The Road Warriors: Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor

I woke up with enough time to shower. I wisely packed the night before. I had only a meager amount of kip on me, knowing full well how nonexchangeable it was outside of Laos, so I was only able to afford a fruit plate with yogurt for breakfast. After paying my guesthouse bill I had a 2000 and 1000 kip note left. Souvenirs.

The boat roared out of Don Khong. It was a sunny morning and we bounced between islands upstream. This was a different pier than before. More of a small village, and it was an absolute cesspool. Gutters of green and black sludge ran along the street with shoddy wooden planks acting as makeshift bridges. A complete 180 from the cleanliness of Vientiane. I was corralled in with a bunch of other tourists waiting for the bus, some of whom I recognized from the slow boat. After a few minutes of general discomfort with our surroundings, we were all piled onto the bus bound for the Cambodian border.

At the border we all filed out and performed our visa duties, all with varying degrees of success. I got mine in advance so it was easy street, while others didn't even have any money to pay for a visa. After a brief walk between two gates, we were loaded up into another bus.

Down the Cambodian highway number 7 we vaulted. Flatlands went by. So flat you could make out a lone tree kilometers away resting on the horizon, backed by the blue sky. It was nearning the end of the dry season and water buffalo grazed on whatever they could find. We passed shacks. Small children on large bikes. The bus driver would blare the horn every 10 seconds and I swear it was installed on the inside of the bus by accident. Any silence between horn blasts was eaten up by Khmer karaoke tracks that skipped endlessly. The seats were comfortable at least. I nodded off here and there.

The route to Siem Reap was by no means a direct one. In fact, upon descending from Laos, the route swooped east for a few hours before finally heading west towards our intended destination. Really inconvenient and time-consuming, but at least the road was paved. We passed small Cambodian towns, Stung Treng, Kratie, Kompong Cham, before arriving in Skuon to divide the passengers in two; those going west to Siem Reap and those heading south for Phnom Penh. I was one of the lucky ones who had to get out and wait 2 hours for another bus.

The time went by rather quickly thanks to some kids who, after hard-selling me a bunch of bananas, went about pummeling the living hell out of each other. It was 7:30 when the chariot arrived. Five more hours to Siem Reap. I felt like I wasn't going to make it.

An old Hong Kong movie played while the bus shifted and lurched in the darkness. Traveling at night is so much more maddening than traveling during the day. Traveling the whole goddamn day straight into the night is enough to make a man snap. Should've Valiumed up.

In Siem Reap, a man slid open an inconspicuous looking tin door and let the bus in. An open fire was visible in the lot. The place looked more like a dog fighting arena than a bus station. Touts crowded the bus like they wanted autographs. I didn't have much fight in me so I settled for a reasonably priced room in the west end of town.

The hotel lobby was clogged with backpackers. The "free Internet" that sealed the deal for me ended up being a sad looking row of old PCs with dialup connections, all in use, of course. My room was unnecessarily huge, but had a lingering odour. There was no mirror in the backroom and I had a pretty hoboriffic beard. One night would be enough here, I decided.

I awoke at 6am with the worst acid reflux of my life. I downed my malaria medicine without water the night before and it got lodged in my throat. I suspect that might have been the reason. I had awoken from a dream in which I had just ruined a good friend's wedding. This, the reflux and the stench of the room spun me into a weakened, deranged state. I flung out of my room in search of water.

I awoke proper at 11. My heartburn was still lingering. Time to checkout and explore Siem Reap. In fact, I didn't really care about the town, I just came for the Angkor temples. Since I wasn't doing those that day, I just found another guesthouse and decided to be a lazy asshole. The next place I found was empty and boasted free Internet. Sold. Played some catchup on the blog and sauntered about town.

Okay history lesson. Cambodia has a terrible history. In it's heyday it was a mighty empire; a unified kingdom that gave birth to Angkor Wat as a symbol of it's power. In the late 70's, the place went to utter hell, and the saddest part is that very few people in the West have any idea the extent of how bad it got. A despot named Pol Pot and his political party, the Khmer Rouge, tore the whole country down into an agrarian commune and had tens of thousands of intellectuals, scholars and dissidents massacred. The Killing Fields may ring a bell or two, because that's what the whole country became. So it's no wonder that with that kind of past, recovery has been a little stalled compared to neighbouring countries.

And certainly when I walked the streets, this state of recovery became clear. Lots of poverty at every turn, no city services, garbage, begging, poor living conditions. All of this interspersed with fancy hotels, convenience stores, mobile phone shacks. The people seemed upbeat and positive albeit eager for my cash. They also seemed very very young. Extremely, disproportionately young. I took note of my surroundings then headed back to the hotel.

For dinner it was Korean. This time, the owners appreciated my "anyeong haseyo"s and even gave me a fish on the house. We watched Korean historical dramas with English subtitles, something I never did even in Korea. Finally, an attempt to reach across gaps that didn't end up slapping me in the face.

I hung around the guesthouse lobby drinking a beer. Classic 'lonely guy looking to hang' move. Soon a swarm of young Japanese tourists swooped in and started practicing their English. One guy's mind was blown when I started talking back to him in Japanese. Reaching across the gap again for the win! Before I knew it, I was in a posse. The guys eagerly asked questions about my time in Japan while the girls hung back with that classic air of apprehension/terror. Unfortunately, I had booked a tour of the Angkor temples for the ass crack of dawn the next morning so I couldn't stay up late, but it was fun digging out the Japanese again.

