Hi all

So, I guess it’s time to tell you about the Eighth Wonder Of The World. Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is pretty much the national symbol of Cambodia and is everywhere you look.

So, 4.30 am saw us getting up and heading off to see the sun rise above it for what we were promised would be one of the most unforgettable scenes of our lives. And I’m sure it would’ve been if it wasn’t persisting down. Instead we found ourselves standing around in the rain watching the clouds roll over the top of it, but to be honest that still didn’t detract from the impressiveness of it. It is huge. I mean immense. Gargantuan even. And just standing there in the courtyard at dawn was magical in itself. Despite the 300 or so Japanese tourists busily clicking away and getting in everyone else’s way. Bless em. But after an hour or so of standing in the rain, the magic began to fade and we decided enough was enough and it was time for breakfast.

Breakfast was a leisurely affair (it’s difficult to eat quickly when your eyes are still half closed) and we invited Sokpha to come sit with us. Apparently this meant we had to pay for his breakfast too. Hmmmmm. Then we were back into the tuk tuk and off to see some more ramshackle broken down temples :o)

We intended to return to Angkor Wat the following day (you buy a 3 day ticket on the first day which allows access to the entire temple complex) to have a proper look round so our first stop was Angkor Thom. This is a complex of several temples and we roamed freely (well kind of – I had a serious case of the trots) starting with Bayon.

Bayon is decorated with a huge bas relief all the way round the outer wall and is described in fair detail in the LP. Sweet. Trouble was, we couldn’t work out from the descriptions which one we were looking at and every time we thought we’d sussed it the next one wasn’t what it was supposed to be. But never mind, the carving was exquisite in places (again this temple dates from the 1100s) and we felt proper cultural wandering around and discussing the various dress and techniques on show. But they weren’t the highlight. The place is renowned for the huge faces that look down from every angle from the 54 huge towers. There are 216 of these heads (four per tower maths fiends) and they stare down with benevolent smiles and I have to say it’s a strangely thrilling feeling looking up at them and knowing they’ve been looking down over ceremonies and the comings and goings of the likes of us for the last millennia or so. And they are for the most part in remarkably good condition. Mand got a brief guided tour from one of the beggar kids who lurk trying to lure the unsuspecting tourist into giving them money. The tour went something like this. ‘There used to be a statue there but it’s been stolen. There’s a drain.’ For this remarkably in depth and highly thought provoking tour Mand coughed up a dollar. Can’t leave her on her own for a minute bless her. It was at this point that we decided rather belatedly that we could really do with a guide and promised we’d get one the following day. We wandered on for about an hour or so before deciding to head on to the next one.

Which is called Baphoun, and had us laughing our socks off for a good five minutes. It is still under renovation, and as you approach it you begin to see piles and piles of huge stone blocks lying in the ground. The thing is, it was taken apart for renovation just before the Civil War broke out and all the documentation relating to what goes where was subsequently destroyed. Leaving the restorers with the largest jigsaw puzzle known to man. Ok, not the funniest thing in the world but when you’re walking round dilapidated temples in the drizzle, with a decidedly twitchy bum, you get your kicks where you can. LP optimistically predicts the temple should be restored by 2005. This made us laugh even harder cos they are nowhere near completion and you just get the feeling that there are a lot of builders stood round just scratching their heads and looking at the blocks thinking ‘f*** this, let’s go and have a cuppa’. Sweet.

We then headed on to Phimeanakas which was little more than a pile of rubble before running round a maze of corridors cut into a hillside for a few minutes. When we finally extricated ourselves from them, we went on to see the Terrace of Elephants (which was a terrace of elephants) and the Terrace of the Leper King with it’s rather ambiguous statue of a person on it. No-one knows exactly what it is and to be honest even less people care.

