North-East Thailand
Jan. 29 (continued)
We exited Laos at Chong Mek and chartered together with a German, Matthias, at the border a taxi (750 B) that would bring us to Pha Taem in order to visit the prehistoric rock paintings and then drive us on to Khong Jiam.
The Pha Taem site is in fact a national park (so it's 200 B entry fee) and the setting is quite spectacular. You walk along this huge cliff parallel to the Mekong (the other side is Laos) where you find different groups of paintings ranging from elephants, hand prints and fish to geometrical shapes. The walk under the cliff and back on top is a few km in all.
Khong Jiam is a quiet place on the Mekong that is a popular holiday spot with Thai. In Araya resort we paid 500 B for a room (nicely landscaped place). On the Mekong there are 2 floating restaurants which we both tried (lunch and dinner).
Jan. 30
As we found ourselves together with Matthias at the bus station we decided to charter again a private taxi to go to Ubon Ratchatani. We heard that morning that there had been riots in Phnom Penh against the Thai embassy and Thai businesses (some Thai actress would have claimed that Angkor Wat belonged to the Thai - indeed there is no deadlier insult possible to a Khmer) ...consequently the Thai had closed the border. We wanted to go to Preah Vihar, a Khmer temple in Cambodia easily accessible via Thailand and thus decided to find in Ubon a TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) to find out if this was possible. The temple has long been disputed between Thailand and Cambodia, and was to the chagrin of the Thai finally "given" to Cambodia. So it wasn't a very big surprise when we heard in the TAT that the temple had been closed on the Thai side for over a year... So next we took the bus to Surin. In Surin we spent the rest of the afternoon looking for a car rental agency, and finally found one near the bus station. We agreed to hire a very Thai car (pick up with stickers of the royal family and a plastic Buddha image in front and even Thai music tapes) for 900 B per day.
Jan. 31
During our search for tourist information in Surin (which we finally found in an unidentified government building) we stumbled upon an anti-drug demonstration where the famous Surin elephants were also present (in total about 50 of them). Near Surin live people from Khmer origin who are famous for their elephant training skills and every year a big festival is held with elephant shows as the big attraction. The elephants are trained in a village 50 km from Surin and later that day we would pass their overnight camp.
Around Surin we visited 2 silk weaving villages, Ban Chan Rom and Khwao Sinarin. The same tie dye technique as in southern Laos is used (the threads are bound with plastic wire in a pattern and then painted ...where the wire is there is no paint and later in the weaving the same pattern shows). We also visited Ban Bu Thom, a village where basketry is made. Later we drove on to Phimai and stayed in the Phimai Inn (with swimming pool).
Feb. 1
In the center of Phimai the restored ruins of a big Kmer temple can be found. It's a pretty impressive sight. Next we drove on via Prasat Phanomwan (another Khmer ruin, not very remarkable) to one of the most famous silk weaving villages of Thailand, but we found only big shops there making commercial silk for the shops in Bangkok.
Our next Khmer ruin of the day was Phanom Rung, the best restored of the Khmer ruins in Thailand. It's also very popular with Thai tourists because of all the tourists there there were very few falangs. The walkway to the naga (mythical serpent) bridge and the carvings above the doors were very impressive. Close to Phanom Rung is Muang Tham which is very nice because there are 4 L-shaped pools in the complex which make it quite photogenic. That evening we drove back to Surin, bought train tickets for the next day to Khorat, took a room in the Thong Tharin hotel (860 B) and handed in the keys of the car.
Feb. 2
The train to Khorat left at 8 and was very punctual. In Khorat we transferred our bags in a tuk-tuk, went to the bus station and spent another 5 hours on the bus to Chanthaburi. Amazing the distances you can travel in comfort in Thailand in one day compared to its neighboring countries...
