Sleepless in Siem Reap

Cupcakes, pancakes and fruit shakes. Batman Tuk Tuks, Jianzi, dollar massages. Baby Alligators. Temples.

Welcome to Siem Reap.

Known as the gateway to Angkor Wat, Siem Reap is a big tourist destination. With treelined streets, a river and you know it's coming - French colonial buildings, it's a handsome town filled to the brim with great little cafes and the more schlocky Pub Street for the younger, drink-fuelled backpackers.

We arrived by the notorious night bus, in spite of having been warned of how dangerous it is by every single travel guide and blog I had found on the internet.

Why then, you ask, did you go on it?

Because someone convinced me that I was being a... cluck cluck. And I'm too easily riled.

Having been promised a spacious double bed, air con, free water and all the perks (am I sounding incredibly naive at this point?) we found ourselves in a vehicle which could have masqueraded as a sex parlour. And probably did. Dark red curtains and tiny cells not fit for a life-term convict, we found our bed directly under the engine at the very back of the bus. Air-con out of action. Hairs on the pillow. Shady stains on the mattress.

Relatively claustrophobic, having once had a complete paddy climbing the staircase to the Whispering Gallery at St Paul's Cathedral, I found myself breathing pretty short breaths in muggy air convinced that the mephitic fumes of the engine would probably kill me overnight. The corridor reaching our budget boudoir was so narrow, all passengers had to walk crablike. One escape route, with us at the back of the bus.

Currently agnostic, I cannot say I 'found God' on this journey but I did pray multiple times overnight when I was suspended in air or spooning the wall when the driver slammed the brakes down. (Being at the back, we were sideways on).

The Remedy

Sleep deprived with a rats nest on my head and desperate for a wee, we arrived at a sunny 6am in Siem Reap. At this point with no placable sarcasm apparent, Alex said:

"Well that was much better than the night bus in Laos!"

Genuinely. I wanted to kill him.

At least he didn't say 'What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger".

But food always cheers me up and two pancakes with berry compote, creme fraiche, maple syrup and bacon at Cafe Central did a grand job.

You know that I can't write a blog about Siem Reap and not talk about Angkor Wat. And whilst we took some incredible photos, they will probably look just like everybody else's - no matter how much time is spent editing them. So I will attempt to not to go into minute detail about every temple we saw but share the more entertaining bits. But prepare yourself for lots of photos, tough luck on that side of things.

At 4.30am, my favourite time of day to wake up, we took a tuk-tuk which we had negotiated down (good cop/bad cop routine is still working) to 15 dollars for the day. We had decided to leave the best til last, so we maturely turned our heads to the left whilst passing Angkor Wat on the right.

First stop 5.30am

Baksei Chamkrong was our choice for the sunrise, an early 10th century Hindu temple which looked a little like an Apocalypto head-rolling sacrifical slide. Our driver got out his hammock and hanging it on his tuk-tuk, went back to sleep whilst we peered blankly into the dark at the very steep stairs we were standing in front of.

Having climbed to the top, whilst murmuring about health and safety hazards in a very British way, we sat and ate our breakfast of pineapple and mango whilst Alex listened to the bats that were chirping in the temple. I protected my hair with a sarong.

Breakfast time in the dark.

Having been to Petra in Jordan, the capabilities of what humans can do never ceases to amaze and when you stand amongst the faces of Bayon that awe and splendour really hits you. What was all the more special was that because all the tourists had flocked home after sunrise for breakfast, we were pretty much the only people there. Passing it a couple of hours later, it was like a sea of faces.

I pride myself with having a good vocabulary, but after seeing a couple of temples you do struggle for words to describe them. Rock. Stone. Carved. Sculptures. Buildings. Temples. Meh.

Alex bitterly disappointed me at Ta Prohm for refusing to be videoed pretending to be Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. He was never going to be Angelina Jolie but he could have been a very believable young Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones.

Later that day, we discovered the best cupcakes we had ever tasted at Blossom Cafe, so we ate lots of them. Though my sister is not a bridezilla, I still have to watch what I eat apparently so I am not a fat bridesmaid so I won't mention how many we had or how many times we visited in our week in Siem Reap.

