Siem Reap and Angkor

On our first day in Cambodia we visited the floating village Kompong Phluk near Tonle Sap Lake. We took a Tuktuk all the way to the docks, during dry season this ride takes an estimated 45-60 minutes. The Tuktuk driver will take you past the ticket vendor (25 USD a person) before bringing you to the boats. Your boat guide, (usually you get a private boat, with one driver) will take you down the Tonle river past Kompong Phluk; an impressive village built about 5 metres high on stilts.

This is due to the fact that during rain season the Tonle Sap swells and the water rises up to 5 metres higher. This is when all the houses look like they are floating on the water. During the dry season you can appreciate the structures under the houses, with steep steps and ladders leading down to the ground. The children are playing between the stilts in the shade provided by the high houses. The ride goes past a school and a church, both on stilts. Even during the dry season, the villagers main transportation is still the boat, since the Tonle Sap River snakes its way through the settlement, then passes the mangrove forest and spills into the vast lake.

Our boat docks on a restaurant boat, from which we can purchase a tour of the mangrove forest for an additional 5 dollars a person. We step into a shallow kayak carefully and a old little Cambodian woman takes us into the flooded forest. 5 minutes in and you believe you’re alone in the world surrounded by tree trunks emerging from the murky water. Insects buzz and you wonder what else is lurking in the water merely 10 cm away from the boats edge. The sun rippling through the canopy dances on the water and becomes fiercer as we exit the forest and the little boat swims on the open lake. Right after your eyes adjust to the blinding sun they fix on a horizon that consist only of water as if you were out on sea. The waves made by larger vessels rock the small boat precariously on its short way to one of the three stationary restaurant boats on the lake. There our driver will meet us later to take us out onto the lake and then back. The restaurant boat serves lunch, but we are still quite full from a late breakfast and opt for a refreshing coconut instead. We stroll along the deck looking at the unbelievably gigantic lake. I can hardly imagine how large it is during rain season when it swells to six times its size!

At the back of the boat, a wooden cage half submerged in water holds crocodiles lying lazily in the sun. (They serve crocodile meat in the restaurant) When we ask the staff where the crocodiles come from they point to the mangrove forest we emerged from 20 minutes previously.

We board our boat and ride out onto the lake before circling back and arriving at our tuktuk about 2 hours later.

Our tuktuk driver is waiting for us and we decide to go and play minigolf at Angkor Wat Putt, a little place that has a course in the theme of the Angkor temples. He tells us he knows where to take us, (as drivers will always do, while searching a long time before you realise they have no idea where they are going.) we ended up at the golf club of Siem Reap and the member of staff that welcomed us redirects our driver to the correct place. By the time we get there we are very hungry and the lovely owner of Angkor Wat Putt hops on his motorcycle and gets us some sticky rice bananas from a nearby local market - delicious!

We play a round of minigolf for 5 dollars a person (Darius wins by one point) and I even get a free drink for my hole in one. Then we head back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner.

The next day we rented some E-bikes and drove to the Angkor complex. First we visited impressive Angkor Wat, the old Royal Palace and one of the best restored buildings in the complex (coincidentally it is being restored by Germany). The bridge leading over the river in front of it is being renovated, so they had set up a floating bridge on the water that was rather strange to walk on. Darius took a hyper lapse of the walkway up to the Angkor Wat and we climbed the stairs to the very top. Seeing and being there was very impressive and the fact that all these temples are the remnants of an ancient civilisation left me awestruck.

The next temples we visited were the ones in Angkor Thom, the old capital of Angkor. The dense jungle that has taken back the old city make it hard to envision what the city might have been like at its prime.

The Bayon Temple with its stone faces and detailed carved walls and stone decorations is my favourite temple of all the ones we visited. The majority of the temples originally were built as hindu temples and then reused and altered by the Khmer to buddhist temples later on. There are some structures that are 1000 years old.

Ta Prohm is the ancient university site of the Khmer empire. Nature has forced is way so deeply into its structures, that trees have grown all over the complex, forcing the stones apart and covering the walls with snaking roots.

Other temples we visited include Baphoun, Ta Nei, Preah Kahn, Ta Keo, Neak Pean, The Elephant Terrace and others I don’t remember the name of. (To see these go head over to the Gallery)

One more thing I’d like to mention that we did in Siem Reap was visit the War Museum. The tour guides are Cambodian war veterans, that talk you through the displayed artillery used during the Cambodian civil war. They also tell you about their horrific experiences in the war. Our guide was Sinarth, dubbed the ‘cat’ with more than nine lives. He has shrapnel left in his body, that he makes you touch to compare it with the grenade shells they display there. He has many scars, a missing leg and a piece of his own toe bone in his blind eye from when a shell demolished his leg. He has died a total of 13 times and once his heart stopped for a total of 8h, yet he recovered. His life’s journey is an amazing one; from child soldier to good humoured tour guide at the War Museum in Siem Reap, he shares it with anyone who might listen and hopes to spread the message that war is terrible and should never happen again around the world. Even though the war against the Khmer Rogue is over, Cambodia still suffers many casualties due to buried landmines every day. When the war ended in 1999 there were 2.5 landmines for every living person in Cambodia. Due to radiation from radioactive artillery used during the war many Cambodians die of lung cancer today.

Sinarth can point at destroyed tanks in the museum and say “My cousin died in there in 19__” “My friend died when this tank went over a landmine, look theres a remnant of his shoe and his femur” He’s experienced horrors beyond imagination and lost many people dear to him because of this war, yet he remains an energetic and positive person, and we are fascinated and grateful to have met him. There is a book about him that is sold at the museum shop. We bought a copy and Sinarth signed it for us on a broken Soviet tank. I can’t wait to read it.

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Em

08/02/2018

Koh Samui

#Travel #Cambodia #SiemReap #Angkor #Angkorwat #Southeastasia #Asia #Budgettravel #KompongPhluk #TonleSap #WarMuseum #Sinarth