Street Life: Thoughts from Siem Reap

This is a hard thing to write because it has to cover a wide variety of experiences and places. It may be easiest to start with the tourist sites.

Just north of the town lay the hotels. These are not just ordinary small hotels. They are, as the pictures show, large and somewhat pretentious 'palaces' built to sustain the wealthy of the world. They do seem, outwardly to look fitting in that their appearance and style are what one might think of as Cambodian. Certainly, their names fit eg Ankor Palace and the like. However, when compared to the local environment they are completely different (see later).

A similar issue is the Museum, which is huge and very new. It is an amazing edifice that sets out to provide setting of the history of Ankor Wat. At the same time it also tries to explain the meaning of the complex religions that are the basis of the temple sites. But it is limited. Kings are described as 'Great' but there is insufficient explanation to evaluate what this means. In many cases it seems that great meant he built lots of temples. However, one then learns that he also opened and ran many hospitals across 'Cambodia', which were available to ordinary people. How effective they were is another question, however.

The displays of Buddha are staggering but lack any real explanation to help out the foreigner which is a great pity. It was also sad to see so few people in the Museum and attendants standing around waiting.

I have also been interested to note the existence of Golf courses in and around Siem Reap. Why?: Not for the locals that is certain. A round of golf will cost about $170 fro one or perhaps $160 per pair. This amounts to 50% of a months salary fro a hospital worker and about 16% for a doctor. But the argument goes it brings in the rich tourists who can avoid the painful realities of daily life locally by…playing golf!

The roads and how one drives are a wonder. Unlike Europe, the traffic is mainly motorbike or TukTuk. Only the relatively wealthy have cars, 4by4s and other four-wheeled things. Although traffic lights exist, mostly it's an open road and one crosses by negotiation. That is the driver heads into the crossing sounding his squeaky horn and looking at others, who similarly sound their horns and head for the crossings'. All of which makes for exciting times!! Drivers often head up the wrong side of the streets before negotiating their way across the road! Clearly, the key thing is the big vehicles always go first.

But by far the most interesting is what one sees on the back of motos. This morning it was a small TV (eg 14") held on by one hand, no ties or anything while the man drove his bike one handed. It is very usual to see more than 2 people. Frequently it's a whole family, a babe in arms and two others, with one holding on to the front whilst standing up! The middle child is…..in the middle between the parents!

Today we drove to P{hnom Penh and that in itself was interesting. Our 'luxury' coach did have a/c but not much more. At $5 for about 250 miles it was cheap. The driver spent most of the time sounding his horn: get out of my way!! And passed even with things coming the other way. They were mainly bikes and Tuks but occasionally we saw wagons piled high with timber pulled by a horse. Or a minibus crammed to the rafters with everything and sagging on its springs. Occasionally people sat on then roves!

However, the roads are flat- there are virtually no hills in Cambodia so there are lots of bikes. Passing one town at about 11.05 we were faced with hundreds of children of bikes pouring along the road usually ignoring the demands of our driver to get over and risking life and limb in the process.

We are on National Route 6. If this is an advert for Cambodia's roads, I am not sure about the rest. Narrow, potholed, and bumpy it sure wasn't the M25. But we had no holdups or traffic jams so maybe a small mercy!

Once in Phnom Penh the traffic got a lots worse and the streets were jammed with motos, bikes, tusk and everything else one can think of. Narrow streets and a chaotic approach to road craft means crossing the road is particularly interesting.

Photographs are an attempt to give a flavour of whatwe are experiencing. Keep looking because I will add more over the next few days.