Siem Reap & The Temples of Angkor, 18th - 26th May

And so to Cambodia, which was yet another culture shock. Arrival at the Siem Reap Airport was like stepping into another world after Luang Prabang - it is a clean, modern airport, well laid out and all the staff speak excellent English. Plus the Cambodian sense of humour is immediately obvious as the line of 15 Cambodians issuing visas pass your passport along, each one looking at you and laughing! But outside the clean shiny airport the lush greenery of Laos is replaced by a landscape of red dust that covers everything; the gentle calm chaos of the Lao roads is replaced by a frantic hustle and bustle with much more traffic and where people generally drive on the right but it is not uncommon to find vehicles travelling in both directions on either side of the road; and the poverty of the country is immediately obvious. I'm fully aware that Siem Reap is not the 'real' Cambodia and I would love to return and get away from the tourist trap and explore the real country, but this time we can only afford a brief visit. Siem Reap has built up as a tourist resort because of the temples, and there is obviously more money and better facilities here for this reason, but where there is more wealth there is inevitably more poverty and this is something we were simply not prepared for.

We bought a week-long pass for the temples of Angkor to give us (well me!) time to look around them thoroughly, and I think it worked well as we didn't have to cram so much into each day and could rest during the hottest part of the day and also avoid the rain which comes in short sharp bursts about once a day. When I do return I would certainly chose the high season (Nov - Feb) as in May the temperatures are still really hot but the rains have started, although it is not yet full monsoon season, hence it is prime time for thunder storms. In fact we couldn't stay at the guesthouse we had originally booked as they had no power following a lightning strike that hit the power cables which was a shame as it looked lovely. We eventually stayed at the Angkor Voyage Villa, which was ok, though bizarrely there was a pool full of crocodiles out the back!

We found a tuk-tuk driver online who was highly recommended and booked him for our week and he was a star. His name was Kim Soyean (the family name always comes first here) and he turned up every morning with an icebox full of cold water and facetowels, a face mask to stop us breathing in the dust, and a smile! He was an extremely good driver - after a short while I stopped crossing myself whenever we approached a junction and just appreciated the way that we melted gently around the other vehicles. He is also studying the temples and as he dropped us off at each one he gave us some history and things to look out for which was useful. It was too expensive to hire a guide as well so we bought a (copied) guidebook and did it ourselves. But the first morning at the temples was not the exciting adventure I was expecting. In fact when we stopped for lunch I was seriously wondering how I was going to cope with an entire week of this.

We started at Roluos, the original royal capital, to see the early temples of Lolei, Preah Ko and Bakong, the first state temple built in the style of a temple mountain. But I really can't remember much about these temples as I was so upset by the children. As the tuk-tuk pulled up we were immediately surrounded by children trying to sell us various souvenirs so they could buy food and school lessons. Tiny children, desperate for you to buy something for 'just one dollar', who were so persistent, and 2 young deaf girls trying to give us a flower so we would give them money. It's strange, we were expecting this in Asia, but when it wasn't so bad in the places we visited in Thailand & Laos, we just thought perhaps it isn't so bad here after all. But we have never seen such poverty and the relentless questions along with the shocking age of some of the children was just overwhelming and we both wanted to run and hide - how can you walk around a place and appreciate its beauty while you are surrounded by hungry children? To top it off, at Bakong we stopped to use the toilets and found that the lights didn't work and there was a giant tarantula hovering just above the seat! The attendant disposed of the poor creature and we took in turns to pee with the door open while the other stood outside sheltering our dignity from the children waiting patiently to try and sell us some more stuff! That was enough - we asked Soyean to take us back for a couple of hours so we could have a break.

During these two hours we poured over Lonely Planet and various websites to try and work out how people deal with this. They generally advise not to give money as this rarely goes to the children - people 'pimp' them, as they know that people are generally kinder to children. Sometimes their families actually sell them for this, and they are often fed drugs to keep them dependent and desperate. They are also sold for sex because families are so poor and this is something we have been vaguely aware of all over SE Asia. There was one guy in our guesthouse who gave us the creeps whenever we saw him - we tried to give him the benefit of the doubt as you can't judge a book by its cover and all that, but he was always online in chatrooms with a creepy leer on his face, then we found him in a bookshop asking a young girl if she was still at school, with that same leer, and finally we saw his computer screen as we were waiting to pay one day which confirmed that he has just come on holiday here for sex - dirty pervert! Anyway, in the end we found a solution that sort of worked for us - we bought a huge bag of cookies every evening and whenever we came across some children we shared them out, as at least we know that they eat them. We also tried to engage them in conversation and found this quite rewarding - they are children after all and they need attention, not to be ignored, which was the solution for many people. And we found that they were intelligent kids with excellent English and an answer for everything! We appreciate that this isn't a long-term solution, but at least it is something and most of the time we were rewarded by a lovely smile that lit up their faces.

And so to the temples. We visited a lot of the temples during the week and found the 'Ancient Angkor' guidebook invaluable as it advised the best times to visit each one and which ones had the best shelter for visits in the hottest part of the day, as well as things to look for and the stories, mythological and true, behind the many bas-reliefs and carvings. I won't go into detail for all of them for fear of boring you all to death, but will just mention some of the highlights, though I have to say that there was generally something that made each one memorable, even if it was simply a meeting with somebody within the grounds.

