Siem Reap The 10th June, 2004 I grabbed an early morning bus from Bangkok (Thailand) to Siem Reap (Cambodya). The ride from Bangkok to the border was swift enough (other than the usual snack stop drivers take every 1:30 hours). At the border I instantly starting noticing the not so subtle differences between Thailand and Cambodya. Thailand is quite a developed country and fairly westernized. However Cambodya is way more like the real Asian thing: kids running loose naked, unpaved and muddy streets, bamboo huts, chaotic traffic, increased number of beggars, etc. Also, it was quite amusing to find the very first building standing right after crossing the border to be a massive casino! Yup, I guess gambling is forbidden in Thailand, so Thais drive across the border to gamble away their bucks (well, their bahts actually).
The ride from the border to Siem Reap is less than 250 km, but the bus took 6 hours to cover them! The reason was, of course, that wreck they call it "road", bumpy and muddy as all hell, forcing the driver to average a nerves-teasing 40 km/hour , much to our kidneys displeasure. I can't believe the only road linking the Thai border with the country's number one touristic attraction is in such poor conditions. Makes no sense to me, specially when many other secondary routes are laid in a much better fashion. Anyway, the landscape is absolutely flat, with a lonely hill here and there and an occasional tree standing about wondering where his buddies are. No matter what direction you look towards, the only sight you'd see is vast flat fields. Picture on the right. Eventually I arrived to Siem Reap for a well-deserved night of rest at the Smiley Guesthouse, a neat and affordable hostel, I recommend it.
The next morning I woke up early and rented a bicycle, for Angkor Wat is five or six kilometers away from downtown. Also, within the temples complex you need a transportation meaning provided because the temples are a couple of km. from each other. So off I rode with my front-basketted, pink colored bike towards Angkor Wat, a place I have been meaning to go to for a loooong time, just as I had to Petra or Abu Simbel. Actually, when I started to plan out this around the world tour over a half a year ago, I reserched on the net a list of world-wonders to decide which areas throughout the globe I'd be visiting, and Angkor Wat was one of the main reasons as of why I came to the South East Asia. You have probably seen this place on TV as it has been a popular set for the filming industry. I remember a Van Damme film shot here (the one fighting the Muai Thai fighter called Ton Poh ) and of course the more recent Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider. The entrance fee is 20 dollars for the one-day pass and 40 dollars for the three-days pass. No student discount applies. Ouchie! No big deal though, worthiest 20 buckies I've ever spent. Let me fill you in with a bit of background. The monuments at Angkor Wat are the very heart and soul of Cambodian society, not only as far as arts and architecture goes, but also it constitutes their national pride and their inspiration. I have not visited any other country where one single image compounds such a social icon for the country as a whole, not even the Pyramids for Egypt or the Coliseum for Italy. Pictures and drawings of Angkor Wat can be seen at every Cambodian house, restaurant or hotel, revered as the king and ruler of the nation. It was no surprise when, while researching a bit on the country's history, I read how Angkor Wat, built between the 10th and 13th century, had been where the Khmer kings had been ruling their empire from. Indeed, during those 3 centuries the Khmer Empire did become the mightiest power in South East Asia, embracing together a large piece of land including the current Thailand, Cambodya, Vietnam and even some parts of China.
Ok now, I have come to realize that beautiful man-made wonders are so not just because of the constructed sector itself, but also because of the natural surroundings they are based upon. Just as Palmyra was built right in the middle of the desert, miles away from anything, Angkor Wat had been erected within an idyllic forest, with extensive grass plains, leafy trees and clean ponds. It does resemble to Hyde Park in London or Central Park in NYC. Such whereabouts enhance the awing from the tourists when the sight of a temple emerges over the tree-tops. Picture on the right. Like I said before, there are a number of temples within the complex. The first one you'll encounter, few km. on from the tickets disposer, is Angkor Wat itself, the main temple, and largest religious-dedicated structure on this planet (can't tell about others though). The whole building is double-walled, with a massive courtyard between the two walls and a causeway laid across linking both gates. Inside the inner wall, the central structure is built, with five symmetrical spiky towers crowning it all, being the one in the middle higher, soaring up 55 meters high. Such central structure is dug through by a network of inter-connected galleries and chambers.
The feeling of sheer size as you enter the outer wall and walk up the causeway, facing the inner wall and the central building atop at the other end of the courtyard delivers a cold shiver down the spine. Like I said, it's ungodly massive, several times the size of a football stadium. But, once you wander inside the inner wall, the temple's narrow galleries and the building's dark gray stone blocks' carvings, the sense of privacy, mysterious quietness and stillness kicks in, blessing you with the feeling of being alone and having such a moment in such a place just for yourself. Truly inspiring! Ok guys, they say one picture's worth a thousand words, so here you have few!
