Listening to the very sound
advice of James, instead of doing the boring 170km from Battambang to
Siem Reap, we opted for a lovely boat trip on the Tonle Sap lake.
Half of it was through a maze of fishing nets and the other half
through a maze of bushes, trees and branches.
A spotter sat on the
front side and signaled the captain when to turn left and when right.
We passed by a million floating villages, interesting how life is
practically the same, only difference that people use canoes instead
of their legs.
I wondered if there is any sort of sewage system or
whether everything ends up in the water. At least there was a
drinking water station in one of the villages that probably does the
rounds all day.
7 sunny hours later we got
to the mad house called Siem Reap, a small town that receives about
4000 visitors per day, whose center is a proper tourist trap, with
hundreds of bars and restaurants stacked one next to the other, where
there is something for everyone, from fancy french restaurants to
foot fish massage(I ended up putting my face in there but that's
another story), in the end of the day you can have great fun if you
feel like it. My favourite bit was a “Lost in translation” night,
ending up in a karaoke room, and boy, I have to say, khmers are pros
in this, both me and Beate, a German girl did our best but sucked
big time, whereas for our khmer friends it seemed like second nature.
As for a guesthouse, Yellow is the best one I've stayed in so far,
its staff and owner are friendly, funny, kind and can arrange
whatever you need, go there and you won't regret it.
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| Did you say "union"? |
Disturbing findings of the
day: Had a conversation with a tuk tuk driver, apparently there are
close to a thousand of them in Siem Reap their main income coming
from taking the tourists around the temples, usually 10 usd for a
full day, not a bad deal for either side. The government is in talks
with a chinese company that will bring and operate an equally large
amount of battery operated tuk tuks and have exclusive rights for the
trip to the temples, basically tough luck for all the tuk tuk drivers
around. I naively asked him if they have a union. Here's the story he
gave me. The hotel employee's union is supposedly the strongest
around. A couple of years back, a major hotel in Siem Reap decides
not to pay overtimes to their employees. They go on strike, having a
protest in front of the hotel everyday. The hotel owners bribe
whoever it is they need to bribe, the police comes-from a different
province of course, you don't want them to hit their own relatives,
everybody's kicked out, the hotel hires new employees, end of story. This is Cambodia.
The temples of Angkor are
the obvious highlight of the area. I'll refrain from writing my
thoughts about them, only to avoid embarrassment, it would be some
silly sentences full of superlatives. I do have to say I was a bit
daunted by the heaps of tourists everywhere-even for a place this
vast it was too many of them, but in every single temple I could find
my spot, sit down and marvel at the beauty of both humankind and
nature. I might sound a bit heretic, but I found Angkor Wat
underwhelming. Its scale is almost beyond comprehension, and the bas
reliefs in the outer perimeter are exquisite but Bayon, with its
chaotic, multi-leveled architecture and mystifying heads overlooking
everything was, well, you see, I'm going into superlative mode
again...
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| Oh God, here I come |
The scale of everything made
it difficult to understand why the stairs were always so narrow and
long. My idea was that they ran out of budget.
I could see the king
gathering his accountants and going through everything, realising
that there was not a penny left in the depository, but the only thing
missing was the stairs, and then making the hard decision of using
half as many needed.”But, your majesty”, “No but, just do it,
cut them in half!”
The official -but less
interesting-explanation is that in order to reach god you have to
struggle. Not anymore though. In all the high temples there is proper
wooden staircase made for the visitors to use. Which made it even
more tempting to use the old-and blocked to the public-ones. After a
while even that became boring, so for the rest of the day Beate and I
climbed all the high temples we could find, usually via the most
unorthodox route.
The area is infested with
bad manered monkeys, most of them obese because tourists feed them
all the time. This one in particular, after getting only one of my
bananas instead of the whole chunk, grabbed my ice coffee, removed
the straw, and drank it all in a matter of seconds. Cheeky bastard.
No pictures will do justice
to the place but here's a few to give you an idea. On a technical
note, some of them are HDR, mostly due to the high contrast
conditions. I tried to be gentle with the tone mapping in most of the
cases.
Here's a couple of easy ones to get you
started(sorry, I couldn't resist):
Another technical note: Shooting
single-camera 3D without a slider is not the easiest thing,
especially if there's tons of tourists about to enter the frame so
sometimes the I/A is too big. I corrected most of the non
time-related or barrel distortion disparities but give me a break,
I'm on the road, got a tiny netbook and not much time to spare!
