15th November - Angkor at Dawn

We were up at 4am this morning and on the bus while it was still dark.  Arriving at Angkor Wat, we were all given torches and walked to the lake.  It was an eerie feeling standing there in the darkness gradually watching the temple become visible against the sky.  The ambience was rounded out by the background noise of the Buddhist monks in the nearby monastery doing their morning chants.

Sadly, the morning was rather cloudy, but it was still an amazing experience. After watching the sunrise we were taken to the monastery overlooking the water for a champagne breakfast.


I was back at the hotel by 10am and had the rest of the morning free before setting off for the afternoon excursion: a cruise on Tonle Sap lake. Denise was feeling under the weather and elected not to come.  We were taken by bus out to where we were supposed to board our "cruise" boat. On the bus the guide admitted that this was not really a "cruise" more like a "boat ride".  When we arrived we boarded a small wooden boat capable of holding about 20 people.  No mod cons - even the life jackets looked a bit iffy.  We were then taken for a short boat ride through a floating village.


Apparently a large proportion of Cambodia's population live on houses on the water with no electricity other than what they can generate with car batteries.  After about 10 minutes of sailing along we ended up at a larger floating construction which was supposed to be a "crocodile farm".  As we approached several small sampans came up and the women on board grabbed onto our boat and started shoving their naked babies up against the railings of our boat screaming "dollar! dollar!".  None of them looked malnourished and the women were wearing good clothes - the sad fact is that they can make more money by aggressively begging like this than they can from fishing, and giving them money only encourages them to throw their children against the next boat that comes along.  We had to jump off the boat onto the "crocodile farm" building.  The floor boards were rotting and not nailed down properly - I honestly felt that the boat was more sea-worthy than  this construction and couldn't wait to get back onboard again. After a short boat ride back it was back to the bus and home to the hotel again.   All in all it was a most unpleasant experience and Denise didn't miss anything.  If you ever go to Cambodia I suggest you skip any excursion described as a "tonle sap lake cruise".

The evening event was a gala farewell dinner in the jungle.  However, Denise was still under the weather and I was exhausted after being up since 4am, so neither of us went. 

14th November - Ankor

Angkor Thom (literally  "Great City" in Cambodian) is the ancient capital of the Khmer Empire, and is situated in the jungle just a few km from Siem Reap.  It was abandoned at some point around the late 16th or early 17th century when the capital was moved to Phnom Pen.  The whole site is around 9 square km, so it is impossible to see it all.  Most of the population lived in wooden housing, with only the temples and important buildings being made of stone.  Only the stone buildings survive.

The whole city is surrounded by 3km walls on each side - each with its own gate, and encircled by a massive man made moat that could be mistaken for a lake.   We crossed the bridge and entered by the South Gate.  

The first building we visited was Bayon Temple. The temple has many towers all topped with Buddha faces - 216 faces in all.  Parts of the temple are in rough shape and various international organizations are busy repairing what they can.  Despite this we were allowed to walk around pretty much anywhere within the building.

After Bayon we moved on to Ta Prohm.  This is one of the iconic temples that has been largely overcome by vegetation, with huge tree roots growing out of the walls.  It was used in the filming of Angelina Jolie's film: Tomb Raider.  Ta Prohm was in worse shape than Bayon - the few parts that hadn't collapsed were being held up by metal scaffolding.  Again, some international organization was doing repair and restoration work.  The collapsed stones are a gigantic jigsaw puzzle - and these days they scan them into a computer and let the computer work out how they fit back together.


 After quite a physical morning navigating broken stone flooring, climbing over large stone blocks and avoiding tree roots, it was a short bus ride back to the hotel for lunch. .




In the afternoon we drove back again to visit the jewel in the crown: Angkor Wat.  This is the best known of the temples, and also seems to be the one in best repair.  It's also the largest, and features on Cambodia's national flag.  Today's fascinating fact is that supposedly Cambodia is the only country in the world to have a building on its national flag. 

The one thing that put a downer on the day were the ever present hawkers trying to sell you cheap silk scarves, post cards, books about Angkor, etc.   I'm  kind of surprised that the government allows them onto the site.  As soon as the bus pulls up they cluster around the door and keep thrusting stuff in your face yelling "one dollar one dollar! YOU BUY! YOU BUY"  and so on.  They follow you around the temple complex doing this - it's almost like running a gauntlet.  The psychology escapes me - why would they think I'll buy something if they shove something in my face a 5th time when I've shown no interest the first 4 times ?

