2kiwis

Our next destination was Kampong Cham, an old port town slowly fading now the Japanese have paid for a bridge over the Mekong River. We journeyed by local bus with 16 seats reserved at the front, a mix of local people and a few tourists taking the other seats. The journey was about as memorable as a bus journey will be, I remember the inane music synced to sappy videos on the tiny TV screen above the driver more than anything else. At times the music was piercingly terrible, truly awful.

On arrival at Kampong Cham we found ourselves at a very strange hotel. The place was large, each floor of the multi-story building consisting of a largely empty central space with rooms to the outside of the longest sides. The open space could easily have encompassed an indoor cricket pitch, an ice rink of a decent size, a not-too-cramped hotel. The rooms were (based on ours) roomy, if badly in need of an update with minimal decoration and tired furniture and fittings. Still, they were tidy and clean enough.

Across the road and over the bank there were plots of crops, a path down to the river and a fenced off area that held a volleyball court. Young men, two to a side, played a simplified game that seemed to be more about playing than keeping score. By the court and the river bound path another group sat in a loose circle and played a card game, betting money and seeing out the hot afternoon. Next to one of the trees the sprouted out of the paved area between bank and road a fat monkey sat and looked for food, it was hard not to stare at the missing leg.

The Mekong Crossing Restaurant

Lunch was had at the Kampong Crossing, a small restaurant on the next block along the road outside the hotel that ran parallel to the Mekong. We were served by the owner, a man who bore a passing resemblance to Freddy Mercury with his moustache and slim build. The food itself was tasty and simple and there was a yummy and home-made (sold from its Tupperware container on the counter) chocolate cake for afters.

After some time to ourselves we all gathered for our afternoon sojourn; a bike ride over a bamboo bridge connecting the mainland with the island Koh Paen in the middle of the Mekong. The bridge is all bamboo and is constructed each year during the dry season, almost literally wrapped up as the rainy season approaches and stored until it can be put back together. The bikes we had were in good running order for the most part, some even had working gears (usually of the hard, really hard and only downhill varieties). We set off down the road, a ragged line of people like myself getting used to riding a bike once more.

The road continued along the path of the river and we arrived at the path to take us down to the bamboo bridge, a dirt track on an incline that tested everyone’s faith in their brakes (or as it turned out lack of brakes). The short but hairy ride became a test or faith and imagination; surely this construction barely a couple of meters wide and made of bamboo couldn’t hold bike and rider up from the water for long? It turns out that it could and did, everyone made it across without incident. A few had decided, however, that enough was enough and the end of the bridge was the end of their bike adventure. A couple of people down we stopped for a breather at the top of the hill just past the small (bamboo of course) cabin where our entry fee was collected for the island.

Having a drink after crossing the bamboo bridge

Continuing on dirt tracks we same to a more substantial, if still dirt road and journeyed on past houses and trees, stopping at a small shop to the side of the road. We were encouraged to buy gifts, our first proper stop a short way up the road at a local school. A few bought food and most spared the small change required to buy a few books and pencils. Money was also spend on cool drinks, the unaccustomed energy expenditure taking its toll in the afternoon warmth.

A curious cow at the roadside shop

Linda overrun as she gives out food

The school visit was fun, the children obviously happy to see us, even if it maybe was more for the gifts and novelty of our presence. Linda was literally mobbed when she started distributing her small packets of food, almost disappearing under a crowd of youthful arms all reaching for their share of the spoils. Christine and Nick were also surrounded as they gave a lucky girl a book and encouraged her to write and then read her text. The teachers eventually restored order and the children were lined up outside one of the classrooms. We had a number of photos taken of our group all mingled with the rows of kids and then our books and pencils were handed to the slightly bemused head teacher. We looked through the classrooms and talked amongst ourselves or with the teaching staff as the children were tasked with cleaning up the mess they had created in the school grounds from dropped food packaging. For them it was then back to class and we headed back to our bikes to head out to our next destination.

Acting up for the camera

Order is restored for a group photo.

As it turned out the next place was next door, a temple with a few detailed stupa and attendant monks. After looking over the farmland being worked by a family, buffalo tilling the ground, we made our way into the complex. One monk in particular walked with our group as we entered the grounds and made our way up to the main temple, asking questions and replying to our queries. He was friendly, inquisitive but a little shy, especially when his teacher arrived in the temple. We had a look around, asked more questions about inconsequential things and then slowly walked back to the road and our bikes.