Ko Chang
Feb. 3-9
In Chanthaburi we posted another parcel home with the souvenirs from Laos (10 kg). From Chanthaburi we went by bus to Trat, by songtaew from Trat to Leam Ngop, where the ferry pier to Ko Chang is, by ferry to Dan Kao on Ko Chang and then again by songtaew to White Sands Beach on the west coast. Ko Chang is the second largest island in Thailand after Phuket and as it's mainly a national park there is only development at the beaches. The beaches are really what you'd expect in a tropical place like this: palm trees, huge stretches of sand...
A comparative study of the guest houses and diving schools had as a result that we took a room for the week in Best Garden Resort (1350 B) and I took the Open Water Diving Course with Paradise Scuba Divers (9900 B) during 4 days.
M. sprained his ankle with a fall with his motorcycle so discovery of the island was limited to a trip to the nearby beaches (Lonely Beach). After I got my certificate I went an extra day diving to practice some more.
And for the rest we spent our time swimming in the sea, reading, enjoying seafood BBQ on the beach...
All in all something completely different and a very relaxing break after 3.5 months of traveling...
Cambodia
Feb. 10
We took the songthaew to the ferry (30B) which simply left when full (almost immediately). On the mainland we took another songthaew to Trat (30B) and from there we went by minibus (100B) to Hat Lek, the border town with Cambodia. Because of the troubles between Thailand and Cambodia (the border was still closed to Thai and Cambodians) it was very quiet at the border. Without incidents we exited Thailand and entered Cambodia. Since we had already a visa we didn't have to pay here 1000 B for a visa (although they tried asking for 1500 B to 2 Dutch women who were with us on the minibus, but 1000B is the official price).
We discussed a while whether to spend the night in Ko Kong and go by boat to Sihanoukville the next day or charter a taxi to get there the same day by the brand new road (still unpaved and bridgeless but otherwise in very good condition). After some discussion with the taxi driver from the border we settled on 100 USD for the trip from the border to Sihanoukville for the 4 of us - but later we found out that the official rate is about half this, so don’t discuss with the guys at the border but head for the taxi stand in Ko Kong to discuss there.
The ride was picturesque (there are 4 river crossings by ferry) and you see the rice fields, water buffaloes...Cambodia is at first sight very green with thick forest.
In Sihanoukville we slept the first night in Mealy Chenda GH (6 USD), which is in the backpacker's quarter but not on the beach.
Feb. 11
We first went with a motorcycle taxi to the bank (we finally withdrew cash with VISA because of the bad rate they gave for Thai baht ... no doubt also due to the current fall from grace of the Thai) and then on to Serendipity beach. It's on the northern end of Occheuteal beach - later we saw that the only GH in Sihanoukville that are really on the beach are located on Serendipity beach. We stayed at "The house of Malibu", a new (open since 2 months) and beautiful place (12 USD).
The rest of the day we swam, read, lay in a hammock walked around Occheuteal beach and nursed the sprained ankle.
We enjoyed an aperitif on the very pleasant terrace of our GH and on the beach at the place next to our GH we had very good pizza for dinner (Unkle Bob's).
Feb. 12
We took a motorcycle taxi to the market to arrange transportation to Kampot for the next day (there isn't much of a bus system in Cambodia, everything goes with shared taxi ... but as these are crammed with up to 7 passengers you end up either chartering the whole car or at least pay 2 seats per person). We settled on 800 B for the ride to Kampot including pick up and drop off at GH. The motorcycle taxis seem to be the only form of transportation in the town ... luckily good old LP mentions the tariffs because the drivers start by asking 4 times those and only after hard bargaining you get a good fare.
We also tried out Internet (2 USD per hour), which was surprisingly fast. Sihanoukville is for the rest not really much to look at ... it's very spread out, there are no colonial buildings and the buildings that are there look like they have been erected in a burst of ambitious optimism about the development of the city. This is also the case for the development near the beaches.
So in the afternoon it was back to the beach again. The Khmer seem a lot more entrepreneurial than the Lao judging from the number of food and drink stalls on the beach. There are also lots of ambulant vendors selling everything from spring rolls, lobsters and fruit to a manicure. The fruit sellers are mostly children (they go to school either in the morning or in the afternoon) and it's amazing how well they speak English.