After a brief but rather messy stop at the toilet, we headed on to Banteay Kdei (at least we think we did). This temple has the biggest steps I have ever seen. They are about a foot and a half up, and the tread is about 4 inches. They’re pretty much vertical. After bravely climbing the first set we wandered around marvelling at the workmanship and the sizes of the stone blocks they used in construction (back on the cultural bus baby) before standing at the bottom of the set that lead up to the inner sanctum. We had a look and decided that risking death just to see a few broken statues probably wasn’t gonna be worth it and headed back down. Steps like this are all the rage throughout the temples and we spent much of the day discussing why people who were probably only about 4 feet tall would make their stairs quite so big. The question was eventually answered by LP and our guide the following day. Most temples are constructed as a physical representation of Mt Meru, which the Buddhists believed to be the centre of the Universe. Ahhhhh. Next up we visited Preah Khan (we think) where Sokpha deliberately set us down next to half a dozen kids trying to flog us scarves, t-shirts and books. This actually turned out to be loads of fun as we laughed and joked with them for the ten minute walk to the actual temple. One of them was really really funny and hassled me non stop with lines like ‘I bet you bought a t-shirt in Thailand. Don’t you like Cambodians or something?’ before berating me for not marrying Mand. They all thought Mand was really beautiful. Because she has a long nose. Quality. The temple itself was pretty impressive but I was only half looking because next up was the one I was looking forward to most. Ta Promh.

Ta Promh is the one covered in huge trees. And it was as much fun as I thought it would be. Nature triumphing over man. These trees are massive and they are just swallowing this huge man made structure like it’s not even there. Amidst all this natural splendour and architectural wonder Mand discovered the highlight of her day. A small frog. Which we spent a good ten minutes looking at. Because it was sooooo cyyyoooooot. You can’t take some people anywhere. But Ta Promh was simply amazing. We climbed and wandered in and out of it’s crumbling corridors and rooms (part of the first Tomb raider film was shot here) and generally had a whale of a time trying to listen in on other people’s tour guides. Oh yeah, and I got bitten on the toe by a huge red ant. And it hurt.

Our final stop for the day was Sra Srang which is a beautiful big pool and was nice and quiet and really relaxing after the hecticness and busyness of the rest of the day. It was spoilt only by the ever present hawkers, one of whom was about 16 and shouted at me on the way in that if I didn’t buy one of her t-shirts then she’d cry. On the way out she repeated it and looked at me in utter contempt when she saw it wasn’t going to work. Like I give a f***. But Sra Srang itself was superb and we headed home with the feeling that we’d done a good day’s work.

Day two of our three day tour saw us hiring one of Sokpha’s friends as a guide. And it turned out to be well and truly worth it. Mand wasn’t feeling too hot due to too much alcohol the night before, so we decided that we’d just do Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Promh as they were the highlights of the previous day. In the event we only made it as far as the first two before we decided to call it a day. That booze is a killer.

A quick word about our guide. I can’t remember his name, so we’ll call him John. John was about 45 years old I guess and the first fifteen minutes of the day were spent with him recounting his experience of the Khmer Rouge. He was one of the ones separated from his family at the age of 14 or so when they came to power. He was the only one of his family to survive. He was sent to work in the rice fields from sun up to sunrise, seven days a week and was fed one bowl of rice per day. The rice fields were full of leeches and he’d watched hundreds of people around him die from starvation and disease. He himself worked like this for pretty much the whole of the time the Khmer Rouge held power. He still has scars all over his body from the leeches and the beatings. And he considers himself one of the lucky ones.

Since then he has been to University and became a teacher. He also believes 100% percent in back magic. He believes that his father in law was killed by a curse invoked by a witch doctor, and that he himself has come under attack from evil spirits. Whilst on his way to a friend’s house, he was chased by a big black beetle that kept returning and flying round his head. Every time he chased it away it would come back a few minutes later. Eventually, he picked up a big stick and chased it away and it didn’t return. This, he is sure, was an evil spirit of some kind sent to watch him by a witch doctor. He had to go and get himself blessed (or whatever the equivalent is) before he could get back on with his life. The fear on his face as he was recounting the story was plain to see (although this didn’t make it any less funny, although we did our best to hide our growing smiles) This is a highly educated man remember, not some backward yokel. Strange but true.

The tour of Angkor Wat took hours. And hours. And hours. As I said, John is a highly educated bloke and we were treated to an entire history of the place. And the bas reliefs which show various historic and mythic events. And he told us the entire story of the Ramayana. And how it relates to various other religious teachings. And the religious history of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. And their deities. And he explained some of the techniques used in building and restoring the place. And the history of many of the statues inside. And the history of the Cambodian people. And their kings. It was the most thorough tour I have ever been given of anything ever. We couldn’t shut him up. And with our hangovers coming and going in waves of sickness, we began to believe that HE was an evil spirit sent to teach us the error of our decadent ways. Seriously. I’ll just deliver the very briefest synopsis I can.

