Nudiflora Trees growing from the "Tomb Raider" Temple
Bayon Temple
Mass Graves at the Killing Fields
Recovered skulls in a shrine at the entrance of the Killing Fields
Some of the younger S-21 victims
One of the actual rooms and bed where victim was burned (see pic on the wall)
The "Bat Cave"
Cambodia was eye opening to say the least. It is a place that makes you cry and smile at the same time- feeling for those victims of the Khmer Rouge and yet marvelling at the beauty that are the temple ruins.
We made it to Siem Reap, Cambodia via plane, our first flight since the beginning of our trip. Since getting our visas at the border via bus was known to be very dicey, flying was the only way to ensure we would get our paperwork hassle-free.
We make it in one piece and get a couple of licensced guys to drive us to our guesthouse. Referring to our Bible, aka the lonely planet, we make our way to a few guesthouses by bike. Things appeared a little pricier than usual, and soon decided to rely on our drivers for reccommendations. We couldn't be happier! The guesthouse was amazing and dirt cheap. The guy working there, Alan, was extemely friendly and we even had access to free Internet! Lonley planet is going to hear from me for not including this one. Since Siem Reap is mainly famous for the many temples, we decided to use our existing drivers to take us around to all these areas; it was their suggestion. We bought 3-day passes to visit the scattered temple locations. You can buy 1-day, 3-day and 1-week passes. At the time we thought 3 days seemed a good midway point to visit what we wanted to without spending too much time in this town. We were soon to be harshly corrected. The next morning we headed to the famous Angkor Wat at 5 am, hoping to see a great sunrise and in addition, get some nice photos. Unfortunately the sky was overcast! It was quite pleasant nonetheless. This temple is quite extraordinary, and fairly massive, although Hersh would disagree. After all, this IS one of the wonders of the world! The next three days were really very tiring, as we rode on the motorbikes for a long time, going about 25km out of the city to visit the old structures and then back in. But of the several temples we did see, I found two of them to be my favourites - Bayon and Ta Phrom. Bayon is famous for the 216 enormous faces that have been carved on the towers, four to each tower. Ta Phrom has more of a Western fame to it hailing as the place where scenes from Tomb Raider and (maybe) Indiana Jones were filmed. It was a beautiful temple with a true ancient world/jungle book (King Louis' pad) feel to it; not to mention the gargantuan Tetrameles Nudiflora (Thitpok) trees that were growing everywhere, almost systematically tearing the temple apart! This, however, added to it's charm. Unfortunately there were a few Korean tour groups that, well, to be stereotypical yet honest, couldn't stop their boiesterous yapping and constant taking of group pictures! That annoyed the both of us and really destroyed the tranquility of this place.
By the third day, however, Hersh and I both began to feel like the ancient ruins. "You wanting go few more temples?" our drivers asked- "No, no, we go guesthouse now!" we said. The similarity between the many temples became quite monotonous, and we felt we had seen enough. The many hours on the back of a small bike didn't help either.
Poverty is an issue, and you end up constantly being swarmed by hoardes of orphans forcing you to buy things from them, from postcards to books, most goods priced at a dollar. If you don't buy, they say they will wait for you to exit and when you do, they accuse you of promising them you would buy something on your return! This strategy was employed at EVERY place in Cambodia. What started out as compassion and understanding eventually turned to dismissal. I may sound harsh but I assure you the annoyance was internalized - I definitely did NOT yell or sound rude to the kids. Perhaps me being from India adds a bit of oblivity to the begging situation. A sad state of affairs but I beleive there are quite a few social programs in place to help them.
Our next move, quite impromptu actually, was to immerse ourselves in learning the most we possibly could about the evil that was Pol Pot's regime, the Khmer Rouge, and the massacering of 2 million Cambodians from 1973 to 1975.
We travelled the rest of Cambodia visiting these historical sites. The Killing Caves in Battambang, was our first stop where people, (women and children) who were deemed to not be "true" Cambodians were massaccered by being clubbed and thrown down a jagged cave. To this day the monks are still finding remains and the body count keeps growing. Even our guide/driver got a tad emotional at the site. On a more lighter note, we were able to see a [swarm] of bats leaving their cave in the hundreds in the hunt for their next meal. Apparently it takes about 2 hours for ALL the bats to leave! An amazing sight and a welcome change from the Killing Caves.
We later visited the S-21 in Phnom Penh, a school that was turned into a "detention center"during Pol Pot's rule - well, more like a prison where innocent people were tortured and killed. Men and women alike were beaten, shackled, poked, impaled, starved and in some cases burnt to death. Out of the victims of this atrocity, only 7 have survived to this day. The pics at the end of the blog will suffice as explanation for now. Although very depressing it was necessary to understand this important piece of history and relate this to the current situation of Cambodia's progression as a country.
The last visit were the Killing Fields, about 45 minutes out of the city. This was a big site of mass graves of people who were murdered at the school turned prison -there were occasionally 30 to a grave.
