Blogging Pubbitch

Just a brief note about the journey to Thailand. It was in a minibus which had started life as a transit van. Consequently, the three rows of seats that had been shoe-horned into the back of it had almost no room for the longer limbed. Even Holly, who has short legs, wasn't comfortable. Of the four windows in the back, only two opened, so the surprisingly long trip was spent in cramped, airless conditions. I have sympathy for other cattle now.

On its own, this wouldn't be so bad, but the roads now assumed traditional Cambodian standards of workmanship. We consoled ourselves with the fact that we were only meant to spend 4 hours like this. "Only four?" said the person next to us, "I heard 5" Let me tell you now, it took about 6 and a bit hours, with relief being supplied at the three river crossings in the form of being able to get out and stretch our legs.

And I have a confession to make. Despite being in what was basically a sardine can on wheels, I managed to snatch a few hours sleep. I'd strongly advise you do the same in a similar position --- it makes the world a far more pleasant place!

Needless to say, as soon as we reached Thailand, the roads improved immeasurably (though they did improve, the difference wasn't imperceptible!) the minibuses acquired leg-room and the air conditioning worked. And we weren't asked for a bribe on the border. It was a bit of an anti-climax, to be honest.

Our plan was to spend only a single day in Sihanoukville. It's a quiet resort, favoured by the Cambodians for beach holidays; a position it wins almost by default since Cambodia is lacking coastline. It helps that the country's Prime Minister likes to holiday there, so the road to Phnom Penh is flawless.

Our plans were put out a little because the minibuses to the Thai border were all fully booked that day. Consequently, we overnighted at a place near Serendipity Beach (going out for a few beers in the evening) and it turned out to be one of the better things that we've done. Come the morning, the poor weather finally broke, and we had glorious sunshine. As we staggered towards the narrow strip of palm fringed sand that made up the beach we ran into Brendan and Becky, who we had last seen in Vietnam. Our day was therefore spent with much careful contemplation of such important subjects as "Isn't the weather lovely?", "What have you two been up to?", "Do the Cambodians like their Prime Minister?" and "Shall we go for a swim?" It was a relaxing way to spend a day.

In the evening, we decided to head out into town and treated ourselves to some very nice spaghetti carbonara --- a dish that we'd been avoiding by dint of its unavailability in preference for some variation on rice or noodles. The following morning we left for Thailand....

The road to Sihanoukville has the honour of being the worst road that Holly and I had the misfortune of travelling on in our time in Cambodia, despite some pretty fierce competition. The reason for it has to be the 10km stretch that appears to be a detour across a ploghed field. Not only that, but some heavy traffic has turned some of the ruts into pits several feet deep which nothing short of a hovercraft could avoid being trapped in.

We spent the better part of an hour and half hearing the bottom of the card scraping gently against the mud, splashing through voluminous puddles, watching in amazement as rust red mud managed to get in through the windows and being laughed at by the locals who have a canoe and were paddling through the rice paddy on the right hand side at a far faster pace than we could dream of going.

You can't win them all.

Kampot is a place of little charm and fewer attractions. There are two reasons to go there, and one of those is to head down to Kep, the nearby beach resort. The other reason is to provide an easy way to reach the Bokor Hill Station in the nearby national park, and the reason for going there has a lot to do with the country that Cambodia used to be.

Cambodia was once one of the most modern of the South East Asian nations. It had a rapidly expanding and effective infrastructure and was seen as a safe place to go; during the Vietnam War a large number of the journalists covering the fighting were based in Phnom Penh. It had also been a French colony and had a relatively successful tourist trade. The thing that Cambodia lacks is much coast, but it does have some nice scenery, and the plan was to turn the Bokor Hill Station into a thriving tourist trap. To this end, a large hotel and casino (amongst other buildings) were constructed.

All good things come to an end, and no sooner had the hotel been completed when tourism became the last thing on people's minds. As a result, there's now an eerie ghost town, with a slowly rotting, but very grand, hotel to see up in the hills, wreathed in mist on cold days and with a startling view to the sea on fine days.