Built in the 1100s it took 37 years to complete and is a 1.3 km by 1.2 km rectangle. And a fair percentage of it is carved. There are over 3000 Apsara carved into the bas relief and by all accounts none of them are the same. Like how could you honestly tell? But John was pretty adamant about it and who were we to argue? The bas reliefs are something to behold and stretch round the entire wall. Some show various battles and others scenes from the Ramayana. My particular favourite was of the gods and demons playing tug of war with a huge Naga (or serpent) which resulted in the milk of creation being stirred and thus life on earth was born. Echoes of the primordial soup ring out. I’d love to do some kind of study on various religions and there versions of how life began and how they can be tied in with our current scientific knowledge. If only I could be arsed :o)

The stairs up to the inner temple are absolutely huge and again we found ourselves staring up at them in horror. But not to worry, the ever helpful Cambodians have put in a rail to help you pull yourself up to get there. Coming back down was like abseiling. I s*** you not. But it was 100% worth it. The views are amazing and the stonework up there is fantastic. After the inner temple we headed to some kind of alcove where when you lean against the wall and hit your chest it echoes massively and sounds like a huge heartbeat. You’re supposed to pray while you’re at it for whatever your heart desires. I asked for lunch and my prayers were answered when we finally came back out onto the causeway and headed to The Blue Pumpkin for some seriously tasty food.

Next up was Bayon, the one with the huge stone heads. It was here that we discovered the reason for our confusion of the day before. We couldn’t get the bas reliefs in order because we were looking at the wrong walls…hey, we all make mistakes. But John gave us a proper tour and suddenly it all began to make sense. He even gave us a brief (well, brief for him i.e. it only took him about 6 weeks to explain) history of the place. It turns out it was built by a king who was sick of the fighting between Buddhists and Hindus. So he created a temple which contained images of deities from both religions and had everybody come to pray together. How cool is that? It worked a treat and the whole time he reigned the trouble was negligible. Then he died. And the Hindus smashed up the Buddhist statues. And the Buddhists smashed up the Muslim statues. These crazy fundamentalists eh? The faces are of the king himself, looking down on his people with a kind of calm strength and more than a hint of kindness. I love them. This was actually my favourite temple of them all.

After Bayon, we decided (mainly due to Mand’s hangover) that we wouldn’t bother going back to Ta Promh but would instead retire to our boudoir for fast food and cable television. Lovely job.

Don’t worry folks, only three more temples to describe in excruciating detail and we’re done. Come on now, wake up. We’re nearly there.

So the next day saw us up and off to the mysterious temple of Beng Melea. Alright, so it’s not that mysterious, it’s just another broken down old temple. But this one is slightly different. It’s completely overrun by nature. Not like Ta Promh where they’ve kind of tried to control it a bit, but properly overrun. It’s quality. You actually have to climb in and out of the broken down towers over stone blocks and through tunnels created by towers falling over and s***. And everything is properly overgrown with trees. It’s fantastic. You actually start to feel like Indiana Jones (well, that was probably just me to be fair) coming across an ancient temple in the middle of the jungle. Woo hoo. The only thing to detract from that feeling was our guide. Let’s call him Bob. Now Bob’s English was on a par with my grasp of astrophysics. That is he knew it existed, and had memorised some useful bits, but was otherwise at a complete loss. And he definitely couldn’t answer any questions. But what the hey, he had a fair old go and to be honest it was quite nice that he didn’t try and talk our ears off the whole way round. I started to pretend he was our sherpa (you know, the one from the films who constantly looks nervous and is the harbringer of doom and is the first to run off/die whenever the curse/monsters kick in. In fact even of he runs off the heroes find him a few scenes later disembowelled and hanging from a tree or some such) and so in his own little way he really helped make the experience memorable. Although he didn’t die. Unfortunately. So, Bob’s mantra went something like this: ‘Slippery, careful, mind your head. Tower, library.’ And that was about it. If you did ask him a question he tended to just look at you and smile like an imbecile until you ushered him on to, presumably, the next point of interest. He was great. And so was the place. I can’t tell you how much fun we had climbing in the ruins and discussing the fact that you could never get away with this in England. Health and Safety simply wouldn’t permit it. Quality. We enjoyed it so much that I didn’t even begrudge the chucking the little disfigured beggar boy outside a couple of dollars. I’m all heart me…

