Siem Reap, Cambodia
December 31, 2015
Our incursion into Cambodia begins and ends with bus odysseys that last more than ten hours, on narrow seats where we try to shift and squirm to get something like a comfortable position. After planes and trains, buses cap off the trifecta of transport and have provided us with opportunites to see the Cambodian countryside as well as the opportunity to see if the bus gollums do really exist. If they do, it's unlikely that they'll find anything of worth since our packs contain only yellowing clothes that we've worn for countless humid days unwashed.
Bus trips are always a great time for two things: catching up on sleep, and reflection. On the latter, it gives one pause to think about the country one finds him- or herself in. It reminds me of my time earlier in the year wandering around vast American states on Greyhounds and Megabuses, although without the need to worry about American gollums lurking in the luggage compartment. They're too well fed to be able to hide down there.
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| A German love story |
My experience of Cambodia (or the little part of it) has been mixed. Even from neighbouring Thailand, it's been a culture shock to come across the border, where living conditions are more basic and a greater sense of poverty pervades perceptions. If I thought Thailand was third-world, then this was another gear shift altogether. We had to adjust from small things like now driving on the right-hand side of the road (where Thailand was left), to things like child beggars (in Thailand they were only child hawkers). Even in Thailand, I actually don't think I saw anyone begging on the streets, whereas it has certainly become more acute here. Strangely enough though, travelling through Cambodia costs at least twice what we paid for food, drinks and sightseeing in Thailand, even though its economy is much worse. Perhaps it's because in addition to the riel, the US dollar is used primarily everywhere, but the lowest denomination is $1, and they don't deal with cents.
Some decades after the rise and fall of the loathsome Khmer Rouge, the effect of their backward step from civilisation is still ongoing. In addition to the mass executions carried out in the Killing Fields, I was struck by a scene of a couple of old men missing odd body parts playing Asian instruments, with a placard asking to contribute money for victims of landmines. It also makes me thing how fortunate Thailand was, relatively speaking, to be spared from all the colonisation and civil wars suffered by its neighbours (Thailand is one of the very few countries in the region that resisted colonial intrusion).
My very first ecounter with Cambodia was at the border crossing, where I was absolutely annoyed at the ineptitude of its border service. In a little shack where everyone was crammed, I waited a long time while the officer in my queue took bribes from unwitting visitors who didn't apply for a visa. He would also go to the back of the office for no reason at all after each visitor was stamped, and when I got closer to the front of the line I saw that they were playing Farmville on their phones while stacks of bribe cash stood neatly at the table. If I had any doubts earlier, then I was now sure that I was in Scambodia, and I would be reminded of this at a number of other points during my stay.
I only had to wait a few hours for that to happen, when we arrived and settled for our first dinner at Siem Reap-Off. Halfway through our meal, two friendly well-dressed locals sat next to us, and began introducing themselves. Thanks to Felix's ingrained cynicism, we knew exactly what their script was going to be. We also knew that we had to go back to our hostel and look up how the scams worked here, and here are some golden picks from the internet:
Phewwwww, looks like I dodged a bullet. I've been living in Phnom Penh for around a month, and today came across the friendliest old Cambodian man called 'Andy' who stopped me and asked how I was & where I was from. He was over the moon when I said I was from London, and told me his daughter was moving to Birmingham after Christmas to work at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. He told me how nervous she was about meeting new people and moving there, and asked if I would mind meeting her to chat and give her advice about moving to England. He invited me to have lunch with his family and meet her, offering to take me for free on his motorbike and then drop me off wherever I wanted after lunch. He honestly seemed so genuine and lovely, and his English was great... but my instincts told me it wasn't the best idea (perhaps because the Cambodian man was called Andy) so I said I had to go to work. He seemed really upset and was begging me to arrange to meet her after work. I felt really bad walking away, and thought I'd been overly sceptical, then literally 10 mins later a young couple pulled up on a motorbike to tell me they 'loved my dress' they then went on to ask where I was from. 'No way!!! England?! My sister is moving to Manchester after Christmas to work at the hospital, but she is so nervous! Would you please come and meet her?' What are the chances…
Worst scam/mugging ever, I have travelled for 5 years and just this weekend in Phnom Penh and walking up the street I did drop my bank card and a seemingly nice bloke informed me, he got chatting and said was I enjoying the sights and asked if I would like to join him for a typical meal, I thought yes as I love to experience the culture, he said he would pick me up later from my hostel. He arrived and took me to his place on his scooter (looking back he probably took me a very long way round so I was not aware of his location) we had a lovely meal and chatted and he suggested we should play cards which I agreed (no money involved)later on a girl came in and then a man and the man joined in then put £1000 on the table and I said oh I don't gamble, he pulled out a gun and demanded my money (which I had very little on me), they put a sack over my head and sandwiched me on a motorbike between them and took me to a cash point where my bank would only let me have £500 so they took me to a shop and made me buy 2 I phones. I went back to the hostel I'm unsure of time and how I got but I think the way I felt they may have drugged the meal I ate, I managed to buy another phone but the first man was hanging around the hostel so he wanted my new number (they had taken my phone the night before), I gave him my number but he told me not to leave the hostel, I got a taxi to the airport and 7 hours later after a lot of trouble trying to get a flight (I was lucky to still have my passport) I was on my way to Bangkok and then England! Had the man not helped me over my bankcard I would never have trusted him but a little kindness clouds your judgment in this case.
