More Siem Reap (See and Weep)

Its amazing the subtle differences one notices crossing borders. Cambodia is no exception, I mean we hadn’t see a live pig trussed up on the back of a scooter anywhere in Asia, now every third bike seems to be carrying one. The Tuk Tuks are different, the beers, local whisky/rum/vodka stuff, traditional clothes, facial features. In Cambodia you can’t get local currency everything is in $US even at the Autobanks. Some countries don’t use coins, change is given in sweets! One delicious thing in Cambodia is the bread, lovely fresh baguettes everywhere, a throwback from the French occupation.

As we entered Cambodia we started noticing little stands alongside the roads with bottles of yellow and red liquid, couldn’t figure it out, we thought perhaps a traditional drink until we stopped to fill up, turns out its petrol, no meters, no pumps just old bottles filled with petrol sold by the liter, not surprisingly petrol filters are evident in the shops. Cambodia is mainly Buddhist and one comes across simple daily offerings everywhere, little handmade baskets with rice, flowers and incense. The after effects of the war are visible all around, minefield survivors with no legs or arms are in bands playing traditional music in town at night on the pavement or at the entrance to temples, damn its heartbreaking.

The “Golden Banana” becomes our central point for our explorations, a little oasis with a pool to cool off and relax. Met a girl there doing a survey for World Vision on the kids, she goes out into the field and asks questions, some of the answers break your heart, child abuse, sex tourism, slavery. Kids as young as 4 or 6 approach you at the temples, why aren’t they at school?
One thing that seems consistent is both the positive and negative effects of tourism, towns and cities are changing at a blistering rate all over Asia. Siem Reap is showing all the signs of becoming a tourist trap, touts, western bars, expats, cheap sunglasses, Mexican restaurants in Cambodia huh? People start giving up their traditional ways and sometimes you need to dig a little deeper to find what you are looking for.

An early morning visit to the local market in Seam is fascinating, I am on a mission to find an even bigger suitcase, one with wheels on as our luggage is breaking out all over the place. With the heat and lack of refrigeration fresh produce pours in daily from the surrounding countryside, piles of fish, strange vegetables, flowers, skinned frogs, other unmentionable moving things. With the heat, smells noise and steam the atmosphere is rich in the market, my camera lens keeps fogging up as I try to capture the scene. Our stomachs are pretty tough and spicy by now and we eat a lot of street food, mama behind the wok, children serving, $ 8 dollars buys our family a delicious fresh crunchy tasty (albeit MSG filled) meal.

One morning Mr Sam took us out of town to a little boat from where we traveled for about an hour to a floating village set on the largest Lake in SE Asia, a source of vast amounts of protein. This village is not set up on the side of the lake but miles from any shore. Everything is floating - houses, shops, vegetable gardens, even their pig-pens. We bought a hundred pencils (at a vastly inflated price) and stopped at an orphanage where Nicky handed them out. 100 sweet little Vietnamese children, human flotsam living in the middle of a lake in Cambodia! Last stop and of course the boys highlight was a visit to a floating crocodile and snake farm/ restaurant – as tough as our stomachs have become we declined to stay for lunch.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat must rate along with Michu Pachu and the Pyramids as one of the wonders of the world. It’s not possible to describe the scale and magnificence of the place and so despite the difficulty in reaching Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) it was well worth the effort.

Built between the 8th and 14th centuries this vast area consists of literally hundreds of cities, palaces and temples in various stages of repair. One can spend weeks stumbling around discovering new wonders and unlike most sites of this importance it’s still relatively ungoverned and you are able to really go just about anywhere unguided giving you that feeling of being an old time archeologist discovering things for the first time.

Mr Sam, our tuk tuk arrives in the morning and we are all bleary eyed but looking forward to the adventure. The road leads through thick indigenous forests, it’s like a movie stage set - incredible with a huge energy. We arrive at the most famous one first and get absolutely bombarded by touts selling books, trinkets, guides, videos and anything a tourist will buy.

One of the girls takes a complete fancy to Bill much to his disgust and says to me
“Hey mother in law you give me your son I take him home and show him some loving!”

