Cambodia (photos)

January 6 - February 1

I am in Australia, trying to remember the details of Cambodia relying on a shoddy journal, so I'm just going to loosely tie together the photos here and try to do better in the future. It might help to read Dara's Cambodia entry.

We came from Saigon to Phnom Penh and found a great guesthouse. The next day, we went to the S-21 museum which documented the Khmer Rouge's "Liberation" and their attempts to create an ideal agrarian society.

The Khmer Rouge, pretty much at the same time that North Vietnam stormed into the South after the Americans left, took over the city. The soldiers were mostly just kids. They made everyone leave the city, millions of people in just a couple of days. From what I understood, most people were neither for or against the Khmer Rouge. Some people were celebrating just because once the city was taken over, the war was over. Again, you need to read about it, I still haven't gotten a total sense of what happened and how.

Anyway, there's a museum there called S-21. It was a school that was turned into a prison. The presentation is totally raw, and you can still see blood stains on the tiles. The photos are extremely graphic. Everyone that came into the prison was photographed. The idea was to form an agrarian society. Peasants were honored and intellectuals were killed. If you wore glasses you were doomed. The way that they sought to create this new society was to empty the cities. Here is a map showing the dispersion from Phnom Penh.

A few days after we got there we took a tuk-tuk out to The Killing Fields, which was another bummer. Here are some of the pits they've undug. The government collected and placed the skulls they found in a huge tower in the center of the park. It was pretty gruesome.

So, since there was no way for us to experience Cambodia without first being confronted with these facts, I figured I should start with the topic. From there, it got fun.

We left the city and took a bus to the southern coast to a town named Sihanoukville. It was a nice beach town with cheap rooms, cheap food and cheap beer. We stayed there five nights and spent our days on the beach or cruising around on a motor bike. We watched the sunset almost every night. One day we drove over an hour on the motorbike to see some waterfalls. It was dry season, so the falls were dry. It was a nice ride though. Here is Dara crossing the bridge to the falls. We were only supposed to spend two nights in this town, but we got stuck relaxing.

From Sihanoukville, we headed back towards Phnom Penh, via Kampot. We were travelling with our friend Claus, who we had first met in Saigon and ended up on the same bus with to Phnom Penh and then hung out with in Sihanoukville. On the way, we saw huts. From Kampot, the three of us got a car (and driver) and headed up to Bokor Hill Station. Here is the abandoned church, and here is some misty scenery, we saw the sunset from the balcony of the abandoned hotel. We spent the night at the ranger station, going to bed early so that we could get up to see one of the legendary sunrises. We got up at sunrise and I walked outside into a misty rain with fog so thick that I literally could not see my hand in front of my face (at arm's lenght that is). So, we rode back to Kampot, had a crappy lunch and rented moto bikes. The ride from Kampot (famous for its black pepper) to Kep was huge fun, with loads of little kids running to the roadside to scream and wave hello. We have video of it. We drove through remote little villages and eventually got to Kep, where we saw monkeys, at crab and drank Coca-Cola. Then we drove back, and got to Kampot just in time to get a ride back to Phnon Penh. On the route, we saw this basket truck and got to experience Phnom Penh's rush hour and a nice sunset. As we got in to town we saw this guy pulling a cart. That night, Claus and I hung out "high school style", staying up late and drinking quart sized bottles of beer sitting on the curb of the main street near our guesthouse. The next day, Sunday, we went shooting and driving. Dara and I both shot the AK-47 (which I videoed but did not photograph) and Claus went for the 9mm and then we went go-kart racing. Here is Dara getting into her racing suit. I kept thinking I was going to flip, and therefore got out-driven by Claus. It was a nice way to spend the day.

OK... we gotta get out of here. The connecting verbage will now thin.

Here is a house outside Phnom Penh. And here are some guys in a hut. We went to Siem Reap, which is near Angkor Wat. In the market, I saw fish heads.

First day in Angkor wa...
Angkor Wat is the most famous of the temples, but the site is much larger and contains many different temples. We decided to approach it over two days, doing Angkor Wat itself on the second day, so as to build up to the finale.
So, on the first day, here is
Tah Prom gate, Dara and Claus, this reminded me of the poem Ozymandius, and here's rover in front of a Tah Prom temple. A shot of Claus through a window, some wooden support beams, and a huge tree growing through the ruins and then another tree growing through which Rover enjoyed. And then, another tree temple shot.

Then we saw Pre Rup, which had towers, even in the corners and Dara climbed around. Here's a gate tree head and another shot of that. Look kids, a bridge.

