Little achieved in a week due to stomach bugs and the associated malaise
7th December 2005

We apologise to the artisans of Angkor for not being glowing enough
What we did while ill
You can drag a biker to the temple but you can’t make them pay
Older ruins, less intact. No brainer.

A final word on Angkor

We rather rushed through the last bit of journal in our excitement of getting close to being up to date. We deliberately didn’t wax too lyrical about the temples of Angkor as there are so many that “you had to be there” to appreciate the differences. If we were to highlight the best bits of each, it would come over as a guide book list of salient points, a virtual archaeology text. We got a comment from a reader asking as to whether it is all the same or not - it had obviously not come over as that amazing. We apologise, it is truly amazing. I would make only one proviso for visiting, if you’re going to spend three or more days at any site of antiquity, do so fresh from some other type of experience otherwise the Watson syndrome of ‘museum legs’ will set in. If you are an archaeologist or fascinated to the same degree as an expert in the field, your threshold may be higher.

We, of course, did the whole thing without a guide and so probably missed out on loads of the more fascinating information. Hearing other guides shepherding their wards around, it was obvious that unless you are going on an educated recommendation, you’re going to be taking pot luck on the depth of insight that you’re going to get. Simply relying on someones ability to speak your language doesn’t necessarily mean that their going to know anything about archaeology!

One of the most interesting historical points regrettably rather spoils the ruins. The temples were built over a long period during which religious preference swung backwards and forwards between Hinduism and Buddhism. Whether it was this flux or the later token seeking by visitors and the Khmer Rouge, it is not certain but huge amounts of the faces have been mutilated or removed (defaced? pardon my ignorance but I never really thought about the origin of this word).

There is so much carving that these minor alterations take nothing away from the splendour.

I still manage to make it all sound boring.

For me, the highlights were the pre-angkor carvings in the waterfall at Spean Kbal, with butterflies fluttering; the 3m by 100m bas beliefs of Hindu myths, like the famous ‘churning of the ocean milk’ (is that a euphemism for something masturbatory); the enigmatic giant faces watching you from gateways and towers of the Bayon; delightful asparas decorating the walls; the vast moats and pools offering reflections of the wonders of nature and man’s creation; the sea of tinsy little frogs leaping in waves as we explored Preah Khan, the ramanticism of tumbled ruins, with chance to spot that forgotten, exquisite lintel lurking in the rubble and the huge trees engulfing the ruins in symbiotic support.

I liked the fact that many of the wats had active monasteries still in them. There is something unavoidably serene about the ambience created by guys in saffron robes chilling under trees. I am sure that the Angkor kings would have approved.

Bad stomachs, good company

On the last day of our pass we took lunch at one of the omnipresent thatched roadside catering gaffs. We made mistake #1. Never eat where there are no other diners. Even the local motorcycle taxi drivers were avoiding this one even they were offering the cheapest victuals around. My food seemed gritty though Hippy found nought wrong with it. Her papaya salad, in turn, contained, bizarrely the remains of a crab claw. We wondered whether this was part of the standard ingredients that is added condimentarily. Two days later when our departure from Siem Reap was delayed by Hip’s tummy’s refusal to normally process food and return it with a vengeance, we rued our economy.

Every cloud has a silver lining, they say. While Hippy had a day of repose, I typed and typed. I’m starting to wish that I had learned to type properly instead of spending my youth in idleness and frivolity. It is a double edged sword. Typing slowly gives one the opportunity to consider the mot juste but when you have a real creative flow on the ideas have gone before you manage to get them committed to virtual paper. For once I was on a roll and for the first time since leaving Blighty this time everything was completed up to current.

Rather than rushing off the next day, we thought it pragmatic to allow a calming period for normal enzyme activity to resume. Just as has happened so many times before, my stomach caught up 48 hours after Hippy’s onset. Same two day period of toilet activity.

