Day 88

Friday 28^th January 2011

In one week’s time we’ll be home – boooooooo! Not that we’re not looking forward to seeing you all but we’re having far too much of a good time to want it to end. That said I’m not sure our livers could hack it if we continued like this. They have taken a battering since arriving in South East Asia with no sign of it letting up.

We woke late, about 11.30am. I felt incredibly guilty at wasting my day of sunbathing and eventually dragged myself off the bed and over to the window to check out the weather only to discover it was raining. Well that’s one less worry, I don’t feel guilty, just incredibly hung over. It seems that Mr Frank is feeling equally special this morning judging by the groans coming from his side of the bed.

We peeled ourselves off the pillow and head into town as we have clearly missed the hotel’s breakfast. We’d also like some Wi-Fi so I take the lap top along. The rain has fortunately stopped but the thick grey clouds are still in abundance.

After wandering aimlessly for an hour or so we can’t find anywhere that does the food we want and Wi-Fi. By this time we’ve reached the golden arches so it’s into McDonalds for the well known hangover cure and then to a coffee shop for Wi-Fi.

I was half way through loading up the first blog pics when the Wi-Fi konked out completely and then told me there was no Wi-Fi connections to be had. Grrrrrrr so we downed our coffees and headed back to the hotel. On arrival the laptop was still in denial about the existence of Wi-Fi so either the whole island’s system has gone down or half way through surfing the web our laptop has broken. Either way is not good. I’m currently typing the blog in word in the hope that we’ll get Wi-Fi back at some point and Franky is making the bed as the maids have helpfully left us a pile of clean linen but not actually done anything with it!!!

One thing we have achieved is that Franky has finally purchased a watch. We’ve been looking at various fakes since we arrived in South East Asia and he has settled on a really nice Mont Blanc one in a shop today. This is a relief as it was a watch or a tailor made winter coat which I think would have taken far longer to purchase and would have taken up far more room in the already bulging backpacks!

We also added to our ever expanding pirate DVD collection. We now have Dexter seasons 4 and 5 and The Inbetweeners Season 3. We’re going to be pretty skint when we get home so at least now we’ll have something to keep us entertained until we get Sky switched back on!

After making the bed Franky was keen to dive in it and revisit slumberland despite the fact that we’ve only been up for 3 hours! But as it’s raining there isn’t too much else to do – apart from drink and neither of us are up for that just yet!

When he awoke I’d managed to get us up to date on the blog. He fixed the laptop – seemingly I’d inadvertently managed to switch off the wireless card – a spectacular trick since I didn’t even know we had one! We decided to head back to the Amari for happy hour and utilise their internet.

We were feeling much better so spent a pleasant evening supping red wine on the day bed and posting 5 days of blog by which time we were pretty hungry.

We mooched into town and found a restaurant for tea. Franky had surf n turf with 2 HUGE prawns. I had a lasagne that was terrible.

We weren’t much up for a big night and so headed back to the hotel to get stuck into our DVD collection and I had a strawberry cornetto to make up for the disappointing lasagne.

We opted to watch the treble Oscar winning film ‘The Killing Fields’. It was absolutely diabolical. There was very little dialogue so it was extremely difficult to follow the story even though I knew most of what was going on from my book. The musical score was laughable – everything from opera to jazz and mostly at inappropriate moments, Mike Oldfield should hang his head in shame. I’m not sure what else it was up against for Oscars in the mid 80s but they must be devastated to have been beaten by that pile of crap. It’s a shame because it’s an important story to tell but they did it soooooo badly.

So after a disappointing day and a disappointing film we went to sleep.

Day 87

Thursday 27^th January 2011

Much to Franky’s annoyance I’ve set the alarm this morning…. I want to get out and enjoy my day at the beach doing absolutely nothing. I’ve set it for the respectable time of 10.00am so I don’t think he has any grounds on which to complain.

We check out the hotel breakfast which is standard fodder and then go back to the room to get our beach gear before heading the 50 yards or so from our room to the soft golden sands of Chaweng beach. The beach is pretty narrow but we are lucky enough to commandeer 2 sun loungers on the edge of the sea.

I throw my towel down and jump on. It’s pure bliss lying toasting myself in the sun, cooled by the sea breeze and listening to the lapping of the waves at my feet. This is what I’ve been dreaming of.

We spend a lazy day at the beach dipping into the warm waters of the ocean whenever it gets a little too hot on dry land. I start and finish my next book. A who dunnit set in the 1930s called ‘The tale of the 39 cuff links’ which is easy going and entertaining.

By 4pm the trees are shading our patch and so we head up to the room where Franky immediately falls asleep after his exhausting day of relaxing at the beach.

By 7.00pm though we are refreshed, showered and changed and ready to hit the town. The internet at our hotel is diabolical. It’s also astronomically priced. 600 Bhat for 5 hours. That’s about 12 quid. We had conceded we were going to have to pay for it as Franky is still waiting to hear about interviews and Garlick, the rhythm guitarist from his band, is on the island with his wife so we need the medium of facebook to arrange a meeting. However, after paying for the internet we discovered it worked for about 10 minutes and then cut out, then worked for 10 minutes then cut out. At reception they brightly informed us that this was usually the case. I couldn’t believe they were charging so much for internet that was essentially useless so we got our 600 Bhat back and headed out to the local internet café where we got done what we needed in 20 minutes for only 20 Bhat (about 40p).