Essentially, from our research, the scams are on a whole different tier to the "Thai centres" and tuk tuk schemes we'd experienced earlier. For example, there are the bike scams, where after renting a bike, someone from the rental place trails you until you lock your bike somewhere, before using their second key to take it away and then allege that you had lost it. Or the rape scam, where local women would seduce unwary travellers and spend the night with them, only to come back the next day in tears and surrounded by her "brothers", alleging that you had raped her. The ones here are predicated upon playing off the kindness and compassion of travellers, and they thrive and conceal themselves in the chaos of the place. There's also a despical network of commissions, where restaurants and hotels and tuk tuk drivers and probably the whole city is in cahoots with each other to milk you of every dollar you have. The only way to be immune from them is unfortunately to try and avoid the locals, and to force yourself to turn a blind eye to their misfortunes, which may or may not be genuine. I wouldn't be surprised at all if 90% of Cambodia's GDP came from the scamming industry.
The other 10% would come from tourism, and deservedly so. Even though the only things worth seeing are in Siem Reap (more than 50% of all tourism goes through here), the teemples here were worth the two ridiculous bus trips needed to get in and out of this place. On our first day, we woke up at 4am and hired a tuk tuk for the whole day for USD$17, doing the classic temple route in Angkor. Even at 4.30am, a good queue was already forming for tickets ($20), and by the time we settled down to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat at 5.30, the place was already packed with tripods with barely any space left for a good view.
It was inevitable that these places were going to be crowded with tour groups, many of whom paid no regard to local customs of having shoulders and knees covered around the temples. We actually were really inclined to hire a tour guide for the day (they're reputed to be good), but we decided in the end to do without, since Lenny has a PhD on Cambodian Temples from the Angkorian Period and is more than qualified to explain all the symbolism of the structures.
After enjoying the sunrise from a relatively secluded part of the complex away from tourists, we hit up the surrounding temples first and decided to come back to Angkor Wat later in the day, hoping that the crowds would die down then. The temples are all in some state of ruin, being the products of war, earthquakes, and mostly neglect. As the locals abandoned the Kingdom of Cambodia's capital city sometime in the 13th or 14th century (no definitive reason why), the jungle reclaimed much of the land, until Lara Croft became the first Westerner to discover it while she was raiding tombs. In the ruins of Ta Prohm especially, the trees had somehow managed to grow on top of the temple, with its roots breaking the blocks like the tentacles of some monster clenching nothing more than blackened Lego blocks.
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| Like something out of Lord of the Rings (the dilapidated Banteay Kdei) |
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| Lenny contemplating the complications of life |
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| Felix doesn't give a single (Sras Srang, a reservoir for the 200m wide moat around Angkor Wat) |
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| They did actually film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider here (Ta Prohm) |
What is astounding about the temples (aside from their age) is the sense of symmetry they possess. Most of the European castles from the same era have more of an ad hoc nature, but here in Cambodia all four square sides of the temple align almost perfectly with the cardinal points. However, there seems to be no order in which they aligned the sandstone blocks, as if just randomly piling them together. Each temple we visited was in some crumbling state of disrepair, but it was encouraging to see that there were international efforts (we noticed Japan and India) to arduously restore the temples to a semblance of their original state. And the restoration work really is impressive--I overheard a tour guide saying they used computer scanning technology to put fallen blocks back in the right order, and I can't even imagine what algorithm they use for that. What's not so encouraging though is the fact that the temples, despite being UNESCO-listed, are actually managed by the national petroleum company, and we found out that less than 30% ticket revenue goes towards restoration, with the rest being profit.