The real silver lining though was meeting up with Jan. For once, it was he that spotted us and nearly repeated the apocryphal words of Mr Stanley upon meeting Livingstone. Maybe it was the union flag displayed on my t-shirt that he associated with the British numberplate in the car park or just the slightly hunched motorcyclist posture or maybe just the scruffy near-beard. He may even have been approaching everyone in the hotel with “You’re the guys on the bike, yes?” Whatever deductive process was involved, he was correct. He’s come ‘the other way’ through Iran, Pakistan and India on his Honda Africa Twin, having had to bypass Myanmar by ship. (Still no news on our efforts to traverse Myanmar).

He seemed to be our kind of overlander, unlike the Swedish guy that we met briefly on the stairs who, seemed to be on a mission to do unpleasant roads to prove how hard he was. The Swede had chosen Siem Reap as a stop, not for the famed angkor ruins but because the road to Sisophon is reputedly the worst in Cambodia. Whatever? Not sure if the rumours are right, but the story goes that the guy who owns the airport in Siem Reap has paid off the construction company for the Sisophon road, knowing that if they ever fix it, it will be easier to take the road from Bangkok than fly in and out.

Corruption, more than crude poverty, again holds a country back.

Jan being one-up understandly enjoys dirt more than Pat, but travels on dirt roads because they go somewhere he wants to go. We are pussies when we ride, but in the 4 years on the road have had only one accident with no injuries and no punctures (except that one in that car park in Mexico). Jan, a paramedic in the real world, had seen enough maimed bikers to know that riding at the limit, limits your life. He had a wonderfully dry sense of humour, so he was not only a kindred spirit, but an entertaining one.

We fell into bike banter and picked up the same vibe that we’ve had from everyone who has done the same thing. Iran and Pakistan great, that India can be the most frustrating and tedious place on earth. We still can’t understand how although this is the common experience so many people spend so long in India. The more I hear, the more I feel like flying over. Jan summed it up as being a place of extremes. One day you have the most amazing fun with Indians, the next you are picking up your bike off the ground because someone has been fiddling with it and seems completely unconcerned that they might have damaged it.

Just when you thought you were safe from temples ....

We filled Jan in on how to get a taste of the Angkor temples without having to buy a ticket - the roads are public and so you can ride around and see all the outsides, needing a ticket only to enter the temples. As I seemed to have achieved relative digestive stability on the second day of my episode, we decided to hitch up and head out to the ‘private’ ruins that are accessed through the Angkor park and then onwards on dirt roads for another 15 miles or so.

Our plan to enter Angkor Park via the back door to avoid ticket issues nearly collapsed at the first hurdle. We hadn’t notice when using this road previously to exit the park that it is in fact one way. Doh! Still, no one really fusses about bikes going the wrong way up roads so we just carried on regardless. We also nearly failed at the second hurdle. We’d never noticed that there is a check-point where this back road meets the ‘grand tour’ route around Angkor Park. Rather than inflame a situation, I decided it would be sensible to pull up and do the stupid act. We were looking for Phnom Kulen and were a bit lost. The guard was very helpful and pointed us in the right direction. So, there it is. If you are going to Angkor and can’t decide whether to pay to see the temples, take a tour on the roads, telling the guard that you’re going to PK. You can’t get fined for being in the ruins without a relevant ticket as you are not in the ruins. We feel that our contribution of $80 to the coffers of the hotel/petrol company that runs the place entitled us to a bit of slack.

We arrived at the highly recommended Phnom Kulen. Jan being more experienced in the ‘special price’ entry phenomenom, launched into an effort to reach a reasonable compromise with the guards. The $20 dollar entry fee was rediculously, huge for a waterfall with some carving, considering an average income of a dollar a day in Cambodia our offer of 20 dollars for the 3 of us for the three of them, was, you could see, enormously tempting. You see, the hill of Phnom Kulen is privately owned, and the owner clearly believes in not only making money but also paying his guards a pittance. We didn’t have the 20 dollars per person and wouldn’t have paid it if we did. You could see one guard fighting between the fear of his boss and the offer of a week’s wages in his pocket. It was the oldest guy that was adamantly against it. It is understandable that after decades of legitimate fear of authority he was too scared to be tempted. As we sat negotiating a steady stream of Cambodians on mopeds rode into the ruins all unheeded despite the notice asking a 10,000 ($2.50) riel fee from them. Saffron robes seem to be a free ticket in, as do being a landmine victim, but it seems that all accompanying passengers go free too, which seems a bit of an abuse of the system. I suggested adopting a monastic aspect but Hippy was adamanently against shaving her head and rightly pointed out that white (the colour of robes for Buddhist nuns) is not a practical colour when the dirt roads kick up a red-brown dust.

