Holiday in Cambodia

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Clambering over the boulders, steppes and pyramid-shaped towers, the temples are too vast to be shut off behind fences and wires. You can explore at your leisure, down dark passages, into rooms where ancient Buddhas still sit. Angkor is a hands-on experience, open to abuse and graffiti by ignorant tourists, but then it did survive Pol Pot, so anything is possible. The ride back to Siem Reap at sunset, passing locals carrying wood, or peddling on their one-speed bikes, was religious. I took a sunset photo across the Angkor Wat moat that was more beautiful than it looked, winked at some happy kids, and could just make out that something that makes poor countries like Laos and Cambodia so special. Everyone appears to be smiling.

More exploring on the last hot, dusty, sunny day, and the three-day pass was well worth it. Siem Reap’s chilled pace and delicious restaurants combined with Angkor’s attractions could easily trap me here for weeks. But Xmas was approaching, and I’d have just a few days in the south before it was time to leave. Tuk-tuk, a bus back to Phnom Penh, a night in a room with rats running on the roof, tuk-tuk, a bus to Sihanoukville, and two days later I can relax. Sihanoukville has beaches with talcum sand so soft it actually squeaks when you walk. The water is clear and blue, accommodation is good and cheap, the food portions are enormous and cheaper. It’s how I imagined Thailand would be, except Thailand was nothing like this. Enterprising English, French and German travellers have opened dozens of guesthouses with free pool, great music, hammocks, DVD libraries - you get the picture. It took me two days just to leave the guesthouse. I devoured the latest UK music magazines in a hammock, superb playlists providing the soundtrack courtesy the local Boom Boom Room record store. Massages on the beach cost $5, and for some reason I got two women giving me the rub down. Were it not for the hordes of young children, blatantly scoping out bags to steal to such an extent that they needed to be chased away, or the legless beggars, with their element of a very real desperation, this would be paradise. Of course, the islands off the coast don’t have any of this, and I shudder to see what Sihounakville will look like in a decade, as Thailand pushes more and more people away with its gross commercialization. “Aren’t you glad we’re seeing this now, and not in five years?” asks Isabelle. I nodded my head, and ordered another chilled 75c beer.

Six weeks in Southeast Asia have flown by faster than I could have imagined. I found myself in a wave of travellers, as the Israelis call it, good folk from around the world heading in the same direction as me. So it was a more of a social affair than other parts of my trip, group orientated, trudging along well-known tracks within the region. I did not get a chance to visit Vietnam, but reports were not as encouraging as Laos or Cambodia. Some folk are taking off into China, but that too, will have to be for next time. The Philippines, Indonesia, MyanmaräI have hardly scratched the surface, but my whistle-stop tour of the world must continue. After Xmas on the beach in Sihanoukville, it’s time for a continent hop as I hit the yellow brick road in search of the wizard of Oz.

Monkey Republic
Sihanoukville, Cambodia

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