Just as we were leaving the internet café a couple walked past – none other than Mr Garlick himself! Remarkable considering they are not even staying in our resort! They were headed to Prego, an Italian restaurant, which is where we had been planning to eat on their recommendation. However, first they were going to the swish Amari hotel as it was happy hour. We were more than happy with this plan so we reserved a table at Prego and then headed to the Amari.

The Amari had the beds that we had so enjoyed lounging on at Nest in Cambodia and all 4 of us dived onto one of those for a catch up over a drink or 2 (OK 3!).

From there we went to Prego for some good Italian food. It seems that the Garlicks are a lot like us in that they enjoy good food and good wine and so we were having a lovely evening with plenty of both.

After Prego we headed to another regular haunt of theirs, Legends bar. The music was right up our street as were the 100 Bhat cocktails. Although the Long Island Iced Tea nearly blew my head off. I also sampled the Mojito and Strawberry Fields Forever. We were eventually thrown out as the bar closed around us and the evening was beginning to get a little messy.

Further down the road was a truly terrible live band with two Thai girls as the lead singers and a band behind them of dubious sexuality. The bar was busy, although I think this had more to do with the novelty value rather than the calibre of music. We decided to join the throng and get a few more beers in there.

When this bar closed around us and we were thrown out for the second time that night you’d think we’d get the message and head on home. But no! Another trick the Garlick’s were keen to teach us was that

a)      you can walk back to your hotel down the beach – which is far nicer than the road which runs parallel to it

b)      You can buy beer at the 7-11 to accompany you on the journey.

We stopped in the 7-11 and bought a couple of 4 packs and then headed down to the beach for a couple more beers before calling it a night and going our separate ways. I’d love to tell you we sat and had scintillating conversation about world news and current affairs but sadly I can’t remember and I imagine we just babbled nonsense in the way that 4 drunkards do at the end of a good night.

And then Franky stepped it up a notch. He decided that the sea looked truly inviting and he was going for a dip, naked. We sat and laughed as all we could see was my husband’s white bum reflecting the moonlight as his frolicked in the waves. It looked like fun…… so after a little deliberation all 3 of us were stripping off to join him!!!!

Sorry Mum (AGAIN)!

After our dip we’d run out of beer and realised that it was really time to call it a night so we parted company and went our separate ways to our respective hotels. I can’t speak for the Garlick’s but after a shower to remove the sand and salt, which Franky has absolutely no recollection of, we fell into an alcohol induced coma.

Day 86

Wednesday 26^th Jaunary 2011

As I suspected Franky awoke still very much drunk and demanding to know why I had set the alarm for 11.00am. He was less than impressed when I reminded him it was because we had to vacate the hotel room by 12 noon and his belongings were scattered far and wide – an amazing feat since the hotel room was only about 10 feet square!

By 11.30am I had finally coaxed him out of bed. Largely by the use of paracetamol, ibuprofen and anything else I could promise would help with the impending monster whiskey induced hangover that he was brewing. Miraculously by 12.05pm we were in reception and had successfully checked out leaving nothing behind. Although Franky had employed his usual trick of packing his bag relatively easily and then discovering major omissions like his trainers which he would then attempt to stuff into his hand luggage to avoid the need to repack.

Next door but one was an Irish bar called the Green vesper which did a a monster breakfast called the full monty. Almost worthy of a place at Frank’s family breakfast on Sundays this comprised 3 eggs, 3 sausages, 4 rashers of bacon, 2 hash browns, 2 slices of toast and REAL HEINZ BEANS. Franky ordered it immediately in the hope it would help with the beer sweats he was now experiencing. I, however, decided to was more lunchtime than breakfast and had a roast beef sandwich.

We had a couple of hours to kill before we went to the airport. Initially the plan had been to go and shoot some guns. Well Franky was going to and I was going to watch. Allegedly you could play with AK47s, M16s. shotguns, bazookas and grenades. However, we’d met a couple of boys who had gone to play army the day before and said that in reality they had no ammunition for the majority of the weapons and it wasn’t worth the money. There was no one more surprised than me when my desperately hung over husband turned to me and said that instead he would like to go shopping. Shopping??? I nearly fell off my chair! Seemingly one of the few conversations he could remember having with Gordon as they exhausted the whiskey supply of Hotel California last night was that Gordon had been to the Russian markets. Yes, Russian markets in Cambodia! I have no idea why they were called the Russian markets as there was nothing Russian about them. They were full of Cambodian people selling Cambodian produce in Cambodia. However, the crux was this, much of the designer branded stuff we buy at home today is made out here in the east. This market was selling off the reject stock, a stitch may have been missed or the size wasn’t quite right. Apart form that it was genuine designer brands at massively reduced prices. And Franky wanted some.

There was a throng of tuk tuk drivers hovering over the entrance of the restaurant as we ate. The tuk tuk drivers of Cambodia really take getting your custom to the next level. They generally come into the bar where you are eating or drinking to see if you will want a tuk tuk once you are finished, if so they will wait. This really infuriates us so on principle we walk out of the bar and then find a different driver just down the street who hasn’t been mithering us. It’s petty but pleases us no end!

We get to the Russian markets after another hair raising journey through the streets of Cambodia’s capital. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of time to spare here before we have to head to the airport. This is perhaps a good thing. It is baking hot amongst the tightly packed stalls. The market is very sensibly divided into genre. We, however, seem to miss the clothing section completely as we enter and waste time wandering through hardware, motor cycle parts and the butchery section where carcasses are being chopped up – every conceivable part being used and put on sale. I wasn’t hungover but the stench in there made me feel positively nauseous.