For sunset and dinner we went to Chez Claude, a French type restaurant on the top of a hill overlooking 2 beaches.
Feb. 13
We were picked up by the taxi at the GH for the trip to Kampot. The landscape consists of rice paddies, water buffaloes, huts... Along the way we passed an area that soldiers were demining - as it was on either side of the road we were driving on, the landmine issue is still clearly a very present threat to the people.
Along the way the moto-remorque was a very typical sight: as the name says it's a motorcycle with a big trailer behind that's used for transporting cargo and people (I didn't even start to count how many would fit on one).
In Kampot we checked in at the only colonial hotel in town, the Marco Polo (20 USD).
With our driver we discussed to take us to Kep and back for 1100 B total. Kep was founded by the French as a trendy seaside resort, known as Kep-sur-Mer. As the Khmer Rouge considered this a stronghold of bourgeois frivolity, the whole town was destroyed in 1975 - now it's really a ghost town with only the concrete hulls of the large seaside villas remaining. When we see ruins we are used to the fact that they are at least 100 years old, but seeing these with the characteristic architecture of the 50's and 60's is very strange. Along the beach you can eat fresh seafood, so we tried the shrimp.
Kampot is a very pleasant and charming town along the river with lots and lots of colonial architecture still standing ... it is however quite off the beaten track so it hasn't turned into Luang Prabang yet. There's a riverfront promenade which the Khmer use to socialize (and show off their motorcycles). We had dinner in the Marco Polo restaurant ... how strange to eat bruschetta so far from Italy...
Feb. 14
We had booked the day before a trip to the Bokor National park (8 USD pp, Kampot GH) so at 8 we climbed in a pick up truck. The road is really awful: the pavement is so broken that it's more a 4 WD track than a road. Bokor is in fact a mountain which in the French days housed a hill station. As this was also used by the Cambodian elite, the Khmer Rouge considered this town as despicable as Kep and thus destroyed it also in 1975. It is really spooky to come up the mountain and see the remains of a royal summer palace, a church, a casino, a hotel and different houses still standing...
Feb. 15
We had again arranged for a shared taxi and for 4 USD pp (4 people in the car) we set off to Phnom Penh. The roads in Cambodia are indeed not very good ... I think Myanmar and Cambodia may rank together first in having the worst roads so far. The driver deposited our fellow passengers in the backpackers'quarter near the lake and us at the riverside. Phnom Penh lies at the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap and at the split of the Mekong in the Bassac and the Mekong. Phnom Penh clearly is a town with a large expat community, because the number of restaurants and cafes catering to foreigners is many times greater than in Vientiane or Luang Prabang. The advantage is you can get very good food in very stylish places but it is also quite expensive (in fact Cambodia is the most expensive country so far). Since we intended to lave the following day to Siem Reap we took a no-window room at riverfront Indochine for 10 USD.
We bought bus tickets to Siem Reap, the basis for exploring the famous Angkor temples, for the following day (4 USD which makes it very cheap compared to the boat which costs 20-25 USD depending on where you buy the ticket - of course the boat takes only 5 hrs and the bus 9).
We had a drink and dinner at the famous Foreign Correspondents' Club, a colonial building with river view and a real Club feel to it. The river front is used by Cambodians and falang (here barang) alike to sit and watch the sunset.
Feb. 16
At 7.30 we got on the bus for our long ride to Siem Reap. One of the first stops for breakfasts is a little town called Skuon, which is famous for its baked spiders. Apparently during the famine that broke out under the Khmer Rouge regime (Pol Pot sold all the rice from one of the most fertile countries in SE Asia to China to get weapons and thus let a lot of people starve to death- after the Khmer Rouge regime was thrown over in 1979 by the Vietnamese about 20 % of the Cambodian population or 2 million people had died through starvation, execution or exhaustion) the people tried to eat everything they could get their hands on, and the spiders were tasty so the habit lives to this day. The spiders are big hairy tarantulas that are piled high up on plates that are thrust under your nose as soon as you step off the bus...