Back in the tuk tuk and off we went to Banteay Srei which is the most beautifully carved temple of them all. It is absolutely exquisite. And even though it was built starting in 967 it is in really good condition. Some of the stonework is so delicate it’s ridiculous. We’re talking wafer thin in places. It was truly mind boggling, especially after the simple hugeness and derelictness (oops, think I made that word up) of Beng Melea. We spent a good couple of hours walking round it, despite the fact it’s one of the smallest temples we visited. It really is that good. And hence why there are so many photos of it on the site…nice touch Mand, saves me trying to explain it. One word – beautiful.

Back we went to get in the tuk tuk, to find that Sokpha had unhooked the chassis from the back and we were expected to go threes up (so to speak) all the way to Kbal Spean. Now Kbal spean isn’t a temple as such, but is a beautifully carved riverbed halfway up a mountain in the absolute middle of nowhere. So off we ‘sped’ (if 15 miles an hour top whack can be classed as speeding) down some of the most pitted, potholed and muddy dirt tracks I have so far come across. It was hilarious. Well for us anyway. We kept slipping forward (we didn’t have any choice) and kept pushing Sokpha off the saddle in front of us. Eventually, even he began to see the funny side of it (probably by totting up how much extra he was going to charge us for taking the piss) and with us cheering at every death defying manoeuvre he was forced to make to navigate us safely over bridges and up and down banks, it turned into a real laugh. This was really in the middle of nowhere. We’re talking wooden shacks, boys on buffalo, people bathing in the filthy muddy waters of streams, and people hanging from hammocks. In between was some of the most beautiful countryside, almost on a par with Laos I’d say. Although not quite. It was stunning.

Eventually after about an hour or so, and with arses deader than Steve Irwin we trundled into the entrance to the bit where the Kbal Spean lies. And with a cheery, slightly secretive grin, Sokpha pointed us in the direction we were to walk up the mountain. And off we set. It was f***in miles. And some of it was like rock climbing. Virtually vertical (ooooh alliteration, check me out). So much so in fact that we considered stopping halfway and just telling everyone we’d been. About a quarter of the way up we helped a woman and the baby she was carrying descend a bit that was pretty much sheer, how she managed the rest of it is beyond me. But after what felt like weeks, we got to the top and were rewarded with one of the strangest scenes we’ve so far encountered. It was exactly what it said on the tin. Some wonderful carvings were carved (for want of a better word) into the stone river bed. Hundreds of stelae, carvings of various deities and animals, stretching for a good forty or so metres. Every time we thought we’d seen everything, we’d notice something else emerge from the rushing water. It was astonishing. Some of the carvings have, rather predictably, been attacked for souvenirs or to be sold. But what’s left is wonderful. Unfortunately because of the fact it was for the most part under water, the million and one photos we took all look like s***e. But trust me when I tell you it was well worth the trek up the mountain to see. The accompanying waterfall on the other hand was piss poor. Rough. Smooth. Say no more.

So it was with real satisfaction that we half stumbled, half fell our way back down to the bottom and jumped back on the moped and headed off back to Banteay Srei to pick up the other half of our tuk tuk. The journey from there to our hotel was something else. Beautiful, stunning, amazing, tranquil, inspiring, I think I’ve used all these words at some point in this postcard, but the journey back was all of these things and more. Through little villages and farmsteads, past fields and jungle, past herds of cows and chickens, past families and kids of all ages (most of whom ran to the edge of the road and waved frantically until we were out of sight). It was pure bliss. And as the sun started to set and turn everything first golden, then slowly down to the most glorious reds, we finally, finally started to feel good about being in Cambodia. And it’s this picture that I try and conjure up when I think about our two weeks there. Nuff said.

Laters all

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