The temples of Angkor

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.

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...

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.

Time for some 3D extravaganza. All of them are in cross-eyed format, meaning you don't need glasses to view them. If you don't know how, here's a good tutorial: http://www.neilcreek.com/2008/02/28/how-to-see-3d-photos/

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.

The Cardamons Part II: Thma Bang to Battambang - 346km

“Boom Boom, Ok?”

Sometimes things don't go exactly as planned, and finding the road towards Viel Vaeng(the first stop over of the trip up north) was such a case.

6 out of 6 people asked, told us that it either doesn't exist anymore or that it's in such a bad state that it's plainly non-doable. Reason prevailed and we decided to take the long way via Koh Kong, an additional 100km of mostly dirt road, but otherwise a good idea since I needed some provisions, bought a hammock and did some repairs on my bicycle. On the road there we did one last attempt at getting info in a ranger station, but the rangers seemed to know little more than we did. 

Despite the good quality of the road, James managed to get a flat and I 2(!).

One flat too many for me...

Beat that combination!

A local helps James, then rides away wearing my sunglasses...

After spending 2 nights in Koh Kong and saying goodbye to James (you can follow his excellent blog here: www.bisforbike.wordpress.com) we managed to get up early enough-both Peter and I are heavy sleepers- and got going. A surprisingly new dirt road awaited us for most of the day, with few bad stretches here and there. The flat terrain of Koh Kong soon gave way to hills with sparse trees and by noon we entered the mountainous jungle of the Cardamons.

There is a great sense of irony in the signs along the entrances of the Cambodian national parks like the one above. What they should have included in the bottom is that the state WILL sell the land to anyone interested, all you need is connections and enough money to bribe your way through. The Cardamons might not be exactly that but they do come close as I found out later.

I knew beforehand that the construction of a hydroelectric plant was underway but hadn't realised the enormity of the project. We did sense some of it during the first day's riding as every now and then a truck would pass by, interrupting the silence and disappearing in a cloud of dust. There is lots of hills and low mountain passes, making it a slow but beautiful ride.

By dusk we arrived at Viel Bai, a settlement of no more than 10 families. We were offered a place to hang our hammocks and swiftly escorted to the hang-out of the village for some rice wine. It's a very nasty drink, high percentage of alcohol,strong taste and I sometimes enjoy trying to figure out what's in the jar it's kept. This one had everything in it. Bat skulls, snakes, bones, roots, mushrooms, a bird's leg(big one!), herbs, hell, it was as if the whole village would pass by and throw something in. The more we drank and reached the bottom of the jar, the muddier it got, but after a while it didn't matter, nor did the fact that apart from a kid no one spoke english, between my 30 khmer words and their constant laughter we got along just fine.

Waking up in a rainy day

Next day's ride was a combination of beauty and horror, a mix of rivers, mountains, jungle and construction sites. Some weeks later I read there is a total of 5 dams, I counted 3 and passed by another two big sites, one of them for cement processing. I'll let the photos do the talking for a while.

Fact 1: The Cardamon mountain range holds one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. It's home to countless species, out of which 70 are endangered, and include the asian elephant, siamese crocodile, indochinese tiger and malayan sun bear to name a few. It's also home to 40.000 people, living in the villages scattered in the area.

Fact 2: Cambodia has a serious electricity issue. The dams will provide a centralised grid that will solve this.

Apparently, the research on the environmental impact was done by the same chinese company that's in charge of the project. There was no independent research or monitoring allowed. I have to admit that this is somewhat anecdotal, but accurate information on the subject is scarce, plus I have no reason not to believe it, after all this is Cambodia, as I've been told by locals way too many times by now. A technicality: the dams are built AROUND and not IN the sanctuary. New roads are also built, and the old ones upgraded. Rivers will dry up and parts of the lowlands will flood. The animals will be pushed further in, or die. Not long before I was there, Australian Zoo and Flaura and Fauna International went in and rescued a number of trapped siamese crocodiles in one of the dams. Will there be many similar cases in the future, and more importantly, will they always have a successful outcome? Some villages will flood and the people will have to relocate. Villagers that lived by and from the river will have to find alternative ways to make a living. Logging and poaching won't sound too bad, but how can you blame them?

Then again, I've passed by or stayed in too many villages that didn't have electricity. A 12v battery provides some basic lighting for some hours and that's it. The more privileged-or usually the local store- might afford a generator. Sometimes the powerlines are there, but no one can afford it. The prices I've heard of are ridiculous for Cambodian standards. Will it be cheaper once the plants are ready? The chinese company will hold the rights for 99(!) years, it remains to be seen if there's going to be any price regulation by the state.

I didn't hear any birds or wildlife that day. The only noise was the trucks, the heavy machinery on the sites and the occasional blast somewhere far away echoing in the mountains. The wages of fear kept coming to my mind.

A battery recharge store

We arrived early in Ou Saoum-a village where the buffaloes outnumber the humans-giving us time to rest, walk around the area, drink lots of ice coffee(me!) and enjoy the commodities of a guesthouse-basically shower!