We happened across DVDs which weren’t on our list originally but soon were. We came away with Family Guy series 1 to 8, The long way down, The long way round,  film with Matt Damon that Franky took a punt on as it was less than a quid and the Killing Fields which stars the guy whose book I have been reading.

Finally we found the polo shirts Franky had been hankering after in a huge pile, Abercromie and Fitch originals for £3 each. There was a tiny Cambodian stall owner stood on a box peeking out over the top. The sizes were quite variable so he had to strip off and try them on – no mean feat when you’re dripping with sweat and there’s no space to move. After choosing 4 T-Shirts we really had to go and it was back to the tuk tuk.

We picked our bags up from the hotel and headed out to the airport, glad to leave the crazy Cambodian traffic behind us.

We had a flight to Bangkok which took just one hour. This was with Air Asia, the budget airline equivalent of Easyjet. The seat pitches were of the same size too. Franky folded himself in and as the seatbelt sign clicked off the tiny Asian lady in front reclined her seat… but not for long before Franky told her to put it back up. For God’s sake we’re only travelling for an hour in the middle of the day!

We arrived at Bangkok and lost another hour of our lives in the immigration queue. Although at least they don’t charge for your visas. We’d been charged $20 to enter Cambodia and $25 to leave!!!!!

From arrivals we headed straight to departures and checked in for our next flight to Koh Samui. Fortunately this was only a domestic flight and so immigration didn’t have to be involved.

This was another short flight and we touched down in Koh Samui at 10.00pm. I was mortified to see that the tarmac was wet. Not more rain, please not more rain? I was so hoping for the last 8 days to involve nothing more than sunning myself by a pool sipping cocktails – a true honeymoon end to the honeymoon.

Out hotel minibus was waiting for us as arranged and soon we had been whisked to our resort. We were checked in and lead to our room…… to discover a heart made of rose petals on the bed – awwwww! We keep forgetting it’s our honeymoon – after all we’ve been married almost 3 months but little reminders like this are cool.

We were pretty tired after our day of travelling but I was keen to have quick scoot around. We found the pool let straight out onto the beach from our hotel and along the beach we could see coloured lights and signs of life. Drawn like moths we headed towards the light to see what was going on and found a little reggae bar on the beach with people chilling out on the sand and having a beer. We joined them for a drink and then decided to walk up to the road and see what else we could find.

We learned that we had actually come in the opposite direction from the centre of town and so walked back, past our hotel and on into the centre. The centre of Chaweng was pumping with music blaring out of brightly lit bars and people enjoying themselves. I think this is going to be right up our street for the next couple of nights. Although I was slightly perturbed by the fact that many of the revellers were made up of pretty young Thai girls who were scantily clad and hanging off the arms of Western men who were old enough to be their Father.

We weren’t really in the mood for this party scene tonight so after a quick beer in one of the quieter bars we headed back down the hotel for some sleep.

Day 85

Tuesday 25^th January 2011

Cue the most depressing day of the honeymoon. I knew the killing fields weren’t going to all be sunshine and lollipops but I had no idea how harrowing the day would be.

I guess people are wondering why we would do this on our trip but I believe if you are privileged enough to be able to travel the world then sometimes it is important to understand how the lives of the people you meet have been influenced by what has gone before. The more people who come to Cambodia and see first hand the atrocities that were committed here just 30 years ago the less chance there is of this happening again, here or in any other country.

Since arriving in Cambodia we have seen numerous amputees who are land mine victims. Some are just begging by the side of the road. Some are trying to make a living selling books to travellers. Others had formed a band and were busking. What is particularly poignant is that they have flocked to the cities to try and get money to send home as the majority also have wives and children back in their native villages. These land mines were planted largely by the Khmer Rouge as they fled back into the countryside after they were overthrown by the Vietnamese in 1979.

We got up and breakfasted in the hotel before arranging a tuk tuk driver for the day at reception. The first stop was Choueng Ek, better known as the killing fields. This is one of many such killing fields used by the Khmer Rouge during their time in power from 1975 to 1979. It is the most accessible as it is only 17km from the centre of Phnom Penh and hence is also the most famous and the most visited.

On first arrival the first impression is what a peaceful site this now is. A stupa has been erected as a memorial to all those who lost their lives here. The stupa is filled with the bones of those victims that have been exhumed from the mass graves.

Truckloads of victims were brought here from prisons such as S-21 in Phnom Penh. It is estimated that at the peak of the regime as many as 300 people per day could have been executed here  – mostly Cambodian and Vietnamese although the remains of a few Europeans have also been found. The communist Khmer rouge undertook ethnic cleansing against their own people. They supported only true Khmer Cambodians – typically with dark skin and wide eyes as compared with the more yellow skin and slanted eyes of the Chinese or Vietnamese Cambodians. They believed that they could rebuild the whole country using only labourers and country people. On April 17^th 1975 after a bitter civil war they took control of Phnom Penh and ordered all the city dwellers out into the countryside to work, to farm, to build irrigation channels and dams to further increase rice production. Phnom Penh was left as a ghost town. These people were forced to live in large camps and settlements. They were not free to cook for themselves instead they were fed from common kitchens – watery rice soup twice per day that was not sufficient to live on. Thousands of people died from malnutrition or diseases like dysentery and malaria. The Khmer Rouge believed the country could be completely self sufficient as farmers – there was to be no schools, no religion, no banks, no hospitals not even any money. They therefore did not see the need for teachers, lawyers, doctors or any professional people. Any such people were slaughtered as were the upper classes and soldiers or the relatives of soldiers who had fought in the civil war against them. You were thought to be intellectual just for wearing glasses – this enough reason to be killed. In later years Khmer Rouge soldiers were also killed due to suspicions that they had defected or were not trustworthy.