Two of .... many!

Wednesday was a good day as it was a chance to see a face from the past - David and his wife Vina. Both his daughters are close friends of mine. They were both staying at a hotel a considerable upgrade from ours - the Victoria Angkor Resort which boasted a very nice swimming pool, those seriously cool old-school elevators which you have to slide the door to close and a baby alligator pond. We had a bizarre moment when discussing my failure to break Hollywood and it materialised out that one of the few people I had met was his best friend from school. (The only person he knew in LA). It's a small world.

Another day at the Angkor Wat Archeological Site involved riding 'the Grand Loop' - 30km on mountain bikes. The ride was brisk as Scouser Wiggins likes a good pace. I almost crashed into several bins that were waiting to be recycled on the road. Then almost did it again on the way back.

Trusty Steeds

Neak Pean was an island temple accessed by a long causeway and the views were reminiscent of the end of the second Lord of the Rings, when Isengard is destroyed.

"Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they only speak in whispers." (Treebeard)

Spooky stuff.

Isengard /Neak Pean

Alex's birthday falls on Valentine's Day and we were in Siem Reap to celebrate it. We spent the day doing most of his favourite things. We started with a pancake breakfast then watched a film in the Green Leaf Book Cafe (An Extraordinary Theory of Everything - is it only me who bawled their eyes out the whole film?) We then had a brunch of more pancakes with Alex's favourite Mango Shake. Lunch and the early afternoon was spent with Alex watching the cricket and rugby on two screens at the same time. Then we went for a Dollar Massage.

Massage parlours are everywhere in Siem Reap - to relieve the weary loins of tourists traversing Angkor Wat. Most of them have the same deal - a dollar for a ten minute foot massage. Being generous, we decided to go for three dollars.

It was not a pleasant experience.

The man who was lathering globs of unlabelled cream on my feet and legs had elongated molars - aka vampire fang dentistry and was giggling tonelessly in a high pitched voice to his neighbour. His idea of massage was to smack my feet and legs then place his pudgy gargantuan hands on my little toes and pull them out of their sockets as if he was having a tug of war with the entire Japanese Sumo Wrestling Team. This he then repeated two other times, once every ten minutes.

1$ foot massage. You get what you pay for.

Insanely after our dinner at 'Genevieve's Restaurant' - for where else were we going to go for Alex's birthday (it's also the number 2 restaurant in Siem Reap), we decided to go for another massage. This time I broke into hysterical giggles when both of them got into the downward dog position and put their hands on our groins, rubbing us in circular motion. The Khmer massage techniques are really not to be missed.

Then we watched Six Nations rugby well into the night with a few beers to help us along.

The Angkor Wat sunset was our last experience in Siem Reap before we took a bus and crossed the border to Bangkok. It was a marvel, worth waiting for. Alex took lots of pictures of the reflection of Angkor Wat in the lake whilst I made some friends.

Sunset at Angkor Wat

Making friends

Six weeks of travelling around Laos and Cambodia and it comes to the final thing we see to know that the crazy experiences we have been through have been worthwhile. That sitting under a bat-infested temple in the pitch black and watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat Archological Site made the entire trip worthwhile. There have been some incredibly unremarkable places. There have been some horrible, horrible bus journeys. There have been some gruesome, harrowing sights. There has been a lot of the views of the Mekong. That's all part and parcel of being a backpacker. But the majesty of being at Angkor Wat - and it only takes one time - leaves you feeling pretty special. That you've seen something that that old cliche 'once in a lifetime' truly fulfils.

A representation of 80% of photos taken.

12 nutella pancakes (and lamb with all the trimmings)

Kampot was a place I kept mistakenly calling Tampon for reasons unbeknownst to me (other than that 5 of the 6 letters are the same). It was described by the little brown owl (Trip Advisor) as a 'pretty French colonial town' on the river in South Cambodia. A 'must see' by Lonely Planet. If we hadn't done so many of these towns everywhere along the Mekong River now, we might have enjoyed it but, as anticipated, there was nothing to do there except sit and stare at brown sludge. Which you can do from the retreat of your own bathroom, if needs be.