Our friendly and curious guide.

Doubling back down the road and past the school, now finished for the day and leaking groups of children on their way home, we turned off the main path onto another and rode for a ways past more worked land, houses and thicker groves of trees and bushes. Our next stop was at a local home where we were treated to giant grapefruit (white, football sized, very sticky) and sweet bananas. We were given information on the local lifestyle and were again able to ask questions of the adults and the inquisitive children, the children especially keen to ask us questions and practice their English.

Relaxing as we visit her home.

Then it was on to a couple of language schools, one for younger children just learning their basic English and the other for a smaller number of older, young adult students. The youngsters were all seated when we arrived and many of us took turns to stand up the front, write our name on the board and say where we were from to be echoed by the cherub chorus. We were treated to a few songs (so cute) and Nick had a go at teaching “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” which was amusing if not entirely successful (though the kids gave it their best shot, even if the words came out a bit jumbled).

Keryn tries her hand at teaching.

The next door older students were able to ask us questions but seemed to be a mix of those actually curious and those more amused by our lack of understanding. Both schools were simple rows of basic wooden benches arranged between the stilts underneath simple houses. The teachers were obviously passionate about what they were doing, keen to impart the knowledge they had gained and stressing the good that came out of students learning. It was a good experience.

As dusk descended we rode back to Kampong Cham, those at the front running into a herd of cattle being driven along the path and briefly causing chaos. Those of us at the back had a little more warning but it was still unnerving riding through towards the rampaging bovine. We all made it safely through and apart from a brief stop to take photographs on the bamboo bridge we continued on back to the hotel (well, I think most people walked up the incline to the road on the far side of the bridge).

The bamboo bridge.

Our wait for dinner was made more interesting by the swarms of mayfly like bugs congregating around the lights of the hotel, we were sat outside waiting for our ride and watched the swarms grow steadily larger – the local geckos seemed especially happy at the ready supply of food. Dinner was a special affair; we were invited to the house of a local man who occasionally provided tours guide duties for Intrepid. We all piled into the provided Tuk Tuks and were driven through town and out to the far edge, stopping in the dark outside a stilted building. Led inside we were sat around a large mat on the floor of the living area. This was a simple building, basically two rooms with the larger the sleeping, eating and living room with the other being the kitchen, larder and wash room. The floor has bamboo over the wooden frame and we could feel the breeze running between the gaps in the floor and walls.

Dinner was bought out as a number of large dishes filled with lovely food, Cambodian curries, vegetables and salads. It was probably the best meal of the trip so far and we all ate loads (though not enough that we ate everything). We were treated to some spider wine, a local alcohol spiced with real spiders. Luckily we didn’t get to see the spider, not so luckily we all had a small shot of the reasonably foul liquid. The liquid also comes in snake and monkey varieties though these are now illegal apparently.

The remains of dinner.

Replete we lay down and relaxed while listening to stories of local life and answers to the occasional question. During this time a gecko decided life on the roof wasn’t interesting enough and dropped onto Keryn, running the length of her body before disappearing somewhere in the room. With the cool breeze and the pleasant lack of biting insects it was a chilled out evening and we let for the hotel feeling relaxed and content.

We managed to get up even earlier today but still had to wait until 4:45am to leave as the ticket office didn’t open until 5am. If not first we were second to receive our tickets and we then set off 13kms west of Siem Reap heading towards the Roluos temple area, specifically the Bakong temple.

The journey took about half an hour, completed in the dark it was an easy, relaxing drive. Turning off the main road we headed down a dirt road and eventually stopped in a wide, dusty area. The driver pointed off into the dark so we took his suggestion, picked up our bags and walked. It was difficult to visualise what complex we were entering so we took the guidebooks advice and made for what we thought was the North East corner. A suitable mound was climbed and we set up the photography equipment around the arches and then sat down to have something to eat while we awaited sunrise.

The Bakong Temple

In the distance we could here chanting and there were occasional voices coming from the darkness of the temple site. There was also an often repeated noise, kind of like a swishing in the air akin to a towel being snapped in the wind; abrupt with an edge. We never saw what caused this noise, it always came from around or above and we assume it was bats swooping in and around the ruins. The voices turned out to be a number of young monks who sat on the stairs of a nearby ruined tower to watch for the rising sun; the chanting a temple off in the distance.