Yeah right sista!!!!!! More like I’ll Karate chop and kick box you if you lay a hand on him. We laughed our way out of that one and Bill was horrified – “her teeth were disgusting”

We walk around feeling overwhelmed by the size and complexity of it all, thank god we have a 3 day pass as there is so much to explore. Somewhere in the ruins we come across a Monk who performs a ritual on Nicky, it’s priceless, he tells Nicky that whatever he sets his mind to he will get, Nicky responds later “I want puberty”.

We travel a few kilometers further and reach Bayon the temple with the huge faces and now we are really blown away. Huge, powerful and moving. Most of the sites have been adopted by countries who undertake the restoration and maintenance of a single temple. A project of massive scale and expense, with all the modern technology and machinery available they still struggle to attempt the most simple restoration making one wonder how on earth these edifices were built in the first place.

The highlight of the first day for Nicky was the monkeys, we stopped and he fed and loved them, Craig got his hair de-nitted in the process.

The second morning Craig and I arrived at sunrise and visited the more remote temples. What a powerful and moving experience. Ta Prom was the set for Tomb Raiders Angelina Jolie has a tree named after her. The temple has been left and the jungle has grown back, ancient trees are growing in, through and around it. The energy is incredible, you don’t need to even know what the temples are about, no need to do anything but wonder around, let go and absorb the atmosphere.

On the last night Louise and I climbed up to a temple set on top of a “mini lions head” We started climbing with the first signs of an imminent tropical storm. From the top we watched the storm approach over this incredible landscape of ancient civilization. As the storm broke 3 monks appeared on the horizon silouetted against the landscape. What a sight to burn into the mind as a final vision before running through the rain and our descent back to Sam our trusty tuk tuk driver.

Bangkok to Siem Reap via Hell

Its an early morning start 6.30 and by now we have far too much baggage and we are all a bit grumpy. Nicolas has lost his shoes, we are fighting with the hotel staff and the bus is waiting. Luckily the mini bus is comfy, air conditioned and empty. Nicky gets to sleep on a seat of his own – thank god as usually I find I’m his pillow and spend most of the trip uncomfortable while he gets to have a soft cushion and a good sleep.

It seems so quick, four hours pass and before we know it we stop for lunch and think how civilized this is. This guy comes over and says he will organize the visas just fill out the forms, they will take all the passports get our visa’s while we have lunch (cooool) There are about 4 mini busses and we are all like sheep handing out our passports. So while we are eating a plate of fried rice we start calculating what we are being charged and then 2 Canadian girls say they want their money back and they will do their own visa and heated discussions erupt. We all look at each other and know how we have been scammed big time.

I have done this border thing a few times before and hence my earnest conversation with the agent in Bangkok the day before but damn if the point didn’t come when our comfy mini bus disappears with our tickets and we are standing in the hot sun with far too many bags, waiting for a switch in operators. We are in no mans land a long stretch of tarmac to the border post. We toss our bags into a prehistoric wooden donkey cart being pulled by an equally ancient man and head for our pre-border swine flu grilling.

So now we have a smiley Cambodian in a pink shirt who attaches to us like a leach, he starts working us, we queue in a crowded sweaty office to get our passports stamped and I lose the forms so we get to the front and get bumped to the back of the queue again to redo the papers– talk about a sense of humor failure!! Nicky of course has no shoes so has to walk vast stretches in this hellhole on hot tar. Welcome to Cambodia!

Heavy bags moaning children and heat all makes a great opportunity for an excellent con artist. He starts priming us about the length of the trip from the border to Siem Riep and the bus only leaves at 4pm and stops everywhere blab blab la. Its 2 pm we would have to wait 2 hours in the sun then travel another 6 hours awww noo man.

He convinces us an air-conditioned taxi is the way to go so we hand over another 400 Baht each. (we later found out the bus left at about 3 and took 3 hours) oh yes and he conveniently walks us to the atm and describes how this is the last point to draw money (probably making sure he gets paid)

We are so aware we are being conned but are feel pretty softened up. Anyway we walk on with Nicky hopping at the heat on the road (good lesson on how NB shoes are to keep) there are casino hotels everywhere in this no mans land.

We get to the temporary bus station and get whisked out the back door past some really smelly toilets and it all feeling very surreal, we get into the taxi and say goodbye to the tosser merrily waving probably thinking – good one suckers!!

