After a great couple of days in
Sinphandon (southern most part of Laos) we hopped over the border into Cambodia. We spent our first night in
Kratie about 2 hrs south of Laos and had a great introduction into the warm Cambodian culture. We only had one night in the north with the desire to head south to
Phnom Penh and eventually
Siem Reap.
We arrived in
Phnom Penh with an email confirmation at a guest house and word that
they would pick us up at the bus station. Well no pick-up and no way of communicating where to go? Our first
tuk-
tuk driver says "Yeah I know the place" and of course after ten minutes of driving, we haven't found our guesthouse. So we ask for to stop at an
Internet cafe and we can get an address. We get the address and call the guesthouse he gives instructions and says he will pay the second
tuk-
tuk when we arrive. We arrive and the man at the door pays the
tuk-
tuk after we exchange some words about the current level of service. That settled we go in and a young man at the bar says that he doesn't have a room as per in the email. He shows another room not at all what we asked for but at same price (hideous). Then two more rooms (also not what we asked for and at different prices). At this point we are frustrated (to say the least) and demand to talk to the person we
communicated with on the email. They say 5 minutes we will get him and during this time Patti starts looking around the area at other places (and finds lots of other places). Then a new man enters and says that he doesn't have the room he stated in the email. At this point we have had enough and decide to leave. As we are heading out man at the front demands that we pay the
tuk-
tuk to get us here since we aren't staying. We say no (since we were out the money for the first tuk-tuk and the money for the internet and phone call)! He grabs my backpack and re-demands. I push him backwards after saying we aren't
paying and you lied. He get really offended and starts the rich tourist thing while raising a fist. Patti says you lied and we aren't paying. Man raise fist and heads her way. I get very angry and push backwards again (while two of his friends are closing in) and say we aren't paying you lied!! He yells a lot of profanities and tells us " you pay now! people get hit by cars all the time in Cambodia@$%ing tourists" and lets got of my
backpack. We walk off a little shaken and find a nice place down the
street.
We decide that night that we need to start fresh with Cambodia and catch a bus the next day to
Siem Reap and to explore the beautiful temples of Angkor Wat!
We have loved every minute of
Siem Reap and Angkor, I've taken 600 photos in two visits and will go again tomorrow. This has been a true highlight of the trip. We will be posting photos soon.
Don't get worried about us, this is our first real tussle while abroad and we are pretty sure we are still decent people. To make up for the potential bad karma, we've been extra generous with any nice Cambodian who serves us or helps us out.
Colin and Patti
The ingredients read: Water, Sugar, White Fungus, Agar, Sodium Bicarbonat, Bird's Nest and Flavour.
Wow you can really taste the flavour and it's economical.
Sihanoukville is blessed with great sand and a steady breeze that makes the 35dec plus temperatures bareable and it has great seafood to boot. With our time dwindling in Cambodia, we only left ourselves two days to see this town and it's embarrasing to say we spent most mornings watching Olympic coverage then sitting on the beach and drinking the remainder of the day away. The really sad part is that we fit in with just about every other 20 something tourist. Still a great place.After , we headed straight east towards Kampot with one small hiccup. As we were heading out of town we got flagged down by the local police becase apparently it is illegal to drive with your headlights on. After some small talk, the only way not to have our motorcycle impounded was US $10. After that little hiccup, we headed off. The coastal drive was nice and the 130 km's to Kampot were easy thanks to the limited traffic on the road. A quick stop for lunch in Kampot and we drove on to our real destination of Kep. This small town was previously a weekend spot for Cambodians in the 60's and early 70's and was mostly levelled by the Khmer Rouge regime and the Vietnamese. The damage is still visible by the burnt frames of vacation homes and old hotels that dot the landscape. Despite it's appearence at times, the town is quaint and friendly and the seadood is even better than Sihanoukville. The local specialty is crab with kampot pepper and it is to die for. In fact any of the seafood dishes with the locally grown pepper is exquisite. This is likely a spot which, given a couple of years, will be overrun with tourists, so hurry up.
With our time in SEA coming to an end, it was a relitively quick drive back north to Phnom Pehn despite 150 km of gravel roads thanks to construction. We did arrive safely and are preparing to head to Vietnam.
Unfortunately for Phnom Pehn the major attractions bring to life the tragic history of this beautiful country. Visiting the S-21 museum and the killing fields are a must see while in Cambodia if not only to see the horrorfic history but more importantly realise how far this country has come from those days. There has been very few places that we have travelled since leaving last year where every single person you smile at returns an even bigger smile.
A great city and a great country.
Although Siem Reap is a a big tourist draw and the city is at times over-run with barang (tourists) we found a quaint little guest house away from the masses to relax from temple viewing and the heat. It had a tv and this started our morning obsession with LIVE olympic broadcasts.
Angkor Wat is the big draw and the largest temple in the area and is also the busiest, although Bayon and some of the smaller complexes are exquisite. We've included three photo galleries of the temples as every angle was photogenic.
As we were travelling through Laos an aquaintance that Patti met in University noticed that her status on Facebook indicated that we were travelling through Laos. Turns out the aquaintance; Douglas Caffel, works at a recently opened copper mine north of Vientiane. So off we went to visit PanAust's mine in Laos thanks to Doug. It was a great sidetrip in a great country. The mine arranged a ride from town to the mine's camp (5hr drive), meals and accomodations for one night and a tour of the operations. For those geeks interested in earth moving there is a photo album on our Picasa photo page.