[Barts trip of a lifetime!] Cambodia; Magnificent temples, corrupt police and...

[Bart]

Ladies and gents,

first things first. This blog will be dedicated to my travelbuddy - and dear friend - Tamara. The awesome dutchie who I've been traveling with for the past 2 months. The time had come for her to return home, back to reality and the hard life of fulltime work. We said goodbye to her at the airport of Vietnam - Hanoi at the 28th of november. Sad moment, but inevitable. Things haven't been the same without you Tam, but still... I'm having the time of my life here in Cambodia.

After saying goodbye to our friends Neil and Dave, who would continue their journey through 'nam by motorbike, me and Hanneke took a flight from Hanoi on the 30th of November from Hanoi to Phomn Penh, which is the capital of Cambodia. I didn't know what to expect from Cambodia, but to my surprise it turned out to be the most developed country of Asia (except for China) I've been so far. Phomn Penh is very nice and some areas can be considered even luxury to Western standards. Yet everything remains at bargain prices. Since our arrival the temperature didn't drop below a solid 30 degrees and therefore I'm sweating my ass off every single day. But hey, I can't complain knowing that all my friends and family are freezing their butts back home :-).

In Phomn Penh we went to the 'Killing Fields' and the 'S-21' Prison, which has been the scenery of some horrible events that took place in the recent past during the 5 years of governance of the 'Khmer Rouge'. To be honest I never knew or heard of this regime and their acts before, until I read the Lonely Planet. It turned out that the 'Khmer Rouge' had been responsible of one of the most bloody, aweful and terrible crimes agains human rights in the entire history. They killed nearly 25% over the former population of Cambodia  back in these days, a number which - relatively speaking - is much higher than the casualties caused by the Nazi's. Yet everybody of my generation knows of WOII, and I bet very few have heard about the 'Khmer Rouge', which is odd, since it has been only 30 years ago since all these horrible events have been stopped by the Vietnamese army. The Killing fields and S-21 prison are two of the many areas where the former population of Cambodia had been brutally tortured and murdered by the Khmer Rouge. The evidence of these crimes are still to be witnessed by piles and piles of human bones, skulls, clothes, pictures and (un)discovered massgraves! It was impressive and extremely sad to see at the same time.

A more happy moment we experienced in Phonm Penh was when we found a restaurant, called 'Shabu Shabu'. Yes, it is the same restaurant as the ones we have back in Holland. Japanese 'all you can eat sushi'. Only for cambodian prices - for $ 7,80 you could eat AND drink as much as you wanted. Awesome! Needless to say we ate there a couple of times! :-D

After Phomn Penh we took a bus to Siem Reap, the 'world capital of Temples'. I have seen quite a few temples during my (previous) trips already, but after spending some considerable amount of time at the site of 'Ankor' it turned out I had nothing seen yet so far! The site of Ankor is of epic scale. Over 1000 km² in total with more than 1000 temples. You could spend a week in the site and still you wouldn't have seen everything. The mother of all temples was the world famous 'Ankor Wat'. It is believed that this tempel is the the biggest religious building ever conceived by mankind and its absolutely massive and impressive. To give you an idea, the outer walls of Ankor Wat are measuring 1024m x 802m and is surrounded by a moat of 190 meters wide. If this isn't impressive enough you might forget that the temple has been constructed over a 1000 years ago, in which there were no such things as bulldozers and excavators. Everything had been constructed by human hands only! It's comparable to the Great Piramides of Giza or the Great Wall of China. Just mindblowing!

Me and Hanneke spend 2 solid days here, visiting all the highlights of the site. We were driven around by a tuk-tuk which we hired for these days. The site is filled with jaw-dropping temples, jungle and ruins. Funny fact: the movie "Tomb Raider" with Angelina Jolie has been recored here. The actual temple used in the movie was accesable for public as well!

After Siem Reap, we took a boat to Battambang. We were expecting some sort of luxury cruiseboat, but we couldn't be more wrong. A tiny boat, filled with tourists and locals (including smelly baskets of fish) was our transportation for the next 7! hours! We did see some cool stuff though, like floating villages and people living on the water! Battambang itself has little to offer, except for one 'major' attraction which is 'the bamboo train'. Of course we checked this out. The bamboo train consisted of 2 barbell wheels, a - how surprising - bamboo platform and a tiny 5hp engine running on petrol. Everything could be assembled and disassembled in less than a minute or so. And that comes in handy, because the bamboo traines where driving along a single traintrack which is used for 'train' traffic coming from both directions. When you come across another bamboo train from the opposite direction, the bamboo train with the fewest passengers had to come off so the driver could disassemble the train, for the other bamboo train to pass. Funny experience, lots of fun! In Battambang we also met some cool people. A dutch dude named Jeffrey and a couple, Craig and Michelle, both living in London. We hitted it off quite well with the 5 of us so we decided to spend the next few days with eachother.  Next stop: Sihanoukville.

Sihanoukville is a place at the beach in Cambodia. Since I haven't been on the beach for - well the beginning of my trip, I was really looking forward to Sihanoukville. We spend a couple of days here, for some partying, chilling at the beach and boattrips around the many (deserted) beaches and coral reefs. It were some relaxing days with not to much action except for drinking beers in the sun and having cheap BBQ food on the beach. Although, I did something extremely fun. Getting towed at fast speed behind a speedboat (80hp engine) on a big rubber tube, together with Jeffrey and Craig. Wicked and an awesome thrill. The last day, Hanneke, Craig, Michelle and me, rented some motorbikes. We were warned in advance that the police didn't accept foreign driver licences and you might get fined when stopped over! We went on a motorbike anyway. After 10 minutes or so, we drove into a police roadblock with dozens of policemen all carrying big machine guns! Of course we were requested to show our license and of course it wasn't valid. Playing the complete ignorant and wellbehaved tourists we were able to bribe to police officer with 'an amount of money'. The 'fine'?? 1 dollar each! Hilarious!

And with that as our last adventure in Sihanoukville, we left the following day for Phomn Penh again, from which Í'm currently writing my blog. Me, Hanneke and our new travelfriends will keep traveling for the next 5 days or so and then we'll split up again, for a bustrip to Ko Chang situated in Thailand. A lovely 'paradise' island which should be perfect to celebrate christmas. Hard times, but someone's got to do it.

A warm christmas greet from a tanned and happy traveler!

click here for pics.

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Geplaatst door Bart op Barts trip of a lifetime! op 12/16/2010 04:57:00 PM