The last day

How quickly two weeks flies by.  In some ways it feels like we just got here, in others it feels like we have been away from home for months.

Today's program was for everyone to go on a flight in a micro-light plane over the temples.  Megs, Kieran and Petra got in first thing, but then the wind came up and the rest of us had to wait till this afternoon.  But it was most definitely worth the wait.

The view from 500m above through the open air is stunning.  You get a very different perspective on the scale of what was built.  Really, with only hand tools and endless labour, the feats of engineering - and not just the buildings, there are massive earthworks around them - is just amazing.

Sky Venture Tours are also brilliant.  Dave is an English guy who started the venture.  On the side he and his wife fund an orphanage that they rescued from a pedophile, a school and a health clinic.  It is wonderful to see people contributing in such great ways.  They were fantastic in getting us all in the air, very informative and just loads of fun to hang out with.

Between flights we perused markets, at more Khmer food, had massages and facials, and began the important task of packing everything we have accumulated over the last massive two weeks.

Then Jules, Mikey, Kieran, Megs and I headed out to Ankor Watt one last time to watch the sunset.  I don't think it is an understatement to say that it is a magical place.  We loved it, and being there are the sun dipped and the temple galleries filled with darkness was wonderful.

Tonight we had a final celebratory dinner at Nest (really it is just that good) before we have to face reality and head home.  More fantastic food and brilliant cocktails were enjoyed.  My steak was rated by the table as among the best most people had ever tasted.

We finished with more market shopping (we needed some last minute presents) and some people are still out making every moment count.

I have to say that this has been just a brilliant trip in all regards.  Petra has worked wonders to make it all happen and we owe her a huge debt of gratitude.  It has been an experience none of us will ever forget and has inspired us all to return.

So from us all to Petra and Kieran, we can't thank you enough.

Ankor Watt

It was temple day two today.  We decided to start at 7.30, so compared to recent days it was time for a sleep in.

After another breakfast that couldn't be beat, this morning we went to see the city of Angkor Thom.  It includes a number of temples including the famous temple of Bayon.  This temple is famous for having multiple faces pointing in the 4 directions.  It was hear that we learnt the interesting thing that much of the damage at the various temples, isn't due to the revenges of time.  Rather as Cambodia's history swung between the Hindu and Buddist religions, various religious icons of the alternate faith were destroyed as temples were repurposed.  In addition, during the time of the Khmer Rouge reign, faith was banned so they destroyed things, including doing things like chopping off the heads of many of the buddas at Ankor Watt.

We saw quite a few temples over the morning, climbing up some very steep stairs in the process and it was hot, but because we had started early, we were ready for lunch early.  After a delicious lunch, we returned to finally visit Ankor Watt almost spot on noon.

It was HOT and the sun was burning down, but it was the perfect time as there was barely anyone there.  In a place that is usually crawling with tourists, we had whole galleries to ourselves and could just got wherever we pleased rather than wait in the queues that are aparently usually there.

As with all the temples, the carving on the walls is just magnificent, and in places you can even see skerics of the original paint.  However Ankor Watt really is something special.  It feels significantly larger and more grand than the other temples and you can really imagine it filled as it was intended to be with magnificent colour and full of worshiping people.


Our tour wrapped up at about 2pm and we headed straight back to the hotel for naps and swims.  Tonight there will no doubt be massages, shopping and more good food.  We are having a brilliant day.

Awesome!!!!

awe·some
–adjective
1. inspiring awe: an awesome sight.
2. showing or characterized by awe.
3. Slang . very impressive

There really is no other word to sum up the amazing day we have experienced in Siem Reap, other than awesome according to any definition.

After a string of enforced early mornings, for some reason Kieran, Mikey, Megs, Jules, Oren and I decided that getting up at 5am would be a good idea.  We jumped into a couple of Tuk Tuks, and headed out to Ankor Watt to watch the sunrise.

It is no secret that I'm a great fan of sleep, but sunrise is a particularly special time of day.  I've seen it over many foreign lands and it has always been a special and significant occurrence.  Today was no different.  The sky slowly lighting the majestic visage of Ankor Watt is something I will never forget.

