Changing Cambodia

By Maxine Bates

As part of a tour of South East Asia, I spent five nights in Cambodia at the end of December 2011. This was my first visit to the country and, having compared notes with  friends who had visited a few years previously and read a previous VISA article, it appears to have changed tremendously. 

Having flown into Siem Reap airport our first task was to queue for a visa on arrival. This cost US$20. (Although not Cambodia’s official currency, everything is priced in dollars.) You handed over your dollar notes along with a passport photograph, shuffled along the counter and picked up your newly stamped passport several minutes later. Having deciphered which names were being called by someone whose native language isn’t English. Amusing at times.

We had booked to stay at the fairly new Shining Angkor boutique hotel which included airport transfers. These turned out to be by tuk tuk. Luckily we weren’t travelling with large luggage as I’ve no idea where it would have been loaded!  

Pub Street is the heart of Siem Reap nightlife with many bars and restaurants covering all nationalities from Irish to Italian to Khmer as well as traditional dance shows. We saw banners advertising a New Year’s Eve street party but unfortunately had to sleep through midnight due to a stupid o’clock flight on 1^st January. We had 2012 stamps in our passport whilst our friends back in the UK were still in 2011!

There were as many fish spas as eating and drinking establishments so plenty of choice, both indoors and outdoors, if you wanted fish to nibble the dead skin off your feet! Most fish spas also offered massage with a typical price being $6 for 60 minutes. I treated myself to a French manicure and pedicure for a total of $5 – bargain!

Obviously the main reason for our stay in Siem Reap was to visit the nearby Angkor complex. We hired a tuk tuk and driver who, after we’d had our photograph taken and paid $40 each for a three day pass, took us around some of the temples. Our first stop was the imposing Angkor Wat. We spent a pleasant couple of hours exploring the stupors, decaying steps, traditional window frames, etc, before reaching the main building and the “clothes police”. A couple of uniformed guards studied the attire of visitors and ejected anyone who didn’t meet their criteria. However, there didn’t appear to be any set criteria as we saw one man leaving with short-length shorts whereas another man wearing knee-length shorts was refused entry. Similarly some cardigans and sarongs to cover arms and legs were acceptable and some were not. Crazy! But also entertaining watching the arguments with the guards! After a photo stop for the famous view of the Angkor Wat temple with the Lake of Reflection in the foreground we settled down in one of the many adjacent open-air bars to enjoy a cool drink. Beware of scams when leaving. We paid a lady who appeared to be the owner when she served our drinks, but upon leaving were approached by a young boy who said we hadn’t paid our bill. He followed us throughout the stalls demanding money which was somewhat annoying knowing we had paid. We opted for a roadside café lunch and although very basic we could see our noodle dishes being prepared and cooked. It was tasty, plentiful and very cheap.

The next day the same tuk tuk driver took us to Angkor Thom where we admired the 216 carved faces of the Bayon and strolled around the Baphuon pool to the Elephant Gate. Then on to Ta Prohm, probably recognisable as part of the Tomb Raider film set. I was looking forward to seeing the ruins with trees and foliage growing through them, but at the time of our visit this temple resembled a building site. Very disappointing.

On our third day we opted to travel further afield, some 30km, to Banteay Srei, a Hindu temple famed for its carvings. The display panels were interesting but exploring the site itself became tiresome with so many Asian tour groups climbing all over the stones. However, our main reason for travelling in this direction was to visit the Landmine Museum. Boards depicted the lives of the children living at the relief centre within the museum. Money from sale of admission tickets and items in their shop pay for dozens of handicapped, orphaned or poor children to be fed, clothed, housed and nurtured. Other boards explained why landmines were laid and how they are now removed. A small but thought-provoking museum and well worth a visit.

Another day we booked an excursion to Tonle Sap Lake to visit the floating village. I’m sure our small boat and driver would not have passed any regulations in the UK, but that’s half the fun of travelling. We were steered slowly by houses, a school and a church and disembarked for a shopping opportunity and look at a crocodile pit. From the way the animals were behaving it looked like they were due a feed so we didn’t get too close! The main road between Siem Reap and Tonle Sap is nothing more than a dirt track in places with cattle, bicycles and tuk tuks being the main users. The petrol stations were most interesting with fuel decantered from large drums into whatever plastic or glass bottles the owner could find. We saw petrol for sale in a Jack Daniels bottle!      

Although we only skimmed the surface with brief time in Cambodia I would advise anyone contemplating a visit to go sooner rather than later before it gets too commercialised.

