So, one amazing mural later (for which I actually pulled my weight and made a small contribution to), after lots of reading, eating (I must have easily gained half a stone here!) and video editing we reluctantly moved on from the Bodhi Villa to the next town, Sihanoukville.
Sihanoukville is the coastal party town of Cambodia where the ‘elite’ locals go to holiday and tourism is a bit like Southend in the summer!! In our old age we decided not to stay in town at the main beach but at a smaller beach about 7km out of town which had a much quieter & cleaner, clearer beach. It was really lovely with basic rooms on offer, some decent food and hot hot weather and sea. I swear the sea was like a bath by mid afternoon! So it will come as no surprise to you that once again we prolonged our stay and did pretty much nothing – haha. Lazing around on the beach, having a daily massage, (I even managed to get my eyebrows threaded!!! So exciting!)eating, drinking & reading (we’re both racing through books!) We did venture out on a scooter over 2 days to the main beach called Serendipity as we had heard of a small water play area in the sea called Splash which is basically like a soft play area for toddlers, only on an adult scale and in the sea. There was a big iceberg that you had to climb up on foot and hand rings, which was bloody hard, especially as the sea was rather choppy, and then jump down from 5 metres! I was very scared about this one and sat quivering at the top after hauling my ass up there!! But was proud that I did it – twice even!! There was a big trampoline, a big slide that you had to climb up the back of before shooting down which was great fun (my personal favourite) and then there was the floating ramp which you had to try and run all the way down before you ungraciously slipped or fell off. It was knackering! Just the swimming around from one object to the other was tiring enough, but it was really good fun.
The sad thing about Serendipity is that there are a lot of beggars - a lot. People without an arm or leg, or people without both legs shuffling along on cardboard seats (the most horrific I’ve just seen back in Phnom Penh – a man like this shuffling along the roadside with a small child laying across his lap!) and it’s awful, your heart reaches out to them and I find myself naively hoping that they can somehow have a better life in the future, that miraculously they will get the help they need to help themselves!
We went for a walk at sunset around a small local lake and I finally got the courage to ride the scooter! This time I didn’t have to worry about propelling myself into oncoming traffic as it was a deserted area and actually I found it much easier this time. I rode once round the lake and I was like a little kid grinning to myself all the way. I even rode back to the hostel with Tymon on the back snapping away – it was so much fun, although I’ll still leave Tymon to do any serious driving on the roads. I’m still a little cautious after the accident we saw.
So…a few more things I have noticed in Cambodia:
• There are little kids and puppies and chicks and calves and baby things everywhere! Everything is constantly reproducing.
• I don’t think you could find an original product (bags, watches, sunglasses, books even) if your life depended on it.
• When a group of women are talking all at once they sound like a group of chickens or gulls just like in ‘Finding Nemo’ when they go ‘Mine Mine Mine!!’ It’s very funny – the Asian languages are so funny! I’d love to know what we sound like to them.
• Sadly Cambodia has a very bad sex industry with a high rate of child prostitution & trafficking. A lot of Vietnamese children are sold to Cambodia to work and their pimps feed them heroin to keep them. We have seen a lot of older Western men walking around quite openly (how they have the nerve I have no idea) with young local girls (although not under age I don’t think, but they are still old enough to be their fathers) and it’s just gross! Cambodia also has the highest infection rate of HIV/Aids in S.E. Asia.
• An ox and cart is still used in the rural areas for farming and transportation.
• Little kids run around naked everywhere – they are very rarely dressed.
• I’m sure Cambodia (or Vietnam) must hold the world record for the number or people or objects piled into/onto one car or bike. It’s insane!
• Rubbish is ingrained in the land as much as the grass is.
• Kids are out working from the age 5 and younger. Any day of the week they are walking the streets/beaches/ruins selling you anything and everything. It’s so hard to see them begging you to buy a bracelet for what is just 50 EUR cent. No one seems to ever be in school. The only people who seem to get an education here are the monks!
• Cambodians wear pajamas as daily clothes.
So after soaking up as much sun as we could, as it’ll be the last beach place we will be at for a while until we reach Thailand, we packed our bags and headed back to Phnom Penh as we needed to get a visa extension. We’re loving Cambodia so much we just want to take our time here.
Next stop – Siem Reap, which holds the jewel of Cambodia. The Angkor temple sites which are the spectacular ruins of the old Khmer empire (not to be confused with the Khmer Rouge – the Khmer were an old civilization before all the blood and guts and destruction). Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples but there are so many in the area. We brought a 3 day entry ticket and planned our itinerary trying to dodge the crowds & which we were actually really successful at doing, before setting off to one of the remote temples that evening for a ‘free sunset’ from the top of one of the ruins as our ticket was valid but began officially from the following day. So we went to a temple called Phnom Krom. This temple is at the top of a hilltop overlooking Tonle Sap lake and the fields around. It was a steep 15 minute climb to the top which included a lot of sweating but it was worth it. My first glimpse at an Angkor temple – it was a very special moment. The view was incredible and as the sun set and the colours merged into one another from orange to red to purple across the sky, we toasted our exact half way point of the trip. (We also received a phone call from some friends in Holland – Remy and Sandra, who said they would call us on our half way date to celebrate which was really lovely!)
I won’t bore you with the details of each temple we visited – I couldn’t sum it up anyway and unless you are there in person it’s almost not worth talking about to someone. I mean a temple is a temple right? And to be honest they all do look the same. They might have all been built over 10 centuries under the rule of 26 different Kings, but they were all pretty much built in the same style. (I’m sure historians and specialists alike will scoff at my statement but to the untrained eye…)Obviously materials, carvings and size increased as the centuries went on and the civilization grew but they are all the same format of a temple of worship to the Gods whether it be Vishnu, Shiva, Buddha or other.
But anyway – as I said this was a very special moment for me. This part of our trip is one of the top highlights for me – like the shark dive and Kruger in SA and the glacier hike in NZ, it’s right up there. This is one of the things that I used to look at in books as a young girl and travel brochures. It’s one of the wonders of the world (although not officially) and it’s right up there with the likes of Machu Picchu in Peru! And as I have sat at sunrise or sunset on one of these temples, with the man of my dreams at my side, I have taken a moment to thank my lucky stars. I wouldn’t have missed this in my life time for anything!
The temples themselves are astounding and it’s mind boggling how they did this all by hand and the time it must have taken! They are absolutely massive and some of them such as Angkor Thom and its surrounding temples were complete cities. It’s hard work walking around them, with longs days and it involves a lot of climbing in the blazing sun at around 38 degrees so to say you sweat a bit is an understatement, but the carvings are beautiful and intricate. Some of them are in a real state with a lot of collapse and erosion and sadly theft – the black market for statues and stone is big business, but there are huge restoration projects going on at most of the temples to preserve as best is possible these wonderful buildings. My favourites were Phnom Krom for the views, Ta Prohm (the one were they filmed Tomb Raider) as it has trees that have grown out of the stones and literally taken over the buildings, which makes it very atmospheric, and mysterious, Preah Khan with it’s beautiful and really well preserved intricate carvings and of course Angkor Wat which you cannot help but be overwhelmed by for it’s sheer size.
So yeah – it’s been an AMAZING experience & we’re now heading to Battembang, which I keep calling Battenberg (like the cake) :0)
Keep checking the videos out so you can see what we have been seeing and share the moments with us and look at the photos.
www.youtube.com/meliketravelling
www.picasaweb.google.com/Me.Like.Travelling
Hugs to all
xxx
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