Sunrise was again disappointing with no appearance of colour, just a gradual lightning of the atmosphere and an increase in definition to the surrounding monuments. The temple was revealed as a large pyramid structure, four levels accessing by large steps on each compass point face. The corner of each level was home to an elephant statue and there were lions and naga (a multi-headed serpent statue) at other places.

Keryn found herself in conversation with a young monk who explained the tenants of Buddhism while I wandered around taking photos, camera on the tripod. We had the complex mostly too ourselves, for the most part the only other people present once the monk was gone were a group of children playing hide and seek in and around one ruined tower. The occasional other tourist arrived while we climbed and explored but there would have been no more than ten people present at any one time.

The children leave towards the adjacent monastery buildings

Once done with photos it was back down the now-revealed path over the complex moat to our waiting driver. Rather than look at any of the other temples nearby we decided to head to our next chosen temple, Preah Khan away back in the Angkor area. Our driver had other ideas and first took us to the small but lovely temple of Lolei.

Lolei was deserted other than monks at the monastery behind the ruins and three young children collecting money for a children’s charity. They were sweet and polite so we gave them a small amount of money before entering the ruins. There were only three towers still standing at Lolei and we would have spent only a few minutes walking through if not for two things. Firstly the sun finally appeared from behind the clouds giving the nice golden light a chance to bath the warm reddish walls of the towers and secondly another small group of tourists arrived. We found out that these temples have some of the earliest examples of Sanskrit writing and spent some time looking at the precisely carved text on the inside of a doorway.

A doorway at Lolei

Back to the Tuk Tuk we headed back on our intended path to the Preah Khan temple. This journey would have taken about 45 minutes but for two incidents. Firstly, as we approached the east gate of Angkor Thom we got a flat tire. Luckily this was discovered only a few hundred meters down the road from a motorbike repair shack so we pulled in and got the tire replaced quickly – we had enough time to finish the food we had bought with us. The second incident took place just as we had passed through the east gate; we ran out of petrol. After repeated attempts to start the engine the driver walked down the road to the gate and borrowed a bike from some kids who had come in to so something in the gate area.

Passing traffic coming through the east gate of Angkor Thom

While the driver was away Keryn had a rest and I walked back to the gate to take some photographs. It turned out that the drivers motorbike had been used by friends the night before and they had used more petrol than expected. All in all the delays probably added an hour to our journey so it was probably just as well we weren’t in a huge hurry that morning.

The western concourse at Preah Khan

Preah Khan it a large temple complex that, while only having one level, sprawls as a building through small chamber after small chamber meaning there are a large number of rooms to investigate. We spent over an hour from walking west down the causeway to exiting the east side of the temple complex. There were vaulted ceilings, a small but impressive stupa (memorial statue, normally a structure that narrows from a wide base to a point at the top), a building with round columns that looked more Roman or Greek than Khmer, various rooms that have collapsed into piles of rubble and nice carvings all over the place. The east entrance also had a large tree growing over the temple, much like Ta Phrom. There was one point where a bee hive could be seen attached to a remnant of a ceiling overhead, a swarming mass of insects.

Inside Preah Khan

Posing at Preah Khan

Reaching the east side we then turned around and did our best to take a different route back west. We found our driver waiting for us and with that our Angkor experience was nearly over, we needed to get back to the Hotel for some lunch before the group headed out for an afternoon journey. We had one last stop at the south gate of Angkor Thom, a few photographs were taken and then we were on our way.

The return journey was without even and we arrived at the hotel with just enough time to get in a simple lunch with the already eating Christine, Julia, Nick and Wayne. Other people arrived and soon enough a mini-bus arrived along with Pete. The afternoon trip first involved visiting a local Artisan complex where Cambodian’s are taught the required skills to make artistic products such as the painting of carved items and silk-screen, or the creation of wooden and stone carvings. We saw separate rooms where our guide explained how the various products were created; seeing deaf and dumb young woman painting on silk with a superbly steady hand; people carving stone and wood statues and a woman painting large stone relief carvings. Naturally there was an opportunity to buy the products at the Artisan shop but no-one did; out of our price and transport range.

Next up we visited an orphanage and were treated to a series of dances by the local children and young adults. The dances and dancers were good, Cambodian dance has a lot of subtlety, especially in the dancing of the woman. After the dancing we had an opportunity to play with some of the younger children. I ended up playing a kind of hacky-sac with a couple of young boys and Mark. The hacky-sac was a plastic contraption something like a shuttlecock which meant it fell in a controlled manor making it easier to make firm contact than I was used too. It was fun but I ended up covered in sweat.