When we arrived in town, the weather was doing its best to prevent anyone from seeing anything. Strong winds and constant rain that swung wildly between tropical downpours to invasive drizzle made walking around the town a miserable experience, and a landslide made access to the hill station a hazardous expedition --- so hazardous that one girl, thinking she could handle the dire road and powerful bikes needed to travel it, managed to break her hip when she overbalanced. The sheer vileness of the situation had forced the price of a trip up from 8 US dollars (including lunch) to 15 - 20 US dollars, excluding lunch but replete with colourful stories of hapless tourists breaking their hips.

Naturally, we overnighted, looked at the dismal weather in the morning and decided to head for Sihanoukville with a group of other travellers we had met in the hostel. There were 8 of us, so suitable transport was arranged the night before. Despite the others confidence that a large minibus would pull up, neither Holly or I were even slightly surprised when a Toyota Camry pulled up outside.

Going from Phnom Penh to Kampot, our next stop, would necessarily involve transport of some description. Asking around town, the choices seemed to boil down to:

• A very slow train that only runs every other day, because Cambodia has two train lines and only two passenger trains to run on them
• A minibus
• A shared taxi

Of these, the last two sounded like a pretty good bet, so on the morning we wished to travel we found our way to the market from where both types of vehicles leave. It was here that we learnt the true meaning of "packed like sardines" and "quirky pricing" Let me explain....

A minubus in Cambodia normally has three rows of seats, each of which can hold 3 or 4 people. This puts the theoretical maximum number of people in the thing at around 13 or so (two rows of four, one of three by the door and two in the passenger seats at the front) In Cambodia, an astonishing 25 passengers can be placed into this one poor machine, a feat of human packing seldom rivaled since the World Record for "most idiots in a mini" was set on prime-time childrens' telly. If that seems like a madness, then also consider the shared taxi. This is generally a Toyota Camry (though not as modern as that link, coming as they seem to, from the early 90s) and tends to be white --- the ideal colour for Cambodia's barely paved roads and mud tracks. Into this hapless sedan a total of up to 8 or 9 people can be shoe-horned, with one person sharing the driving seat, the driver sticking his head either out of the window or very much to one side, and some other poor schmuck clinging for dear life to the lid of the boot in which he's sitting in.

Now it should be bourne in mind that although these numbers are set using the slight and short people of Cambodia as victims, the drivers see no reason to change strategy when confronted by our taller, bulkier western frames. But there's hope at hand! All we need to do is rent a taxi by ourselves. Considering that there's less weight to thrash around on the suspension and over the distance covered a small amount of petrol might be saved this should surely have the advantage of lower cost as well?

And here the madness deepens. In order for Holly and I to rent a taxi by ourselves, the cost of the vehicle is 5 US dollars more than if there were 8 of us. Quite how this works has never been successfully explained to either Holly or myself, but that particular pricing structure seems to be rife throughout the region (we've seen it in action elsewhere too!)

In the end, we managed to find two other westerners going in the same direction, and we ended up paying a miserly fee to travel in relative comfort. On arriving in Kampot though, things got worse....

We left Siem Reap to return to Phnom Penh for a little while, since our tour of the country was planned as a star shape to each of the corners, returning each time to the capital to make traveling easier. The most noteworthy thing about this brief stay was that we were sharing the hostel with someone who had contracted dengue fever. At Siem Reap. Where there was an outbreak going on. We'd heard about it just before going there and had decided to play the law of averages, heavily weighting the dice with DEET and by not going to the affected areas (the temples were meant to be safe enough to visit, it was just some of the outlying areas that were ropey) We were both fine.

As a sure-fire way to ruin any trip, dengue fever is a winner. It basically renders you almost unable to move, making it painful to flex your limbs and causing the muscles to cramp up to such an extent it feels as if your bones might snap, hence the rather descriptive alternative name for this affliction. Better still, there's no vaccine for it, it can be fatal if you're not properly fed or watered (the sweating it induces can lead to dehydration) and the only way to avoid infection is not to get bitten by a mosquito; a nearly impossible goal.

The girl who had it in our hostel was being cared for by her friend, Helen, who had remained untouched by the disease. Helen informed us that the victim felt that she might have dislocated her left shoulder because of the pain it caused her. As a happy ending to this otherwise somewhat bleak entry, I should say that Helen's friend was over the worst of it, and was now able to sit up in bed without it hurting intolerably.

