The colours of Cambodia
My way into Cambodia was really interesting and exhausting. I booked a combined bus and ferry ticket from Don Det to Siem Reap (29$ way too expensive). There I met Roel (Dutchie) and Mack and we sticked together until now. And now the adventure begins! We crossed one of the most corrupt borders in the world. Evidently. It started by getting out of Laos. In order to do that you’d have to get a stamp from the immigration which is usually free but over there you had to pay 2$. I was asking for a receipt but they just handed me my passport back without the stamp, so I just ended up paying. We even met some people who were arguing with the officers about the fee for over an hour but they refused to give them a stamp. No stamp means no chance of leaving Laos. We made our way out of Laos after a bit of cursing and grumbling into no man’s land and limboed under the barrier into Cambodia! The next scam was at the cambodian immigration: 35$ visa instead of 30$. Well done officers, you were making a very good first impression of Cambodia. Didn’t mention the best thing about that day tho. After that pain in the ass border crossing (took us like one and a half hours) we had to wait for our bus in the heat in the middle of fucking nowhere. This happened again after a two hours bus ride for the next city and then we ended up in a minivan all squeezed together. Some people didn’t take the whole ride as relaxed as others which led to a french guy shouting at our driver because we arrived in Siem Reap a couple of hours after the estimated time. Relax man, we’re in Asia…
Siem Reap was a shock at first. After the peaceful environment on Don Det the crowds an masses of tourists were overwhelming. Arriving there at night made it even worse cause everybody was out starting to Party at the famous Pub Street, so we called it a night.
The next day Mack, Dutchie and me did some exploring in the city and planned our trip to Angkor Wat. I met Ben again and we headed to a pool party at the Flashpackers Hostel and ended up in Pub Street.. Funny night that ended with drunken people stumbling back to their Hostel and my friend messing with the TukTuk drivers by twisting the whole game and asking THEM if they need a ride. They were left speechless which was a nice change cause they didn’t follow us trying to get money out of the drunk white people.
Too hungover to go to the temples of Angkor in the morning we decided to start our exploring in the evening. Rented some bikes and cycled all the way there to enjoy the sunset at the temple complex. Two hours later we cycled to the village nearby where we ended up in a Guesthouse that supports the local teachers and school had some real Khmer food and started our journey early the next morning. Early means 5 o’clock which is way too early in my opinion but we couldn’t skip the famous sunrise at Angkor Wat, right?
Before I start telling you our journey I wanna educate you a little bit ;) tbh, I had no clue what the Angkor temples are, why they are there and since when. So i started reading because I was too greedy to get a guide. This is gonna be a very very brief history lesson! First of all the temple complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is constantly in restoration at the moment. The EXACT dates of when it was built are still unknown. The Angkorian period started in 802 AD and ended in 1432. During that period the Angkor temples were built. The Angkor Wat temple and many others were built during the reign of King Suryavarman II (ruled between 1113 and 1150 AD). The temple complex was the capital of the Khmer Empire and it’s said that there were more people living there than in the modern London. Fun fact: Angkor Wat was originally dedicated to Vishnu, the Hindu God. It was converted into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century which means they added a loooot of Buddha’s. The second name you’ll have to know is Jayavarman VII. He built Angkor Thom, Bayon, Ta Prohm and many other temples.
To be honest, I was really disappointed by the famous sunset. It’s probably the season tho, but the sunrise is not as magical as everybody says it is. Go for the sunset, it’s way better! The sunrise itself was witnessed by hundreds of tourists maybe even thousands and each and every one of them went inside of Angkor Wat eventually. We followed the masses inside and were a bit disappointed, again. This specific temple (the most famous one and probably the one with the most visitors) looks amazing from the outside. But once you go in it kinda loses the good vibe. Could also be because you will never be the only person in that temple, but the architecture and details in other temples were more beautiful.
We decided to avoid the crowds after that and do the temple tour the other way around. Started at Pre Rup, a temple on the big circuit. And luckily we were three out of 7 people visiting this temple which means enough time and space to explore in peace and quiet! I really liked that one, we reached it at the perfect time and it was kinda taken over by nature with flowers in most corners.
Our next destinations was the famous Ta Prohm also known as the Angelina Jolie temple from Tomb Raider. One of the most popular temples of the whole complex and I get why. This one is amazingly beautiful, it’s more ruins than temple at the moment but as it is more or less in the jungle there are huge trees growing in/on the temple and nature is completely taking over which makes it kinda magical. You can walk around in the complex and get lost in its beauty and details. Sadly this one was rather crowded but it gave us the opportunity to listen to some tour guides again (yes, we did sneak up behind the groups and listened to their stories). One of them (now my favourite one) pointed out one specific tree at the temple, started laughing and said it looks like a butt. Cheers to you, made my day!
The next stop was at the Ta Keo temple. Not the most special one but definitely exhausting to climb! From there we went a bit off-road and discovered a nice ‘viewpoint’. Ride there was really adventurous and fun, I had to duck under branches or ride on bamboo bridges a couple of times. All of us were so glad we rented Mountainbikes and not regular ones!! We thought we deserved a break from the biking and exploring, sat down at the viewpoint and met a really sweet dutch couple with their guide. He gave us some advice how to proceed further with our temple exploration so our next stop was Preah Khan, a temple hidden in the depths of the jungle. Perfect for us cause that meant it wasn’t crowded at all. In my opinion this was one of the most beautiful temples in the whole complex. Standing in the centre of said temple you felt like you’re looking into a mirror cause the architecture was so symmetrical!
