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Pol Pot
|
main |
main interior |
nature |
racial |
Buddha monks |
children |
the killing fields |
munitions |
spot the princess |
Pol Pot |
If you are reading this you intend either to travel by air to Siem Reap, which is expensive, or by road from Thailand.
The problem is the touts and the police just over the boarder in Poipet, Cambodia.
Some travelers say that this is not as bad as India.
It is by far the worst tourist tout scene the author has yet experienced.
Tourists have been robbed and set upon by very aggressive touts who intimidate the taxi and bus drivers.
It can be done but you need your wits about you.
Do not forget to journey far up the road and not to stop at the first traffic circle, where most of the tuk-tuks wait.
Best to take a motorbike a kilometer or two up the road where a second set of taxis and pickup trucks are waiting.
Even then you may be pursued by touts. They are very persistent and nasty.
The police are in on it so you can expect no mercy. It is possible.
Read this for travelers advice http://talesofasia.com/cambodia-overland.htm.
Better to take the 100 baht bus from Khao San Road Bangkok.
The New Siam Guesthouse near the Khao San area at 550 Baht is a good choice since the bus departs at 7 am.
This too is a scam.
The road from Poipet to Siphon and then on to Siem Reap is quite good now and should take only about 3 hours.
Instead you will probably be taken to Batambang, a beautiful colonial town on the river where you will stop for a good meal.
If you ever get to Batambang, get off the bus and stay there. The bus operators won't like that but it would stop this scam.
This is the road route to Phnom Penh.
The road from Siphon to Batambang is bad and the road from Batambang to Siem Reap is one of the worst in Cambodia.
You will have done 2 sides of a very large triangle and after 8 hours you will arrive very tired and dirty in Siem Reap.
The mini bus will contain a very aggressive tout or two who will try to sell you just about anything.
You will be dumped half a mile outside of Siem Reap in the dark and forced to stay at a guest house probably the Bang Malea, who have purchased your custom.
The fair price is more than 7 US dollars, which you will be charged on the return journey.
Why can the bus company not just charge the same fare in both directions. You can of course get out at Sisophon. Don't forget to call it Sway.
It sounds like you know.
Despite this warning the experience is well worth it.
The bus price has now been raised from 100 Baht to 550 Baht and passengers are no longer persuaded to stay at the Bang Mella Guesthouse.
Poipet is best avoided. Everybody goes there because on the map it is the shortest and the easiest route. Better is to enter Cambodia from Trat (pronounced traaahht or you may find yourself going to Khorat as in rat) in Thailand to Koh Kong and to get stuck there for a few days. There are many buses from Ekamai in Bangkok to Trat. Trat is also and interesting place. When the boarder was closed it was a frontier town and it still retains some of that atmosphere, but wait for Koh Kong. It is even better. There are many longer routes from there to Siem Reap, all of them less touristic, cheaper and more interesting. Either Koh Kong to Phnom Penh by mini bus or by boat to Sianoukville and then by bus to Phnom Penh and then by boat up the Tonle Sap or by bus to Siem Reap. It sounds longer and more complicated but in fact it is fast, easy and hassle free. Let us hope that not too many people read this.
There are scams upon scams and just as one is reported another emerges. It is the price of a visa. A tourist visa for one month costs $20. That is what it will say on your passport. In fact the immigration officials charge what they can get away with. The embassy in Bangkok used to be very straight and honest and is still the best value. It was tourist visa one month $20 or 1000 baht or business visa $25 or 1500 Baht and there was a sign on the gate stating this. Obviously cheaper in dollars. Now the embassy takes $25 for a $20 tourist visa and for a business visa $30 and 10 working days to get it. The advantage of a business visa is that it can be extended in Cambodia; a tourist visa cannot. Visas are also available at the borders but are much more expensive, anything up to double the price, say about 1400 Baht for a one month tourist visa with, you guessed it, even higher prices and more innovative scams in Poipet, like 50 Baht for the application form. You need either no photos and pay and extra 100 baht at the boarder or in Bangkok 2 photos, 2 application forms and 2 photocopies of the passport. Also since the Americans donated the equipment you will be photographed at the frontier by a Logitech camera attached to a Dell computer. That makes 5 photos in all!
