Cambodia. On Tuesday, Gary separated from our group, and the remaining three of us took a bus across the border at Moc Bai into Cambodia to Phnom Penh. We were able to book a pseudo-taxi driver to get us to Siem Reap that night, which was definitely worth the (relatively) high price. (Transportation gets really tricky in Cambodia, cuz buses across the country only run like once a day. I found out this trip that travel/transit time is definitely the maker/breaker of trip planning.)
Travelling in Cambodia is kinda funky (in a good way) cuz for all true purposes, the commonly used currency is the US dollar. Sure, you need to get a few bucks worth of Cambodian riel, but all transactions over like a buck or two are done in USD. It's also a curious oddity that supposedly there are no ATM's in the entire country that can access foreign bank accounts. Add to that the fact that basically no other countries will exchange for Cambodian riel (they won't buy it from you, so any bills you take out of the country are only good for souvenir value), so I kept thinking of the riel as only slightly above seashells and shiny stones in terms of monetary value. =P Anyways, cuz of the country's third world status, a dollar goes a pretty long way. We stayed in a place that could be a 3- or 4-star place for like US$10 a night (for 3 ppl). The ticket to get into Angkor is like the biggest purchase you probably make (US$40 for a 3-day pass), but it's definitely worth it. To tell the truth, Angkor's the only really amazing thing I saw in Cambodia.
Ok, so like the entire 100 sq. mile area complex or so is known as Angkor. But it's sometimes casually referred to as Angkor Wat by tourists, when that's actually the name of just the one most famous temple that is itself like only 1 sq. mile (which is actually still pretty big). And Siem Reap is the city you stay in to go see Angkor Wat (like 15 minutes away).
Angkor was amazing. The level of detail and the sheer size/scale of the place was unbelievable. So much intricately carved stone, and the wall carvings tell stories... of gods and the Khmer people. They seemed to have been a lot better at war than I woulda given them credit for. I always had this impression that this entire area of the world had been constantly dominated by outside powers; but at the height of its power, the Khmer empire really was amazingly grandiose in its own right. The whole time, I kept wishing I could turn back time to see how things woulda been back in the glory days, before these amazing temples fell into ruin.
But yea, I was actually pretty surprised how quickly we went through all the temples (that we wanted). We spent an entire morning at Angkor Wat, like 2 hours at Angkor Thom (Bayon, Elephant Terrace, Terrace of the Leper King, etc.), and about 2 hours at the jungle temple (the "Tomb Raider temple"). To tell the truth, that's really all I was DYING to see at Angkor. So yea, while you could spend months in Angkor in general, you can do all the highlights in 1 very jam-packed day. We spent another half-day in Angkor (Prah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup) before we had to leave for Phnom Penh. The stuff the second day was significantly less amazing than the more famous temples we had seen the first day.
The next day in Phnom Penh, we stopped by the Luol Seng (S21) Genocide Museum- a lot of stuff without any written descriptions, so we didn't really know what we were looking at. After that we went out to the Killing Fields; it was kinda morbid- like there's still human bones half sticking out of the ground in some places, and uggghhhh... it's just hard to understand such conscienceless mass-murdering. Visited the Russian Market (good place for souvenir shopping) and the Royal Palace (was ok; heard it was just a rip-off of the Thai royal palace) after that.
That night, I came down with food poisoning (or stomach flu, or something); it was vicious. Vomiting, Diarrhea, Nausea... the works. And the weird thing is that I didn't even eat anything crazy. Well, it lasted like a week, and ruined my trip to Hong Kong.
Reflections. Cambodia was like 10 times more interesting to me than Vietnam. The Hindu influence was much stronger here. Adds up to a very interesting look. And it was good to finally see something that didn't look even remotely Chinese.
I was also surprised how undeveloped Phnom Penh was. Even as the country's capital, it was not very metropolitan at all. Definitely not a country of skyscrapers at all.
