| Product: |
Cambodia |
| Date: |
15/05/08 (164 review reads) |
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Advantages: Unmissable Angkor,
Disadvantages: Transportation, poverty, begging
Towards the end of 2004, I decided to take a short break from the rat race in order to go travelling. I chose Asia as there were several countries I wanted to see, because I thought it would be fairly safe for a lone female traveller and because the weather was quite good that time of year, September to December. After a couple of months in China, Hong Kong and Vietnam, I headed for Cambodia
Getting there and getting around~~
I had travelled south through Vietnam, which meant it was a very quick (40 minute) flight from Ho Chi Minh City in the south to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Unfortunately you cannot fly directly to Cambodia from the UK at the moment but you can fly via Bangkok or Singapore amongst others and the flying time will be about 11 or 12 hours followed by another 1 or 2 hours depending on which particular route you chose.
A visa is required in advance. I applied for mine in person at the Cambodian Embassy in Vietnam. That was a relatively painless process but it looks to be even easier now as you can buy them on-line. Obviously I have not actually tried this method so cannot comment on how reliable or otherwise it is. The visa is valid for three months though so you could apply for it well in advance for added peace of mind.
Getting around Cambodia is quite an adventure but not necessarily in a good way. Trains are infrequent and not reliable and the roads are in very poor condition. I found there was not a bus service between two regions I wanted to visit meaning a shared taxi or minivan was the only way to get to the second location. But shared taxi drivers will try to cram six adults in one average saloon type car which I can only imagine to be very unpleasant for a six hour journey on potholed roads. Minivans have the same over-crowding issue. Transportation problems might be overcome by joining an organised tour, but I didn't want to do this.
The one place that is well served is Siem Reap and I chose to fly here from Phnom Penh. I used Siem Reap Airlines, I found their planes to be modern and the service good. The airport at Siem Reap is excellent for its size. There are several flights a day between the two locations, flight time is 50 minutes and the cost about US$50 one way. The true backpackers would of course choose to save a few pounds and spend six hours on an uncomfortable bus instead..
So partly due to the challenges of transportation, I only visited three places; Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville. It was necessary to come back to Phnom Penh in between as there was no way of getting from Sihanoukville to Siem Reap or vice versa at that time. The other place I had wanted to visit was Kampot, but this would have meant yet another trip back to Phnom Penh which was totally the wrong direction. I believe it is more accessible by bus from other locations now though.
Phnom Penh~~
I found Phnom Penh to be a fairly compact city and I was able to walk to more or less everywhere that I wanted to visit. The heart of the city runs along the banks of the Tonle Sap river and the immediate riverbank area is picturesque.
I opted to stay in one of the many guesthouses situated along the riverbank, paying about $15 per night and I took most of my meals in one of the many lovely cafés and restaurants along here as well. The most famous of these is the Foreign Correspondence Club, which I can recommend very highly for the views, the atmosphere, the décor and the food is not too bad either. The FCC also has a few rooms available and I think this would be a fabulous place to stay, although as I was on a budget I sadly could not stretch to the $60 per night cost on this trip.
Nearby attraction include the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, both of which worth a visit. A slightly longer walk would take you to Wat Phnom, another temple and around it a small but thriving cluster of market stalls.
Not long before my trip I had watched the film "The Killing Fields" and I wanted to know more about these terrible times. One day I visited the Toul Sleng museum, which had been a school before being taken over and used as a prison and interrogation centre by young Khmer Rouge soldiers. It is estimated that up to 20,000 people were imprisoned here over a four year period but only twelve are known to have survived. Most were dead within a few months. Every prisoner was photographed passport style when they entered and many of these photographs are now on display. I was shocked at how young some of the prisoners were, there were even babies and children. The school / prison has been preserved in more or less the state it was found after the regime fell. Most people will guide themselves around. I found it horrifying but not in a gratuitous way. My guidebook had prepared me for even more gruesome displays than I saw but the worst horrors are left to the imagination.
Ten miles outside Phnom Penh is Choeng Ek also known as the Killing Fields. I took a taxi for my visit here. The fields are not big and after paying a small admittance fee most people wander around by themselves. I decided to hire a guide to show me around. I didn't understand him very well, but enough to know that his family were killed here during Pol Pot's regime and he was understandably still very angry and he wanted to show people what had happened. He walked around the fields with me and pointed out pieces of bone, teeth and clothing that still lay on the ground. In the middle of the site is a glass tower which has been filled with many of the skulls that have been recovered from the site. I did not want to take a photograph of this particular monument, however my guide wanted me to. Apparently nobody survived this prison, other than seven people who were found inside when the regime was overthrown.
Sihanoukville~~
After a few days in Phnom Penh, I made the four hour bus journey to Sihanoukville. The buses are always described as "luxury". They are not. They would probably not be allowed on the road in the UK so be prepared. The drive will be broken up by one or two comfort stops along the way. There will probably be a very loud TV or even worse karaoke machine blaring for the duration of your trip and you may find yourself sharing your seat with a chicken.
I spent about five or six days here in Cambodia's premier beach resort, it is pleasant but does not remotely match up to the beaches of Thailand. When I was there it was still relatively quiet and undiscovered and I found that most of my fellow visitors were backpackers, with plenty of time on their hands, but there were not many "normal" holidaymakers.
