Gosh, I haven't blogged for ages. I am pleasantly surprised by Cambodia overall so far. Everyone here is superbly friendly, food has been great, transport has been easy, and broken English seems to be enough for us to get by. I am happy.
Siem Reap
Siem Reap was absolutely amazing. I met this Australian backpacker guy in our hostel in Siem Reap who was there 3 years ago and said he hardly recognised the town anymore this time around. That pretty much summed up how things are moving in Siem Reap.
Most people go to Siem Reap to visit the ancient temples. Guess what? So did we. It's surreal to walk through the thousand year old temples and visualise thousands of monks praying, chanting and meditating in unison.
Wandering around in some of the larger temples like Angkor Wat and Bayon made us very hot and tired. I was however also awed by these temples. Angkor Thom was a royal temple city that used to accommodate a million people. And Angkor Wat is pretty much the size of the whole Brisbane CBD. Despite their magnitude in size, they were very well preserved and it 's easy to see how symmetrical that they once were. 4 faces of all buildings were built precisely to the 4 directions.
The interior of Preah Khan was like a maze. Thanks to the tour guide that I got conned into to hiring, I went to see a section of the temple that would not have been visited by many tourist in the past which was once the queens' chambers.
The children selling stuff at the temples were nothing but nuisance. It's a pity that Naomi was always besides me. I discovered that these kids think that I am Cambodian and whenever I walk by myself, they tend to leave me alone as they think that I am not interested in their stuff. I did get sucked into buying something from these kids when I was with Naomi at times. After all, 50 cents probably is a lot to these kids.
Siem Reap is a great place to party. There is even a street called the 'pub street'. With happy-hour 50 cent beers flowing from 10am to midnight, I was very surprised that most backpackers were still sober by dinner time. But then again, we didn't meet too many Aussies in town to lighten the spirit.
Battambang
Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia. We were there to look at these French colonial shop-house buildings. There were pretty interesting. I felt like as if we were back in time. The photos turned out pretty good. The town itself is otherwise quite boring.
I went on a moto-excursion to an old temple about 25 minutes outside town. The temple is nothing too special. But on the way back we stopped at the fish-paste market and the bamboo sticky-rice village.
Fish paste seriously stinks in production. They cut the fish open, and leave it in water for a few days in the open, then move them to a big barrel and add salt and water to it and store it for 1 month before they bottle it. It's seriously rotten and disgusting. I nearly spewed when I was walking through the market.
Sticky rice in bamboo is soooo nice. It smelt awesome and tasted great. They cook it with coconut cream and banana scented as they wrapped the bottom of the bamboo with banana leaves before cooking it. After I tried a little bit from my driver, I simply couldn't put them down. I had a whole one and decided to buy another one for Naomi who was resting in our hostel.
We also stopped by this Khmer Rouge killing field memorial on the way back. My guide who was probably younger than me was explaining how his parents were forced to move from the city to the country and plough the rice field as it was cheaper to use forced labour than cows. His parents told him that if you couldn't work, you would be dragged aside and executed later as you were meaningless to the government.
The memorial also showed some human skulls and bones that were later found in the mass grave near the memorial. It was also very powerful that there were paintings on the walls that depicted a part of the events happened during the Khmer Rouge reign that many would probably choose to forget.
We also spent one day doing a tuk-tuk tour around Battambang. As most of the roads were dirt-roads with some holes almost half the size of our tuk-tuk, it was bumpy to say the least. Naomi nearly fell off the tuk-tuk a few times and I almost ended up with a few bruises on my butt.
The country side was very flat and long. It would have been pretty scenic if it was during the rice season. There were a lot of kids offering to be our tour guide. It's almost impossible to say no to these kids. Once you say no, they ploy another tactic against you - “sorry sir, we no money for school and food. No mama and no papa. Please give us some money...” Luckily I have the advantage of saying “Me not speak English, do you speak Taiwanese???”. Unfortunately Naomi doesn't have much luck in that department and just have to content to have her head “shaved” as the locals put it.
Battambang is interesting, but by far, it's the most boring town in places we have been in Cambodia.
Sihanouk Ville
We could not resist from coming to Cambodia and not go to its famed beach. The beach had some nice sand and little rubbish, but the water was too hot for me to fully enjoy myself. I felt like I was having a hot bath in the salty water. It's bit green too. Most Europeans (and Naomi) seemed to enjoy themselves tremendously in the hot water.
It was very relaxing just chilling out on the sand and having a cold drink in the arvo and reading my book. Seafood dinner on the beach also proved to be a highlight of our stay here. A whole snapper bbq-ed together with salad and chips only cost me US$4. Soooo cheap!
We were there for 3 and half days and felt like we could have spent another few more just putting out feet up and relaxing for a bit. We could start to understand why backpackers more often than not pick small beach towns to relax and take a break from their immensely stressful self-searching journey around the globe.
We arrived in Phnon Penh on 7th of April just in time for a special day in our calendar – yep, my birthday.
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