The rest of the trip passed quietly and at 4 pm we got to Siem Reap. Typically one of the GH guys had paid the driver to let the bus stop in front of his GH so he could rake in as many people as possible, which left us nowhere near a bus station but in the center of Siem Reap. With a tuk-tuk (but here that's a trailer pulled by a motorcycle) we looked at a few hotels before picking Australia GH (15 USD).
We arranged with the tuk-tuk driver to have him drive us round the temples for 400 B - in the end we would hire him for full 3 days for 1500 B.
In Siem Reap (and later in Phnom Penh also) we saw a lot of beggars with amputated limbs - apparently Cambodia has the highest rate of amputees in the world (1 in 250) and still every month there are 75 victims of mines...
Feb. 17
To visit the Angkor ruins you can buy a 1-day pass for 20 USD, a 3-day pas for 40 USD and a 7-day pass for 60 USD. We bought a 3-day pass - on the first day we followed the so-called Petit Circuit, the next day we went to the further temples near Banteay Srei and the last day we followed the so-called Grand Circuit and visited the Roluos Group.
The Petit and Grand circuits date from the French days when these were done on elephant back ...the distance are considerable so you do need some kind of transportation.
The Angkor Thom complex is s a huge square 3 km2 walled city with a very wide moat surrounding it. The entrance gates carry the 4 huge smiling enigmatic faces that are so typical of Angkor. Within the city only the stone temples survive, but it in its days over a million people lived here.
At the center of the city is the Bayon, a temple with 37 towers all carrying the smiling faces. Very impressive bas reliefs surround the whole complex. Inside the Bayon it's really a maze of corridors and gates opening up on the towers. I thought the Bayon was the most special building of the Angkor complex. The souvenir sellers are of course also present en masse, and you can buy anything from T-shirts (6000 R) to photocopied books, not in the least of the Lonely Planet (3 USD or lower). Even police officers try to sell police badges as souvenirs (I don't know if either the officers or the badges were fake).
Next we visited the Terrace of the Elephants (huge life size elephants on a 300 m terrace) and the Terrace of the leper king (beautiful carvings of apsaras - dancing nymphs- and demons).
We exited Angkor Thom via another gate to go to the temple of Ta Prohm - it is said that this is the only temple that was left as it was found with the huge trees growing out of the walls, but there are others that have the same atmosphere, like Preah Khan or Banteay Kdei.
After a siesta in the hotel we decided to visit in the afternoon Ankor Wat, the most famous temple of the Angkor complex. It is indeed huge with a lot of carvings and bas reliefs, but somehow visiting with 1000 tourists takes away from the charm...
Feb. 18
We set off to Banteay Srei, a temple some 30 km from Siem Reap. The temple is not very big but the carvings are incredibly detailed and refined. Next we drove on to Kbal Spean, where the riverbed of the river that fed Angkor's irrigation system is also carved out. It's a half hour walk through the jungle to get there and the road's not really good, so only go there if you have the time.
Our last visit of the day was to Preah Khan (also with stone smiling faces), where we got around 4 pm; which had the big advantage that most tourists had already left. There we experienced what the first discoverers of Angkor must have felt: you walk past courtyards which are sometimes blocked with stone blocks with beautiful carvings, with the trees towering over you and the only thing you can hear is the sounds of the jungle. I really think visiting Angkor Wat or Bayon very early in the morning before the masses arrive is to be recommended.
Feb. 19
In the morning we went to the site of the old capital (before Angkor), the Roluos Group. Lolei and Preah Ko are not much to look at, but Bakong is impressive. At the Bakong temple there were several students on the lookout for foreigners to practice English with. Studying languages (especially English, French and Japanese) is clearly seen as the key to a better life.
We visited also a silk farm and handicraft center that displays the work of victims of landmines.
The other temples of the Grand Circuit we visited were Banteay Kdei (also with the stone smiling faces), Neak Pean and Ta Som.