At the Choeung Ek site 85 of 129 mass graves have been excavated since 1980 when the site was discovered. These graves our now pits filled with grass.

However, when the rains come bones and clothing are still mobilised and come up to the surface. Underfoot scraps of clothing and bits of femur can be seen protruding from the earth. It is estimated that 14 000 people may have been buried here. Only 8985 bodies have actually been exhumed. The largest mass grave was found to contain the bodies of 450 people. One grave contained only women and babies who were all naked. The babies were slaughtered infront of the mothers by swinging them by the ankles against a tree to break their skulls or by tossing them into the air and catching them on the bayonet before casting the body into the pit. A further grave contained the remains of 166 headless bodies. All these people were innocent. The soldiers used chemicals such as DDT partly to mask the smell at the site and partly to ensure the death of anyone who was buried alive.

As you can imagine it was a sobering morning wandering around the site in the Cambodian sunshine. It is impossible to imagine the atrocities that were performed their by Cambodians against their own people.

During the 4 years that the Khmer Rouge were in power it is estimated that between 2 to 3 million people died. The population of Cambodia at that time was only 7 million so between a quarter to a half of the population was wiped out.

After wandering around the site and learning about the regime in the museum where we watched a short film we were happy to leave. However, I did not know that the worst was yet to come at the genocide museum back in the centre of town.

Tuol Sleng was a school. On April 17^th 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh and evacuated all of its residents the school was converted to office 21 or known as S-21. It was designed for the detention, interrogation, inhuman torture and killing after confession of the detainees. The arrival of every prisoner was documented. They were given a number and photographs taken both on arrival and if they died during torture. Those who did not die would eventually be sent to the killing fields for their final execution. It is estimated that 20 000 people spent time at S-21 during the regime. Only 7 people survived. Of these 4 are alive today. Imprisonment typically lasted from 2 to 4 months although political prisoners such those accused of leading the uprising against Pol Pot were detained for 6 to 8 months and subjected to more torture.

On January 7^th 1979 the Vietnamese arrived in Phnom Penh and found the prison. They found photographs of the victims and negatives and prisoner confessions. People were forced under torture to either confess to crimes that they had not committed, to being professional people or from the military or to crimes that were not permitted under the regime such as cooking your own meals.

In 1979 there were 14 prisoners remaining in the torture rooms, one of whom was female. It seemed they were undergoing interrogation and torture when the Khmer Rouge heard that the Vietnamese had overthrown their army and they fled, leaving the prisoners as they were. The prisoners all died before the Vietnamese arrived and were so badly beaten and decomposed that they could not be identified. These 14 corpses were buried by the Vietnamese infront of building A and now 14 white stone coffins remain in their memoriam.

The Vietnamese took photographs as they found these 14 prisoners and these photographs are on display in the same rooms as the torture took place. They were not for the faint hearted. The iron beds and shackles were still in the rooms as were some of the boxes the prisoners used to contain their bodily wastes and the tools that the Khmer Rouge used to torture them – such as shovels. The floor was tiled with the same yellow and white tiles as in the photographs and in the middle of the rooms where the beds were standing the tiles were noticeably stained a darker colour from the blood and faeces of the prisoners. It was truly grim.

Just 8 months after its discovery on the 19^th of August 1979 the prison was opened as the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. The school comprised 4 buildings, each 3 storeys tall. The first or A block was where the torture took place. This had glass windows so that the other inmates couldn’t hear the screams. The other three were used to house the prisoners. The men were housed in tiny individual cells only 80 cm wide and less than 2 m long. It would have been permanently dark and dirty and cramped. They could wash twice a month.

Larger rooms housed large numbers of women and children. The front of the buildings were covered in a fishnet of barbed wire to prevent the prisoners committing suicide by jumping from the upper storeys. The third building still had its barbed wire in place for us to see.

The larger cells now housed various artefacts including further torture implements, the chair where inmates were sat for their photographs on arrival and hundred and hundreds of photographs of the Cambodian people who were tortured here. Their petrified eyes bearing down on you from every display board. There were also a number of paintings that have been done from the memory of one of the 7 survivors from S-21 of the sights he saw during his time there.

A wooden pool outside the second building in the yard was once used for physical education at the school. The Khmer Rouge turned this into an interrogation and torture machine. The interrogator tied both hands of the prisoner behind their back and lifted the prisoner upside down. This action was repeated a number of times until the prisoner lost consciousness, then the interrogator dipped the prisoners head into a bucket of filthy water. This shocked the victims back into consciousness so the torturer could continue their questioning.

Our guide at the prison was a Cambodian lady from Phnom Penh who said that she was just 13 years old when the Khmer Rouge took control of the country. She was sent out into the countryside to work. She lived in a long house with children of her own age away from her family and was forced to work long hours in the fields for little or no food for 4 years. In 1980 after the Khmer Rouge were defeated she found her Mother and returned to Phnom Penh. Her Father and Brother had been slaughtered. I struggled to comprehend how she could do the job she did – for a measly $6 or £4 she took us around the prison and explained what had occurred there. I was struggling to come to terms with it and it was so far removed from anything I have ever known but she lived through it and came face to face with it every day as part of her job. That said every single Cambodian has lost numerous friends and family during the Khmer Rouge era. Maybe for them it is sadly a normal part of everyday life.