After the sun was up, we took our Tuk Tuks back to the hotel.  On the way I confessed to Megs what I would really love for breakfast was french toast.  Asian breakfasts are great, but there comes a point where you just want something familiar.  So imagine my joy when breakfast not only included french toast, but also museli, fruit salad and yogurt.  Ok, the fruit salad is possible a tad more exotic than one would usually expect with the inclusion of dragon fruit and papaya but that just made it all the better.

On a high, we jumped on our tour bus for what was a magnificent day of sightseeing.

We visited 7 temples in total, covering a range of time periods, both  Buddist and Hindu religions, popular well known temples (i.e. as featured on Tomb Raider) to almost deserted ones off the tourist trail.

We saw moats, intricate carving, inscriptions, evidence of religious warfare almost 1000 years old.  We saw temples held up by modern reinforcement, by trees, and by amazing engineering.

We climbed high stone stairs to look across temple compounds built to honour gods and family, or the jungle that trys to encroach.

We formed a defensive ring to get Megs through the very cute but numerous souvenir sellers in an effort to stop her buying any more postcards (30 at last count) or palm tree toys (I did't count but it looked like about 7 to me).


It is almost impossible to describe the feelings generated by these temples that the jungle tried to hide. The wonderousness of their construction, and the amazement at their abandonment over time.

We stopped for a fantastic lunch, but still managed to get through all those temples by about 4pm, which meant we could get back to the hotel in time for a swim before a massage.

Last night the massage seekers found Lotus Dream massage and the wonder that is a 4 hand massage.  That's right, 4 hands working on you at the same time.  I tried it today and I have to say, everyone should have one of these at least once in their life.

After my massage, Rob and I also treated our feet - to Dr Fish.  Everywhere along the main road are tanks where the fish nibble away at the dead skin on your feet.  It is great, my feet feel amazing.  For the ticklish you may find it somewhat confronting, but those fish are miracle workers.

By then we had worked up an appetite and Rob had been recommended a restaurant, Nest.  So Rob, Mikey, Kieran, Petra and I headed in to the very funky surrounds.  We were seated on large reclining couches, which were great for cocktails but proved difficult for dinner so we moved to tables.  It was an amazing meal.  Modern Khmer food, served with fantastic cocktails, in elegant surroundings.  It was the type of meal that you would not be surprised to pay well in excess of $100 in Australia, but even having had 3 cocktails, it only cost me $40.

I can't imagine a better day.  It had it all - awe inspiring scenery, brilliant relaxation, amazing food and drink.  What else can I say, it was awesome.

Finally - we arrive at Ankor Watt

It was another early morning, rising at what has become known as stupid o'clock to catch our "express" boat to Siem Reap.  It was due to leave at 7am, but in the end left at 7.30.

The boat was a long, low power boat which our bags were strapped onto the top of.  We filed down into it, to find the cabin filled with the smell of diesel.  We hoped that it would fade during the journey, but were sadley mistaken.

At first it seemed we would have the boat mostly to ourselves, but more and more people arrived and soon it was very full, however once we got going, people quickly began to exit the cabin to sit on the bow or the roof.  The choice was not great, sit in the diesel filled dark cabin on the uncomfortable seats with no leg room, or sit on the hard metal deck and face getting sunburnt.  I think we all bounced between the two.

Being almost the end of the dry season, the Mekong is currently quite low and as a result we couldn't go as fast as it normally does.  As a result the usual 5.5 hour trip took 7.5 hours.  Towards the end the river got so low they had to transfer us to a smaller boat to get up the tributary.  It was an interesting boat ride though.  Compared to Vietnam the banks of the river are almost deserted, and the villages we passed seemed much poorer.  However the people who waved from the banks or their fishing boats all seemed to have massive smiles on their faces which was lovely.

The Mekong opens out into a massive lake before you get to Siem Reap and on it were whole floating villages of fisher people.  When we slowed they would row out to sell us drinks or bananas.