So we left, and went on to Beng Melea a few kilometres away. As we left the younger guy watched wistfully, as his potential bonus disappeared, and the anxiety of the older guy evaporated. I was relieved, I am happy to blag my way as a student when I am not, as this is only my own deception, and my own risk, but potentially putting a guard in a dodgy position was putting others at risk of losing their jobs or worse. Not to mention my aversion to corruption.

We did not have the sense to ask as we began the toll dirt road to Beng Melea (free for motorcycles), “How far Beng Melea?” so after 20km of gorgeous graded dirt we pulled up to a shelter, for a ciggy break and stilted communication with a cheery grandmother swinging carelessly in a hammock. After a little confusion we deciphered that it was only 6km more and there was a junction in a about a km down the road. This lady was so chilled and friendly. Why is that richer countries get the more dissatisfied the people become? There is no fundamental logic as to why people with many things are often less content, but it is a general ironic truism. The more we have the less we appreciate, and the more stressed we become over getting more to not appreciate. Life for people here is hard, very hard, a one room wooden shelter with no electricity or water to house the family, and little or no money coming in, to buy food. The constant potential land mine danger, makes foraging for food a liability. Yet their smiles are genuine and easily given; their faces free from the lines of stress and full of contentment. The more I see of people the less I understand about what makes a society a good one. I find it incredible to believe that a race of seemingly happy smiley people could have caused and suffered the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. Where are the savages who beat to death millions of people, now?

We made it to Beng Melea, the ruins subsumed by the nature, too far from the rest of the angkor ruins to attract the big conservation funding, it attracts the more Indiana Jones type tourist, or bikers who fancied a day out. The approach was promising, the expected naga embellished promenade to the entrance, with the most intact set of naga heads we had seen yet. Maybe, its relative obscurity had protected with ignorance from looting over the years. The ruins were a combination of tumbled gateways, prangs and libraries with the main enclosing walls miraculously intact. Scrambling over fallen lintels and blockwork, we wended our way through the ramshackle ruins, delighting in the glimpses of a Shiva here, or an apsara there peeking out of the rumble, telling tales of on the grand edifice this had been. This had been the capital before Angkor had been conceived and remnants of a laterite road from there to Pimai in Thailand have been found. For me there was a sense of completeness about visiting both ends of the road. I have to thank Jan for stirring us up to take the trip out to Beng Melea. I’d been reluctant as I couldn’t summon the enthusiasm for the road and I was beginning to think that Hippy would never forgive me for not taking her there.

We ended the day watching a reflective sunset, and marvelling at the drunkenness of the pottery traders of Cambodia. At our sunset spot we were saved from the usual fluster of children trying to persuade us buy things we did not want by a collection of pottery trucks, that consumed the children’s interest. The trucks laden with displays of their wares, seemed to have a common factor, first one then two then three of these trucks pulled up with comatose owners. The first was sprawled face down on the grass, the second slept supported by the wheel of the truck and the third had mates who tried in vain to push him from the seat he seemed welded to. Did this happen everyday, or was this national potter’s drinking day, had a gullible tourist paid so much for their earthenware souvenir that a celebration was in order?

The English of these little children is tremendous, they learn not from schools but from the tourists. The more English they speak the more they sell. Lonely Planet launches into an interesting debate on the subject of the children selling stuff in the ruins. The amazingly complex (for a child of about 12) and gramatical English that this girl was speaking has been completely acquired interrelating with tourists. She claimed that they weren’t taught English in her school. So, yes, she is getting a valuable education through her work and probably earning enough to keep her family at the same time.