Next day's ride was far better than the previous. Soon the construction sites and their constant noise ended. It was a no-brainer that we'd keep heading north towards Battambang instead of taking the main road to Pursat. After Pramaoui the road kept deteriorating on a steady pace, making it a slow and muddy ride, beautiful nonetheless. I realised that in a masochistic kind of way, the more demanding the ride, the more I enjoy it, and no matter how identical the scenery might be for days in a row, nothing beats riding through the jungle. 

There's not that many villages in this side of the mountains so it was already dark when we reached a small settlement called Paou Pien. We went to the store and asked for food and shelter. The lady started yelling at me like there was no tomorrow, something I hadn't experienced since I got to Cambodia, people here never lose their temper so I was caught completely off guard. I tried really hard to understand what she was saying, or better said the words she was spitting at me as she was pointing to where we had come from. Was she telling us to go back? I did get that she would cook for us so I calmed down a bit. She sent her son down the road and told us to follow him. He led us to a house, showed us our room and sent us to a nearby puddle to wash. 

Going back to the store, Srei Ia was calmer, she even laughed when I showed her we were clean, I guess that's all she wanted from the very beginning, she wouldn't allow us to eat in the condition we were before!

Getting directions in Pramaoui...

...and then some lunch.

A few ks before Paou Pien

Srei Ia and her children

A night view from our balcony

Her son, waiting for us to wake up

The next day was long but fascinating in its variety. After riding for a few hours we left the mountains behind us and not much later the jungle gave way to a more colourful and not as dense forest. The road went from bad to worse to extremely shit, sometimes I pushed while being knee-deep in the mud. Must be fun cycling in the rainy season over here. The villages grew bigger and more frequent, soon corn-fields replaced the forest, the road improved dramatically, and after the world's most terrifyingly boring straight-as-a-ruler 10km it was bye-bye dirt, hello tarmac. I have to admit, as much as I'd enjoyed it, after 500 something km of mostly bad dirt roads, it was a joy. 30 easy and relatively busy km led us to Battambang. With the exception of Koh Kong, I had spent the last 10 days in quite remote locations. Entering a city as big as Battambang was a bit of a cultural shock-so much that I didnt take any photos,hehe, lame excuses...

Offering some entertainment to the locals

The never-ending stretch

I still don't know how to embed a google map, so here's a high quality(!) photo of my marked map. Working south to north, the first X is Chi Phat. Details on the ride from there to Thma Bang(the second X) can be found in a previous post.

Thma Bang to Koh Kong:70km, half dirt, half tarmak, can be done easily in 4 hours. Most of the second part, though in the main highway, is quite scenic.

Koh Kong to Viel Bai:60km. The road starts to get mountainous after a while, don't expect to do much more. From now on it's all dirt road.

Viel Bai to Ou Saoum:50km

Ou Saoum to Paou Pien:68km. Pramaoui sits conveniently midway through. It's a biggish town, lots of food and supplies for you. Remember to take the road right across the main square. It leads to a narrow trail that after 10km will get you to a proper dirt road. Turning left goes north, right to Pursat.

Paou Pien to Battambang:96km. There is a very tricky junction in the forest exactly 44km from Pramaoui, where you need to turn right instead of straight. There is no traffic at all over there and we had to wait for a while to get directions. Apart from a big puddle on the right, there is nothing else around.

Remember to bring big bottles of water with you(3 will do), you will not find any after Koh Kong. You'll cause a small ecological disaster, but there's no other way but to buy small ones and refill. Get biscuitsand bubblegums for the kids, paracetamol or similar drugs for the people that let you stay at their houses, most of the times they are very poor. Be prepared to give them some money as well. Nothing is expected-usually- but will be appreciated.

I think that the road connecting Thma Bang to Ou Saoum will be ready soon, in which case the Koh Kong detour won't be necessary, saving you about 100km, but in the other hand it's not a bad ride, plus you'll get to eat ice cream in the riverside!

At some point during the second day we come across a hut, identical to many others in the country where one can buy a cold drink and enjoy the shade. Two good looking girls work there. We get our drinks and sit for a while. As I'm about to pay, the girl asks me, “boom boom, ok?”. I go “Huh?”. Still looking at me, she goes behind Peter, starts rubbing his nipples and repeats “boom boom, ok?”. We are up in the mountains, not a soul in a 10km radius, stop to get some water and the place is actually a brothel... We laugh, pay, and leave. A couple of minutes later it hits me: Maybe a month before, while I was in Otres beach, it was decided we would buy firecrackers, build a sandcastle, and explode it(boys will be boys, I know). I had spent an afternoon looking around in Sihanookville, but not knowing how to say firecracker in khmer, I'd say “boom tom(big)? Boom boom tom tom?”, asking kids, women in bookstores, everybody. Had I been going around town asking for a big fuck? How I got away with it, I'll never know...

Equal Rights.

After all this mud and dirt, we both needed a shower...