Unbelievably very few people have been brought to justice for the atrocities here. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge was never tried. He was held under house arrest until he died in 1998. Pol Pot was a nickname and one of many aliases used by Sa Lut Sor – this one stood for ‘Political Potential’. The leader of the S-21 prison has, however, been brought to justice. His name is Kang Keck Lev, nicknamed Duch. He was arrested in 1999, some 20 years after the Khmer Rouge were defeated. He was then held until trial in 2010. Just last year on the 26^th of July he was found guilty of mass genocide and was sentenced to 35 years in jail. He is 67 and so will live the remainder of his life in prison. I’m not sure that is a fitting sentence for what he was involved in but at least he is no longer a free man. There are just 4 other leaders of the Khmer rouge who are awaiting trial. What is even more galling is that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge were intellectuals such as teachers and generally came from well to do families, exactly the people they were slaughtering. 

The Khmer Rouge were so-called because of their uniform. Black like the Chinese communists but with a traditional Cambodian Krama or scarf which was always red,

In contrast the Khmer Rouge army was made up of uneducated teenagers from rural villages who were easily brainwashed when promised a better life. Once indoctrinated into the regime they couldn’t leave. If they didn’t carry out the orders to torture and kill their innocent kinsmen they would surely be killed themselves. However, when the Vietnamese took power of Phnom Penh on the 7^th of January 1979 many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers deserted and ran away. Now they are living out their days amongst the normal people of Cambodia and will never admit their past. I found this quite hard to deal with as anyone we see who is my age or older here is a survivor of this regime and may have been involved in carrying out the horrendous acts that I have seen and heard about today.

After the Khmer Rouge was ousted from power in 1979 Cambodia was then under rule by the Vietnamese and has only been truly free from civil war since 1999. Perhaps this is why little is developed in this country. In some ways it seems to be far behind its neighbours such as Thailand. On our bus journey to Phnom Penh I was amazed to see that life in the countryside has changed little since the way it was described in my book back in the 1950s. Entire families are still living is tiny little wooden huts with palm thatched roofs built on stilts at the edge of the paddy fields, the rice paddies being farmed by men using ploughs pulled by oxen. For many years the aims for Cambodia have been to increase exports of Cambodian rice, to increase the harvest and utilise mechanisation in its production. They were some of the aims of the Khmer Rouge in 1977 – not a bad idea but sadly the Khmer Rouge had a number of ideas and regimes that made this unachievable. Cambodia has only truly been free to develop since 1999 when the civil war ended and the people have a long way to take the little country so ravaged by the wars.

After such a day it was difficult to go back to the city and continue with the honeymoon. We stopped off in a bar for a drink and snack before heading back to the hotel to reflect on the day. I was still reading Survival In the Killing Fields but having seen the site and prison today it was far more real that I could ever have imagined from the pages of the book.

We eventually headed downstairs to our hotel bar for a drink. We were planning on having a couple and then heading down the road for some tea. However, Gordon, the Irish lawyer we’d met the night before popped up to ask about our day. We gave him a brief overview as he was intending to visit the killing fields the following day and then got chatting to him so decided to stay and eat at the hotel. One beer soon turned into 19 again but by 1.45am I was ready for bed. Gordon and Franky were still going strong so I retired and left them to it. Some 3 hours later a very wobbly boy knocked on the hotel room door asking to be let in. He delightedly informed me that he was not at all drunk and would have absolutely no problem getting up and packing in just 6 hours time. He also informed me that they had come to bed because the bar had run out of single malt whiskey which Gordon had been buying. Oh dear!

Day 84

Monday 24^th January 2011

Another lie in, its almost like were on holiday! Today were off to Phnom Penh on the bus (6 hours, joy!) and its coming to collect us at 11:30. By the time we’d packed (the one thing I’m sick of is packing my sodding bag) it was 10:30 but Suz really wanted to go back to the ‘Blue Pumpkin’ café that we frequented yesterday. I suggested that we should get a Tuk Tuk to save time, the café was only 10 minutes walk away but we were on the minutes so Suz agreed. We stepped outside and when we normally do this every tuk tuk drivier in South East Asia appears and shouts “tuk tuk? Tuk tuk sir? Tuk tuk? And we always say “no thank you”. It’s a tiresome game which tends to continue all over the city, sometimes in a bar the drivers will approach your table with the dreaded “tuk tuk? Tuk tuk sir? Tuk tuk? I’M HAVING A DRINK!!

Anyway this morning when we stepped outside there were none to be found, the only day we actually would have said yes, typical. So we hot footed it over to the café and ordered, received and promptly wolfed down breakfast before striding back to the hotel in time for the bus.

As it turned out we needn’t have bothered, the bus was late collecting us and when it arrived it had “The Mekong Express Limousine” emblazoned down the side of it, but today it appeared to be camouflaged as a shitty mini bus from 1978.

This took us to the station where we boarded another bus and soon enough we were on our way. The journey itself was uneventful and not too painful. I watched “Slumdog Millionaire” which I’d never seen it before, its good innit! and “Robin Hood” (the new one with Russell Crowe) which was all right, I couldn’t quite figure out what accent ol’ Russell was trying to do! Anyway the film wasn’t too bad.

We had a brief tioilet stop with some not so appetising fare on offer, not dissimilar to the stuff I'd sampled in Bangkok, but this time I wasn't drunk. Fortunately Suz had had the foresight to bring a packed lunch for us from the Blue Pumpkin so we didn't have to eat the locusts.