Before heading back to LaNoria, the hotel we'd switched to that morning because of the swimming pool (43 USD) we had lunch at Chez Sophea, a French restaurant near Angkor Wat with rillettes de canard...
And the rest of the day we rested at the pool, only to go out for dinner at the FCC of Angkor.
Feb. 20
We had another excellent breakfast at the Blue Pumpkin near the Old Market area in Siem Reap, then headed back to the pool. At noon our driver picked us up with our bags (LaNoria had only room for 1 night) and we moved again to another GH, "Shadow of Angkor"(15 USD) near the Old Market. Then we rode to the edge of the Tonle Sap lake to hire a boat so we could look at the Vietnamese floating village. The village in itself is quite interesting and not a tourist trap, but the so-called fish farms are. They're in fact overpriced souvenir shops under the cover of an exhibition of freshwater fish.
In the evening we were surprised by a thunderstorm which lasted 2 hours with the rain pouring down - and this is the dry season...?
Feb. 21
At 6.15 we were picked up by a minibus to drive us to the boat for Phnom Penh. Inside the boat it's airco, but the windows are nearly at water level so you don't see that much ... a lot of people sit outside on the roof but then of course you sit in the sun for a few hours...
When we got to Phnom Penh we practically had to fight off some hundred motorcycle drivers all shoving signs with the name of their GH on under our nose. After nearly hitting a few by swinging out with our small backpacks (very light with in one a PC and in the other a few kg of books) we got to the street and sought refuge in the hotel-restaurant Lyon d'Or. They didn't have a room we liked but we did have lunch there so we had time to discuss with the Cambodian owner who had lived in France for a very long time.
We finally stayed in Cozyna hotel, a brand new place on the riverfront with great views of the rivers (20/ 25 USD).
In the late afternoon we hired a tuk-tuk (7USD) to bring us to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. This was during 1975-1978 the execution ground of the Khmer Rouge for the people kept in the Tuol Sleng S21 prison in Phnom Penh . Of the 17000 people "processed" in the prison, only 7 survived.
There are 129 mass graves in total of which 43 still are unearthed. The other ones were unearthed in 1980 and the remains of nearly 9000 people were found. The skulls, categorized by age and gender are kept in the memorial stupa on the grounds. Many of the people were hit with an iron bar on the head - in order to save bullets... The Khmer Rouge held a grudge against non- Khmer ethnic people (Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham...), anyone religious and anyone remotely intellectual (including people who wore glasses). In the end they also started killing in their own ranks when conspiracy and treason theories started to lead their own life. Nearly 2 million Cambodians died in total...
Feb. 22
The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh is quite Thai in style but the destruction by the Khmer Rouge of many buildings and treasures leaves of course its trace. The only building which shows some of the grandeur the whole place must have had is the Silver Pagoda, so-called because the floor is tiled with over 50000 1 kg silver tiles.
As we walked back we passed through Wat Ounalom. The Khmer Rouge also didn"t like Buddhism and monks were defrocked or murdered and temples and statues were destroyed. Hence a lot of the temples have still unpainted concrete constructions on the grounds, because they are only starting to really become alive again. You do see a lot of monks on the streets, but what was very astonishing was the number of other people living on the temple grounds. There are hammocks between the trees, wash hangs to dry on the statues... in Myanmar people would have a fit if they saw this.
From the balcony we had a good opportunity to observe the life on the street in Phnom Penh: the motorcycles carrying sometimes up to 6 people, or with girls sitting on the back in amazon fashion... A motorcycle taxi is in fact handy to get around and even with both of us together in the back of one it's no problem. The only problem is that every time you set foot on the street and for every 2 meters you have to shield them off ... on the occasion when you do need one it's funny to see 4 or 5 of them nearly crashing into another as they are so eager to ride for you.