• Angkor Wat - the mother of them all, the largest religious building in the world and still in excellent condition. We visited twice, for both sunrise and sunset, and watched both from the lake with the reflection of the 5 towers shimmering in the water. The rainy season does mean that clouds interrupt those picture-perfect images, but it was very special, especially sunset when we were almost alone. The first time we visited we were treated to the sight of a bizarre Japanese cult, all dressed in white, moving everybody aside to sit and meditate in front of the towers which sent a little shiver down my spine (for all the wrong reasons)! Another special moment was early morning when most of the sunrise visitors had gone back for breakfast and the day-trippers still hadn't arrived and we had around 15 minutes to sit, almost alone, in the central sanctuary and reflect on the magnificence of this building.
• Ta Prohm - despite the wonder of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm was our favourite temple. When it was discovered it had been entirely taken over by the jungle and while much of this has been cut back to allow for visitors, giant silk-cotton trees and strangler figs grow out of walls and over the roofs of buildings. And just to add to the atmosphere we visited during a storm and the rains kept most people away and we wandered around, almost alone, as thunder rolled around the sky overhead.
• Angkor Thom & The Bayon - Angkor Thom was Jayavarman VII's royal city and while much of it has been taken back by the jungle and monkeys sit by the roadside looking for picnic scraps, the wonder lies in the giant stone faces that peer down from each entrance gate and cover his state temple, The Bayon. Ego yes, but striking nonetheless.
• Banteay Srei is a cute tiny temple, built out of rosy-red sandstone with wonderfully well preserved carvings, but the journey there and back was awesome. It took an hour in our tuk-tuk, past Cambodian villages where people live in tiny wooden buildings on stilts, sell their wares at the roadside and pump drinking water from pumps donated from overseas, and past rice paddies gradually filling up with water. It was an interesting snapshot of rural Cambodian life.
• Preah Khan - thought to have been a Buddhist University, Preah Khan was very similar to Ta Prohm in atmosphere with trees taking over parts of the complex, but the real gem here was meeting an ancient lady in the central sanctuary. We stopped to buy some incense she was selling and I took a photo of her and Su after asking her permission, and although we couldn't understand a word she was saying we understood that she was amused as she didn't have her teeth in. I showed her the picture, found the word for beautiful in my phrasebook and told her that she was which made her beam and laugh & laugh & laugh! She was lovely.

And we had a couple of other encounters that made our visit. On the first day, after we'd hidden for a couple of hours, put on a brave face and gone out again, we went to Bakheng for sunset, another temple mountain, and climbed, very carefully, to the top, up steps that were both steep & narrow. We hunted for some shade and stopped to rest and gulp down some water and here we met Chong Lay, a Cambodian monk, and we began to talk. And we talked for so long that we completely missed the fabulous views as the sun went down and it didn't matter at all - he saved our day! He was the most serene, gentle, softly-spoken, eloquent person we'd ever met with the most beautiful, wise face - Su and I were completely bewitched. We talked about the village where he grew up and walked 2 days to market sleeping in the jungle en route; the culture shock for him arriving in Siem Reap; how the money from Angkor, c.200 million US$ every year, doesn't find its way to the people starving throughout the country; how many of the monks here have problems with their stomachs as people are so busy they have lost the tradition of morning alms, and so on. And then we walked back down the elephant track with him and his friend as darkness fell. During our conversation he invited us to his monastery before we left and one afternoon we turned up, with a bag of food, and became the topic of conversation between the other monks as we sat in his simple wooden hut, where he brushed down two chairs and set up a fan for us, and talked for another hour, while monks took it in turns to walk past and peer in none too discreetly! So now we have swapped email addresses and will keep in touch with Lay from the UK. This was really special.

We also had a chance encounter with Federico and Virginia, an Argentinean couple, now living in Australia, who we had met in Laos. We bumped into them several times around the temples, twice in the toilets(!) and had a lovely dinner with them at the Cambodian Soup Restaurant, which they kindly treated us to. Thanks again guys, it was lovely to meet you, hope you enjoyed the rest of your honeymoon and keep us posted on the pregnancy!

Anyway, I think that's enough on Siem Reap for now, although there is loads more I could write. By the end of our visit we were utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally. But while Cambodia is undoubtedly the most challenging place that we've been to, it is also the most rewarding if you take the time to understand the people and their dreadful past, and the more you can explore the country and meet the locals, the greater the potential of that reward. Travel isn't only about pretty beaches and suntans and this is one place and one visit that we will both remember for the rest of our lives.

Finally, our lovely driver Soyean drove us to the airport in a final jaunt in our tuk-tuk. And to say goodbye and thank you to us he gave us gifts - 2 scarves each including the traditional Khmer scarf, and a wooden sculpture of an apsara dancer. Such a wonderful generous gesture from him, although he did cause a minor security problem for us as the sculpture was tightly bound in newspaper and he told us to keep it like that for protection. So we had to wait until he had left the airport, waving all the way out, before opening it just to check as when you are travelling between two countries where the penalty for smuggling is death you can leave nothing to chance!

With love, Jo & Su, xxx