We formed a plan of attack.  Get up at the crack of dawn, hire a couple of bikes and cycle to the temples to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat.  Perfect.  My alarm bleeped at 5am, we opened the curtains.  The sun had beat us to it and was already beaming over Siem Reap.  Bugger.  We tottered into town where at 5.15 the harassment from Tuk Tuk drivers was already becoming annoying, doubled by the fact that I was grumpy for a) getting up at 5am and b) missing the one thing that we got up early for.  Nonetheless we found some bikes and headed north to the temples.

First stop, iconic Angkor Wat.  It’s huge.  It’s allegedly the biggest religious building in the world, however been the first-class skeptics that we are, we spent the day debating whether St. Pauls is bigger.  Answers on a postcard please.  What’s perhaps more telling is that this impressively intricate and ornate monument was built in the 12th century whilst us English peasants were busy eating mud and burning the village witch.  We walked the (huge) grounds, took in the impressive bas-reliefs and wondered up to the top of the towers.  All before our breakfast of noodle soup (which unlike Phnom Penh noodle soup, did not contain pig intestines).

We tottered on to Ta Prohm, an enchanting temple that’s succumbing to the jungle.  Trees are growing over under and on top of these ruins – the setting wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Labyrinth or Indiana Jones.  Apparently that most famous of Derby exports – Tomb Raider – was filmed here.  Another notable temple was Bayon which is in the center of the old city of Angkor Thom.  This temple is famous for it’s 216 scary faces carved into the walls and towers.  Even more scary was the 216 hysterical, screeching Japanese tourists who were visiting that day.  Finally, this one made me chuckle readers, is the Baphuon temple.  For some unbeknown reason The French dismantled this huge temple before the war but the drawings were subsequently lost.  The pieces are now spread across acres of land and the French are busy trying to put it back together again.  Cue ‘allo ‘allo style skit: “Hawhehaw Rene, I tink we ave found le missing winkle-tinkle of Udayadityavarman, let us drink cognac and eat sausage to celebrate this magnifique occasion.”  Except they weren’t there when we visited.  They must be on strike again.

It turned out to be a marathon day of sight seeing.  Not least due to the overwhelming temples and vastness of the site, but also due to the constant screeching from hawkers.  “Hey mista!  Wanna buy a tee shirt?  You buy it from me?  Promise?”.  Piss off or I’ll run you over with my bicycle.  Twelve hours and 35km later we returned to Siem Reap for the best 30 pence beer I’ve ever drunk.

 

PS – we’ve just watched CNN news over breakfast.  The Derby clan will be delighted to know that Ashbourne has made its international news debut.  Between reports from the Iranian elections and French plane crash investigations we’ve just seen coverage of Ashbourne’s toe wrestling final.  I kid you not.

The morning after my monkey attack I wasn’t experiencing any rabies symptoms so we embarked on another truly shit thirteen hour journey from the Laos border to Phnom Penh, arriving at about midnight in a stinking mood – getting into unfamiliar cities late at night is always quite unpleasant and Phnom Penh’s cheap guesthouse area is not at its best in the dark – but within ten minutes of getting off the bus we’d been offered opium, hash, coke and speed so we soon perked up again. Actually we didn’t purchase any, we just had a good night’s sleep and woke up to a less scary looking city.

Despite being on a tight schedule in Cambodia we’ve ended up staying in the Phnom Penh for four nights because, like a wart, it’s ugly but it grows on you with time. The entire city centre seems to be undergoing a very, very slow facelift that has rejuvenated some areas to former glories, whereas others are still in line for a nip tuck. I’m no town planner but I reckon priority number one should probably be drainage…it rained heavily for about an hour yesterday while we were in the National Museum and when we came out we were stranded: the city centre had flooded, which can’t be good considering the monsoon season hasn’t really kicked in yet. To get back to out guesthouse we had to wade through a foot of truly disgusting black rain water mixed with drain scum, with unidentified objects brushing past our legs every ten seconds.

Phnom Penh used to be known as the Pearl of the Orient; it had a post-colonial hey day in the fifties and sixties but it was completely abandoned in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took control of the country, forcing the urban population into rural agrarian collectives – or simply massacring them in the killing fields of Cheow Ek. These days, the capital encapsulates a lot of Cambodia’s less appealing characteristics – drugs are practically on tap, poverty, begging and child prostitution are common and the infrastructure is decidedly shaky – but, considering the political and social turmoil that Cambodia experienced during the sixties and seventies, the devastation of the U.S. secret bombing campaign and the unspeakable horror of the Khmer Rouge regime, you have to admire Phnom Penh and its inhabitants for their determination to rebuild the city, themselves and their country.

As well as the change of pace it’s also been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since we arrived: we’ve visited two horrifying museums explaining the causes and consequences of the Khmer Rouge period (as far as you can explain complete madness), and although I knew a bit about the genocide here during my degree, I didn’t really get my head around the mass murder of two million people I looked at their photos, saw their skulls piled up in heaps and walked around the rooms and fields where they died.

We’ve also had great food and beer, shopped in the crazy markets and seen the beautiful relics of the mighty Angkorian era in the stunning National Museum, all of which has left me feeling a bit emotionally topsy-turvey and in need of some low-grade mental activity. We’re on to Siem Reap next to see what Cambodia looked like a few centuries earlier when the Angkor Empire was bossing the entire region – but after that I think it’s time for a bit of beach therapy on the coast.