Extract of Angkor Wat outer wall from the outside	And from the inside
The causeway, cutting across the courtyard and leading to the inner wall, with the main building towering over it	Here you can see the main building's five towers
The main building's entrance staircase. It's dangerously steep and narrowly-foot stepped	Inter-linked galleries inside
Walking around the inner chambers and galleries	Another one of the main building's inside
Ok, time to grab my bike and ride to the next temple. Take a look to the picture on the right. See what I mean when I said that the temples are surrounded by gorgeous forests?   In fact, many temples are being swallowed by the jungle as time passes, and many of them are being "assaulted" by enormous tree roots reaching out from the underground, creating a sort of creepy scenes brought straight from the Twilight Zone. Check out the picture bellow and bellow-right for further details.
The next remarkable temple in Angkor Wat is The Bayon. Here, a number of stone-carved faces stare at the traveler from all possible angles. It is quite impressive to be honest, because they remain totally disguised in the walls till you look carefully and see'em everywhere! This is in my opinion the coolest of all temples. Pictures bellow.
The Baphoun is the third most remarkable temple in the complex, but at this time there's a meticulous restoration work going on so I could not see much of it. They are gathering thousands of blocks together in a puzzle-alike attempt to bring it all up again. As the day went on, I put my travel guide down and simply rode around among the temple shooting pictures left and right and enjoying the awesome views. There's so much to see here! Random pictures bellow.
After sunset, weary and exhausted, I rode another 10+ km. back to the hotel. Once I explored Angkor Wat to its fullest, I decided to leave Siem Reap because that town has little to show. Hadn't it been for its proximity to the temples, it would receive little attention from anyone other than inhabitants. So, once done there, I picked up the next bus to Phnom Penh. the capital of Cambodya.
Phnom Penh Phnom Penh is relatively a small capital with only a million inhabitants. After having been "banned" from the touristic circles during the last decades due to political instability and civil war, it is steadily catching up now, at least as far a independent travelers (backpackers) is concerned, specially those doing the South East Asia trail. A number of cheap accommodations and eateries have sprung up, specially by the Boeng Kak lake side. A bit too Gipsy'ish for my taste so I stayed downtown at the Narim II guesthouse (which I absolutely recommend). To be 100% honest, Phnom Penh did not appeal me much. The Lonely Planet guide labels the city as "captivating", to which I politely disagree. There's just not much to do or see here. As a matter of fact, the whole Cambodya does remind me on Jordan a bit: small country with little to show but blessed with a world-class attraction (Angkor Wat in Cambodya, Petra in Jordan). So, I planned my staying in Cambodya to last 10 days only and eventually proved about enough. The Royal Palace near the river shore is a beautiful, oriental-styled gardens with pompously ornated temples. Being the residence of the king, it's an ocean of tranquility and silence in the middle of the deafening noise outside the walls. Certainly not breath taking, but a pleasant morning walk non the less. Pity there's no coffee terrace inside the Palace.
Also worth a visit if interested in Cambodian recent history is the Tuol Sleng Museum, also called S-21 (Security prison 21), or more graphically The Genocide Museum. I will next elaborate a bit on history and show you some pictures, but if you are of sensible bowels, I recommend you to skip it all out. During the mid-late 1970's, the Khmer Rouge totalitarian government established one of the most atrocious social and political restructuration processes the 20th century has seen. They wanted Cambodya to backtrack evolution into an agriculture-based, peasant, ignorant country. Thousand of people were killed for the mere "crime" of speaking a second language, or being lectured in arts or whatever. Not only that, starvation and disease struck population in their hundreds of thousands. As it usually happens in these cases, tortures and executions took place on daily basis. Within 5 years, almost 2 million Cambodians died as a direct result of the policies of the Khmer Rouge government The S-21 was a secondary school that got overnight transformed into a prison and torture house. Within 3 years, almost 20,000 Cambodians got tortured and executed here. Men, their women, their children. Now a days, the prison is a macabre museum with thousands of pictures of the people who received "justice" here. I warn you: skip past them if you don't wish to see explicit material.
The building's front side   Close up	Photos of tortured-to-death men. There are countless of panels like this, with dozens of photos per panel. You do the math... Children under 10 too...