But at last we arrived in Siem Reap.  We were met by our guide Som, who took us to our hotel, The Angkor Holiday Hotel.  It is great.  Among the things that immediately endeared it to us was the presentation of mixed fruit cocktails and damp hand towels on arrival, shower heads that us tall people can actually stand under, large and comfortable rooms and a pool - more on that later!

We dumped our gear and headed for a very late lunch as we were starving.  Ever since I said I was coming to Cambodia people have been telling me I need to try fish amok, a type of soup.  We finally managed to have it for lunch and while we were starving and anything would have been good, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is fantastic.  The closest thing I can equate the flavour to is a green curry, but it is a much more subtle flavour.  It was served in a coconut, and you poured it over rice.  Just what we needed.

We were too late to see the first temple complex on our itinerary, so instead we headed straight to see sunset from Phnom Bakheng.  It is a temple that was built to honour the Hindu god Shiva in 1002.  It stands on top of a hill and once you have climbed the hill, you still have to climb the very steep and narrow steps to the top.  However once up there, the view is amazing and the temple ruins are spectacular.  It is the place to watch sunset so there were a million tourists and it was interesting to watch them.

So many dress inapporpriately.  This is a very modest culture and everywhere there are girls in tiny short shorts and strappy tops.  There were a group of monks (who were taking pictures themselves) and a bunch of scantily dressed Japanese girls came up to get their photos with them, like they were the tourist attraction.  It is all a bit embarrassing.

We stayed till after sunset when most people had left and the temple got quiet and that was beautiful.

From there we headed to dinner and a show.  Dinner was a buffet of lovely Khmer food however having only had lunch 3 hours earlier none of us were very hungry.  But the show was of traditional dance and it was really great.  Again annoying tourists kept standing in our way but we really enjoyed it.

We came back to the hotel and finally got to enjoy that pool I told you about earlier.  After such a long, hot, uncomfortable day, a refreshing swim was just bliss.  Now Petra, Kieran, Mikey, Oren and Rob have gone in search of a massage to top it off.

It has been an amazing day.

A Somber Day

There are depths of human cruelty which are just beyond my reckoning.  From my safe privileged bubble of a life, I find the atrocities man has committed on man unfathomable.  In the lucky country, it is rare that such inhumanity enters our sphere of being, but when you come to a place like Cambodia, it confronts you.

There were some lovely parts of today and I will come to them in a minute, but I want to start with the important stuff. 

Today we made our way to both the killing fields and the S-21 Prison. 

The Khmer Rouge committed atrocities at a level of insanity that I just can't comprehend.  During the 4 years they controlled Cambodia, over 3 million people are thought to have died.  The majority died of starvation and disease caused by the policy where the cities were emptied and everyone was put into forced labour to turn the country to an agrarian society.  As I look around Phnom Penh it is almost impossible to imagine it empty of people.

However hundreds of thousands of people were also executed.  They executed the educated, doctors, teachers, government officials. They executed the former military leaders.  They executed ordinary people who were informed upon.  They even executed their own who had fallen out of favour.  And when they executed someone, they didn't just kill that person, they killed their whole family down to babies to ensure there was no one left to exact retribution on them later.

Everyone has heard about the killing fields, and has probably seen the famous photos of piles of skulls.  It is one thing to hear about, it is another thing entirely to see the dozens of excavated pits, the tree where babies were smashed against to kill them, the hoes and bamboo poles that were used to kill, and the skulls, carefully categorised by age and sex, piled high.  Over 20,000 people are thought to have been murdered at the killing fields outside Phnom Penh - and there are further killing fields across this beautiful country.

The S-21 prison in Phnom Penh was in the pre-war days the Tuol Sleng Primary School and the Tuol Svay High School.  Its classrooms, playgrounds and exercise equipment were grotesquely transformed into holding cells, torture chambers and documentation offices.  Frangipani and palm trees which were planted for the children, instead stood witness to their play equipment becoming torture implements.  The wide shady verandas were fenced with barbed wire and the large classrooms bricked into tiny holding cells with the windows glassed in and ventilation blocked up to hide the screams of torture.