And then before I knew it we’d arrived in Phnom Penh and I turned to Suz and said “well this is another fine shithole you’ve brought me to darling”. We exchanged sarcastic smiles and disembarked. The level of Tuk Tuk harassment seems to have gone up a notch in Phnom Penh, the bus company have put a barrier up to prevent them grabbing your bags out of the bus and putting them on their Tuk Tuks. My bag was the last bag off and no sooner had I put the straps on my shoulders the Tuk Tukkers were all over us, they’d come through the barrier and were shouting;

“Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk Tuk”.

They sounded like an army of crickets. I raised my arms and shouted “NO!!!!”

Luckily our accommodation was only two doors down from the bus station so we walked around the corner and immediately arrived. This didn’t stop 4 (that’s 4!) of the Tuk Tukkers following us to make sure we weren’t lying. Honest to God!!

During the whole of the bus journey I had been dripping in sweat, the sun seemed to be magnified by the windows and I baked like a spud for six hours so the first port of call was a shower. The bathroom was another one of those ones where you can shit, shower, shave without moving an inch. The shower was powerful though so there were no complaints, even if it did drip on your head when you were trying to do your morning business.

We napped and then went downstairs for some tea and a few beers. I tried unsuccessfully to contact some of the jobs I’ve applied for as I have been shortlisted for interview which is great, but the interviews are on the 26^th January, not so great (I’ll  be in Thailand). The only number I could get through to was my Mum, so I asked her to sort it all out for me and she did, thanks Mum!!

We sat and watched some American Football (it happened to be on the telly) and a bloke came a sat at the table next to us. We soon got chatting and he joined us on our table. He introduced himself as Gordon and told us that he had just flown in from Hong Kong where he had been to visit and old school friend. He stated that he’d had a great time but was now feeling the effects of a 2/3 day bender. So we had a few more beers with Gordon but soon enough he was feeling the pace and retired to bed. We had arranged to Skype my mother to find out what was going on with the job interviews so we got our bill. Our bill said that we’d had 19 beers. 19? Surely not that means I’ve ten in the last two hours! We argued the toss back and fourth for ten minutes until I was tired and just paid. It was $35 dollars and that included the tea that we’d ate so it didn’t really matter.

When we got upstairs Suz did some calculations and we realised that we probably had the 19 beers plus 2 more that we’d brought to the room, so to celebrate I drank all the beer in the mini bar too! We ended up Skyping both sets of parents before falling into a beer coma.

We plan to visit the “Killing Fields” tomorrow, I’m sure the hangover wont add much joy to the day.

Day 83

Sunday 23^rd January 2011

Oh dear, Suz doesn’t look so good this morning and confirms that she’s not too clever with a grunt and a low murmur of ooooowwwwwwww! The red wine obviously took its toll. We hauled ourselves out of bed for a leisurely 12:30 and headed back towards “pub street” (for sustenance not alcohol). We ate in the bar opposite the bar we watched United trounce the Brum in last night and had a scrumptious ciabatta each and lots of liquid.

The sun was blazing and even in the shade it was too hot for us so we went looking for a café with air con and Wi-Fi. We found them both at the blue pumpkin, a lovely little café just off pub street. We ordered an iced coffee a piece and decided that we’d catch up with the blog. We wiled away a few hours in their before heading back to the hotel for a nap, shower, change.

Tonight we’d decided that we would visit the Angkor night market which is vast but everyone seems to be selling pretty much the same stuff. Either fake t-shirts, fake watches or artwork seems to be the sum total. I spied a nice Tag Heuer replica in one of the stalls and enquired as to the price and was startled to find out that the bloke wanted $35 for it. I started laughing and the guy said to me;

Stall seller: “Why you laugh? Is good watch, is from Japan.”

Me: “Well that’s no good mate, ‘Tags’ are made in Switzerland!”

I think it was lost on him. Suffice it to say that I didn’t buy the watch; even though he eventually crumbled to $20 I had seen them elsewhere for $5.

We ate at the island bar which was at the back of the market and they served us very pleasant Cambodian food which was some spring rolls, chicken curry and a beef dish, something like “luk lak”. We washed them down with a couple of cold beers before taking on the market sellers once more.

Suz wanted to buy some art with a monk on it so we went looking for that. We found various examples but she couldn’t find the one she wanted so we wandered back over to the market we were at the night before to secure the desired artwork. That done we wanted to try the “Dr Fish Massage” that are on just about every street and street corner.

Basically you put your feet in a fish tank and hundreds of fish eat away the dead skin on your feet (they are obsessed with feet in Cambodia!!). To entice you in they also offer a free beer and a back massage all for $2. Winner! Its incredibly ticklish to begin with, the fish sort of head butt your feet to disturb the skin and then kiss them to get it off, very strange and resulted in me squealing like 4 year old at Christmas for a good five minutes! You eventually get used to it and people in the street stop staring at you with sympathy in their eyes!

From there we headed back to pub street and settled down to watch the Blackburn Vs West Brom game. The bloke next to me got up after twenty minutes and left, he’d been expecting to watch Real Madrid and when I informed him they wouldn’t be on until later he replied in a thick French accent “well I’m not watching dis shit”. Nobody asked you too pal.

In fairness to Frenchy the game was shit and Suz was doing the ‘nodding dog’ next to me so we decided to call it a night. Back at the room I watched the second half (it didn’t get any better) and Suz fell asleep next to me.

Day 82

Saturday 22^nd January 2011

After several days off pampering and TLC the Sony camera has FINALLY dried out and seems to be working again. Perfect! I really want to be able to take some quality photos today of the temples……. And then I realised that both batteries are completely dead so this is not going to happen. Although I was both delighted and relieved that it seems to be working again.