4:30am and I actually received my wakeup call. By 5, I was on a motorbike zipping alongside tuk tuks and tour buses filled with sleepy-eyed tourists bound for the temples of Angkor. The surroundings became progressively more well-groomed. Soon, I was at the Canada's Wonderland-style gate to purchase my $20 one-day admission pass.

The driver dropped me off at the biggest, baddest attraction of the tour for the sunrise: Angkor Wat. If it doesn't ring a bell, it's image should at least be familiar to you. Sprawling temple grounds surrounded by a moat with numerous characteristic spires shooting up into the skyline. So iconic, that it's even on the Cambodian flag. Unfortunately for me and everyone else there, a fair bit of reconstructive work was being done on the front facade, marring everyone's perfect picture with ugly green tarps and scaffolding. At least they could have found some grey tarp or SOMETHING.

Tourists placed themselves across a pond to catch photos of the temple and it's reflection. Some ass jackal in bright orange pants, completely oblivious, positioned himself on the other end of the pond and right in the middle of everyone's shot. Like, when you see that you're in one person's shot, you go "oh damn" and back out of the way. How could this guy not notice the phalanx of camera pointing right in his direction. Bright green scaffolding, bright orange pants. Nice. Angkor Wat a letdown.

I walked the temple grounds climbing steep steps and ducking under low archways. I could taste the old. Grit in between my molars. Intricate (and I mean intricate) carvings lined every square inch of the walls. There was a noticeable dearth of tourists. At times I was in total solitude amongst the stones and the spires.

Work was being done on the central terrace, so it had been fenced off. Ugh. A Khmer man then surrepticiously approached me and offered to take me up if I bribed the police with $5. I said yes and he led me up the scaffolding to the top. About ten minutes later, a policeman routinely strolled up and was all "hey, what are you doing here?" I paid my fiver and continued to take pictures.

Back at the bottom, I grabbed a banana pancake for breakfast with a bunch of kids I met on, you guessed it, the slow boat.

Next stop was inside the fortified gates of Angkor Thom, it's grounds spanning a staggering 4 square kilometers. It's central temple, Bayon, was perhaps my favorite of the whole trip. Massive stone faces peeked out of every tower in every direction. Other temples included Baphuon (closed for renovation), the Elephant Terrace and the Terrace of the Leper King. As the heat bore down, the walks between grew longer, the steps steeper. Stone and lots of it. One thing I was grateful for was the relative lack of tourists. However, I didn't appreciate the many locals who would stroll up and garble historical facts towards me then demand a tip.

My driver took me to a few more temples. At this point, they started to become nothing more than giant piles of stones. The intricate details of the last few attractions tapered off. One climb was so deathly steep, I could have and would have died that very day had I not taken my time. The sun wanted me dead and I baked on the stones like shrimp scampi on a charcoal BBQ.

The last temple I saw was the utter wreck called Ta Prohm. The attraction in this place lay in it's state of decay. Piles of rocks scattered about, left to lie where they fell. Archways bent into unnerving shapes. Massive trees sprouted up within the complex, their roots entangling and subsequently unraveling the stone. A gaggle of Korean tourists shuffled slowly through the maze taking pictures of absolutely everything.

My guide made it clear that he was only paid to do the small circuit, and only one temple remained. The big circuit was double the temples, double the distance and touble the price. The prospect of continuing on for another five hours made me groan. I saw the last temple and decided to call it a day. It was only 10am.

When Gord and Charlotte did Angkor Wat, they saw almost every temple in chronological order of when it was built. That's over 30 temples! Took them a week. My paltry 5 hours in Angkor was laughable by comparison. I honestly couldn't go on though. Not because of the heat, but because I was simply DONE with temples. Hell I was already done with temples BEFORE I even got to Siem Reap, so it's a marvel I spent the admission fee. Angkor Wat was worth it though, as was Boyon and Ta Prohm. Everything else fell into the ever-growing realm of "meh", a classification that would steadily develop to encompass more and more things as my trip wore on. I truly was becoming jaded. God help me.

As you can imagine, I slept like a lazy fiend back at the hotel for the hottest part of the afternoon. I awoke in time for the daily downpour. It's been happening since I arrived in Cambodia. I arrived with the wet season. When it let up, I grabbed an early dinner.

That night was my last night in Siem Reap which meant I was going out. A backpacker haunt cleverly named "Angkor What??" was in my sights. It was very young and British. There was lots of music I had maybe only mildly heard of that was apparently HUGE in England. I met a lot of colourful characters. A carpenter and close-talker named Joseph, a young American who lived and worked in Singpore, a group of Taiwanese office girls who were on vacation and getting unwound. It was a typical backpacker scene and nothing worth continuing to write on about.

When I left, the scene on the street was one of chaos. Seven year old girls holding their five month old baby siblings begging for change, landmine victims scooting about on dollys also begging for change, prostitutes stalking me at every corner and refusing to take 'no' for an answer. It was a very long walk home too.

The next morning I had a draught beer hangover determined to put me in the earth. I managed to throw myself out of bed before checkout time and book a bus to Phnom Penh. Siem Reap was off of the checklist now. Still no end in sight.