One of the amazing things was that each of the prisoners was photographed and records kept, so now the walls are lined with the faces of those who were tortured to confession there before being taken to the killing fields.  Once at S-21 there was no other outcome.  No one was ever arrested by mistake - torture was extreme and eventually a confession was found.  Walking through rooms lined with row upon row of photos - old, young, men, women, children - it excruciating.

Currently there is an amazing exhibition by Peter Klashorst of paintings based on the photos.  It is stunning yet repellent at that same time.

Seeing these things has made for some somber moods, but as our guides tell us, it is important that the world understands what happens here, so that it may never happen again.  I wish that this could be the case.

But today hasn't only been about the dark side of Cambodian history.  This morning Rob, Megs and Mikey went to a Khmer cooking school!  They started early at the local markets, which was an intense experience.  They could barley walk through for all the food and people, fresh meat in the open, piles of vegetables etc.  From there they moved to the open rooftop cookery school.  There they first learnt to make banana flower sausages which tasted incredible, followed by making yellow and red curry pastes.  Using the curry paste they made a red chicken curry made with the curry paste they had made which they then got to eat.  Everyone should hit them up for a taste of Khmer food when we get back.

In the meantime Petra, Kieran, Jules and I headed out into the countryside for a tour on ATVs (quad bikes) before we visited the killing fields. We were taken out by Tuk Tuk, the local transport which was awesome fun.

The tour was great!  We made our way though small villages and along between paddy fields.  There were smiling waving kids at every turn and we gave out a bunch of gifts we had brought with us.  Our tour guide Sun, was born in France, his parents fled just prior to the Khmer Rouge coming to power.  He was fantastically knowledgeable about the area and we had a great time.

After the tour we came back to the hotel to tag team the others out there, and after washing about half of Cambodia off ourselves, we headed to find lunch.  A local restaurant looked promising (by which I mean it looked open and like it had air conditioning - it is still really hot) so we headed in and had an absolutely delicious lunch of squid in a black bean sauce, special fish in a hot pot and a spicy chicken dish, all watched over by a large moray eel in a tank.

By then we were just a block away from the place we had massages yesterday so we headed in again.  I had the most brilliant foot massage, it was magnificent.

Everyone regrouped at the hotel and we headed off for dinner.  We had a fantastic dinner at a place Megs and Oran found yesterday.  It was another great meal.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped for icecream then Megs, Oren and Rob accompanied me on a search for wireless that would work with my laptop.  We found it in a burger joint where we have been drinking coke as a pretext to using the wireless.

Farewell Vietnam, Hello Cambodia

This morning was another early start as we had to be on the boat to Phenom Penh by 7.30am. It was made all the harder by an unexpectedly late night last night, although we all had fun just hanging out.

We bid farewell to Fu. He was an awesome guide and we will miss him but it was time to head over the border. Our speed boat was fairly speedy and the processing time to both exit Vietnam and enter Cambodia was good, but it still took till 12.30 till we arrived in Phnom Penh. We also got our first taste of how the kickback system works in Cambodia.  Our visas cost us $US23, yet the visa price is $US10.  It is a kind of institutionalised corruption that takes some getting used to, but the system seems to work, so there is nothing to bother getting upset about.

Our new guide (phonetically pronounced Soccer) met us and we headed to our hotel to quickly shower, change into more appropriate clothes (it is a very modest society I wish more of the tourists would appreciate that) and headed our for some lunch.

Soccer took us to a local restaurant where as it was now an extremely long time since breakfast we ate a massive meal. It was quite delicious.

We drove through he city, admiring the very different architecture from Vietnam. Our first stop was the Royal Palace. Unfortunately it was partially closed in preparation for International Women's Day tomorrow but we did get to visit the Silver Pagoda. Before we went in Jules, Oren, Mikey and I had our fortunes read. We all got very promising fortunes which was great. The silver pagoda is amazing. The level of gold, silver and precious stones including diamonds as big as your thumb were mind blowing.

The Silver Pagoda (the floor is solid silver inside)

We continued around the palace complex, including visiting a small building where Mikey and I were purloined into making some local music which was fun.