So let's skip the 48 hours we spent there.

There was one amusing moment when Alex had to queue nearly half an hour to use the new ATM - the first ever in Kampot. Dozens of locals were trying out their new credit cards at the same time, crowding around it like kids at a vending machine. A few of his toys were discarded here.

Sihanoukville provided us with our first view of the sea in four weeks, a welcome distraction for the town itself was like a Far Eastern Benidorm. Taking a walk to the 'Wildside', our accommodation for two nights, we found the gates closed and two alsatians (or alastians as I once called them) growling at us. Eventually a semi-naked Frenchman high as a kite let us in and it materialised out we had the entire premises to ourselves for both days. Dubious times.

Booking our ferry tickets to Koh Rong Samloem (a desert island), we were delighted that for 15 dollars per person, they managed to throw in free breakfast, lunch and a snorkelling trip to the 'best coral reef in Asia' en route. I was also assured by Alex that we had taken out enough cash to last the five days we were intending on staying there.

The next morning we got picked up at 7am via minibus and dumped at a shack where we were served our "free continental breakfast" as part of the trip - a baguette with some jam. Meanwhile our bags were given to some tuk-tuk drivers whom we watched drive off into the distance with a trepidation that we might never see our clothes again. In a car chase, we were delivered to the pier and pushed onto a "party boat" where we watched a policeman do a tally count from his bike, shaking his head somberly all the while. The more observant of us quietly claimed lifejackets at this point. After taking off, we had to duck to avoid being bludgeoned by selfie-sticks owned by the famed Korean tourists.

So good so far.

About half an hour into our boat trip, an overhead tannoy announced that anybody interested in snorkelling should disembark the boat and swim to the island where there lay the promise of colourful fish and the coral reef. We were told to be back in half an hour. We immediately jumped in, alongside with some tourists in head to toe swimwear and rubber rings. Ten minutes later we arrived at the beach and put our snorkel masks on. We didn’t see anything but sediment. Then the tannoy went.

“The Party Boat is leaving!”

Ten minutes later we were back on the boat.

Lunch was some rice with either some chicken that tasted like fish, or some fish that had the texture of chicken. I didn't eat it.

But Koh Rong Samloem was a little slice of heaven. The summation of the simile 'as pretty as a picture', the definition of 'tropical paradise' - all of those stultifying cliches which we hate to use but sometimes are the only ones that are just right. White sand like powder, crystal clear waters - you name it AND you could walk 200 metres out to sea and still be only waist deep. 

At Paradise Island Beach Resort - the original, we are staying on the upper floor of  a mixed dorm for 12 dollars a night. A double storey bamboo barn with the front completely open to the sea, we have a mattress and a mosquito net for privacy, lined up alongside others like ducks in a row. The electricity is only on between 6pm and 10pm. There is no internet, shops, roads, vehicles. There are a couple of beaches to walk to, but that is all. It is like being shipwrecked.

At 6.15am, we creep down the stairs to watch the sun rise. To our surprise, the sun is a deep blood red, crimson, vermillion - whichever romantic shade you like. You would think it was sunset. The rest of the island is asleep.

It is quiet here - except for the party boats that come here each afternoon when the tourists disembark for a couple of hours, take lots of pictures, then abscond again in response to the tannoy:

“The Party Boat is leaving!”

Not many actually stay on the island which gives us a sense of superiority - that smug self satisfaction - we knew better than all the other tourists. False vanity is a common flaw amongst backpackers. 

The only slight problem  is that we were rapidly running out of money. 

So we count our coins - or dollar in this case as all of Cambodia now uses American currency to circumvent the poor value of the riel. The island overcharges for everything, as there is little choice but to comply. Breakfast becomes a meal shared - Alex gets the free coffee and I the free juice. When possible, we avoid lunch and drink water instead. Dinner is a bargain if rice comes with the order. We had already booked our accommodation to last us through to the end of the week and we didn’t want to have to leave early. Plus we were feeling martyr-like - cue a rendition of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" performed walking along the beach, off-pitch and off-key. Hands in the air, shaking. By Sunday, we had 13 dollars to last us two meals before returning to Sihanoukville.

