The Khmer #2

Siem Reap - January 30th - February 3rd, 2008

From Phnom Phen we took a boat 5 hours up the Ton Le Sap river to Siem Reap. For any females taking the bumpy dirt road away from the dock Nic suggests you wear a sports bra. All along the banks of the river families are living in shelters, some little more than a few peices of corregated metal, the filty water the only source for cooking, cleaning and drinking. It's a 16km ride into the town. Our Tuk tuk driver stopped about 5km in to discuss whether we would need him the next day or prefer to make our way from there but some vague promises got us back on the road.

We checked into a place called River Garden, luxury villas set in the Siem Reap jungle with frogs, rats, lizards and other beasts moving too fast to be identified keeping us company. The reason everyone goes to Siem Reap is the temples - the most famous being Ankor Wat where we watched the sunset over the sprawling stone structure and hindu sculpture. With few other tourists around we were able to wander the place undisturbed, except by the hordes of kids selling books, postcards and bracelets. The kids are very clued up, able to tell us Wellington was the capital of New Zealand, we had 4 1/2 million people and 45 millon sheep, and that Helen Clarke was the Prime Minister - 'a very good Prime Minister but she's not very pretty'.

There's so many temples it would take a month to see them all - and by the end of a couple of days you are feeling pretty 'templed out'. We hired a driver for the next day who took us to the best of them which included Ta Phrom (also famous for appearing in Tomb Raider). At Ta Phrom the huge trees have grown through the temple stones and it look slike they are melting into the stone work. Moving between the temples you get to see them at all stages of repair, paying tribute to many different hindu and buddist gods, and that each king tried to 'big up' his predecessors making both a statement on their superiority but also to ensure their pace among the divine. No matter how far into the jungle or how high up the temples you scale, there's plenty of bracelets and postcards available and some old guy has managed to get a drinks trolley with ice up / in there.

In Siem Reap town there's a place unumbiguously called Cambodian BBQ with almost any type of meat to cook up at you own table top BBQ. (NB: Veggies and Aussies may want to skip the next bit). The '6 meats' of Kangaroo, Crocodile, Squid, Fish Pork and Chicken was all class, and the base of the BBQ has a tray of boiling water for noodles and your veg. Anyone thinking we are bad people for eating skippy - you are not alone. Some of those divine powers took charge and Skippy was to wreak his revenge for the next 24 hours. At some stage (after a few wines, beers and cocktails) we mixed the raw meat / cooked meat chopsticks - they are all conveniently white and the stomachs took a hammering from skippys right hoof.

Siem Reap is a fantastic town, with huge local markets, cheap beers / food / accom, ultra friendly locals (and nice clean air!). Of course we weren't so far away we missed the football - catching the arsenal man city game (3 - 1 arsenal :) at Goodysaurus - where the owner spent the night trying to convince us he was a Jordy - putting on a crazy attempt at a Newcastle accent every time he spoke. We also managed to try Cambodias infamous Happy Pizza while we were there.

Leaving Siem Reap wasn't as easy as staying there - a power failure at the airport meant no ATMs (cue bizarre mix of currency to pay departure tax), no check in, no lights, no announcements. We also had our first flight delay as our Vietnam airlines plane had a technical fault that delayed us 5 hours and we were greated onto the plane by the captain apologising and saying the fault had 'probably been fixed'.