Border Adventures: Cambodia to Laos

6:20am: impatient tuk-tuk driver from the bus company shows up for our 6:30am pick-up. We are not ready.
7:30am: our 7o'clock bus leaves with us crammed into the front and our bags crammed into the back
8:30am: we get a flat. driver puts on temporary spare
10:00am: we're off again
10:30am: we stop at a car shop for the experts to fix the wheel. we order noodles; they forget Ben's noodlesoup 4 different times
11:30am: we're off again
noon: we stop for a pre-scheduled meal/pee break where driver gets free food. we're not hungry
12:30pm: on the road at last
7:00pm: it's dark. the bus stops, a pick-up truck pulls up, and the driver starts tossing our packs out the window to the truck. that's how we find out that the bus doesn't actually go where the ticket says, to the border town of Stung Treng... the pick-up will take us. we pile into the back.
7:30pm: we are unceremoniously left in front of an office called Hua Lean (our tickets say Hua Lian), where the people are very puzzled to see us and call up two men who zoom up on motorbikes to tell us that the bus company whose ticket we have and used that day... no longer exists and hasn't for 3 months. this is a small problem because we paid for a through ticket to take us on to Si Phan Don (4,000 Islands) in Laos the next morning. they also tell us that this has never happened before in the last three months that this company has supposedly not existed, and obviously it must have been our 3 separate guesthouses where we and the other travellers bought our bus tickets, THEY must have been the ones ripping us off, but why don't we come back to their hotel to talk it over.
8:00pm: they tell us they work for the van company that would have been our transfer three months ago, but now they will help us out, do us the favor of taking us across for just $11 each.
8:03pm: we don't tell them to go fuck themselves... but we want to
8:04pm: Ben picks up his bag to leave
8:05pm: Orro, a wonderful Cambodian guy who we would run into everywhere we went for the next two weeks, managed to reach the guy in Phnom Penh from whom he'd bought a ticket, who reached a (the?) bus company, who called Orro back, and said they'd come pick us up tomorrow morning afterall.
8:10pm: the hotel staff tell us this new driver who is supposed to pick us up is untrustworthy and will abandon us at the border. we have no idea what is going on and decide to wait til the morning to see what happens. but where to stay for the night?
8:15pm: they show us a $5 room with no fan, holes in the sheets bigger than my hand, and cockroaches of a similar size who don't give an inch when the lights go on
8:16pm: Ben demands a nice room in the main building for the same price and picks his pack right back up to walk out again -- he's fed up, and they know it
8:20pm: we are ungraciously shown to a very nice room, and sullenly tossed a key
8:30pm: we look for food with Orro and his Belgian friend, Chris. I am grumpy, Ben is angry, we're all hungry and confused. nothing is open but one place that overcharges.
9:50pm: we get home, realize we have tv with HBO and discover that Flight of the Conchords is about to come on. sweet mercy at last -- this makes everything all better.

The next morning, miracle of miracles, a driver shows up and we, Chris and Orro, and two Israeli girls jump in and are whisked to the border. Getting through the Cambodia side requires just a single dollar bribe apiece (much cheaper than the entry 'fee'!), and the Laos side requires the same. After all stamps are stamped and we are officially in Laos, we sit. And wait. And watch as cars of locals pull up to customs, slow to a roll so that the passenger can hop out and deliver a fish, or a chicken, or some perfume, to the customs officials, hop back into the car, and continue on their merry way.

Eventually we were picked up, driven 20 minutes down the road, told to get out, to go to the dock, to leave the dock and walk along the bank, to wait, and finally to jump into a long-tailed boat which ferried us across a full-bodied and fast-moving Mekong to reach, at long last, the glorious peacefulness of Don Det: paradise tucked away among Laos' 4,000 Islands.

Phnom Penh, take 2

After saying a weary goodbye to both Angkor and Pierce and Hannah, we took the bus back to Phnom Penh in preparation for making a run to the border for our planned crossing into Laos. If you are, perhaps, looking at a map of Cambodia whilst reading this (mom), you may notice that this doesn't seem to make much sense, but we'd been told the roads through the north-central part of the country were so bad, and likely washed out, that nothing would be making the run through. We later heard from a Cambodian friend that we could indeed have taken a direct bus from Siem Reap to the border town of Stung Treng, an unhappy place of which you'll hear more soon, so who knows.