It had been a good day, worth the delay in Siem Reap, rounded off with a few beers, some pizza and some pool with a couple of Irish lads that Jan had been educated by (he learnt not to get involved in serious drinking with paddies!) earlier when he was in Ko Chang. The only annoyance was a loud opinionated American girl, who claimed to be a New Zealander despite being ignorant of most things NZ. For someone so well travelled, she seemed terribly unempathetic. She seemed to think that Everest, being a tourist attraction and all, should have lots of money spent on it and be made into a National Park akin to those in New Zealand and the US. Trying to point out that building roads in the Himalayas, maybe a tad too expensive for a poor country, fell on deaf ears. Anyway takes some of the expedition element out of it, if you go up on a tar road. She was disappointed that when she got there, there was just a mountain, what else was she expecting, an Everest theme park, a restaurant selling K2 cocktails? She seemed to have nothing good to say about anywhere she had been. I restrained myself from the urge to tell her to just go back to America if she likes it so much. She was quite attractive, though, and it was funny to see a succession of eligible young chaps giving her a bit of their time before withdrawing to sanity. One of them would have done us all afavour if they had occupied her mouth in a long snogging session.

More ruins and a missed karaoke opportunity

As we left the hotel at Siem Reap, a bunch of guys were indulging in the odd egg practice that goes on around here. We’ve seen folk hawking eggs on a stick. I’d assumed that these were boiled eggs subsequently impaled. They informed me that these were chicken foetuses. Nice. I clutched my nuts and nodded at them to receive confirmation with mirthful nods that, yes, this was yet another strange example of perceived fertility inducing fodder. Rather less pleasant than the Guyanese belief that eating the jelly from water coconuts puts lead in your pencil.

We were fit and well, it was time to move just down the road to Kompong Thom. The road was tar and dull as dishwater, the only thing that saved it from being bland was colour from our fellow road users. Mopeds, transport everything here, if it does fit on a bike, just attach a trailer, if the trailer is too small, get a bigger one and if that is not enough overload it till everything is hanging over the edge. Then if it all looks a bit unstable bung some people on top who are hitching a ride. I smiled to myself, over our anal, Western worries about overloading Berthette. Some of my favourites, were 3 dead pigs strapped in a row, heads in the road and trotters in the air, twenty live chickens trussed heads down watching the tarmac rush by and cylindrical whicker cages of piglets.

It seems to me that a survey of Cambodian people at any one time would find about 30% of them waist deep in muddy water, 50% in motion on either bicycle or motorcycle and 20% involved in other activities

We checked into a posh place, with all mod cons, fridge, cable TV, soap, shampoo even toothbrushes and a real bath tub. This I hasten to add was not because we were on a splurge, but because it was you get even better value for money outside touristville. All this was under 4 quid. We could have stopped in the brothel for a couple of half as much. Close call.

Sambor Prei Kuk, just up the road, is the ruins of the pre-Angkor Khmer capital, two of the complexes are 7th century. That’s really quite old. OK it is not quite Roman, Greek or Egyptian, but still admirably old. My knowledge of archaeology is a bit weak and we conjectured whether these were the oldest brick built structures in the world. From a building geek boy point of view, I was bewildered that so much of the brickwork was in such excellent condition. In general brickwork of the world is the sun dried mud variety and suffers from reverting to soft mud after years of exposure to the elements. Even unglazed bricks tend to be less than durable. What was the history of brick making here that is so successful. Must have been aliens involved.

We bought our tickets from a well spoken young man and as we left, he truly amazed me with his encyclopaedic knowledge of English. I had a momentary bowel relapse and did a rather noisy fart. Very calmly and with a rising tone in his voice that implied a question he said “Fart?” We mused that just like every other sad lad at school, he had spent hours with his Cambodian/English dictionary trying to find foreign language equivalents of risqué words. Same, same. We congratulated him on his fine command of the vernacular.