Alex had dreams of piles of Nutella pancakes. We basically spent a lot of time sunbathing and thinking about food. Occasionally we went on walks off the beaten path.

Alex found some exciting toys to play with.

Whilst I continued to think about food.

And look for it everywhere.

It reminded me of a story we were told by a friend who once served in the SAS, when he was returning from the selection course having been out in the field for three days with only a handful of rations and no sleep. In the truck on the way back having passed the test, the assessors asked the soldiers, in attempt to keep them awake, what their perfect meal would be to return to. Not one for the short and sweet answers, our wonderful friend in glorious and immaculate detail described the whole preparation of a rack of lamb with all the trimmings from start to finish. Fifty years later, he bumped into a fellow comrade who immediately brought up that rack of lamb.

The things that stay with us. 

On the last day we met this little kid. A local brown skinned boy, maybe six years old, with a mop of black hair and the pearliest white teeth I had seen on the island. He wore red shorts and a checked shirt and the French owner was sending him around the restaurant serving food to the customers. His English was perfect - better than any we had heard here. He had the sweetest smile.  

I of course wanted to adopt him.

But the prevailing thought at the time was that he was unfortunate. Unfortunate to have been born on the island, however nirvana-like it appeared. Would he have the opportunity to attend a good school, to make something of himself in this world - the way a young bright boy has a right to? But then again, do we have a right to say with conviction that ours is a better life?

I don't know.

Koh Rong Samloem was a lesson in serenity for the city-dwellers accustomed to having civilisation at their feet. There was a high probability that if a groundbreaking event had occurred elsewhere in the world during those four days, we might have been some of the last people to hear about it. Certainly, it would have made no difference (to the world) whether we had been told or not. It was good for us - but I couldn't live this way. I realised that I have to be at the front of the world where technology is evolving, where advancement is at its steadiest. Where the best schools are and the best jobs. And that was quite a big lesson learnt I thought.

That little boy will stay with me. 

Dr Evil and the Killing Fields

All was going relatively well until I got tonsillitis on the 13 hour bus journey between Laos and Cambodia. Simultaneously shivering and sweating on shit-coloured leather seats with a trigger-happy-with-the-horn driver meant that life was not turned onto Comedy Central that day.

Upon arriving in Phnom Penh, the boy's first port of call was to find a non-dodgy chemist, in a city where behind every counter lies a Dr Evil maniacally cracking his fingers. Entering a pharmacy in Cambodia is a little like the Skittles Midas Touch advert* where everything one touches explodes into thousands of colourful sweets - except here it's obviously pills. The good news was that you didn't need a prescription for anything, just simply a response to:

"What you want? Where you from? I get you anything you want!"

Luckily Alex's fine memory from his New Year's sickbed experience meant that he could reel off all the antibiotics he took, including some very nasty mouth-spray which was like inhaling bug repellent. Alex actually calls this stuff 'Pooberry Juice' and has concocted a theme-tune for it to the rhythm to The Who's 'Who Are You' - just play it out in your head. And don't let it stick.

Alex has just asked me why I blame him anytime I write something stupid on this blog. He's right, it's a joint effort. (It was really him).

One night spent at 11 Happy Backpackers Hostel was enough for us to swerve off the budget trail and check us in to an actual hotel with hot water. The music played until 3am and was loud enough for me to suddenly sit up in the middle of the night and name the song - an astonishing feat for a deaf person who has old fashioned taste in music. The ceiling was pretty low and so the ceiling fan hovered precariously above Alex's head. This meant that inevitably, when putting a tshirt on, he experienced an almost finger dismemberment that any fan (ha!) of the film 300 would have been proud of. The sheets were dirty, the water cold and the drains in the bathroom smelt pretty miserable. It was only a fiver, but if we had stayed another night, you would have seen a reproduction of the prom scene in 'Carrie' with me starring in it.

Being sick enables a little bit of extra leeway - a little bit of getting away with things I wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to do. For when I asked Alex whilst he was shaving to show me what he would look like if he had a goatee, he indulged.

Photo removed here by owner's request.