The next day, we got up very very early and went to the site before sunrise.
Here is Angkor Wat in the dark, and then barely visible and then at sunrise and then with the sun peaking through and there was a big pond in front of us. Here is the temple reflecting in the pond. Some monks on the steps. After exploring Angkor we went to The Bayon, which was our favorite. It's the one with the faces.
All in all, Siem Reap and Angkor Wat are a must-see. The town of Siem Reap has great food and good markets and Angkor is amazing.
From there, we went all the way over to Champong Cham, on the Mekong. It was mostly a transit town, but we crossed a really cool bamboo bridge and then went to a cemetary and saw a skinny Buddha. From there we took a boat up the Mekong, passing riverside huts and one with a tree. We got to Kratie, which is famous for its fresh water dolphins, but we more enjoyed the guesthouse balcony. Here is a sunset shot with me and Dara and Claus and English James (remember him, from Vietnam?)
One day, Claus and I went out for an all-day motorbike ride through the countryside, which was a blast. We saw a girl in a field, and stood by the Mekong and then took a ferry from one side to the other and then drove back on the other side, assuming there would be another ferry to the town. On the west side we saw some cows near a bridge and passed a guy washing his water buffalo. On the ferry back to town, there was a man with a bunch of chickens tied to his bike and we saw a houseboat. It was a great day.

From Kratie, we took a dusty bus ride to Sen Monorom, to the east. Once there, we got a guesthouse and the next day we rented motorbikes. We had a brutal ride out to a lame waterfall. We had no water, it was getting dark and we were dangerously low on gas. We started heading back, and Claus ran out of gas. Luckily I had bought a pair of pants in Vietnam that were too big and was using my hammock rope as a belt, so we pulled him to a town, where we met these kids. I videoed them with the viewscreen facing them and they loved it. Here is a still. At the waterfall, an English speaking Cambodian tourist (from the city) was on a hired bike that got a flat so he was riding with Claus and acting as our interpretter. After we got some more gas, we continued on, and then I got a flat tire. We stopped and only two minutes later a group of guys stopped and proceeded to put a new valve into my tire and glue it up and put it back together. They all travel with these supplies. My diligent financial notes state that I payed two dollars for this, and as I recall, I had tipped well. We got back after sunset and we ate, had a couple beers and walked back to the guesthouse.
The next day, we started our three day elephant trek. Here is the elephant Dara and I rode and here is the elephant driver's hut. Some of the huts were smaller, and there were kids watching us the whole time. There was one kid sitting in a chicken coop. Here is a profile shot of both elephants, and one of the driver. Here is Claus getting on to his elephant. Everyone watched as we rode away.
On the first day, we crossed rivers and went through the woods and crossed clearings. It was scary to get off the elephants, but they politely kneeled to make it easier.
We rode the whole day and came to a totally remote village which probably has not seen many tourists. The drivers took the carriages off the elephants and let them graze in the woods. We sat and the guide made dinner. The house we were sitting next to had a pig. (this is the pig that would follow you into the woods and eat whatever you might leave behind.) We ate pretty much the same thing we ate everyday in Cambodia and then slept under mosquito nets. The next day, we got back on the elephants as the villagers watched and went out for another day. We found some orchids and looked at them. When we next stopped, the elephants drank some water. Elephants are mammals. We spent the second night by some waterfalls. When we got there, we had a great swim and bath in the river and played under the falls and then we went and saw a bamboo bridge. Here is Dara on the bridge and a close-up of her foot. Here is a shot of Dara crossing the bridge and one of Claus crossing the bridge. I crossed it too, but don't have photos of it. It was pretty scary.

We went back to the campsite where the elephant driver was relaxing. The guide had already set up our beds and we had dinner. It was Claus' birthday that night, so we had whiskey and Cokes (not much whiskey since the guide had thrown my backpack off the elephant on the first night and broke one of the bottles) and afterward, we surprised Claus with a birthday cake, which was just four candles in a granola bar.
In the morning, we admired the falls one last time and watched the driver wash the elephants. The elephants and drivers stayed at the camp and we walked about five hours back to the village. It was hot and we realized that we much preferred riding to walking.
We got back to Sen Monorom and got a private car back to Kratie and spent one night and then we left Kratie on the fast boat to Stung Treng. We saw kids along the river and more kids along the river and then we got off the fast boat in Stung Treng and got straight onto a speed boat. Some of the people riding in speed boats wear helmets but we didn't have any. It was kind of dangerous, but we survived. It may have been because the driver was riding with his son. Here is another speed boat and here is the Cambodian exit post.
Then we were in no-mans-land. We got back on the boat and went to the Laos entry office, paid extra for overtime and then got on motos to the town and then a bus to another town and then a motorboat out to Don Det, where we got a room and spent the night. If you look at a map, we went from Sen Monorom (car, fast boat, speed boat, walking, speed boat, moto, bus, motorboat) to Don Det in one day. It was exhausting.

After a few days in Don Det, we decided to head back to Thailand to end our Southeast Asia trip in the islands. We headed west out of Laos by bus and then got a ride to the border, crossed and got another ride to the train station, caught a train to Bangkok and were in bed by 1am. Another exhausting day of travel.

Whew.