The tourist ministry wants none of this since it puts out a bad image of the country. It is only the local immigration officials who do this. There are moves to bring it under control. Large new immigration facilities are under construction at the Vietnamese border and at Poipet. Let us hope for success.
Cambodia still seems to be something of a battleground. But this time for the hearts and minds of the people. After many years of war there is peace. People are no longer being killed. The political influence is definitely Chinese. They are everywhere. The Japanese and the world bank are pouring in money for infrastructure projects like roads and bridges. Property prices in Phnom Penh and elsewhere are booming. The Americans are fielding armies of CIA (central intelligence agency) and NGO (non government organisations) just to find out what is going on. A sort of unofficial police force. Beware of charming strangers posing as tourists wanting conversation and appearing to be totally charming and likable but in fact searching for information about young children and drugs. There is not a big drug problem like in neighbouring countries (Vietnam and Thailand). Interfering with little children seems to be endemic but while foreigners get the publicity, it is unfortunately part of the culture. It needs to be treated like a local problem and not a foreign problem. UNICEF, Australia and the Christians have a large presence. "Children have a right to etc.." as they say on the Discovery channel. Adults have no rights (apparently). Unless you go out looking for it you will not come across it.
Not that there are not enough of Cambodian police. Everybody seems to be police, from the temple guards to the Internet cafe operators, but they get paid a pittance and so have other jobs as well. A favourite scam is to invent crimes to earn money from fines. Typical offenses are failure of a driver to indicate a right turn when exiting a round about. (Like the French Cambodia drives on the right.) ; walking along a grass verge; wearing clothes with a camouflage pattern, which constitutes a military uniform. Of course these offenses are enforced mostly against foreigners since they have the money. Passengers on tourist buses entering Phnom Penh are asked to close the windows and keep themselves inside to avoid attention from the police.
Angkor Wat is a temple complex built in about AD800 and abandoned in about 1400 after the Thai invasion. Cambodia or the predecessor countries of Chenla and Champa has been Hindu and Buddhist and this is reflected in the temples. Angkor Wat was too close to Thailand and so the capital was moved to Phnom Phen in about AD1600. The temples were left to fall apart and be overgrown by the encroaching jungle.
In about AD1860 the ruins were discovered by the French who started to cut back the jungle. In 1997 the Khmer Rouge were defeated and Cambodia enjoyed peace and the first tourists arrived escorted by armed guards. It is a mystical experience. The Cambodian people have now rejected their Communist ideology and desire only US dollars. To emerge from a temple is to be surrounded by screaming women demanding one US dollar for a bottle of Coca Cola. By 2002 there is a thriving tourist industry and within 5 years the site will become yet another boring tourist trap. The site is now a popular park where local people can come free of charge to eat and picnic. Foreigners must pay US$20 per day to visit and there are guards skilled at selecting racial types.
Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, Hindu and Buddhist temple complexes at Angkor, old capital of the Khmer kingdoms of Cambodia. The first building phase, in the 10th and 11th centuries, was Hindu in character: the Khmer kings had adopted the southern Indian concept of the god-king. They therefore constructed their temples as microcosms, imitating Mount Meru, the Hindu cosmic mountain, with the king as microcosmic deity, and each king built his own temple. This tradition culminated in Angkor Wat, built under King Suryavarman II (reigned 1113-1150), who intended it to present him as the incarnation of Vishnu.
For some reason the temples are all laid out with identical entrances and exits on the east and west sides. This can be very confusing. Also there are two identical entrances to the park complex one on the north side and the other on the south.
The reign of Jayavarman II (reigned c. 802-c. 850) began the Angkor era in Khmer history and the rise of the great Khmer kingdoms. In the early 9th century he returned from exile in Java, rejected the pretensions of the Javanese kingdom of Sri Vijaya, and strengthened the cult of the god-king. The great temples of the Angkor era were built by his successors to house their royal lingas, the phallic emblems of the Hindu god Shiva. The Thai invasion of 1431 was the end of Angkor Wat. After that it survived as a Buddhist place of pilgrimage.