Additionally, I also discovered that the one thing that his father would say to him as a child that really riled him up was "Stop showing off". This would result in a freeze and a quiet fury radiating from every pore of his eight year old body which was a very cute image and useful ammunition.

Six days later and I was sufficiently recovered to actually go out and see Phnom Penh and to visit two of the sights I had really been looking forward to - Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields. Because it is simply not possible to describe our experiences here in an entertaining way, you will have to accept my apologies because the funny part of this blog is over.

In spite of having a history degree, I shamefully know very little about the Khmer Rouge period which meant that whilst I knew this was somewhere I had to visit, I didn't really appreciate why. Though I knew that if HCMC's Revolutionary Museum was anything to go by, this would be brutal.

The Khmer Rouge was Cambodia's Communist Party led by Pol Pot which ruled between 1975-1979. During this period, two million people - a third of Cambodia's population was killed by their own. Genocide - "a systematic destruction of a significant racial, ethnic, religious or national group" took place here. Tuol Sleng was a prison during the Khmer Rouge period which housed at least 1,500 people at any given time over the four years. Whom through torture were forced to confess to international espionage links with the CIA, KGB or Vietnam.

Tuol Sleng's premises is a high school. Playgrounds, classrooms, lockers - the things we all take for granted were there among the barbed wire fence, torture instruments and rows and rows of photographs of prisoners. A clash of good and evil, of right and wrong. Many of the classrooms are subdivided into crude cells for the prisoners. Blood stains remain on the floor, gruesome pictures of torture taking place stand unapologetically on walls. Outside stands a climbing frame with three pots sitting underneath. Prisoners were hung upside down here whilst being questioned, until they passed out from exhaustion at which point they would be dunked into human faeces. The most difficult of prisoners were skinned alive.

Did you know when arresting people, they took whole families to reduce the risk of bad blood or revenge later in life?

I'm going to crib a line by WW2 poet, Charles Sorley. "When you see the millions of mouthless dead"

Choeung Ek - the Killing Fields is a little further outside of town. We took a tuk-tuk in the early hours before the hoards of tourists arrived. Audio guides are presented to us, which I declined of course, but there was more than enough of a visual.

There is a 'Killing Tree' and a 'Magic Tree'. The Killing Tree is where soldiers would grip the ankles of babies and bash their brains in against the trunk. The Magic Tree held a loudspeaker which played music to drown out the screams and cries.

The palm trees, which stand next to us, were also a weapon - the serrated stem of the leaves were used to cut people's throats. Wooden shelters house the mass graves and thousands of bracelets are left on the fences as a blessing or a token to the dead. Only 79 of the 112 gravesites here have been excavated - they have chosen for the rest to be left alone.

Possibly one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen is observed when we walk around, there are rags in the hard soil of the paths we are walking on - clothes of the dead that are slowly rising to the surface after the rainy season. We are advised not to pick up the rags or the bones that are also emerging - the volunteer custodians that look after this place will do it after we have left.

It seems inane that a full excavation has not taken place - that people would not want their family or friends identified and their remains put to rest. But the unspeakable horror that took place here is visible - it smacks of impact. The final part of our visit was the Cheoung Ek memorial; a buddhist stupa with glass sides displaying over 5,000 skulls that have been found here. Red, yellow, blue, green stickers are affixed to the skulls to illuminate the cause of their death - whether by bullet, bayonet, club, hoe, tree or palm. Whatever they could put their hands on.

Most people didn't know where they were coming to - when they were blindfolded and transported at night to the Killing Fields. They were told they were going to somewhere else to work - most did not come from prisons but from the fields - picked out for wearing glasses (for these showed foreign influence), for looking like an ethnic minority - this all rings akin to the holocaust. And the court cases are still taking place to this day. The killers have still not been brought to justice.

I could have skipped all of this and lightly recounted the highlights of our visit to Phnom Penh. But this was it - the highlight. Phnom Penh itself was a little bleurgh and very smelly. After staying in five hostels in five nights in five different areas of the city, we felt we had seen it all. Sometimes it is not the best of times that stay with us, but the worst. And I will forever remember, with haunting precision, those rags and those bones. May they rest in peace.

*Check the Skittles Midas Touch advert out here.