The kids in Angkor who try to sell you stuff have remarkably clean English. They even know how to guilt-trip you like pros. "You buy from me later, ok? I'll wait right here.", "I'm so nice to you, why are you ignoring me?"
Travelling in Cambodia is kinda funky (in a good way) cuz for all true purposes, the commonly used currency is the US dollar. Sure, you need to get a few bucks worth of Cambodian riel, but all transactions over like a buck or two are done in USD. It's also a curious oddity that supposedly there are no ATM's in the entire country that can access foreign bank accounts. Add to that the fact that basically no other countries will exchange for Cambodian riel (they won't buy it from you, so any bills you take out of the country are only good for souvenir value), so I kept thinking of the riel as only slightly above seashells and shiny stones in terms of monetary value. =P Anyways, cuz of the country's third world status, a dollar goes a pretty long way. We stayed in a place that could be a 3- or 4-star place for like US$10 a night (for 3 ppl). The ticket to get into Angkor is like the biggest purchase you probably make (US$40 for a 3-day pass), but it's definitely worth it. To tell the truth, Angkor's the only really amazing thing I saw in Cambodia.
Ok, so like the entire 100 sq. mile area complex or so is known as Angkor. But it's sometimes casually referred to as Angkor Wat by tourists, when that's actually the name of just the one most famous temple that is itself like only 1 sq. mile (which is actually still pretty big). And Siem Reap is the city you stay in to go see Angkor Wat (like 15 minutes away).
Angkor was amazing. The level of detail and the sheer size/scale of the place was unbelievable. So much intricately carved stone, and the wall carvings tell stories... of gods and the Khmer people. They seemed to have been a lot better at war than I woulda given them credit for. I always had this impression that this entire area of the world had been constantly dominated by outside powers; but at the height of its power, the Khmer empire really was amazingly grandiose in its own right. The whole time, I kept wishing I could turn back time to see how things woulda been back in the glory days, before these amazing temples fell into ruin.
But yea, I was actually pretty surprised how quickly we went through all the temples (that we wanted). We spent an entire morning at Angkor Wat, like 2 hours at Angkor Thom (Bayon, Elephant Terrace, Terrace of the Leper King, etc.), and about 2 hours at the jungle temple (the "Tomb Raider temple"). To tell the truth, that's really all I was DYING to see at Angkor. So yea, while you could spend months in Angkor in general, you can do all the highlights in 1 very jam-packed day. We spent another half-day in Angkor (Prah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup) before we had to leave for Phnom Penh. The stuff the second day was significantly less amazing than the more famous temples we had seen the first day.
The next day in Phnom Penh, we stopped by the Luol Seng (S21) Genocide Museum- a lot of stuff without any written descriptions, so we didn't really know what we were looking at. After that we went out to the Killing Fields; it was kinda morbid- like there's still human bones half sticking out of the ground in some places, and uggghhhh... it's just hard to understand such conscienceless mass-murdering. Visited the Russian Market (good place for souvenir shopping) and the Royal Palace (was ok; heard it was just a rip-off of the Thai royal palace) after that.
That night, I came down with food poisoning (or stomach flu, or something); it was vicious. Vomiting, Diarrhea, Nausea... the works. And the weird thing is that I didn't even eat anything crazy. Well, it lasted like a week, and ruined my trip to Hong Kong.
Reflections. Cambodia was like 10 times more interesting to me than Vietnam. The Hindu influence was much stronger here. Adds up to a very interesting look. And it was good to finally see something that didn't look even remotely Chinese.
I was also surprised how undeveloped Phnom Penh was. Even as the country's capital, it was not very metropolitan at all. Definitely not a country of skyscrapers at all.
The kids in Angkor who try to sell you stuff have remarkably clean English. They even know how to guilt-trip you like pros. "You buy from me later, ok? I'll wait right here.", "I'm so nice to you, why are you ignoring me?"
posted by Dear Daniel at 4:00 PM
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