We get up to check out the breakfast in the hotel – it aint bad although the bacon is a bit random! We’ve booked an English speaking guide and a tuk tuk for our tour of the temples today and they collect us in reception at 10.00am. The Khmer civilisation centred on Angkor was one of the most remarkable to flourish in South East Asia. Between the 8^th and 13^th centuries, a succession of Hindu and Buddhist kings created numerous magnificent temples in stone. I hadn’t realised the sheer scale of the sights that were on offer here in Siem Reap – apparently you can spend a week exploring all the different sights. We decided to dedicate just one day to this and so told our guide we wanted to see the pick of the bunch.

First up was Angkor Wat – the grandest and most famous temple. This was built under the reign of Suryavarman II between 1113 and 1150 and was also a city within its own right. It was staggering to believe that they could create something so vast and so beautiful in just 40 years by hand although our guide assured us that thousands of Khmer people were involved in the construction. By comparison the Indian Government are currently restoring Ta Prohm, a much smaller temple that we saw later in the day, and they will take 10 years just to restore it, despite having modern tools and equipment!

The outer limits of Angkor Wat are set by its broad moat. I was amazed at how a relatively poor country such as Cambodia is taking care of its heritage, al be it with help from UNESCO. The moat is kept permanently irrigated, even during the dry season that they are currently experiencing. The country only has sufficient water for one rice harvest a year in comparison with 3 in neighbouring Vietnam and yet they choose to irrigate the moat at Angkor Wat rather than divert water to farming. The whole site is also kept meticulously clean. We saw workers removing weeds from the moat and clearing the roads of dust and leaves. It makes sense when you hear that Angkor Wat and the associated temples draw thousands of tourists a day. Those tourists bring the money that Cambodia depends on with almost everyone in Siem reap depending on tourism through one form or another. The bulk of the tourists come from neighbouring Southern Asian countries – Vietnam, China and Japan and they were EVERYWHERE!!!

The total area of the Angkor Wat site is almost 200 hectares – we spent a couple of hours with our guide exploring the central stone temple. Much of the original city, including the Royal palace is no longer standing as they were constructed out of wood and bamboo. Only buildings dedicated to Gods were built in stone and so only these remain standing. It comprises typical Khmer architecture of a pyramid and concentric galleries surrounding the 5 central towers.

I was gutted to discover much of the front face of the Wat covered in scaffolding and green sheeting. Restoration work was being undertaken sponsored by the German Government – bloody Germans! Is this the ultimate equivalent of putting your towel on a sun lounger? ‘No you can’t look at Angkor Wat until we’ve finished restoring it!!!!’

Fortunately once inside the first gallery the sheeting was no longer visible.

The gallery walls are all intricately carved and sculpted. Each different scene telling a Hindu story. There were even sanskrit inscriptions detailing the story being told or giving information on the King and how people lived at that time. These inscriptions have gievn a valuable insgith into the lives of the ancitent Angkor people.

Our guide was very informative and spent some time explaining the stories as we went along. We were both grateful to be out of the beating sun but the temperature in the shaded galleries was still well over 30^oC.

Angkor Wat was originally constructed as a dedication to Vishnu, the Hindu God.  This is due to Indian influences on the Khmer people. However, in later years it has been converted to Buddhism, Buddhism is very closely linked to Hinduism with Buddha being one of the forms that Vishnu took. The moats represent the oceans surrounding the earth, the concentric galleries represent mountain ranges surrounding the home of the Gods. The towers represent the mountain’s peaks and the experience of the ascent to the central shrine is convincingly like climbing a mountain. The stone steps were narrow and huge as the ascent to heaven is not meant to be an easy one.

However, there were 5 staircases leading to the central shrine. Four have these treacherous steps. The 5^th was built for the king and he was given a much gentler climb!!!Nowadays a secondary wooden staircase has been provided for the tourists to avoid them falling to certain death!

Sadly many of the Buddhist statues are headless due to looting during times of Cambodia’s troubled past. We even saw bullet holes in the walls from the civil wars. Fortunately much of the temples remained in tact as both sides of the opposition respected the Khmer heritage.

The highlight for Franky was not provided by the awe inspiring age old world wonder but by the monkeys living in the grounds. I have to confess they were very cute and inexplicably cheeky. Seemingly they thrive here as hunting is banned within the Angkor sites.

They were tame and keen to investigate what we had to offer them. I thought we had nothing as we had no food but they seemed equally happy to unload our water from us! The larger ones could even drink from the bottle without help. There was a clear hierarchy with the smaller monkeys waiting until the bigger ones had had their fill before taking water from us.

One cheeky one climbed up Franky’s leg and had his hand in his back pockets to investigate what else he might get out of us. Finally one over exuberant youngster knocked the bottle from Franky’s hand, spilling the remaining water and spoiling the fun for everyone!

After a couple of hours we had exhausted the key sights here and it was time for lunch.

We were taken to a Cambodian restaurant just outside Angkor Wat. I was delighted as I was keen to try out the local cuisine. Our guide recommended the chicken curry that was served in a hollowed out coconut shell.

We also selected the ‘Beef on Volcano’. This is not indicative of the spiciness of the dish but the fact that this is a Cambodian barbeque. The meat is brought to the table raw with a kind of hot plate device. There is soup in a tray around the outside where you put the vegetables to cook (green beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions and a random leafy vegetable called Morning Glory). You then put butter on the hot plate, braise the meat in raw egg, lime juice, salt and pepper throw it on using chop sticks. When the beef is cooked to your liking you take it off with the chopsticks and munch it down.