As always, I daydream about being the first person to discover these ruins, and what it must have been like to see the spires of the towers mixed among the jungle, like gothic towers done in an intricate oriental style. I think about what it must have been like to run my hand along the relief carvings on the wall reflecting Buddhist and Hindu epics, and to try to comprehend how these complexes of holey laterite and sandstone blocks stained dark by history and time came to be. Inevitably, there had been a lot of looting, and most of the statues that once possessed a head had had them lopped off by robbers.
Since we had gotten up early, Baby Felix needed his naptime, and he enjoyed a snooze every now and then whenever a flat surface presented itself. While he did, I had enlightening talks with Dr Lenny Vogt, head professor at the University of Talking Shit, where we decided to write the definitive history of how the temples came to be. Too much shit talk wearied us, and eventually we too joined Felix in a nap after we climbed the top of the Baphuon and found some sacrifical altar large enough to accommodate the three of us, only occasionally roused by clicks of tourist cameras taking photos of us.
Overall, I'm really glad to say I've seen Angkor Wat, since it truly was incredible. I think it's easy to be numbed to attractions when they're overcrowded with tourists, but most times they're overcrowded for good reason. We weren't able to catch the sun set on Angkor Wat, so we returned to our hostel and immediately collapsed. Lenny had a mean stomach ache from all the shit he was regurgitating from his mouth, so he had an early night while Felix and I enjoyed a date night checking out downtown at night.
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| Baphuon, atop which we napped |
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| Felix feeling much more sprightly after some zzz time |
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| Mega reclining Buddha |
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| The amazing Bayon, the central structure in Angkor Thom |
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| Angkor Wat |
We spent our second day in Siem Reap on a relaxed walk around town, before popping in to the Old Market. Lennart bought a pair of fake Beats speakers for $15, and we had a strange and I would say repulsive curry with questionable animal parts thrown in and some noodles to make it seem like we're actually paying for a legit bowl of food. I found Cambodian cuisine much less interesting and tasty than Thai food, and aside from the amok curry, it didn't have really anything unique to offer. Or I should say that it was actually interesting, but only because you were interested to find out what you were actually eating.
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| At the Old Market |
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| Felix looking after our fibre needs |
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| Just your midday siesta |
That same afternoon, we decided to hire a tuk tuk with our hostel to head out to Tonle Sap, the large inland lake about 45 min out from Siem Reap. It's famous for its floating markets, but also imfamous for its exploitation of the locals and keeping them suppressed so more tourists would come out and see them. We agreed amongst ourselves and with the hostel that we would only head out to the lake to watch the sunset (which would cost us $15 for the tuk tuk) and that we would not paddle out on a boat like other tourists (which would cost $20 per person).
The tuk tuk trip was quite enlightening itself. After our impatient driver honked his way like a madman through the highway, we eventually turned into a rocky road that kicked shards of dust into your eye. We saw the simple bungalows and shacks built amidst fields and paddies, and occasionally we would drive through cows being herded on the road. It was very threadbare, but again the people adapted swimmingly to the conditions. One of the games I saw the children playing was a variation of lawn bowls, except they would each bet and drop a wad of cash on the same spot, and then would take turns trying to hit the cash with their thongs from a distance; the first to move the pile got the spoils. From this idyll setting, I thought that these places would be where the real Cambodians lived, the ones that made a living from an honest days work, and the ones that had no intention of scamming you.
We were stopped at a roadside checkpoint, and we were told that the lake was still 4km away. We were asked to pay $20 each for the boat ride, even though we insisted that we only wanted to head to the shoreline and had no intention of hiring a boat. "It doesn't matter," they said. "Either way, you'll have to pay, or you'll have to turn back."
At this point our driver was also getting quite annoyed, since I'm sure he was getting some sort of kickback from the scheme. He kept urging us to pay, and when we told them that we were just going to walk the 4km to the shoreline, our driver started turning around his tuk tuk and leaving us stranded on some rural roadside checkpoint. We had to stop him and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing, before we thought it best to head back to the city lest we spent our last night stranded in Shitsville, Scambodia. Back at the hostel, we firmly planted our foot down that we weren't going to pay the driver the $15 originally promised, and we refused to pay even his fuel. The hostel receptionist eventually gave in, and although we were exasperated, we readied ourselves to head out for the night by pumping some music with Lenny's new speakers.