    

First published in VISA 106 (December 2012)

Cambodia and the Mekong Delta

by Janice Booth

I’ve just eaten the last of my Vietnamese peanut brittle, savouring each sweet, sticky mouthful. I’d watched it being stirred in a massive iron wok above a fire of rice husks, then poured into heavy trays, pressed flat and scored into sticks as it cooled. The smell of smoke, hot metal and bubbling palm sugar filled the long shed where it was made.

The holiday had begun in Cambodia, at Siem Reap, where my father had visited Angkor Wat in 1933. As a child I’d been entranced by his photos of the great temples and particularly their friezes: full of little carved faces with enchanting upward-tilted smiles. I’d always promised myself a trip, and this year the imminent doubling of my travel insurance (I’ve just turned 70) was the nudge I needed.

From London I stopped overnight in Bangkok, at the 3-star Miracle Hometel Suvarnabhumi. Strangely, there was a price list in my room for anyone wanting to buy the furnishings: for example bed-sheets 550 baht, ashtray 60 baht, ‘cloth hanger male’ and ‘cloth hanger female’ 150 baht. The hotel was comfortable and convenient – until my morning wake-up call didn’t materialise and I had a serious scramble to catch the shuttle back to the airport. However, I was so happy to be finally heading for Angkor Wat that it didn’t matter: I loved everyone and everything. The love dissipated slightly when the pilot announced that heavy rain might prevent our landing at Siem Reap, but after we’d circled a few times the clouds parted and down we went. A driver from my guesthouse was waiting and gave me my first of many big Cambodian smiles.

Temple tourism has turned Siem Reap into a large, busy town and the drive in from the airport doesn’t offer much excitement, but once we started twisting among little side-streets it livened up. Small houses and shops jostled together and cyclists festooned with bags and packages wobbled their way through muddy puddles. From the website www.angkorhotels.org I’d picked the Angkor Discover Inn at US$22 a night and it was ideal: peaceful and relatively new, traditionally built, with simple wooden rooms set back from the road in a shady garden. I fixed transport to the temples for the next day and then launched into Siem Reap and its cheery tuk-tuks (motorbike rickshaws). The ride to the central market took ten minutes; returning to the guesthouse in the dark took 45 as the driver didn’t know the town! ‘No plobrem!’ he kept reassuring me as he dismounted to ask yet another stall-holder for directions and then ‘No far’ as he chugged off on the next wild-goose-chase. It’s a measure of Siem Reap that I never felt anxious. ‘Tank you! Tank you!’ he beamed, when we finally arrived and I paid him.

The temples are astounding: their scale and quantity, the colossal work involved, the volume of carving, and the meticulous details of daily life – for example a man blowing the embers of a fire to life, dogs, cockfighting, women with children, fishing, and even a turtle biting a man’s backside. Military scenes abound, as do elephants – which, interestingly, have knees, whereas in early carvings in English churches they mostly don’t. Our sculptors had never seen one! The swarms of brightly dressed children hawking their postcards, scarves, bracelets and other souvenirs amid the massive stonework reminded me of butterflies fluttering against the trunk of some venerable oak. In fact many temples still have big trees rooted among their walls, as they did when Europeans first saw them in the 19th century. John Keeble’s Tales from theTemples (VISA 48) gives some good descriptions and background. Towering Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, absolute treasure-houses of carvings, date from the 12th/13th centuries, not so far in time from the building of our own great cathedrals: on opposite sides of the globe, builders and stone-workers were exhibiting similar skills, devotion, and loving attention to detail.

Sixty years after enjoying my father’s photos I was still captivated by the faces, whether smiling shyly in the friezes or scanning the landscape with huge, ancient eyes from the temple towers. I’d brought some of the photos with me and people stroked them lovingly, spotting the changes and murmuring nostalgically about the past. I showed them to gardeners, guides, policemen, stallholders, local families, tuk-tuk drivers – and got big Cambodian smiles in return.

A taxi-drive out to a remote temple, Beng Melea, took me through the countryside: paddy fields stretching into the distance, and scattered wayside hamlets where the occasional stall of fruit or vegetables had been set up to catch passing traffic. The houses, mostly wooden, were built on stilts, giving them a useful extra living/storage area underneath. A ladder or thin staircase led up to the rooms. Scrawny dogs dozed, children played, and men sat repairing rusty bits of machinery.

