visiting the site, the layout was so maze like that it was actually possible to lose them for a short while by picking a different route to the large tour groups running round like a daisy chain of sheep. Jay, Laura, Vicky and I picked a route that went around the edge of the temples at first and were delighted to find that everybody else had gone straight through the middle. Despite the crowds being technically not all that far away, you really couldn’t hear them which gave you the wonderful feeling of being alone with nature and a bunch of temple ruins; fantastic!

A bit of peace and quiet away from the dreaded tour groups!

Our second day in Siem Reap (and final full day in Cambodia) was spent relaxing and preparing ourselves for the bus journey the following day. We had a wander round one of the markets during the day, and then went to a local bar in the evening for dinner along with some local cultural dancing which was put on free of charge.

So that was about it for Cambodia, short and sweet as I said. On now to Thailand for 2 weeks to see what we can get up to there! But we will leave you with our companion Walter the Bear's (and Vicky's) favourite piece of advice from Cambodia: