Holiday in Cambodia

Hello all, its been a little while since the last update due to lack of internet access or at least free access (i'm a cheapskate at heart). Since I last wrote we have visited the Cu Chi vietcong tunnels outside Ho Chi Minh, travelled by bus to Phnom Penh, visited the killing fields and torture sites of the Khymer Rouge, travelled again by bus north to Siem Reap and spent hours exporling the tombs and temples of Angkor Wat.

I'll try to go into a little further detail now but if my connection should drop at least thats a quick summary of what we have been up to.

So first things first, the Cu Chi tunnels. We went on a half day tour with a local operator as the tunnels are a fair distance outside of Ho Chi Minh. Well actually they arent that far outside the city', we spent most of the time driving through the city itself. Its all fairly low rise and with 8 million plus people to house that means its pretty sprawling in nature. While Vietnam is undoubtedly a poor country by western standards it seems to have a least a good basic standard of living. The streets are lined with stores selling decorative mirrors and clocks, clothes and children's toys, not really the items of mere existence. The streets are absolutely choked with motorbikes though, virtually no one owns a car and a scooter or small engined motorbike is the preferred means of travel. Its nots unusual to see a family of 4 or even 5 on the back of a single vespa. They also seem to double as the world's smallest hi-aces, we've seen ones carrying a full double mattress, half a bath, the contents of an entire convenience store, we even have pictures of some of the more ridiculous attempts which i'll try to upload when I can.

So anyhoo once we finally got out of the city limits it was a fairly short spin to the tunnels. Now nicely geared up for the tourists at the entrance it can seem a little hokey but any commercial sheen kinda vanishes when they show a 15 minute documentary/propaganda film ostensibly dating from the late 1960's. It tells of the atrocities of the 'American War' which is understandbly how the Vietnamese refer to it. To say the film was anti-american would be the worlds biggest understatement as they refer to the awarding of medals to the Heroic American Killers (locals who have killed the most soldiers in a given period). With my very limited knowledge of the war i dont know much about who was wrong or right, on the one hand these Vietnamese never asked the Americans to use their townlands as the centre stage for the battle against communism and similarly most of the American soldiers who ended dying there probably would have rathered be any where else.

Afterwards we had a tour of the hand crafted weapons and traps fashioned by the vietnamese, which were very basic yet seemingly very effective. They all kind of centre on the idea of a soldier unexpectedly walking over a trap, falling into a hole and a lot of sharp things stabbing him, in a variety of different ways. Following this we were offered the chance to crawl underground through an original tunnel and resurface some 40metres away. I thought i would give it ago having come this far. I don't suffer from claustrophobia but my god it was the most claustrophobic experience of my life. The tunnels are tiny, pitch dark and have steps and drops in them which come out of no where when you can't see where you are going. Made for the slight vietnamese frame the tunnels are too small for many westerners to crawl through, i was having difficulty at 5 foot 2'' so John had no chance at all. When i finally reemerged i was bouncing from the adreneline and soaked from the humidity of the hot air trapped under ground. I can't even begin to imagine what a scary experience that must have been for soldiers with only the addition of booby traps and armed locals to look forward too. Still I am completely glad i did it as it really brings the experience to life in a way a movie or a book never could.

The trip was rounded off with a visit to the in-house firing range, as you do. John bought 20 rounds for an M16 (?) gun, i'm really not a gun nut but it is a big and very loud bloody thing. My ears hurt so bad from his firing of it i couldn't be bothered to repeat it myself. In the afternoon we visited the War Remnants Museum which is quite sobering. From the outside it just appears to be a collection of military hardware suitable for some holiday snaps (tanks, jets, helicopters, etc), but inside its a photographic account of the war. In fact one of the rooms is dedicated to all of the photo journalists that died during the course of the war and some of the amazing photos they managed to capture. Another of the rooms looks more at the human victims of war, such as the deformed babies born after the war due to the use of Agent Orange. It also tells the story of an Ex-Senator Bob Kerrey who during his time as a soldier tortured, raped and killed an entire family of defenceless vietnamese women and children. The truth of his crimes only emerged in 2000 when Mr Kerrey had long been seen as an upstanding member of the community. The fact he isn't currently rotting in jail is amazing. So while obviously all these exhibits and legacies of war show just how much this country went through only 30 something years ago it is uplifting to see that it is moving on and looking forward now.

Unfortunately the same can not necessarily be said for the next country on our destination list, Cambodia. Having taken a 8 hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh the differences between the two countries was evident pretty much from the moment we crossed the border. It is with out doubt the poorest country we have visited. Bar the couple of main artery roads there is no infrastructure to speak of, there seems to be a very limited level of industry and a whole lot of poverty. As the bus came into Phnom Penh (PP) we were actually wondering if this could be the capital city. Secretly hoping it wasn't we were somewhat disappointed when the bus stopped and turfed us out. Spirits didn't get any better when we arrived at our hotel for the next 2 nights. The New York Hotel, a last minute alternative after our 1st choice failed on us, certainly lives up to its 63 out of 75 rating on TripAdvisor. For $29 a night for a twin it was a complete rip off given the quality of the room and service. This is a town where $3 gets you a room with air con so we really were expecting a little more. PP was definitely the first place i had the feeling of wanting to leave.

But we had come here for a reason, to depress ourselves further with a visit to the Killing Fields and S21, a school turned torture centre during Pol Pot's demonic 3 year reign. Between 1975 and 1978 over 3 million Cambodians died at the hands of Pol Pot. He systematically targeted anyone that showed an ounce of intelligence (doctors, teachers, professors, dentists, artists, sculptors, business men, bankers, etc). They and their extended families were tortured at a place such as S21 and then executed and buried at one of over 19,000 killing fields throughout the country. The Killing Field just outside PP is now the main monument to the victims of the genocide. There is a glass and concrete temple that houses the almost 9,000 skulls of the victims found at that site alone. It really is grim but it seems incredibly cowardly not to hear about how these people died when they went through so much. Those 3 years seemed to have ravaged Cambodia to a greater extent than Vietnam seemed to suffer during the Vietnam/American war. I guess the knock on effect of killing almost every learned person in a nation will ripple through many more generations than just that directly effected. At the worst of the violence the capital's population reduced to just 15,000 people, now it is back up to about 1 million but it has far from recovered.

The following morning we were somewhat thankfully leaving PP to head for Siem Reap up north. Another 6 hour bus ride.....Joy!

Siem Reap really is an oddity in Cambodia a prosperous, westernised and touristy town. It exists solely because of the nearby Angkor Wat. The heritage site of the Angkorian Kingdom. Dating from around 800ad onwards Angkor Wat is a huge geographic area littered with some of the worlds most amazing temples and tombs. You free to pretty much explore áll of them at will, checking out every nook and cranny, each dodgy staircase of loose rock and bat filled corridor. As long as you can bat off the herds of retired tourists on their Greatest Hits Tour of Asia, that is. Angkor Wat itself is the grandaddy of them all and is apparently best viewed at sunrise, which is why we found ourselves on a Tuk Tuk at 5.15am this morning rattling towards the temple by the light of the moon. In typical fashion 2 minutes after getting there and a couple of minutes before sun up the battery in my camera dies. Fantastic! John had his with him as a back up but in the low light i'm not sure how the photos will turn out.

We're back at the hotel now and will probably just laze by the pool for the remainder of the day as we have another early start tomorrow, leaving Siem Reap for Thailand. We fly first to Bangkok and then onwards to Krabi.

Talk to y'all soon.

Jules