I’m deliberately not talking politics in this piece, but my involvement with Rwanda’s tourism for the past decade made comparisons interesting. Two tiny countries, Cambodia with amazing temples and Rwanda with mountain gorillas, both rebuilding their tourism after genocide, both needing to diversify their attractions so that tourists stay longer: so far, very similar. The difference is that at least 5% of Rwanda’s tourist income from the national parks goes directly to finance small, rural enterprises, and practicalities like village water tanks. No-one could tell me of similar investment in Cambodia – and it’s needed. With around two million tourists in 2008, even a very small percentage of the temple fee (US$20 per day, $40 for 3 days, $60 for a week) could have achieved a lot.

Beforehand I’d also booked an eight-day riverboat cruise with Pandaw Cruises (see www.pandaw.com), down the Tonle Sap River and Mekong Delta to Ho Chi Minh City, preceded by two more days in Siem Reap. Now it was time to leave my guesthouse and hook up to Pandaw – and to a huge treat. Tourist numbers were low, so they’d decided to upgrade my hotel to the gorgeous Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, supreme among Siem Reap hotels since 1933. Wow! Not at all my usual style, but I gulped bravely and adjusted to the deluxe bedroom, huge squashy bed, large swimming pool and delightful, friendly staff.

I loved Siem Reap, not just the amazing temples but also strolling and people-watching. The centre of town has plenty of Asian charm, the market is lively and there’s a pleasant tree-lined walk along the river. I found friendliness everywhere. There’s certainly poverty but also a sense of energy, of people doing their best to recover from the past and get on with their lives. I’ve seen the same in Rwanda. But now my riverboat was waiting and I had to leave.

The boat – the Tonle Pandaw – takes 60-odd passengers but there were just 16 of us: Aussies, Danish, Dutch, American and me, the only Briton. We piled into a coach for a four-hour drive to reach her. It poured the whole way – far too wet to stop and explore Skoun, the ‘spider capital’ where women sell crunchy roasted spiders from stalls beside the road. The Tonle Pandaw was moored alongside a muddy bank on the Tonle Sap River, to the amusement of locals whose homes were only a few yards away. I don’t do cruising normally but this was very laid back: no dressing up, no Captain’s table, no impressing the Jones-hyphen-Joneses. My tiny cabin was comfortable and the top deck gave wonderful views of the river as it gradually widened and grew busier. Small local craft with croaky outboard motors buzzed about among container barges and dredgers, and traditional canoes drifted gently by. Houses and temples peered out from the trees along the bank. We passed islands, some of them large enough to support small villages and farms. Other ‘villages’ floated on the river: ramshackle collections of houseboats containing homes, shops, markets, bars and workshops. Some of the homes had deep cages directly beneath them, for fish farming.

Most of each day was spent ashore, exploring. We visited towns, villages, markets, temples, and inevitably craft workshops. That’s where I bought my peanut brittle: they also made wonderful pop-rice (like popcorn but with rice grains popping and bouncing in a bed of red-hot sand) and carvings from local stone and wood. Once we strolled through paddy fields where villagers were busily transplanting rice seedlings. In Phnom Penh (where we rode in cyclo rickshaws) we went to the Royal Palace, still magnificent despite the looting of 60% of its treasures during Pol Pot’s era. I bought myself some traditional fisherman’s trousers in the Old Market; the stallholder and I had no common language but gestures go a long way! That night a sudden storm whipped up the river and waves splashed against my cabin’s porthole. One Khmer island village, Koh Deak Chor, had been visited by cruise passengers only once before so tourists were still a novelty. Villagers led us along the leafy paths to see their ‘cottage industry’ of making rice-flour noodles, much in demand on the mainland, as well as their breeding pens of tiny pink piglets. Their ‘shop’ was a woman on a bicycle, pedalling and peddling her load of vegetables, fish and meat. A child came running in from the paddy field to show us a bird’s nest she’d just found.

Then we crossed into Vietnam and very subtly the atmosphere changed: slightly brisker, slightly brasher, slightly more cosmopolitan – but the smiles were no less warm. Chau Doc was a bustling, lively town, with a huge street market selling all kinds of fish, meat and vegetables as well as snails, crabs, snakes, toads and crayfish – many of them still alive. Cu Lao Gian Island had a sad government-run home for old women, where we left little gifts of the free toiletries from our cabins and whatever else we didn’t need. In Sadec, we visited the ornate former home of Huyn Thuy Le, lover of French novelist Marguerite Duras. Then a final bus from My Tho took us to frenetic Ho Chi Minh City. I went straight to the airport for my flight to Singapore, where I had just enough time for a swim in Changi airport’s rooftop pool before continuing to London. My first trip to Asia was over.

But look – there’s just one small crumb of peanut brittle left in the packet...

First published in VISA 87 (Oct 2009)