Dancing at the Orphange

When everyone was done it was into the mini-van and onwards to the next destination a way out of town; Tonle Sap lake. The lake is the largest lake in South-East Asia and we were visiting a floating village. Being the dry season we had a drive of a few kilometres from the town to Phnom Krom to the point where we could board a boat, in the wet season the large expands massively in size and we would have been travelling by boat from the town.

The road from Phnom Krom was dusty, narrow and undulating. It took a long time to squeeze past the other buses and vehicles before we found our dedicated boat. As we all boarded a young local guy took our photos, which seemed a little strange at the time, was it for insurance purposes? We found out on our return that these photos were printed onto small plates and we were given the chance to buy the rather tacky product – no one did. The river at this point was little more than a large muddy ditch with ramshackle houses and buildings lining the shore, it did not look or smell pleasant. As we headed down the river we watched other boats leaving and arriving in a spray of dirt coloured water – it was the water equivalent of the road from the Cambodian border to Siem Reap.

Pushing off for the boat trip

An international greeting

Moving through the village.

Eventually the river widened and became the lake and the houses started looking a little less dirty, if still simply built and added to in a disorganised fashion over the years. We were later than planned but this meant the sun was getting quite low in the sky, the light was strong but good and the photography conditions were great. We moved about the growing number of floating buildings, looking as people went about their lives; children washing, a family having dinner, dogs barking as boats approached their dwelling, a small cage of pigs floating next to a house, pool tables in pubs adrift. We motored out from the village and had some time out on the lake, the horizon a flat blue line under puffy summer day clouds. While drifting a small dug-out canoe neared and then a small object jumped out and started slowly coming our way. It turned out to be a young girl in a large steel bowl pushing towards us using a poorly formed wooden paddle.

Travel by bowl and paddle

Pete had told us earlier that our boat might be boarded during our journey and enterprising children would try to sell us items and possibly even steal things if they could. The girl came up next to the boat and proceeded to beg for food and money. She was persistent but left empty handed once we had convinced her that nothing would be coming her way. She swished the paddle back and forth and once she was a distance from our boat she was picked up by the canoe, chugging back a drink as she was whisked away.

The engine growled back to life and we headed back into the floating village and a floating restaurant come tourist bizarre. Onboard were captive crocodiles and catfish, food and drinks, curios, and children looking for money to have a photograph with the placid snakes they carried over their shoulders. Before we could sample these things we had to deal with a small emergency first.

Wayne before his accident

As we came in to dock Pete went to show something to Wayne off the port side. Wayne got up to look and walked straight into the edge of a speaker strapped to the roof. At first it just looked like a hard bump but then Wayne put a hand to his head and it same away red with blood and he was soon sat down, blood streaming down his face and dripping to the floor. We docked and soon had a number of locals offering various plasters, cleaning liquids and other things they though could help. The wound was quite quick to stop bleeding and the cleanup process, both of head and boat, seemed to take longer than the initial first-aid. Wayne was adamant he was fine so a poultice was applied and held in place under his hat and we disembarked.

One of the snake kids

Adjacent to where we docked was a raised platform and it was from here we could look down to see the crocodiles below. There were two viewing ports in the floor of the platform, each with a fence preventing anyone from falling in. Below the crocodiles, the biggest probably 1 ½ meters long, either sat still on the boards or swam in the lake water. Down a level was the catfish enclosure and there was an attendant girl who would periodically thrown what looked like dung into the water, causing a brief frenzy of fish as the food was consumed.

Crocodile

We probably had nearly an hour on the boat which was probably 30 minutes too much. There were constant arrivals and departures of tourist boats, each new one greeted by the hawkers and beggars in their canoes. A couple of children were walking around with obviously sedated Pythons looking for money for photographs and they were joined later on by another child with a small and similarly sedated crocodile in his hands. I walked around ignoring the various offers and taking photos of the onboard activities and the ever lower sun sinking towards the waterline.

Sunset on Tonle Sap

Once everyone was at the point of complaining we were rounded up and back onto the boat for the return journey. I sat at the back photographing boats and people in the sunset, the sun gone and a red glow rising as we came back into the mud-dock. The drive back to our hotel was without event and we ended up having dinner at the Red Piano. We were looking forward to a sleep in, our departure from Siem Reap taking place near 8am the next morning.