This is an architects plan of the temple of Angkor Wat.
It shows the concentric courtyards each of which is surrounded by four galleries
and connected by radial corridors.
The main entrance is from the west.
The east gate is raised to permit easy access to the back of an elephant.
The temple site is much older than the tourist guides would have you believe. They learn and speak only of the political history of the country of Cambodia, which dates only from the reign of king Jayavarman II in AD802. Try asking them why the temples were built here and they say give me US$20 and I will tell you. There is something very mystical and significant about both the the location and the orientation. These NASA photos show older constructions on the same site.
This is how the temple ruins used to look
before the French constructed the park and the area became a poplular place for picnics.
The organisation Angkor Conservation is responsible for the study, preservation and upkeep of the Angkor monuments.
It has its headquarters in a large compound between Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. More than 5000 statues, linga and inscribed steles
are stored here because of the danger of theft from the hundreds of nearby sites where these artifacts were found.
As a result, Angkor's finest statuary is inside Angkor Conservation's warehouses, meticulously numbered and catalogued.
Unfortunately, without the right contacts, getting a peek at the statues is a lost cause.
Hopefully, some of the statuary will eventually go on public display.
There was recently some trouble between Cambodia and Thailand and for a time the popular overland crossing from Aranprathet in Thailand to Poipet in Cambodia was closed. This caused great hardship to the local Cambodian people who are heavily dependant on cross boarder trade. It was alleged in a Cambodian newspaper that a Thai actress in a popular TV soap had stated that the temples of Angkor Wat belonged not to Cambodia but to Thailand. Everybody watches Thai TV by UBC satellite. No evidence was produced that she had ever made any statement at all about Angkor Wat or Cambodia on or off the air and only that 3 men had visited the editor of the newspaper and given him the story. These men have never been clearly identified and probably selected this lady only because she has a big following in Cambodia. On channel 3 of Thai TV there was an episode of a well known soap filmed on location in Prasert. Prasert is a town in Thailand near the Cambodian boarder where the people speak Cumin, a language close to Cambodian. The action was around the temples of Prasert, which are similar to those of Cambodia. Yet some of the exterior shots of the temples of Prasert were of Angkor Wat and the Bayon. This episode was repeated recently. It is not wrong to do that but it is subject to misinterpretation. The temples of Angkor Wat clearly belong to Cambodia and nobody is suggesting otherwise. They are a leading tourist attraction. Nevertheless the story was sufficient to provoke gangs of youths to burn down and loot the Thai embassy and many Thai businesses in Phnom Phen. They wrote "Thai robber" on the outside of the Thai embassy. They burned a Thai flag with an elephant on it, such as is used by the Thai boarder guards on the northern frontier with Laos. The suspicion is that the riots were politically inspired to promote Cambodian nationalism. Yet it must have back fired because the actions helped nobody least of all the Cambodian people who have now agreed to pay reparations to the Thai government and people for the damage caused.
Crossing from Thailand to Cambodia one is aware of a major culture shift from a Buddhist country to a country with a Hindu Indian influence. Such acts of violence can happen and there is never a good or meaningful explanation. All seems to be peaceful now. And the tourist boom into Siem Reap continues. There are more and more hotels being built. Get there now before it becomes one more tourist trap.
more...
Golden Angkor Hotel (Sovan Angkor) - US$15 TV hot water air con
Recommended French bar:-
Recommended restaurant serving local and French food, open all hours.
Casino in Poipet popular with Thai people.There is no more any night life. All of the bars have been closed. Siem Reap after 9pm is as silent as the grave. You will not have the opportunity to experience a pay per dance Cambodian lady on the banks on the Tonle Sap lake. The prime minister, Mr Hun Sen, ordered not the police but the army to close down all of the bars and discotheques of which there were many including the famous 'Heart of Darkness' in Phnom Phen. It now must have all of the windows open and the lights on. Since the police can be bribed he ordered the army to use tanks if necessary.