The evening was free for us to do what we wanted, but both Denise and I decided an early night was in order as we had to be up at 4am to go and see the dawn at Angkor Wat.  So we were in bed (and asleep) by 7pm.

13th November - Goodbye Scenic Spirit, Hello Siem Reap

This morning we had to have our cases outside the cabin by 7am, and were disembarking at 8.  A coach was waiting to take us to Siem Reap. 

The trip to Siem Reap took 5 hours.  I had no idea it was going to be so long.  We were following one of the main roads in the country - "Highway" 6, but even so there was a lot of stopping and starting and since I suffer from motion sickness I really wasn't doing well when we pulled into the Cafe Indochine in Siem Reap for lunch, so I didn't eat much.  After lunch it was on to the hotel: the Park Hyatt Siem Reap.  The hotel is beautiful and has 2 pools.  Denise and I relaxed in the outdoor salt water pool for the afternoon.



The evening excursion was to the Phare Circus - Cambodia's answer to Cirque Du Soleil.  However, Denise was not feeling up to it - and after my 5 hours of motion sickness in the morning I wasn't really up to it either.  So we opted to skip the excursion and had a room service meal and an early night.

12th November - Wat Hanchey

Today is the last full day onboard the Scenic Spirit - but it is not the end of the trip.  Tomorrow we will leave the ship and start the land tour part of the vacation.

When we woke up we found we were already moored at Wat Hanchey.  The monastery here is at the top of the hill, and it was quite a physically demanding excursion. There was no smooth walk off the ship, at the end of the ramp we had to jump onto a steep river bank and follow a rough dirt trail upwards. The incline was steep with some homemade bamboo steps filled with sandbags to get up the steepest bits.  Then it was a short ride on a bus to the bottom of the mountain.  The trail up to the monastery had been a concrete path at one time, but was in poor repair.  By the time I reached the top I was out of breath, but we did have superb views.


Most of the "monks" here are actually children.  Believe it or not, education is optional in Cambodia.  Children from poor families are often sent off to become monks for a number of years - as the monasteries are places of learning.  This little boy was 13 years old and had been at the monastery for 2 years. His parents were divorced and his mother simply didn't have the resources to look after both him and his younger sister.  He seemed very happy there though.  The monks have only 2 meals a day - breakfast and lunch.  Buddha forbade various forms of "enjoyment" but didn't mention things that hadn't been invented yet. So most of the monks enjoy playing on the computer, watching TV (nothing too "sexy" though) and riding around on motorbikes checking their mobile phones. 

After a tour of the monastery it was time to go down the hill again - but not the same way we came up.  Instead there were 300 odd steps straight down with nowhere to stop.  My thighs were burning by the time I got to the bottom.

After lunch back on the ship, the afternoon excursion was to a temple and a Buddha Garden.  What's a Buddha Garden you ask? Well basically it's an ornamental garden with lots of Buddha statues in it. There are 2 types of Buddhism:  Theravada, which is the main one in Cambodia; and Mahayana which is more prevalent in China.  They are also known as thin Buddhism and fat Buddhism, because the Theravada Buddha statues show a thin Buddha with a meditative expression, whereas the Mahayana statues are the smiling Buddha with the big belly.  When creating this Buddha garden part of the site was found to be a killing field.  The main area of the killing field is cordoned off adjacent to the garden, but the bones that were exhumed from the garden site itself are housed in a stupa.


Since this was our last evening on the ship there was a 7 course gala dinner.  We've made a lot of friends on this cruise and 10 of us sat together on a large table and had a grand time.  Most of us are carrying on to Siem Reap tomorrow for the land portion of the tour, but some people were only doing the cruise.  So we were saying goodbye to Lee and Chantelle - 2 Australian ladies who would not be going on to Siem Reap.

11th Nov - The Killing Fields

People usually think of vacations as a time to have fun, but they are also opportunities to learn: perhaps about the local culture, or the local history.  Today was a sobering day when we learned a lot about the recent history of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge regime.  Much of what I will talk about in this blog entry is disturbing - so decide for yourself if you'd like to skip to tomorrow's entry.

There are over 300 sites in Cambodia that have been identified as killing fields, but most have simply been cordoned off and left untouched. The one we visited was the closest to Phnom Pen, and over 8000 bodies have been exhumed from the mass graves there - although there are still many graves on this site that have not been excavated.  It's hard to comprehend the scale of the genocide.  The estimates are that between 1.3 - 2 million people were executed in the most brutal ways at these sites. China gave the Khmer Rouge guns for free - but the bullets had to be paid for.  So rather than being shot, most victims were beaten to death with a bamboo stick, or killed with a knife.

