Long Ago and Far Away
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement as the little rodent scurried under Marge’s bamboo chair. We were sitting at an outdoor café in downtown Phnom Penh, quietly having a drink after arriving from Siem Reap and checking into our hotel. I was calculating my next move – should I say something or just be patient and hope the little bastard moves on – when I observed his mischievous little rodent head emerge right next to Marge’s leg. Somewhat panicky, I stamped my foot, hoping to scare him off, but instead he mistook Marge’s leg for an escape route, availed himself of it, and created even more pandemonium as my wife came to the realization that a rat was scaling her leg, shot up, and scattered the rodent in the direction of the other startled patrons. Already, in a matter
of seconds, I didn’t like Phnom Penh and it hadn’t been an hour.
We had left Northern Thailand last week to spend a week or so in Cambodia, a considerable and sometimes grueling 24 hour trip. It began with a comfortable overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok (15 hours), followed by a 5 hour bus ride from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. Unfortunately, at the border, the situation deteriorates quickly. First, you get stamped out of Thailand, then you walk down a dusty and hot road, littered with beggars and touts, to Cambodian immigration where they notoriously scam you out of an extra $10 for your ‘expedited’ visa. Then you have to deal with getting transport to Siem Reap – your choices being a bus (cheap and 10 hours), a taxi (expensive and 3 hours) or a pickup truck (cheap and 6
hours).
We negotiated for a $45 Toyota Camry private taxi and spent the next 3 hours driving down the worst dirt road you could ever imagine to Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat. To say this road is a national disgrace and embarrassment is being too kind. Despite appearances of construction crews along the dirt road, it’s mostly washboard surfaced with bone jarring pot holes, so dry and dusty that most of the time you can’t see the cars in front of you. Bangkok Airlines, who, coincidentally are the only airline to fly into Siem Reap, are in no hurry to see this road improved, although just laying blacktop would cut the travel time easily in half and exponentially
improve the experience.
Finally, we arrived in Siem Reap and checked into the Le Meridien Angkor, using some of our hotel points, a very nice upscale hotel close to the ruins. We bought the $40 Angkor 3 day pass, which allows unlimited access to close to 50 sites in the surrounding areas, a considerable value considering the historic opportunities.
Dating back to the middle 12th century, Angkor Wat was built by King Suryavamanen II as a monument to the Hindu god Vishnu, and is the centerpiece and must see attraction in Siem Reap. Your approach across the moat is breathtaking, your passage marked by interlinked blocks of rock assembled like a jigsaw puzzle, your entrance through the outer gate is visually stunning - it’s scale and architecture appearing illusory at times, due to distance and relative perspective - the intricate and timeless bas-relief carvings detailing scenes from Hindu mythology including the famous ‘Churning of the Sea’ – we spent half a day here and came back a second time just to walk these enduring corridors one more time.
Next up is the great 2 mile squared walled city temple and former capital Angkor Thom, built by King Jayavaramen VII in the early 13th century. Within the four walls are many Buddhist and Hindu structures,
including Bayon and it’s 37 towers with giant stone carved faces, Baphuon, the collapsed temple-mountain in the heart of the complex, Phimeanakas, a crumbling sandstone pyramid that you can climb to the top of, the Terrace of the Elephants, a 1½ mile long wall adorned with elephants and garudas (very impressive), the Terrace of the Leper King, parts of which have only recently been excavated (1990’s), and the four imposing entrance gates, each with unique and memorable stone carvings. We spent the better part of a day here just wandering around.
Ta Prohm, also built in the early 13th century by Jayavarman VII, is a Buddhist complex intentionally left unrestored. Massive fig trees grow from the towers and produce an atmospheric and highly photogenic jungle within a temple visual, while dark mysterious corridors and open plazas populate the enclosure and allow for exploration. We really enjoyed this ruin because it is largely unrestored and had far fewer people visiting.
After these ‘must see’ big three, you can wander around the many other ruins, most of them easily accessible from well established roads. There are many ruins that are in very, very bad condition – dangerously so in fact – that you need to be careful where you walk. You‘ll observe crumbling walls, falling blocks of rock, propped up columns - if these ruins were in America they would
be closed to the public.
The best way to see them is to hire a tuk-tuk driver for the day which will cost you $12-14. They will drive you around, stop at the temples and wait around to drive you to the next site. It’s really not practical to walk from one site to another – although not far, it’s very hot and humid and will wear you out quickly – also, the ride in the breezy tuk-tuk will periodically cool you down.
Siem Reap is a rapidly growing tourist town, with a disproportionate amount of high end hotels and many, many tourist buses along the main temple circuits. It’s also very expensive with everything sold in US dollars – a bottle of water, a t-shirt, a pack of postcards, a tuk-tuk ride across town, always $1-2. We thought everything was overpriced, that the hordes of tourists were being relieved of their money too easily, but, where else can you come and see unique relics like this. Although we were here for 5 days, you could easily see all the main attractions in 3 days - again it’s very hot and dehydrating, so pace yourself. And if we had to do it over, we’d choose to fly from Bangkok or Chiang Mai and avoid the border hassle and shockingly poor overland route.
We spent another two days in the capital city of Phnom Penh, a 6 hour bus ride from Siem Reap, mainly because it
broke up our overland journey to Saigon. Marge liked it better than me, despite the rodent experience, and thought it had great potential. I thought it was by far the dirtiest town we’d been in and wouldn’t think of touching the street food. For a capital city, it was a real pigsty, with an undercurrent of seediness. We found a nice place to stay – Paragon Hotel – right along the riverfront (where all the action is) for $20/night. Aside from the Killing Fields, all of the other main attractions are easily walked – Royal Palace, Tuol Sleng Museum - the very sad and sobering high school where victims of the Khmer Rouge were imprisoned, photographed, tortured and killed – and the National Museum, where many Angkor artifacts (statues, carvings, vases, bas-reliefs) have been safely moved over the years as a result of chronic and widespread looting and vandalism.
Great potential resides in this historic kingdom, despite years of civil strife and political unrest. The country itself is very, very poor and travel is challenging outside the main tourist centers of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. Medical facilities are sparse (there’s dengue fever epidemic in Siem Reap), land mines continue to be a persistent problem in the countryside, and the many political factions could splinter at any time. We probably should have spent some more time here, but we’re glad we made it out safe and sound. Now on to Vietnam – first stop, Saigon.
Long ago and the far away in the Kingdom of Cambodia, there
were kings named Isanavarman and Jayavarman and Yasovarman and Suryavarman who together
built great monuments to honor their gods, temples that have survived throughout
the ages despite many wars and fractured political alliances, testaments to
greatness that inspire and challenge our existence on earth, and hopefully will
continue to do so for many generations to come.