We were on a roll with the English language and when the little girls appeared to sell us scarves and flutes I regressed to schoolteacher mode. Rather more jolly than when I was coaching reluctant maths students in the UK. Here we kicked off with “Heads and shoulders, knees and toes”. Thereafter, an hour was spent trying to develop their “sh” sound. Clearly this is a sound that is alien to the Khmer tongue and we really struggled to work out exactly what one has to do with ones mouth to create just that sound. We had to admit defeat, especially when trying to explain to a youngster, in a foreign language, that you have to kind of curl up your tongue at the sides and touch the palate a bit further back, and so spent the rest of our visit singing “head and soulders, knees and toes”.

Maybe its time to call it a day on temples or we’d made the mistake of visiting the best first but Sambor Prei Kuk just didn’t grip me like Angkor, but it did have some pretty unique aspects for all that.. The bricks were good but had been scattered by the ravages of time. Nature had leant a little support to the odd wall and tower but structural elegance is not what you come here for. The bas reliefs, too, were not the finest examples but displayed a reasonable clue to the beauty that must have once abounded. No, it was the statuary and phalli and their presentation that was quite unique. A certain amount of imagination was needed to draw this conclusion as there were, in fact, no statues or phalli. Most of them have been ripped of by treasure seekers (Who on earth would nip out to a bit of mosquitoey jungle to steal a half ton block of stone that when in a vertical attitude may just about resemble a phallus but when horizontal may just be another rock?), the rest are on display in museums. The bases for all this ornamentation are still there and it’s enough to see these. Uniquely, from what we have seen so far, there are shrine arrangements which were like large canopied 4-poster beds in stone.

A brief mention needs to be made about the practise of phallus worship. It seems to revolve around pouring water over a large piece of stone that varies in cross-section from square to octagonal to circular from bottom to top - the very apex being a hemisphere. There’s no bulges or veins or anything remotely physiologically accurate about these objects d’art but they are sufficiently willy-like to satisfy the carnal Hindus. The phalli are built into a base so that all the water which has now become holy can be collected and distributed to anyone that needs it. What Pat fails to allude to is that the base has a grove to drain the water off after annointing, that has a remarkable likeness to the front bottom. More to do with Paganism than strict Hinduism, but hey what’s a religion between friends. One of the prangs at Sambor Prei Kuk has a deluxe arrangement where the holy water is automatically channelled through the wall where, one assumes, the hoi poloi could take a pint or two without the priests having to lower themselves.

When we retired to a thatched shelter to partake of crisps and pop, the kids gathered to play. Rather than teaching their friends their new English song, they preferred to stick with the international playground favourite of skipping. Here a slightly dangerous element was added by having to hop over a string attached to a large rock which was being swung around the head of a crouching child.

Our pop and crisps break got a bit weird when I ordered a bag of snacks by pointing. 25 cents got me a bag of coconut flavoured peanuts in a bag labelled “Guiness Stout promotion, not for sale” that were made in Malaysia but actually contained something rather like chipsticks. How random is that? Helen’s plantain chips, although honey coated, were exactly what we expected and as such something of a disappointment.

Development in the world has become rather difficult to assess when people are seen swinging in hammocks hung below rather shanty shacks wearing facsimiles of designer t-shirts and talking on their mobile phones. I’m fascinated by the apparent lack of a mains electricity system - how do they charge these phones?

Back at the hotel we subjected ourselves to another night of karaoke. One of the major advertising points of our hotel was the provision of karaoke facilities and we’d discovered that this is something of a private affair; rooms set up with equipment lined the top corridor and folks hired a room for a period in which to practise their discordancy. The management had, at least, set it up to affect the hotel guests minimally by subjecting would-be Sinatras to a midnight curfew. I have still to face my challenge and dip my toe in the karaoke water. Brother Rob has emailed to encourage not to force myself upon the world. It remains to be seen whether my efforts are as poorly recieved as his.