On a more social note we did meet our old buddies Steve and Anne again, and made two more friends, Rachel and Kiki from Amsterdam! We have been meeting many people from Holland on our trip sp far and are quite excited to reunite when we reach that part pf the world! All in all, Cambodia was fantastic, and although we did more things like hitting the beach quite often, eating weird foods and even going to a local club, the most interesting and significant aspect of this country lies in it's recent history - something worth sharing (although only in brief) with all of you. Cheers.
We made it to Siem Reap, Cambodia via plane, our first flight since the beginning of our trip. Since getting our visas at the border via bus was known to be very dicey, flying was the only way to ensure we would get our paperwork hassle-free.
We make it in one piece and get a couple of licensced guys to drive us to our guesthouse. Referring to our Bible, aka the lonely planet, we make our way to a few guesthouses by bike. Things appeared a little pricier than usual, and soon decided to rely on our drivers for reccommendations. We couldn't be happier! The guesthouse was amazing and dirt cheap. The guy working there, Alan, was extemely friendly and we even had access to free Internet! Lonley planet is going to hear from me for not including this one. Since Siem Reap is mainly famous for the many temples, we decided to use our existing drivers to take us around to all these areas; it was their suggestion. We bought 3-day passes to visit the scattered temple locations. You can buy 1-day, 3-day and 1-week passes. At the time we thought 3 days seemed a good midway point to visit what we wanted to without spending too much time in this town. We were soon to be harshly corrected. The next morning we headed to the famous Angkor Wat at 5 am, hoping to see a great sunrise and in addition, get some nice photos. Unfortunately the sky was overcast! It was quite pleasant nonetheless. This temple is quite extraordinary, and fairly massive, although Hersh would disagree. After all, this IS one of the wonders of the world! The next three days were really very tiring, as we rode on the motorbikes for a long time, going about 25km out of the city to visit the old structures and then back in. But of the several temples we did see, I found two of them to be my favourites - Bayon and Ta Phrom. Bayon is famous for the 216 enormous faces that have been carved on the towers, four to each tower. Ta Phrom has more of a Western fame to it hailing as the place where scenes from Tomb Raider and (maybe) Indiana Jones were filmed. It was a beautiful temple with a true ancient world/jungle book (King Louis' pad) feel to it; not to mention the gargantuan Tetrameles Nudiflora (Thitpok) trees that were growing everywhere, almost systematically tearing the temple apart! This, however, added to it's charm. Unfortunately there were a few Korean tour groups that, well, to be stereotypical yet honest, couldn't stop their boiesterous yapping and constant taking of group pictures! That annoyed the both of us and really destroyed the tranquility of this place.
By the third day, however, Hersh and I both began to feel like the ancient ruins. "You wanting go few more temples?" our drivers asked- "No, no, we go guesthouse now!" we said. The similarity between the many temples became quite monotonous, and we felt we had seen enough. The many hours on the back of a small bike didn't help either.
Poverty is an issue, and you end up constantly being swarmed by hoardes of orphans forcing you to buy things from them, from postcards to books, most goods priced at a dollar. If you don't buy, they say they will wait for you to exit and when you do, they accuse you of promising them you would buy something on your return! This strategy was employed at EVERY place in Cambodia. What started out as compassion and understanding eventually turned to dismissal. I may sound harsh but I assure you the annoyance was internalized - I definitely did NOT yell or sound rude to the kids. Perhaps me being from India adds a bit of oblivity to the begging situation. A sad state of affairs but I beleive there are quite a few social programs in place to help them.
Our next move, quite impromptu actually, was to immerse ourselves in learning the most we possibly could about the evil that was Pol Pot's regime, the Khmer Rouge, and the massacering of 2 million Cambodians from 1973 to 1975.
We travelled the rest of Cambodia visiting these historical sites. The Killing Caves in Battambang, was our first stop where people, (women and children) who were deemed to not be "true" Cambodians were massaccered by being clubbed and thrown down a jagged cave. To this day the monks are still finding remains and the body count keeps growing. Even our guide/driver got a tad emotional at the site. On a more lighter note, we were able to see a [swarm] of bats leaving their cave in the hundreds in the hunt for their next meal. Apparently it takes about 2 hours for ALL the bats to leave! An amazing sight and a welcome change from the Killing Caves.
We later visited the S-21 in Phnom Penh, a school that was turned into a "detention center"during Pol Pot's rule - well, more like a prison where innocent people were tortured and killed. Men and women alike were beaten, shackled, poked, impaled, starved and in some cases burnt to death. Out of the victims of this atrocity, only 7 have survived to this day. The pics at the end of the blog will suffice as explanation for now. Although very depressing it was necessary to understand this important piece of history and relate this to the current situation of Cambodia's progression as a country.
The last visit were the Killing Fields, about 45 minutes out of the city. This was a big site of mass graves of people who were murdered at the school turned prison -there were occasionally 30 to a grave.
On a more social note we did meet our old buddies Steve and Anne again, and made two more friends, Rachel and Kiki from Amsterdam! We have been meeting many people from Holland on our trip sp far and are quite excited to reunite when we reach that part pf the world! All in all, Cambodia was fantastic, and although we did more things like hitting the beach quite often, eating weird foods and even going to a local club, the most interesting and significant aspect of this country lies in it's recent history - something worth sharing (although only in brief) with all of you. Cheers.