From there we headed to the art museum. The Khmer art through the ages is gorgeous and so interesting. However we were hurried through though by a large contingent of guards as the Lao Prime Minister was visiting. I felt really sorry for all the guards and officials in their long dark suits as it was very hot.

The Khmer Art Museum

The final stop on our city tour was an artificial mountain with a temple on top for Lady Penh who first settled the city before it became the capital.  Most of it is being renovated but there was great view including of the monkeys that live in they city.

Entry to Lady Penh's mountain temple - free for locals not for us

As we headed back to our hotel we mentioned to Soccer that we would like to get massages - after all it has been 2 days between massages for most of us. He rang a place and we arrived to find a phalanx of masseuses waiting. We had traditional massages and they were fantastic, although we are fairly sure that it was the type of massage place that offered a wider range of "services" than we were interested in.

Since then we have had a drink and some dinner - just pizza as it was close to the hotel and we were all too tired to do much else. Today has been great and we are all enjoying Cambodia but tomorrow we will be visiting some of he remnants of the darker side of this country's history which may not be so fun but is sure to be memorable.

The last day in Vietnam

The new day dawned with a beautiful red sunrise through the fog caused by yesterday's rain.  I'm familiar with the sunrise because we had to get up extremely early in order to get to the floating market, however it was definitely worth the effort.

Unlike other countries, the floating market here is a real market selling fresh produce to locals.  The only allowance for the tourist trade is that there are plenty of small boats selling cold soft drink and coffee, however they are also selling them to the locals.

Petra buys a coke from the floating market

We jumped in another boat and cruised up the lower Mekong to the market.  It was fascinating seeing the people trading, and seeing how they live their lives on those small boats.  After a while of cruising we pulled up next to a largish boat and were able to climb up on top for a long view of the market in general.  They also cut up pineapples into pineapple "lolly pops" for us.

Cruising along the river lined with shanties, boats and palm trees was really nice, but Mikey did comment that it is a country with industrial deafness.  Everywhere you go the diesel engines roar, music is played at major decibels and the people end up yelling at each other.

We moored back in town, a distance away from our hotel so that we could walk through the street market.  It was just what you think of for an Asian market, open air butchers, live fish and prawns in open air tanks and mountains of every type of fresh vegies.

Next up was a nice long bus ride towards Chau Doc.  To break up the journey we stopped at a crocodile farm where we got to view the crocodiles, then we had lunch (not crocodile).  It was very tasty, but much amusement waas caused by Mikey.  He loves drinking coconuts, and today he managed to drink 4 of them at lunch.

The Coco "Nut"

Back on the bus, we all snoozed our way to Chau Doc.  It is a famous pilgrim town built at the bottom of a lone mountain in the middle of the paddy fields.  The largest temple in Vietnam is located here.  It is built around the statue of a lady who the story tells was found 300 years ago on top of the mountain.  The story goes that the people carried her down the mountain and at the base she suddenly became too heavy to carry any further, so they decided she wanted to stay here and they built a temple.  She is very good luck and huge numbers of Vietnamese travel here every year to worship.

Fu suggested we go up the mountain.  Petra, Mikey, Jules and Rob decided to go up on the back of motorbikes.  Oren, Kieran, Megs and I walked up with Fu.  It was stone steps the whole way up the mountain and the air is smokey from burning off the harvested rice paddies mixed with fog from yesterday's rain (and a little bit of rain today).  However the view was fantastic.  We could see all the way to Cambodia.  This area saw some awful fighting, both with the Americans and also with the Khmer Rouge.

We made our way back down the mountain and visited the temple of the lady.  It is a massive complex, but the amazing thing is really the offerings people have given.  People do the usual thing of food, incence etc but people have also donated thick strings of pearls, gold embroidered robes, hats, etc.  It was quite amazing.

It is peak pilgrimage season and the town is packed, but Fu took us for dinner at a local place and we had Pho and pork with rice for dinner.  It was great.

The heat was still pretty oppressive out, so we have all retired to the (somewhat pathetic) airconditioning of Mikey and my room for a catch up to the raging sounds of a fair and karaoke below.  Fingers crossed it doesn't go too late because we have another early start tomorrow to go to Cambodia!!!