Half an hour later, the same speakers stopped working. No worries, we'd go out for dinner, stop by the Old Market to get a refund, and then continue on for some street cocktails and maybe a bit of partying. But in Cambodia, these plans are easier said than done. Dinner was enjoyable and uneventful, but when we got to the market, the shopkeeper refused to give Lenny a refund of $15, and told him to pick out another shitty speaker instead. Under any normal circumstances, this would seem fair enough, but Cambodia is abnormal, and the chance of the other speakers being defective was high. We negotiated for about an hour, while all the other stalls started were closing down for the night, with both parties taking firm positions. We tried to explain that we were catching our bus out of Siem Reap at 6.30am the next day, and so would have no chance of coming back if the new speaker they were offering was faulty too, but the shopkeeper would have none of it, and kept using some Cambodian logic that specified why he wouldn't just simply refund the broken product. Eventually, eager to just enjoy our final night, we took his offer and walked away with a new boxed speaker in Lenny's hands. The shopkeeper was so charitable that he even threw in a tourist magnet for all our troubles. How very kind!
Our sorrows were swallowed with the help of some $1.50 street cocktails, and the three of us were in fine form talking shit, spreading lies, and making many international friends. At Pub Street (the street's actual name), we went into clubs and gay guys started hitting on me and trying to grope my crotch. I used the opportunity the get them to provide me and the other two with free drinks and, thinking that Lenny and Felix were my gay buddies, started feeding them cake with their hands and shoving their fingers into Lenny and Felix's mouths. We would then bail out and escape from their roaming hands and their persistence to add us on Facebook. These are the sacrifices we make to save money on alcohol.
The highlight of the night however started some hours later, when I spotted a half-finished bottle of Johnnie Walker Gold Label sitting lonely at a table. Always one to give lonely people my company, I took the bottle and Lenny and I enjoyed it on the rooftop while surveying the chaos of the street below. We should have enjoyed the moment much more, not knowing what was to come in the next hours, but you can only swig whisky in large gulps so many times.
On our way down, we heard shouts from the waiters and suddenly they were pointing at us and running at us. Our natural reaction was to sprint down the stairs, and start legging it out of the club and onto the street. With pure adrenaline pumping through us, we turned into an abandoned street and I passed the bottle to Lenny like a baton, as he kept telling me to take off my thongs. My knee proved to be my undoing, as my singlet was suddenly jerked back and a fist slammed into the back of my head. The waiter who had me pushed me in front of him, and later we were joined by Lenny and his captors, with police and military surrounding us, and demanding where the bottle was. Christ's sake, it wasn't even Blue Label, and now the military was involved.
We were pushed and led along a dark alleyway, and I had a genuine fear that they were going to beat us up and take our belongings, all because they didn't know what good whisky actually was. Luckily, we'd left all our wallets back at the hostel, and I only had my phone on me. I was tempted to throw it into some bushes and recover it later after a punch up with the Royal Cambodian Army, but it was hard to concentrate because they were hitting Lenny and me on the head repeatedly, and launching kicks into our backs as we walked. I tried to laugh at the absurdity of our situation, before Lenny told me not to make light of it. Afterwards, he asked the officer whether we could keep the bottle after paying a bribe, and we both lost it.
We stopped eventually in a shady corder, and they demanded a ridiculous sum of money for taking the bottle. We tried to reason with them, and I told Lenny in Germany that no matter what, we would stay where we are, while making "make it rain" motions to the army officer. Each time we stalled the discussion though, they would start launching themselves at us with handcuffs, and we had to push them away before they could snap them on our wrists. We tried to give them all the money we had in our pockets, which amounted to something like $30, but it didn't satisfy them. We explained that it was all the money we had, and they told us to go back to our hostel and withdraw more cash. "Pay the money, or it's three years in prison and you will be blacklisted from Cambodia." Definitely worried about getting blacklisted from Cambodia, the thought sends shivers down my spine.
Felix arrived at the scene and after a small conference, Lenny sacrificed himself as hostage while Felix and I took a tuk tuk to get more cash out from the hostel. We got the money and rescued Lenny and we decided that was enough adventure for one night, and it would be best to head back so we would wake up in time for our 6.30 bus. As for the amount we paid, we did some maths and let's just say it is the same amount the three of us would be paying for a couple of weeks worth of meals here. We collapsed immediately back at the hostel, and we couldn't wait until we got the hell out of this deceitful and scheming hellhole. And yet after all these events, Cambodia would still have the last laugh, as Lenny left his new speakers back at the club, and all he gets for his $15 is a shitty magnet with the carved faces of Angkor Wat laughing at our stupid trio of dumb dicks.
