Mark and Jo's travels

Cambodia

We get stamped out of Vietnam, and continue on to the Cambodian border post, where we get stamped in (13 stamps). It was surprisingly stress-free. I feared a frontier style outpost with greasy guards with droopy moustaches who would try their damndest to extort money out of us.

We caught the boat as far as we could to Phnom Penh - capital of Cambodia. We found a really lovely guesthouse right on the edge of a lake where we can sit in hammocks and watch the sunset.

We had a hectic day, and not an easy one to take in. We Visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Uk, where 17,000 of the prisoners of s-21 were sent to be executed between 1975-78. There are about 130 mass graves, only 80 of which have been dug up. In the middle is a glass memorial stupa that is filled with skulls, bones and clothing - 8000 skulls piled high behind a glass wall as high as a four storey house. Walking round you can see rags of clothing and bones sticking up through the ground. It was a deeply upsetting place to be, even more so because of the many children begging � a continual drone of �some monee, wateer�� . I felt it was too soon for the site to be turned into some sort of grim tourist attraction, and deeply uncomfortable being there.

The day continued with a trip to The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide (formerly prison s-21) which documents the role of the prison, which used to be a high school, in the killing of 3 million Cambodian during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. On the drive back, we pass a man who is probably the most disfigured that I have ever seen. I can�t even look.

To top off the day, we watch the film �The Killing Fields�. We had both read the book, and were a little disappointed by the film, which was limited, I believe, by its length. At present I�m still reading �Decent Interval�, a history of the fall of Saigon, written by CIA�s Chief Strategy analyst in Vietnam Frank Snepp, a book that is banned in the West.

The harrowing visit to the Killing Fields, we decided it was time to chill out a little & went on a trip to Sihanoukville on the coast. Sihanoukville is on the Southwest coast of Cambodia, and we stay by the pleasant Ocheuteal Beach. We get motos down to the beach, and stay at a place that was reasonably priced and near the beach. The fact that it didn�t have a roof didn�t bother us too much. It�s a phenomenon that we saw a few times. Instead of building a whole hotel, and then open it up, which would take a long time, they build and finish the ground floor and open the hotel as a work in progress. Its weird � the ground floor looks perfectly normal � plasterwork and paint all done but the upper floors are just the skeletons of wooden scaffolding.

There�s another beach � Victory Beach that most of the backpackers go to which we�d heard some fairly rotten reports about � that it was dirty and that the hawkers on the beach can be pretty aggressive. Thankfully, the beach we were on was lovely. There were little huts along the beach selling food, and in exchange for buying a couple of things, you could use their deckchairs and sunshades. Local girls walked along the beach selling fruit. One girl gets me to promise to buy a fruit salad if she beats me at noughts and crosses. After drawing many times, I�m eventually distracted and loose. I�m thus forced to buy a delicious fruit salad, freshly prepared by the girl chopping up the fruit on the beach. Tough times.

We stop back at Phnom Penh for a day en route to Siam Reap. We get the express boat across Tone Sap lake. I spend most of the 5-hour journey watching films (Street Fighter) that have been bizarrely dubbed into Cambodian and bollywood tunes. We stop at a smelly floating village where we get a smaller boat to the shore. We have moto drivers waiting for us, and we�re driven down a dirt track to our Guesthouse in Siem Reap centre. Which is next to another half built hotel.

Siem Reap is where the famous temples of Angkor are situated. We get a 3-day pass to explore them, and hire moto drivers to drive us around. On our first afternoon there we climb up to Phnom Bakheng. It�s somewhat magical watching sunset from this ruined hilltop temple alongside the monks and elephants.

Our first day�s tour proper begins at the fortified city of Ankor Thom. We stop at the south gate and then onto The Bayon. It looks like a ruined temple from a distance, but close up it is absolutely amazing. It has 54 stone towers decorated with faces looking in 4 directions (the ones that are in all the pictures). We also see Baphuon and Terrace of Elephants, but the weather isn�t bet suited for sight seeing � the heat makes it a little unpleasant, and so we have a siesta before heading back out again. We go to the awe inspiring Angkor Wat. We climb up the very steep steps and pause to reflect that you could never possibly do anything so precarious in the UK. We chat to some monks at the top of the temple, and they don�t appear to be obsessed by Jo�s boobs for a change. On the way back we see lots of wild monkeys playing by the side of the road. Monkeys, monks, elephants, ruins and beautiful ruins; it�s a clich�, but still amazing.

My temptation to get up early to see one of the temples at sunrise is defeated by the reality that I�d have to get up at 4am or so. Instead we get up at a civilised hour and do what is known as the small circuit. At one of the ruined temples a shifty looking policeman (well his uniform says police on it anyway) approaches us. We�re a little concerned as the thin blue line is a little more blurry in this country. He offers to sell us a police badge for $5, and we politely decline. Another 2 policemen try and sell us various parts of their uniforms before the day is over. The highlight is seeing the ruined Ta Prom; a big rambling temple from 12th century that has been left to nature to take over, tentacle-like roots of huge trees engulf the stonework. Broken stone blocks many of the entrances, and I felt as if I were in a computer game, negotiating a maze. Indeed, some of the film �Tomb Raider� was filmed here. We also climb Ta Keo, a temple with lots of steep narrow steps that rises 50 metres upwards.

Well that was Cambodia, and next we were going back to Thailand. We took a crappy beaten up minibus with no aircon down bumpy dirt roads and across bridges of dubious quality down to Poipet on the boarder. During the journey my bag almost falls out of the back of the bus after a Dutch girl thoughtfully opened the window for it. Poipet is described by guidebooks as �a hole�, so I wasn�t expecting much. Thankfully our border crossing was mercifully brief and we were soon on a new aircon bus on the other side of the border, being served snacks, as we headed along a smooth motorway towards Bangkok.