I think I mentioned in one of the previous entries that part of the deal for our room were free lifts into town, and this onerous duty was normally done by a chatty 19 year old who worked at the guest house. He'd spent 3 months or so training to be a guide at Angkor, and his English was supurb, as was his knowledge of the local area and town. On dropping us off anywhere, he would take the time to ask us when we would like a lift back, and sure enough, at the right time, he'd be there with someone else to cart us back home.

Now, one night Holly and I managed to misjudge how long we'd be in town and were mid-way through a beer (hard to imagine I know) when our fellow arrived. So we invited him in, bought him a drink and had a chat with him about little and everything. The following day, as we staggered out to meet the dawn (literally, it was barely 5 in the morning) he invited us to come and join him and a friend for a meal. A Cambodian meal in a Cambodian restaurant, one, furthermore, that wasn't visited by westerners. We leapt at the chance and agreed to meet back at the guest house early that evening.

Come the evening, we were whisked away by speeding motorbike to a dark, unpaved part of town and a restaurant sitting on a dirt floor with a tarpaulin roof, packed with Cambodians. The only dish on the menu was a delcicious soup filled with noodles, brought in a clay pot and seated on a gas ring at the table. Around this soup, plates of vegetables, mushrooms, meat and egg were placed, and these were slowly fed into the soup which was kept at a gentle simmer. You spooned some of the soup into your bowl and then added spices to suit how hot you liked your food.

Now, one of the ingredients that went into the meaty pot that I was eating from was "cows' toenails", which are considered something of a delicacy, I'm told. I was filled with no small amount of trepidation when one of these morsels of meat made its way into my bowl, and our friend and his (a Mr Diamond) watched me, egging me on to eat it.

So I did.

For the record, cow hoof is chewier than normal meat, but much less so than gristle, which it also has a superior flavour to. I think that I'll rate it with chickens' feet --- not bad to eat, but for crying out loud! It's something's foot! It has not been shielded from being covered in dung and muck by a decent wall of skin, but instead has been downtrodden all its life, spending its time grubbing around in the mud!

Ah, and as for Mr Diamond, he used to be a monk until his parents pointed out that he was an only child, and they expected grandchildren. The poor soul is now finding out the wonders of alcohol and meat, though not cigarettes, because the Cambodian Buddhist monk smokes like a chimney. He's a quiet, shy man, but we liked him too and made a point of chatting to him given half a chance when we bumped into him later.

We spent three days walking around temples and being ferried between them by the ever affable Mr Mab, who had lost a leg and then his job in Phnom Penh when he'd walked on to a landmine, and had been reduced to carting westerners around his national treasures. We woke up more than once before 5 in the morning in order to see sunrise at some temple or another, and frankly, if I tell you much more you're going to fall off your seat in boredom.

No, I think it best if I mention a couple of highlights of our visits, even though all the temples were interesting at least. My favourite temple was Ta Keo, which most guidebooks and guides will tell you to spend only a small amount of time at. This is because the thing was never finished and so lacks the ornate carving that are viewed as the hallmark of the Angkor temples. In reality, the sheer massiveness of the structure is enough to render a sense of mild impressedness in most people. Wandering around it simply serves to enforce the scale of the thing, IMHO. If the ancient Cambodians had finished (or even started) the decoration, it would have been one of the must sees in everyone's book.

Quite why Ta Keo was never finished is still a matter of debate. My favourite theory, of the ones that I heard, was that it had been struck by lightening on an inauspicious date, so everyone simply left it. More likely, the king who had been building it had died and his successor didn't think much of the temple.

Holly's favourites were Ta Prohm, because it gave you a taste of the feeling the French explorors had when they stumbled upon it buried in the forest. Unlike many of the rest of the temples, this one has had only minor work done to it to prevent collapse and has otherwise been left alone. Consequently, it's full of trees that are both pulling everything down and also holding everything up. Very strange, and the thing that gets in everyone's photos (including the Lonely Planet, you'll be thrilled to hear)

Other temples that we're very glad we saw were Bayon (famous for the sheer number of enormous carved faces that adorn it --- there must be hundreds) and Banteay Srei, which was probably built by a merchant. It's miles out and a lot smaller than most of the other temples, but the carving in it is perfect, and the restoration work has subtely avoided concrete. Oh, and Angkor Wat, obviously. Just to be different, the thing that I liked most was the so called "echo chamber", a little porch just inside the second level where you can stand and gently thump your chest, causing loud echos to propagate for a few seconds before dying away.