At some point, Joel, Beate and I
decided to sneak in the temples at night. As we cycled the 15km to
get there, what with the moonlit trees casting their shadows to the
street, the stillness of the place, the childlike joy of doing
something forbidden, I thought I wouldn't mind even if we got caught
before entering, I was having a great time already. Far from it
though, the few guards around were fast asleep, we did have to
tip-toe here and there and I almost tripped over a mosquito net
inside Angkor Wat(what a great place to sleep in!) but other than
that it was a walk in the park, and what a walk. Being there without
the thousands of people, sitting on top of Takeo, strolling around
Bayon and Angkor Wat, listening only to the animals of the
surrounding jungle, watching these massive structures change shape as
the moon went in and out of the clouds and letting it all sink in
should be enough, but we topped it by climbing one of the towers of
Bayon, a nice 20m vertical ascent with a bit of a hairy descent.
Beautiful. For a brief second I wished I had a better camera and a
tripod, but I knew it wouldn't make a difference, it's all in my head
and it's a night I will never forget. Enough with the sentimental
crap, here's a few photos.
I planned to cycle down the Mekong
towards Phom Penh, so together with Peter we headed for Stung Treng,
the last town before Laos, or the first if you wanted to follow the
river. A very easy dirtroad-called route 66 btw- through the few
villages of the area made us believe that the journey to Preah Kham,
the temple where we planned to spend the night in, would be short and
painless so we took it easy, with many stops and a nice afternoon
siesta. Little did we know of course, as the road after 80km
deteriorated, switching from mudland to trail to whatever. It wasn't
that bad and I did enjoy it, it's just that we hadn't planned for it
and never made it to the temple. We cycled a bit at night but it was
quite difficult, with that many potholes and what have you, it would
take us another 2 hours to get there, so we opted for the only house
around.
After being turned away-I believe they
were scared, people in all the rural areas I've been so far are
extremely friendly and kind-we found another one further down the
road and spent the night there. I exchanged some packs of noodles for
rice with fish-it wasn't necessary but it was the least I could do.
The family sat around us as we ate, and after I had finished they
brought a plate with bol khmea, a green ball that seems to contain
all the vegetation of the area together with who knows what. They sat
silently, pointing it to me. Without thinking about it, I cut a piece
and ate it. The instant I chewed it I realised it was one of the
spiciest things I've had in my life. I started coughing and the whole
lot laughed their asses off. It was a joke well played that I
accepted graciously, so much so that I had a second bite, this time
doing all sorts of shenanigans to make the laugh some more. After
that they showed us that you just cut a small piece and mix it with
your rice to make it a bit more interesting. I regretted I didn't carry any rice wine to offer them.
We were offered the only room of the house while most of the family
slept in the hammocks underneath, not having it any other way. They
lit a fire to keep them warm letting all the smoke get in the room
upstairs through the wooden floor so sleeping that night was foggy to
say the least.
Next day turned out even slower than
the previous for a variety of reasons. The trail split a number of
times after Svay Damnak and took us a long time to find the correct
one, but most of all we faced nature's biggest practical joke on
cyclists: sand. Let me say this once and for all. If there is no sea
around or you are not in the desert, I can't find any rational
explanation why it's there, other than to piss me off. 15Km of it
meant 3 hours of mostly pushing and cursing. In-between the moments
of sandy agony, there were 2 nice little temples-nothing like the
main ones back in Siem Reap of course, but interesting as they were
engulfed by the forest, lots of variation in the vegetation and a few
lively villages. For the last 10km we cheated a bit and hitched a
ride in the back of a truck, we had enough sand for the day. Found
the only guesthouse in Phnom Deik and slept like babies.
From then on the ride was as easy as it
gets, with the exception of a few potholes here and there and the
excruciating heat during midday. A new highway is in the works all
along the way by the same Chinese company that's building the dams in
the Cardamons, my guess is that this time next year the scenery will
be quite different around here. It's already scary seeing how wide it
will be.
There's a few ice factories scattered
around Cambodia. Every day hundreds of trucks and motos race around
the country to deliver the blocks before they melt completely
considering the heat. Not a small feat if you take into account the
road conditions as well. Then the shop owners will start sawing them,
using some for the refreshments(ice coffee anyone?), some for their
cooler boxes and the rest will be sold to customers.
It's 125km to Preah Kham, the temple
where you can possibly stay overnight. There is a small pavilion
right in front with enough space for 2 hammocks. No food or water
around. Otherwise it's an extra 5km of sand to Ta Seng, the nearest village.
It is doable in a day as long as you remember that after km 80 the
quality of the road goes downhill.We stayed at 107, there's just two
houses over there.