There are various different bars along the long beach providing the sun loungers and refreshments during the day. I had a couple of favourites that I went to most often. As it was not a very busy place, it was normal to see the same faces and there was quite a nice atmosphere. There was also a rather large crown of local teenagers who seemed to spend their days going to the beach talking to westerners and I spent many an hour chatting to small groups of them.
There are a few day trips to take from here and these can be organised via several of the guesthouses. A day's boat trip was popular and there was also a trip to Ream National Park, which I did. It was a nice enough outing and included a boat ride and a picnic, but nothing to write home about.
At the end of my visit, I had to take the bus back to Phnom Penh and planned to spend another full day there before flying to Siem Reap. When I arrived at the bus stop, a rather aggressive looking chap from Nottingham related to me the story of his troubles that morning with one of those taxi drivers who had wanted to cram a ridiculous number of adults into his taxi before setting off for Kampot. In the end the chap from Nottingham, decided he had had enough, got out of the taxi and decided to take the bus back to Phnom Penh instead. During the course of the next four hours and after he had calmed down a little, we discovered that Siem Reap was the next stop for us both and we decided that we would pool costs and explore the site together.
Sieam Reap / Angkor Wat~~
As I mentioned earlier, I decided to fly to Siem Reap but my new friend decided to take the bus so he set off the day before me. I arrived in the town at around midday, met up with new friend in the lovely Red Piano bar restaurant and we worked out a sight seeing plan. Most people would probably recognise the image of Ankor Wat, but there are hundreds more temples in the area, built over a period of 600 years by the Khmer empire. Tourist maps of the area are readily available so with that and a guidebook, it was fairly easy to come up with a plan of what we should see and in what order based on location.
Itinerary done and we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Siem Reap. I thought it was a very attractive small town with a good range of shops and places to eat and drink. At about 5pm, we decided to go and buy a three day pass (US$60) to the Angkor site. Entry for the evening before is included as a bonus, so we went to the Angkor Wat site to watch the sunset. We took a tuk tuk down to the gates to buy the ticket and we arranged for the driver, Mr Peach, to be our guide for our second and third days. His fee was US$8 a day and we saw no reason to haggle over this.
On the first of three days, we decided to go and see the temples situated further afield, some a good 20 miles from the town and a bit too far to go in a tuk tuk. Instead we hired a car and chauffeur for the day costing US$30. We explored the temples to the east of the site including Banteay Srei and East Mebon which were my two favourites of the five we visited in the morning. In the afternoon, we started to head back to the more central area and managed to fit in another five visits. Of these Ta Keo and Ta Phrom were my favourites. Ta Keo was a quiet site and the pyramids were incredibly steep. We started to climb up one side but then turned back because it was so steep and tackled it from another side instead. When we did get to the top and look down, it was so steep you could not even see the steps, it looked vertical. Climbing back down was pretty scary as it is so steep and there is nothing to hold on to. I had to offer to go first and my offer was accepted!
Ta Phrom is an amazing site and was probably my favourite of all the temples. This is quite a large complex and a decision was made not to restore it so it has been left exactly as it was found, that is being totally over run by trees. The roots and trunks of the trees have grown over the temples and almost become one. The size of the trees is an indication of for just how long the temples had been here forgotten. This is one of the more well known sites and accordingly it was busier than some of the others. But there are many temples to see and they are sufficiently spread out for there to be no real problems with crowds.
We went to see Angkor Wat on our second day, this is the largest and best preserved of any of the temples. It is the one most commonly used in photographs and of course one of the most popular. I too thought it was fantastic, it was great to be able to climb to the highest levels and this time there were hand rails to assist with coming back down again. It is a must see, but definitely not my favourite.
On our final day we went to see the oldest temples, known as the Roulous temples and dating back to 890. These are smaller and made of red brick as opposed to the grey and brown stone used elsewhere.
I am extremely glad we had three full days and four nights in Siem Reap. So many people and most of the organised excursions that I have seen, only provide two full days and three nights. I don't think it is enough and if you are going to go all the way to Cambodia, this will surely be the highlight so don't rush it.
Overall Opinion~~
Cambodia has a troubled recent past from which I believe it is still struggling to recover from. Certainly to me they did not seem to have made the progress that their Vietnamese neighbours have after their own troubled past. Unfortunately this manifests as prolific and sometimes aggressive begging, which some may find quite disturbing. This was most apparent in Phnom Penh and I hated the all too common sight of children of about age 10 or less wandering the streets carrying their baby siblings. It was clear to me that these children were not truly fending for themselves, they were too well fed and healthy looking, but rather had been put to work in this way by parents or other adults.
Social problems aside and whilst I did enjoy this part of my travels thoroughly, I still don't think I could say that Cambodia was one of my favourite destinations. This is partly because I would have liked to have seen a bit more of the country but logistically I found this quite challenging. I would highly recommend a trip to Phnom Penh however and can see myself going back one day. I would hesitate to recommend Sihanoukville to anyone other than a backpacker or someone with a lot of time to spend in Cambodia.
As for Angkor, well that was truly remarkable and its position as Cambodia's top attraction is well deserved and unsurprising. It has to be up there as one of the best travel experiences in my life so far. I even ended up getting married to that grumpy chap from Nottingham who shared this experience with me.
Summary: Included one of my best travel experiences
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