The other memorable time in our trip was a visit to the mine museum. This is run by a man who spent his early years laying mines for the three different armies that controlled parts of Cambodia, and who now spends his later years trying to undo part of that damage. Single-handledly he can clear mine fields using only a long pointy stick (!) and lots of knowledge at a fraction of the cost and a multiple of the speed of the major charities. He also uses the donations that are made by tourists to look after a group of children who have all been injured by mines. He is so successful in caring for them that charities are now referring cases to him. Holly had been taking the complimentary tooth brushes from the rooms that we had stayed at, and handed them out to children who were overjoyed to recieve such a simple gift.

After a little debate between Holly and I, we decided that a tuk-tuk would provide us with a happy compromise between being pissed on when it rained and paying through the nose for comfortable travel. Granted, we knew that it would be a little more expensive than cramming the both of us on to the back of a bike, but this seemed a price worth paying. After haggling with a number of people we ended up hiring Mr Mab for 3 days because he spoke good English and was good fun to talk to and he offered to take us to see sunset at Angkor Wat (and he wasn't too expensive either) We agreed to meet him later that day and spent the remaining free time wandering the streets like homeless waifs.

In reality, we purchased a handy guide book to the temples of Angkor and spent a bit of time wondering how we could get the local price for the boat back to Phnom Penh, but enough of this muttering! We had a cheapish ride around the temples, and things were looking good. Naturally, it came as a little shock to the wallet that the three day passes for Angkor came in at 40 USD each, but they did have natty photos of us on and we could keep them when we'd finished visiting the temples. Such generousity is seldom seen from petrol companies. You see, in order to make sure that everything was run well at Angkor, the Cambodian government (the CPP, at least) had awarded the contract to maintain and look after the temples to Sokimex, one of the local petrol companies. They rake in a huge amount of money that the country itself barely gets a fraction of. It's madness, if you ask me, which the Cambodians clearly didn't.

Ho hum. Sunset was lovely. We drove past Angkor Wat and clambered to the top of nearby Phnom Bakheng, a "temple mountain" from which we had a wonderful view of the surrounding countryside, Angkor Wat bathed in evening sunlight and a herd of other tourists who had had the same bright idea. Oh well, at least the view was nice, and we ran into Clare and Gene again to get some tips on visiting the temples.

The next stop on the Cambodia tour is Siem Reap, gateway to the ruinious temples of Angkor. Despite numerous horror stories about the road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, the journey wasn't bad at all. We later found out that the road had recently undergone some fairly major work, and has been in its present state for only a couple of months.

On arriving in town we were promptly mobbed by a murder of hotel touts, all keen for us to visit their place and willing to give us a free lift there if we'd just say that we would look at their rooms. Holly and I had already been offered a room in a guest house run by the nephew of the owner of the Royal guest house in Phnom Penh, where we had been staying, so went there first.

The room seemed fine, with a large ceiling fan keeping things cool, a view that wasn't of the back of another building (no, it was of the roof of the nearby market, but you can't have everything) and a TV with more channels than we knew what to do with, especially considering that we didn't come all this way to watch Forrest Gump. We even had our own bathroom, which provided hours of amusement for us the next day when we discovered that not only could we gawp into the one next door but that they controlled the lights in ours.

We haggled over the price, eventually managing to get the price of the room down by a few dollars and also getting free moto rides into town, which was about 15 minutes' walk away. We'd been trying for a free breakfast, but I'm not about to sniff at free rides on the back of a speeding scooter.

We spent dinner that evening in a place called the Khmer Kitchen, which does some of the best and cheapest food we had in Cambodia (and I'm writing this once we've left the country, so I'm not making this up) If you ever decide to visit Angkor, eat there! We ate with Clare and Gene, a couple that we had met on the boat from Vietnam, as well as Gareth, another traveller who we'd met at around the same time as James, slowly plotting how to go around the numerous temples that lay about 5km away....