Cambodia: Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

I’ve wanted to visit Cambodia ever since I spent a year working in the refugee and displaced persons camps on the Thai-Cambodian border when I was right out of college in 1989-90.  At that time, the whole area was still dangerous, and the border was closed.  The only people who passed through were Cambodian soldiers whose families lived in the border camps, as the soldiers fought a civil war against the Vietnamese-backed Hun Sen government.  And although I worked within a few hundred meters of Cambodia, I never had the chance to enter the country.  The dream at that time was to visit Angkor Wat, which had remained closed to all visitors for over a decade as Cambodia went through the tragedy and turmoil of multiple wars.

Since then, of course, things have changed dramatically, and Angkor Wat has become a major tourist attraction.  Direct flights, big package tours, thousands of daily visitors ranging from Euro backpackers to busloads of Chinese tourists.

It’s not exactly the remote and exotic place it once was, but on the other hand, the ruins are stunning, and it is heartening to see Cambodia look like a “normal” developing country.

Saturday afternoon, we set off from Singapore with Sid and Melinda.  We were met by our guide (or actually, his uncle, since our guide had been hurt the night before in a motorcycle accident), and went off to our first ruin in the vast National Park for sunset.  Pleasant experience, but little sunset in the haze.  Hundreds of other tourists there did not completely kill the atmosphere.  Tasty dinner at a very upscale Cambodia meets Miami place along the river, a short tuk-tuk ride from our hotel.  Loved being in a tuk-tuk again, despite the fact that the ones in Siem Reap are trailers that attach to motorcyles, rather than purpose-built vehicles.

Sunday, we got up at 5 to see dawn at Angkor Wat itself.  Great to be out early and beat the heat, but the sunrise wasn’t much to see, and there were already lots of people there.  Angkor is definitely impressive – huge (claims to be the largest religious building in the world), beautiful sandstone bas reliefs, impressive geometry.  Back to our hotel before 10 (already sweltering) to hit the breakfast buffet and rest for a couple of hours.  Then on to the other must-sees, starting with Bayon, a temple with dozens of huge faces carved out of sandstone on nearly every surface.  Loved it despite the heat.  And then on to the “Tomb Raider” temple, nicknamed for the movie that brought Angelina Jolie to Cambodia (where she is a real hero), and famed for the picturesque trees that literally grow right out of and on top of the largely unrestored ruins.  Wonderfully atmospheric, particularly outside of the most crowded parts.

These talented musicians playing traditional Khmer music are landmine victims.  The guy sitting in front is playing a leaf.  We bought the CD.

By Sunday at 4, we were back at the Borei Angkor hotel, thankful for the pool.  I was really impressed by how O&R held up through a full day of temple viewing in extreme heat, on top of a 5am wakeup.  We let them get room service for dinner and the adults headed to the Grand Hotel d’Angkor for “Linen Hour” (Sid’s recommended way of enjoying the tropics), followed by a dinner in the midst of Pub Street, where the foreign backpackers gather to shop for elephant pants and eat muesli (we did both while in Siem Reap, just not there, in order to preserve the illusion that we aren’t ordinary backpackers). 

Monday found us at more temples (the Ladies’ Temple and the Indiana Jones Temple).  All interesting in their own right, but I found myself particularly gravitating toward the spots that were a) not overrun by huge Chinese tour groups and b) in the shade.

I initially pushed back against Tuesday’s long trip to Preah Vihear along the Thai border in north-central Cambodia.  It was supposed to be 2 ½ hours away (it was actually more like 3 ½), and I just felt that it might be a bit much.  But in the end, going there was an extraordinary personal experience.  The ruins were amazing and we were the only foreigners there, but the real highlight for me was the long drive through the Cambodian countryside.  It was like dropping back in time 24 years to when I was living in Khon Kean, Thailand (only a few km away, though the border there is now closed due to an ongoing dispute about which country owns the ruins).  I spent hours in trucks and jeeps watching that countryside go by, and it brought me right there again.  Continuously settled and soothingly monotonous.  Small rice farms, village temples, big water storage urns, hammocks underneath every stilt-built house.  The dust smelled the same.  Perhaps the most memorable moment of the day was stopping for gas and a bathroom break on the way back and being shown the bathroom in a family’s traditional wooden house.  Squat toilet, huge vat of water for showering and flushing, plastic scooper, and very clean.  I had been there before.

It wasn’t so much that the scene brought me back to Thailand, as much as it brought me back to being inside my 23 year old self.  The whole thing got me thinking about the value of going back to places you’ve already been and the powerful emotional trigger that travel can be.  Funny how it took a bathroom to bring that point home among all of the splendor of Angkor Wat.