Captivating Cambodia

We apologize for the negativity of our last blog, but we had to tell it like it was! We consider ourselves to be quite laidback travelers and usually let things slide, but we just couldn’t do it considering our misfortunes in Laos. Needless to say, we were VERY happy once the Laos customs officers finally let us out of their country.

It sounds crazy, but my feelings instantly changed when we walked across the border from Laos and into Cambodia. My instinct amazes me sometimes and I knew then, that things would take a turn for the better. We had heard mixed reviews about the country, but we couldn’t have had a better experience. The people, the food, the landscape, the history, it was all amazing. As we entered the country from Laos, we had the opportunity to see a fair bit of northeastern Cambodia. We drove for about twelve hours through small villages and beautiful countryside. The poverty was clearly evident and seeing the many poor people was something very different from our experiences in the other Southeast Asian countries. We drove by large families living in small shacks along the side of the road. By a shack, I mean a small room with three walls and a flimsy roof made out of bamboo. There was no floor and no electricity so when night fell you could see the families eating on the ground by candlelight. Because there are very few developed roads in Cambodia, the drive wasn’t as straightforward as it appeared to be on the map. Also, it is the start of rainy season here, so many of the roads were covered in mud which made for slower travel. After a long travel day which also included many bumps and swerves to avoid hitting the odd cow, chicken, pig, goat, or child we arrived at 1am in Siem Reap. We had been given a brochure of a nice guesthouse to stay in so we got tuk tuks from the bus station (what looked like an open junk yard) to Ancient Angkor Guesthouse and crashed hard! The guesthouse was located just a few minutes walk from the Old Night Market and a busy “strip” of restaurants, bars, and shops.

We were still travelling with Nick and Lizette, our Dutch friends who we have been with since Chiang Mai, Thailand and after a rough few days getting through Laos and into Cambodia we chose to spend our first day relaxing and laying by the pool- yes, our guesthouse had a pool!! It was so, so hot that it felt more like a hot tub but was still very relaxing! So relaxing in fact, that we spent the better part of our second day in Siem Reap doing the same thing. It was an early morning the next day, as we got up at 4:30 am to be picked up by our tuk tuk drivers to take us to Angkor Wat for the sunrise. We had gone the evening before to see the sunset from a temple located on the top of a small mountain (about a 20 minute walk to the top), which was beautiful. We unfortunately, didn’t get to see a sunrise as they were too many clouds but the sight of Angkor Wat alone was breathtaking! The Temples of Angkor are spread out for kilometers and were all built between the 9th and 13th centuries. The sheer size, scale and detail of these ancient temples are enough to stop you in your tracks. We spent the day touring around the most popular temples which included Angkor Wat (the largest religious building in the world), Bayon Temple, and Ta Prohm, where the movie Tomb Raider was filmed. We thoroughly enjoyed our time at the temples and it is something that cannot be missed when in Cambodia.

The most fascinating (and very sad) part of Cambodia is its history. Cambodia is still in the early stages of recovering from The Khmer Rouge regime. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, was a communist political party that took over power only to initiate one of the most horrific revolutions the world has ever seen. Within four year (1975-1979), 2.5 million Cambodians were killed. Cambodians who were even the slightest bit educated (i.e. spoke a foreign language or even just wore glasses) were forced out of the cities and into the countryside to be tortured and executed. We were told that bullets cost too much, so instead of shooting them they would mistreat and neglect them leaving them to die from malnutrition and disease. Many locals that we spoke to were eager to share their stories of this “genocide” as it is now labeled, but there were also many who try to forget it ever happened and will not speak of it. I won’t elaborate on how this all ended in 1979 (involves Vietnam and other countries), but it was only in 1998 that Pol Pot himself died…yes, he lived for another 20 years! Interestingly enough, while we were in our room one evening the local news came on in English and the top story was that the trial for four of Pol Pot’s closest colleagues, who admitted their involvement in the genocide, was beginning the next day in Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia). This was a clear indication to us of just how recent this “history” is.

We only spent a total of seven days in Cambodia and were only in Phnom Penh for one day while we waited to transfer buses. Had we had more time, we would have stayed in PP for a couple of days to visit the killing fields and S21, a school that was transformed into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. This is an experience that from other travelers, we have heard is very distressing.

We had a short but eye-opening experience in Cambodia and I know that I will return in the near future. There is a lot of opportunity to volunteer with the country’s children and elderly (of which there aren’t many) and I would love to put my nursing skills to use in a place with such beautiful people and stories.

Onto the ‘nam!