I know I’m just mentioning some buildings you probably never heard of (except for Angkor Wat) so I’m just saying our last two temples were Bayon (temple of faces), which had a lot of hidden messages inside you wouldn’t notice unless you have a guide telling you (or overhear someone else’s guide) and Angkor Thom. Both very very beautiful and way more destroyed than Angkor Wat.
Shortly before we left we witnessed a monk giving a monkey a can of beer. And he ENJOYED it!!
Too exhausted to drive all the way back we did something fun: holding on to TukTuks while riding our bikes. It was incredibly difficult sometimes to hold on but it was worth it. Yes, i know. We’re lazy… but I wanna see all of you exploring Angkor Wat by bike and not be lazy afterwards!
That night (btw out last night in Siem Reap) was a crazy one! But some stories are better untold ;) The following morning or rather noon Mack and I met up for breakfast and started our hitchhiking tour. Original plan was to go to Battambang and a national park but we caught ourselves thinking about the sea and were like fuck it, we’re gonna catch a ride to Phnom Penh and head to the ocean.
One TukTuk ride out of town and 20 minutes later we got lucky. A sweet couple picked us up, saying they’re gonna go all the way to Phnom Penh. Those two were really cute and helpful, buying us food and explaining a bit about Cambodia.
Funny thing: both live in Phnom Penh but told us it’s a horrible city and we should be careful. They were not the only ones who gave us a warning about Cambodia’s capital, almost every restaurant we passed had some people telling us to be careful. I could see why, Phnom Penh looked like a complete shit-hole. We only saw one part of it, sadly.. The next day we took a bus to Kampot which is really close to the sea and supposedly one of the most beautiful areas in Cambodia. This was so true! We rented a bike on our second day and explored the beauty of the Bokor Nationalpark. And it’s insanely good roads which just tempted to drive fast. We spent a whole day there, I learned a couple of tricks for the biking and we got lost in the beautiful jungle like atmosphere.
As you can see, we found this beautiful little temple on top of Bokor mountain. It looked magical!
The next couple of days were relaxed, we had breakfast in our favourite cafe which was staffed by people harmed through landmines or similar things and it was truly impressive how some Khmer manage to serve with only one arm or completely blind. Anyone who’s down to visit Kampot, go to the epic arts cafe! One day I stumbled over a graphic design shop named MATHILDA. They were selling tank tops/dresses for girls with beautiful designs and in the backyard of the MATHILDA shop was a hidden bar, the looking glass.
However, the next day Dutchie, Giulia, Jakob (he’s new), a french guy and me did a day trip to see the pepper plantations and a couple of caves in the Kampot area. It was an amazing day, starting with an interesting motorbike ride to cave number one. Oh, we found some puppies outside of the cave!!
The cave was amazing. We did some exploring, walking around in the darker areas and climbing some bamboo ladders when it happened: Jakob was gone. There was yelling and searching with our torches for a couple of minutes but no sign of him. Reminds you of something? Yeah, my comment about how this is the perfect start of a horror movie was not the best thing I could’ve said but guess what happened next? Someone said ‘why not split up?’. Yep, this is even more horror movie like!! All I could think of was ‘the descent’ with those gollum-like creatures that eat humans... While deciding what to do Jakob appeared out of nowhere :D Thanks, for giving us a scare.
At cave number two we had a little climbing-adventure. Two locals guided us through the caves, climbing from one stone to the other like little monkeys, it was a lot of fun and this time no one got lost. Our next stop was the secret lake which has a horrible history. During the Khmer Rouge the lake was built using forced labour by prisoners and captured villagers to create a dam. Thousands of the people were killed after they helped build the dam and buried in a mass grave at the bottom. One man who escaped told people of the “secret” location of the mass grave under the water. The bodies have never been recovered and some fishermen have collected human bones along with their daily catch. Sounds like the perfect place to take a swim, right?
Not far from this lake was La Plantation a big pepper plantation who offers free tours and free pepper-tasting. Did you know that Kampot is known to have the best pepper in the whole wide world? Of course, people argue about which one is the best but Kampot pepper is definitely one of the best. It’s so delicious and they gave us a beautiful tour, so we could take a look at the real work done here and how much those people do everyday. They also grow other plants like pineapples or mangos and some more spices to make the pepper even taste better.
After arriving in Kampot, grabbing some food and a couple of beers to go we drove to the nationalpark, picked a nice spot and watched the sunset. It was one of my favourite days on my travels.
Now you’d expect some more stories about my travels in Cambodia. Truth to be told, I spent almost three weeks in Kampot having the time of my life. What did I do all the time... well, remember the looking glass?
Guess, who got a job at this beautiful bar? Yes, I did. You know what that means? Free alcohol for three weeks. Think my liver was happy about it? Definitely not!!! It wasn’t that bad actually. My liver was fine, I’m still alive and healthy :) The time I spent in Kampot was amazing. First day working in the looking glass and they took me in as family. I haven’t felt so much love from that much people in a long time and it was kinda like coming home. Meg, Hayley, Jeff, Bib, Joe, Adam and Klara this is to you: I MISS YOU!!! So much and I will definitely come back to you someday and stay. You made Cambodia unforgettable for me, beautiful, fun and just happy. All those nights in the Looking Glass, at Karmatraders or Hightide, the Meraki party, rhymes on the river or Naga House or just eating those delicious burgers or toasties, the dirty dancing or 80s karaoke sessions... i miss all of it!! You are a great family to me, see you soon!