When you add in the people who were worked to death in the fields, starved to death, or simply succumbed to disease because they were so weak and malnourished, the tour guide put the figure at nearer 3.5 million people who had died. This, in a country which had a population of only 7 million at the time the Khmer Rouge came to power.

I thought long and hard about whether or not to put photos in this blog entry.  It seems disrespectful somehow to show pictures of the skulls of the victims piled high in the Stupa at the site. In the end I decided to provide photos of the thing that had affected me most - which was the clothes of the victims still protruding from the ground where they died.  Every year the monsoon washes away more topsoil and more bones and clothing appears.  It's amazing to think that this happened so recently that the clothes themselves have not rotted away yet.



Later in the day we visited S21 - a notorious prison where the Khmer Rouge had tortured anyone who spoke English or French - accusing them of working for the CIA or the KGB. S21 was a former school and the photos below show the "cells" that were constructed - 11 cells in one classroom.  Believe it or not, the people in these cells were the lucky ones.  The cell is tiny, but when the prison started to become over-crowded, people were simply chained to the ground in rows - 50 in each class room.  



I was privileged to meet Chum Mey, one of the last survivors from S21, who is now 87 years old.

There is no justice for the millions who died. The government in charge of the country today is made up of ex Khmer Rouge members, and politics influences what "facts" are recorded.  For example, modern Cambodian books do not mention China's backing of the Khmer Rouge - because the current government wants investment from China.  Cambodians do not enjoy freedom of speech, so the least I can do is share this information, but I can't do it justice in a single blog entry.  I encourage you all to look up the backgrounds of the people who currently govern the country.  Also, what the facts are about which countries backed the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam - and how the USA, backed by the UN, continued to recognize Pol Pot's regime as the "legal" government of Cambodia for 10 years after Vietnam ousted him, purely because of their hatred for Vietnam and its Russian backers.

10th Nov - The Royal Palace

This morning we took a coach to the Royal Palace complex.  It is quite a large site and very beautiful.

After lunch we sailed down to Koh Out Nha Tey (AKA Silk Island) and had a tour of a silk farm covering everything from how the silk worms mate all the way to watching the women making scarfs on the looms.  I bought quite a few silk scarves that were amazingly cheap.

Then it was back to the ship for sorbet on the sundeck and a very nice dinner.


After dinner there was a tour of Phnom Pen by tuk tuk.  Denise decided to sit this one out as tuk tuks do not agree with her back.  So I joined Jen and Robyn, two fun Australian ladies, and we had a whale of a time driving around in our convoy of tuk tuks.  It really is a completely different city at night when everything is lit up. After driving around town for about 40 minutes we arrived at our destination - a roof top bar with a great view out over the city.  We had free cocktails and enjoyed the view before tuk tuking back to the ship.

9th Nov - A Monk's Blessing

Overnight we sailed to Phnom Pen.  It is even hotter here than it was in Vietnam.

Our morning trip was to the monastery at Oudong. There are thousands of Buddhist monasteries in Cambodia, but this is the largest of them. It was certainly impressive and very beautiful.  We walked around the complex and entered the largest of the pagodas - where 2 monks gave us a blessing.  This included the monks throwing handfuls of lotus petals and jasmine flowers at you.  I wasn't expecting it and got hit in the face by the first handful.

Arriving at the Raffles by tuk tuk

In the afternoon I went on my first Tuk Tuk ride - to the Raffles Le Royal hotel.  It was certainly an experience.  Which side of the road do they drive on out here you ask? ALL sides.  It was complete mayhem, but somehow we arrived at the hotel in one piece.   We had a quick tour of the hotel, whose main claim to fame seems to be that Jacqueline Kennedy stayed there and had a drink with the King of Cambodia in the Elephant Bar.  The cocktail served to her was called a "Femme Fatale" which is cognac, champagne and frais de bois.   So we were all handed one of these cocktails as we arrived.  Then we went for afternoon tea in the hotel lounge.  Very elaborate and a mixture of traditional and Asian afternoon tea foods.

There was another mind-bending tuk tuk ride back to the ship where some local children did traditional Cambodian dances.

It is Independence Day in Cambodia today (from the French) so there were fireworks at 7pm which we watched from the sun deck.

The pace of the holiday so far has been quite tiring and I had just had a huge afternoon tea at the Raffles, so I decided to skip dinner and just get an early night.