I was fine with going back to Phnom Penh because I wanted to see the Royal Palace which we'd missed out on our first time around. The morning after we arrived back in town, a sleepy Ben reluctantly climbed into a tuk-tuk with me, and off we went under a sunny and cloudless sky. We arrived at the palace 45 minutes before it was supposed to have closed for the regular 3 hour lunch break, but the guards were closing up shop already, and told us there was no hope for entrance and we'd better come back at 2:00. At this point Ben was all for going back to the hostel and calling it a day, but I was determined to see the darn Palace, so we killed the lunch hour(s) with internet and some food. Around 1:45 the clouds began to roll in but we made it back to the Palace gates, paid the comparatively exorbitant entrance fee, and spent about 20 minutes inside the grounds before the skies opened and we were deluged for the next two hours. The entire place flooded. In the end, we saw those famous sloping gold roofs, took some pretty pictures, and got really really wet... check! another day of rainy season sight-seeing, and a farewell to the capital.

Angkor! Day 3

On our final day at Angkor we went farther afield, setting out first for Banteay Srey, 25 km outside of town and considered by most people to be the loveliest and most artistically perfect of the temples. It is especially famous for its (sometimes dirty!!) detail work.

On our way to Banteay Srey, we stopped by the Cambodian Landmine Museum, a small set of buildings run by a man named Aki Ra who laid many landmines himself during years as a child soldier under the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese, and is an expert now in the ongoing process of trying to rid Cambodia of the UXOs which maim and kill thousands of Cambodians every year. He and his wife use the Landmine Museum as a base to support more than 20 children, many of whom have been injured by UXOs.

After Banteay Srey we decided to push on to a unique site called Kbal Spean which is made up of a series of carvings along a river bed. To reach Kbal Spean we took the tuk-tuk even farther, along deeply rutted and muddy roads, past flooded countryside, to get to the turn-off. From there, the site was about a mile hike in, along a great jungle path which eventually led us to the river as well as a fantastic waterfall.

We could only get a small picture of Kbal Spean's full scope because the rushing water of the wet season obscured many of the largest and most intricate carvings (look close, you can just make out some carving-work...), but our driver led us from spot to spot along the river to find some of the smaller stone bas-reliefs.After a long and bumpy trip back towards Siem Reap, we turned down a small country road to find one final spot, Banteay Samre, a big sprawling temple which was nearly deserted and made especially dramatic by the rain clouds gathering overhead and the heavy humid quietness as we walked around. Tired from another long day, I was happy to finish off our Angkor tour with such a perfect final temple-wander.

Angkor! Day 2

For day 2 of our three day Angkor adventure, we woke up at 4:30 to arrive at Angkor Wat itself before sunrise. Well, we arrived REALLY early, and spent half an hour using flashlights and a pre-dawn glimmer to check out what we could of the iconic temple complex. It was very dark and nearly deserted except for a few other intrepid tourists who had also decided to make the foray into the temple itself. Unfortunately, the very top tier was closed for reconstruction work, so we couldn't climb to the vantage point we'd hoped for. As the sky began to lighten we headed back out front to try to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat... and found a couple hundred other people waiting for daybreak. Ah well, we got the shot. And the shot. And the shot.

Taking advantage of our early start, and stopping only for coffee, we set out on the "big loop" to see some of the temples slightly farther out than Angkors Wat and Thom. We headed straight through the Angkor Thom complex, stopping only for the magnificent head adorning the eastern side of the North Gate.

First stop was Preah Khan, which, along with Ta Prohm, was one of my absolute favorites. They share a certain similarity as each are curled, here and there, in the grasp of huge trees, and feature plenty of crumbling corners. We continued on, stopping at some smaller structures as well as the lovely fountain and reservoir area of Neak Pean, the smaller temple of Ta Som, and Pre Rup, a beautiful Angkor Watlike temple made of a redder stone and built with several layers around the central tower whose corners were punctuated by elephants. By Pre Rup, we'd put in most of an 8 hour day and it wasn't even 1pm yet... time to head back to our guesthouse and rest. As we headed home we stopped in for a quick look at Prasat Kravan, a small structure made of brick (and now fully reconstructed) with a very different feel than the rest of the Angkor temples.

