Cambodia

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English is spoken widely in the region, although there are some interesting translations. The other day I was requested by a sign to “Please put some things in the rubbish bin” I was mortified that I didn’t have anything to throw away. The weather forecast on our arrival in Siem Reap said 36 C, realfeel 38 C. I asked Mags for a realfeel later but she wasn’t amused.

Yes, we’re in Cambodia and, like all the other visitors, we’re here to explore Angkor, the centre of the Cambodian empire that ruled most of Indochina from the ninth to thirteenth century. Early starts every day here for the dual purpose of avoiding the hottest part of the day and the coach loads of tourists that set out a little later. First stop Ta Prohm Temple. This is famed for being overgrown with trees with roots growing out of, and over the walls. Angelina Jolie was filmed here in her role as Laura Croft.

Next up, Angkor Tom, or Great city, a focal point in Angkor and home to the royal palace. This is a massive site established in the twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII covering nine square kilometres. We visited the Bayon temple on the site, a mind boggling sandstone structure with thirty nine out of fifty four towers still standing, each representing one of the Cambodian regions at the time. Each tower is adorned with giant faces on each side. It’s a giant site and mobbed with tourists but large enough to cope without it feeling overcrowded.

 

We left the old city and headed to Tonle Sap Lake, the largest in Indochina. We drove to a diminished river feeding the lake where we transferred to a small boat, cruising through the fishing village of Kampong Phluk before reaching the lake. The Tonle Sap river drains the lake during the dry season meandering towards Phnom Penh where it merges with the Mekong. The Mekong swells during the wet season with melt water and monsoon rains and it actually pushes the Tonle Sap river back upwards causing the lake to swell to five times its dry season size. So the river runs in both directions depending on the time of year. It really is a large lake, even in the dry season, covering 2,500 square kilometers. It supports a population of two million people nearly all of whom live from fishing. The Cambodians told us that around seventy percent of these are Vietnamese who remained after the war (technically illegally).

 

It floods every year here, and the locals have devised a brilliant idea – they build their houses on stilts. Radical I know, but perhaps we can learn from this and apply it in the Thames valley. There’s a twelve metre difference between the dry season and the flood in the village. This makes the houses look like giant cranes in the dry season.

Next day we started with a visit to Banteay Srei temple, dedicated to Shiva and the Hindu religion built with high quality pink sandstone. The carvings are wonderfully preserved as a result and the detail is fantastic, even after a thousand years.

We’d booked a hike up a jungle mountain before we flew out, but on the day with the realfeel at 40C we were having second thoughts. Well, we sweated out a few gallons of accumulated toxins, but managed to enjoy ourselves in the beautiful countryside. We saw no animals, due largely to deforestation as most of the forest has been cleared for farming, and, as our guide explained, people were hungry during the Khmer Rouge period and the subsequent civil war. If it moved, it was eaten. There were tigers and elephants in this region but, alas, no more. We did hear but not see a gibbon and heard cicadas a plenty, a particular species sounding like an electric saw. The walk terminated at a sacred royal bathing site where hundreds of lingas have been carved into a river bed. The linga being a Hindu phallic symbol. Water flowing over these lingas is deemed to turn it into holy water.

We finished the day at Beng Mealea temple. This site has not been restored but allowed to collapse slowly with mother nature gradually taking over with trees sprouting up through the ruins. Its main claim to fame is as a forerunner to Angkor Wat, built first with a similar design but on a smaller scale – a kind of baby Angkor Wat.

Our final day and we’ve saved the best till last, the daddy of all the temples, Angkor Wat. We rose at 5a.m. to catch the sunrise over the temple. This early start doesn’t guarantee a jump on the other tourists as everyone is doing the same thing. Walking over the concourse approaching the temple was like London Bridge at rush hour. Most of us gathered at the left inner moat that still had some water after the dry season waiting for the sun to appear, looking like paparazzi at the Oscars. The site itself is incredibly impressive, three of the five large lotus like towers visible as you approach providing the world famous image. There are three levels representing different layers of Hindu heaven, the higher as you ascend. The lower level is adorned with stone carvings on the walls depicting Hindu religious stories covering 800 metres in four galleries.

So it’s the end of our travels in Indochina and I think its fair to say that we are a little templed out, but we’ve enjoyed every minute. Next stop Australia and, at the risk of offending my Aussie friends, perhaps a little less culture but more R&R.