Feb. 23
In the morning we went to the Russian market, the market most geared towards tourists. You can buy an assortment of copied Lonely Planets, copied audio and software CD's, clothes and shoes which must have fallen of the truck somewhere (Columbia shorts, Aigle hiking boots, Quiksilver jackets...not exactly the kind of thing you'd produce for fake unless you were producing it already for real) and the whole range of wood and stone carvings and silks. In general the impression of handicrafts in Cambodia is that they only have started to revive with the rise of tourism (handicraft were, needless to say, not well regarded by the Khmer Rouge).
By cyclo (bicycle taxi with the driver sitting behind you) we went to the Tuol Sleng museum, site of the S21 prison under the Khmer Rouge. It used to be a high school, and it consists of 4 3-storey buildings. Some of the classrooms were subdivided into individual cells by crude brick or wooden walls ... the upper floors were used for mass detention where the prisoners were shackled to one another. Interrogation by torture was normal procedure - the Khmer Rouge kept very detailed records with name lists, photos etc of all the prisoners. The guards were teenage children. Very impressing is a photo exhibition of the ex-guards of the prison with portraits of them now working in the field or with their family. As they were then children they are now only in their forties, and looking at their photos you realize that you could meet anyone of them in the street. None of the Khmer Rouge leaders have ever been brought to trial, so what must these people and their neighbors feel?
Also the pictures of a deserted Phnom Penh are impressive: on the day the KR took over power they evacuated the whole city (including hospital patients) to the countryside and the city remained deserted for 4 years. Through the closing of borders, the abolishment of money and the extreme form of rural communism the Year Zero and the 3 following years really catapulted Cambodia into the Stone Age.
Feb. 24
We chartered a taxi outside the hotel to make a day trip around Phnom Penh to Tonle Bati, Phnom Chisor and Angkor Borei. The Khmer temple of Ta Prohm at Tonle Bati is from the Angkor era, but it is today still used as a shrine which makes the atmosphere very special: the grounds are nicely kept with potted plants, there are decorated Buddha images with incense burning in the stone buildings and there are people worshipping.
Near Ta Prohm is another much smaller temple, Yeay Peau, which stands on the grounds of a wat. The 2 sites are located near the Tonle Bati river which is according to the entrance ticket (in a mysterious English that gives you a headache when you try to understand it) "pleasant side"
Next we drove to the Phnom Chisor mountain, with another Khmer temple on top. Climbing it in the baking sun is maybe not the best idea (in Cambodia it is year round hot ... for us it hasn't been this warm since November before we left to Myanmar). Also this temple is used as a shrine today: the roof of the central part is gone so that's now covered with corrugated iron, but the prayer flags and the offerings create also here a special feeling.
When we got back down again our driver told us that we could not continue to Angkor Borei by road but had to pay another 25 USD to go by boat. We presumed this was another case of boatman monopoly and decided to head back to Phnom Penh with a discount on our fare for the day (20 USD instead of 28).
On the way to and from PP we drove past the Thai embassy and several other Thai companies that were set on fire in the riots of a month ago ... how the Cambodian government will repay the very extensive damage to Thailand is a big question mark (half of Cambodia's national budget comes from international donations). In the mean time the border with Thailand had reopened so the exchange rate for Thai baht also improved.
Feb. 25
We first of all picked up our passports with the visa for Vietnam from the travel agency. This whole visa thing is a big mystery to me: at the Vietnam embassy in Vientiane it was 55 USD for a 1-month visa with exact entry date, it took 4 days and you needed 2 photos. Here in a travel agency it's 26 USD for a 3-month visa, it takes 1 day and you don't need any photos... We also bought bus/boat tickets for the next day to Vietnam via the Chau Doc border post (8 USD).
Apart from the Russian market the other market to visit in Phnom Penh is the Central Market. It's housed in a huge art deco building but there are also plenty of stalls outside. This is another place to buy fake North Face backpacks, Rolex watches, LP's and a whole library of other books...
From here we headed to hotel Le Royal, PP's most famous hotel (part of the Raffles group) and the place where most of the journalists stayed during the KR take over of power.