Angkor! Day 1

Our first day at Angkor, we skipped Angkor Wat itself and headed for Angkor Thom, a huge complex encompassing the royal palace and buildings. First up was Bayon Temple, a hugely intricate structure with at least three distinct levels, and it's signature faces. Walking clockwise, we arrived next at Baphuon, a "temple mountain" which was actually so heavy that it had partially collapsed the hill which served as it's foundation. Restoration records were lost during the decades of fighting, and it is still being reconstructed. The causeway leading up to it is intact though, and you can still get a sense of how impressive it must have been. As we wandered further along the edge of Angkor Thom, we scrambled around a few smaller, unmarked temples and monuments before having to take a break to wait out a heavy rain. Luckily for us, the rain cleared after a few hours, and we checked out the Elephant Terrace and Terrace of the Leper King before moving out through the Victory Gate. From Angkor Thom we went to Ta Keo which had not been decorated in the intricate style of some of the other temples, but featured some long sets of steep steep steps. Here are Pierce and Hannah making their way -- caaaarefully -- down. We also went to Ta Prohm, a beautiful temple left much as it had been found, tangled up in the trees that have grown up in and around it. When Pierce wondered out loud why no one had ever made a movie in the Angkor ruins, Ben noted that they had: Tomb Raider. This is the temple where some of the famous scenes were shot. At the end of a long day, we stopped off at Banteay Kdei, a big temple complex whose length is what made it's biggest impact on my tired legs. A long central corridor stretched back with courtyards and rooms opening off of it. I guess it would have been more of a monastic nature than a temple proper. It was also a notable stop for us because it's where Ben's right sandal lost it's sole:We ended the day with a stroll across the way to overlook a huge reservoir/ceremonial water basin (archaeologists still aren't sure which) by Srah Srang -- remnants of a hugely developed urban area which once surrounded the Angkor temples and supported tens of thousands of people as well as served as a ruling and religious center.

Phnom Penh, take 1

On Saturday afternoon we arrived in bustling Phnom Penh and headed for the backpacker ghetto located lake-side by Boeng Kak. A street full of guest-houses, bars, and restuarants, it was quiet and cheap and very laid back: benefits of the off-season. The city itself is great, vibrant and sprawling, dotted with wats and filled with the ubiquitous tuk-tuks, and on the verge of reinventing itself, apparently, as the skeletons of skyscrapers are just beginning to rise.

Our first day, we had two main objectives. The first was for Ben and I to apply for our Laos visas, and the second was to meet our old Country Director who is now CD for the brand new Cambodia PC program. We accomplished both, but Ben, who had woken up with a headache and volatile stomach, started to run a fever and headed home to rest. Pierce, Hannah, and I continued on to Tuol Sleng Museum, the site of S-21, a highschool converted into the most brutal of the Khmer Rouge's prisons. According to a guide at the museum, of the more than 14,000 men, women, and children who passed through, only 7 are known to have survived, and all of them escaped from the killing fields, none from the prison itself.

Walking through this museum was crushing. The rooms full of photos and the barrage of information were overwhelming, and the halls and cells were haunting. The irony of the site was like an extra note of horror that hung in the air... the premier prison of a regime that tried to exterminate anyone educated still feels like a highschool: in the hallways, in the stairwells, and in the torture cells which still have chalkboards on their walls.

The following day, to complete the necessary tour, we went out to the Killing Fields. Ben was feeling better by this point, and I was the one feeling headachy and feverish. The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek are just one of hundreds of sites all over Cambodia where people were slaughtered and left in mass burials. At Choeung Ek there is a stupa made of skulls, though much of the shock factor had worn off for me after visiting Tuol Sleng the day before. Outside of that there are some placards noting where administrative buildings once stood, and walking paths through the small grassy enclosure. There were children picking flowers and offering to take photos, and benches under shady trees, and here and there are depressions in the ground with signs like "100 women and children, naked, found here" or "about 150 bodies found here, without their heads". I may have been sick walking into the site, but standing over those depressions with their little signs was nauseating.

On the way back into town we were dropped off at the Russian Market, a morass of bags and tshirts and fruits and vegetables, but finding it underwhelming as markets go, we killed the lunch hour with some food and an internet cafe. Pierce and Hannah continued on to the Palace, but I was feeling really ill by this point, and Ben was still a little woozy, so we headed back to the guesthouse for a rest, stopping only to pick up our Laos visas from the embassy.

Our last day in Phnom Penh we walked downtown, past Wat Phnom, the city's namesake of sorts, and strolled along the riverfront. We read for awhile in a cafe, checked out a nearby market, paused for Ben to get a haircut, and generally relaxed. That night we found a bar down our street which had Wii projected up on a big screen. We four, not having been home in almost 2 and a half years now, had never before experienced the wonderment. So that was fun too.

Downtime in Sihanoukville

So, it's the wet season, and I have never experienced so much rain as I did at the beach in Cambodia. We spent 3.5 days recuperating and chilling out in Sihanoukville with Pierce and Hannah, and on only one of those days did it not rain all day -- though it did storm that night. Our first night we took advantage of a short break in the weather to go for a swim; the water was warmer than the air and we happily bobbed on baby-sized swells. We didn't need much more than that night swim and our one beautiful day on the beach, though: with our stilt bungalows at a whopping $3 a night, we happily spent days drinking coffee, eating shark curry and barracuda steaks, reading, and playing cards. We hadn't seen Pierce in 5 months, and it was great to finally meet Hannah, who was a PCV in Kyrgyzstan, so the company was as good as the chance to relax.