Our taxi-man takes a detour down a really bumpy track and stops at this place for GAS and I do mean gas they pop the boot with all our possesions, now I’m thinking – this is sooooooooo dodgy, so Craig hops out to see what the hell they are doing and remove the bags to fill this huge gas cylinder with well Gas, not the petrol type but the real type of gas, Huh? I thought they were filling the aircon gas for which I was grateful, anyway our driver couldn’t speak a word of English so we just left it at that.

The driver is silent but non violent and the 3 hours are pretty relaxed after the border crossing and we watch Cambodia unfold. Along the way we are a bit puzzled at these bikes roaring along with pigs balanced upside down on their backs in a basket like holder. We later find out that they get the pigs stoned with Ganga (Dagga) and because they are stoned its easy to transport the poor things to get slaughtered, shame poor pigs, my only consolation here is at least they are zoned out and probably thinking wooohooo is that what things look like upside down. Asia can really make you become vegetarian.

We were assured we would be dropped at our hotel but surprise surprise we get dropped at the tuk tuk station. The tuk tuk driver “our chosen one’ tells us that the guest house we want is no good as its full of lady boys, no good for our boys, mmm heard that one before and we say that’s were we are going OK. Guess what the name is??? GOLDEN BANANA GUEST HOUSE
Well it is full of lady boys and they are efficient, the place is gorgeous and has a fab pool yipeeee. We do a deal with our homophobic tuk tuk driver to be our driver for three days and with promises of a 9 am start we head for the pool.

Last Night in Bangkok

So Nicky, Bill and Lou set of for Bangkok again with a card of a hotel in Ko San road area. We arrive at the Wild Orchid something or other and I just think nooooway anyway I go and check out the room and then the next price range up and then eventually the top range room which is on the 6th floor with NO LIFT- huh?

We decide to leave and get a cab to our trusty hotel near the river when some sweet Thai girl says we have a better hotel just round the corner called Villa Cha Cha and it has a pool. We are sold, she grabs a heavy pack – lucky Nicky and head for the mad streets with us in tow, it’s not just round the corner but a lengthy walk and when she slips into this alley I’m thinking paranoid thoughts. Then out pops Villa Cha Cha from the swirling mass of stalls and mess, we check in very excited and happy to have found a home.

The problem is Craig is on a plane from Turkey and then onto the Wild Orchid villa and we are not there, how to get a message to Craig with no phone and no computer. So I found an internet café logged onto Craig’s email gmail and sent an urgent message from Craig to Craig??? Hehehe
The boys and I hit Fuji and had sushi yippee; love Bangkok did some good shopping whilst boys got their fix of Games in the big Kids entertainment emporium.

I get the message as I arrive in Bangkok which after Turkey is starting to feel like home, easy transfer into the city taking no bullshit from the taxi drivers and find my way to the hotel. What a relief to walk into the Cha Cha and see my tanned and chilled family sipping mango lassies around the pool. Louise has chosen a particularly crazy part of Bangkok, restaurants and shops line the streets, and in front of these a second tier of restaurants and bars line the pavements.

We emerge from our alley and fall into a papaya salad, chilli fish and Tiger beer. Much later I weave of nonchalantly down the road with promises to find a trip to Cambodia. Feeling jet lagged and spaced out I catch a tuk tuk across town to the train station, find an agent, stared earnestly into his eyes for a sign of honesty, think I see it and pay over good money for 4 tickets and a hassle free ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia the next morning.

Evening’s arrived when I return, we dump the boys in air conditioned comfort watching scratchy pirated DVD’s and head back into the human tide looking for a night on the town. Dinner is Indian, lots of white wine and ends with a hubbly hubbly shisha pipe watching the second tier of restaurants through the haze on the pavement. It has been particularly hot and humid even by Bangkok standards, the heavens open up and a tropical downpour engulfs the world outside.

Total non panic as rickety awnings emerge, restaurants and bars continue unabated – wires stretched overhead, bare light bulbs, grills, fires, dogs, chickens, rabbits, gas and all. Our last night in Thailand …… just over a month from North to South and everywhere in between - we love it!