Tons (literally) of human bones found in communal pits	Please read the camp's rule #6
What exactly could induce anyone to believe that this is proper way to lead a country is beyond my imagination... Moving onto merrier business, Phnom Penh has a lively night life which I stoically proceeded to study thoroughly (only for your further knowledge, of course). Casually, I happened to be having dinner by the lakeside when someone handed me a flyer of some mambo-jumbo party going on that night, which I attended. Bars by the lakeside are sort of cool, with open terraces reaching over the lake on wooden platforms. Very sweet place to have a beer or two. So, the party slowly fired off, and the peeps slowly fired up. Beers were knocked back, friends were made (can't remember a single name though) and fun was served. Welcome to Phnom Penh! Also, I'd like to point out that there's a rampant business run by former army soldiers offering firing facilities with guns, machine guns and a wide range of options in the fields outside the town. One guy walked up to me and, lowering his voice, offered me the opportunity to shoot a cow with a rocket launcher for a hundred dollars. I was but an inch away of accepting the deal just to turn the rocket launcher upon the bastard and blast him to Mars. Can you believe that? there are freaks out there paying to blow a fucking cow up in pieces with a rocket launcher!! Geez what is wrong with some people, maaaaan... Anyway, after three days in Phnom Penh, I wanted to check out the southern beaches on Cambodya. From what I had heard, they were extremely beautiful while fairly free from the package tourism's grip.
Sihanoukville A four hours worth of bus ride later, I arrived at Cambodya's closest thing to a beach resort: Sihanoukville. Unfortunately I was doomed to not have much beach action here, for the rain persistently pissed on my ass all day long for the three days I spent there. Which was truly a pity because the region is indeed exuberantly greeny and calm. The perfect place to relax and escape away from the city chaos. Actually, Sihanoukville is not that small, it's just very spread out with its hotels and beaches covering quite a large area along the beach front. Well, since I was not to get a nice tan, I could as well explore the whereabouts. So I rented one of those pesky 4 gears clutchless 110 cc motorbikes they drive here. I cannot get used to them for the life of me. Anyway, in the best Michael Doohan fashion, I shot off to some waterfalls some local had advised me visiting. The waterfalls, alas not extraordinarily tall at all, serve as the perfect spot for a mid-morning snack, which is always ready for sale by the local children carrying wide trays full of tasty snacks on top of their little heads. Pictures bellow.
I also wanted to visit Kampot, another southern beach town not far off, but my friends Paola and Pilar whom I met in Thailand wrote me an email telling me they were headed to Phnom Penh the next day, so we worked out a meeting downtown to go out the three of us.
Back to Phnom Penh and out! Paola, Pili and I spent our last three days in Cambodya partying away like madmen in the clubs near the riverside (not the lakeside, that's another district) in Phnom Penh. There is a cheesy but cool enough pub/club called The Heart of Darkness, with a photo of Matt Dillon in front of the bar. I guess he had few drinks there when he shot that film with Gene Hackman, can't remember the title. Well, I don't know whether good ole' Matt had a good time there or not, but we sure had a blast till closing time at 4 am. Oh by the way, I must thank Paola and Pili for having lend me some money. The thing is that there is no ATM whatsoever throughout the whole country, and I had already spent the money I had exchanged on entry. I lived on their cost for three full days. And that is it, not much else to tell really. Couple of days later, on the 19th June 2004, the three of us grabbed an early morning bus (after a late night out) and crossed the border into Vietnam, being the city of Ho Chi Minh (formerly known as Saigon) our first destination. Cambodya is OK, but I feel that it can be done in as little as a week. It's a small country after all.

Gimmie an A! gimmie a N! gimmie a G!... hehe really, no matter what I tell you about Angkor Wat, it just won't do justice. Truly an inspiring sight, second to none. In fact, it's probably the most outstanding man-made world wonder I have seen in my trip so far. Kicks Palmyra, the Pyramids and Istanbul's Blue Mosque right in the royals. I would go as far as saying that it'd beat Petra too. Just if it wasn't for that Treasury canyon... I still dream about it some times...
Like the rest of South East Asian countries, it's a great value money wise. After the over commercialized Thailand, Cambodya does feel more like the real Asian deal. The southern beach towns really looked like a cool chill out place, beautiful and un spoilt. Unfortunately rain was ever persistant when I was there.
Angkor Wat US$20/day entrance fee, no student discounts available. Sort of pricey. No ATM anywhere. Bring enough dollars in cash - dollars and Cambodian reel are equally used, even by locals (1 dollar = 4000 reel) Internet connection is as slow as it gets, which is surprising as the rest of South East Asian countries benefit from an outstanding connection speed. Lots of unpaved roads and streets, which considering we are talking about a heavily rainy country, you end up with mud up your knees pretty often. I found Phnom Penh sort of lacking the punch and the charm of other South East Asian capitals.