It was entertaining grappling with the chopsticks. Franky had a childhood flashback of using chopsticks after Eric had brought them back from working away in China. He and Matt used to eat Chinese food wearing their black silk dressing gowns that were also a gift from Dad! Today he had to make do with a napkin as a hat!

After lunch and copious amounts of water to replace the bucketloads we were losing in sweat we were back in the tuk tuk and off to Ta Prohm. This is a temple made famous by Angelina Jolie in the movie Tomb Raider.  

This is the doorway used in the film

This is on a smaller sale than Angkor Wat but impressive nonetheless. It was built in the later 12^th century. We  found it in an overgrown and collapsed state with trees interlaced amongst the ruins.

This temple was chosen to be left as an example of how most of Angkor looked on discovery in the 1800s. This decision still required a significant amount of work to make the temple accessible and work is constantly being undertaken to prevent further collapse. The trees themselves are responsible for much of the collapse. The roots push between the stones and make the walls unstable. However the trees cannot be cut down as death of the supporting roots would also result in further collapse.

I have to say the decision to maintain the temple in a state of apparent neglect is genius as the tree roots winding through the temple structures give a romantic appeal and a completely different feel to the pristine renovation of Angkor Wat. The trees also provided us with welcome shade and an escape from the sun.

After an hour here it was time to move onto to our third and final site. We entered the ancient Angkor city of Angkor Thom. This was built in the late 12^th century by Jayavrarman VII and was the original capital of the Khmer civilisation. It remained so until the 1600s. The walled city covers an area of 900 hectares but we were just going to 2 important sites.

We entered through the Eastern or Victory gate and went to the Terrace of the Elephants.

It is likely that this would have supported wooden buildings of the King but now only the stone terrace remains. This terrace faces the eastern victory gate and so the king would have sat here watching his army display before heading off to war and on their victorious return. This King was one of the most canny Kings in Khmer history as he embraced both Hindu and Buddhist religions and thus avoided and religious tensions. He was also undefeated until his death. His death was then kept secret to avoid inevitable attack from the Thai people who had previously been afraid to take on the undefeated King.

The Bayon temple is in the exact centre of Angkor Thom city and was the third and final temple on our list of ‘must see temples’. This temple uses a mass of face towers to create a stone mountain.

There were originally 49 towers – each with faces of Buddha. Although now only 37 are standing with 2, 3 or 4 faces on each tower – and even more on the central tower. The number of towers or faces do not have any symbolic significance as many were added at different points in history.

This was an impressive temple but to be honest we were getting templed out. We wandered around getting some shots in the late afternoon sun. The temperature was still soaring even late in the afternoon and after this temple we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel for a well earned rest.

The Southern gate to the city of Angkor Thom is the best preserved and we exited the city through this gate in a convoy of tuk tuks taking weary, hot and dusty tourists back into town after a hard day of temple sight seeing. On either side of the road 2 rows of figures carry the body of a giant serpent – a 7 headed naga – almost in the attitude of a tug of war.

On arrival back at the hotel is was time for a shower and a sleep before we headed out for the night. Franky had spotted a nice looking restaurant called Nest the day before and was keen to try it out. On arrival it turned out to be a bit pricier than the other Siem reap restaurants but had been voted Cambodia’s best restaurant in 2009 so we decided to give it a try. It was well worth it. We both had steak and it was delicious, complemented perfectly with a bottle of Argentinean red wine.

The wine was so good that after the meal we decided to retire to the Bar for a second bottle! Here we understood why the restaurant was called Nest. The bar area had a series of ‘beds’ with mini tables instead of the regular tables and chairs you would find in a bar area. It was great – we lay back supping wine and digesting our food.

We sensibly decided against a third bottle and headed to Pub Street to watch Utd vs Birmingham – a 5 nil drumming accompanied by a few pints of Angkor beer! The bar shut after the match but we were on fine form and not ready to call it a night so were delighted to stumble across Molly Malone’s, an Irish bar, on the way home.

There was a dart board with 2 blokes playing darts so Franky bowled over to ask them if they fancied a game of doubles. He wasn’t banking on the 2 blokes being French, or that they didn’t have the first idea how to play darts. So he introduced them to a game played in the pubs back home that some of you will know - Mickey Mouse. It was all going swimmingly with Tony and Bastion. The dart board left a lot to be desired – just a painted piece of cork with a bulls eye made of cotton wool but that didn’t spoil our enjoyment of the game…….

I was suddenly aware of a noticeable change in the boys as two girls arrived. One a petite French girl who was Bastion’s girlfriend and the other a Vietnamese girl with a face like thunder who turned out to be Tony’s pregnant wife. The tale goes that the boys had said they were staying out for one more beer and would be home in 30 mins….. 2 hours ago. The girls were in the hotel having gone to bed when the angry Vietnamese wife dragged the poor French girl up to go and find them. Franky tried to pacify her that it was probably all his fault for involving them in the game but she was having none of it as apparently this is Tony’s usual behaviour.

The situation probably wasn’t helped by a pretty Cambodian girl who had been keen to join in with us and was taking a go at throwing Tony’s darts when the angry wife arrived. Franky quickly declared the game over with us as the winners (we were in the lead) and suggested we joined the Cambodian girl who was sat with some Western tourists at the other end of the bar, thus leaving the French lads to pacify their women. This was the second time tonight he had misjudged nationality as we were now sat with 3 middle aged Slovakian men who had clearly picked up the young, pretty Cambodian girl and her friend for the evening – delightful!

We tried to pay our bill only to be informed that the French lads had paid for our 6 beers as well as their own. They refused to take any money from us for this so we made a hasty retreat and headed home to bed.