13th December 2014- Siem Reap to Phnom Penn CAMBODIA

Siam Reap to Pnomh Penh - Cambodia 13th December 2014

This morning we left Siem Reap to travel to our next stop, the capital of Cambodia, Phomh Penh.

We were sorry to leave Siem Reap, we had been blown away by the temples, the food was wonderful and we just loved the people. They had been so charming  friendly, remarkably unspoiled even given the level of tourism round Angkor Wat, it will be interesting to see if Phnomh Penh is different as it is a much bigger city.

Views of Cambodia

 Most of the road (Route 8) was dirty and everything on sight for over 300Km was covered in brown dust - including the market.

Route 8  as we saw it for most of the bone shaking day

 Its the rice harvest and so most farmers are in the fields.  Rice is mainly grown for own consumption and they dry it out on blue tarps on the road side - with all the brown dust, this makes brown rice

Typical Cambodian farm cottage - some are at ground level and others are on stilts which is a traditional style from flood prevention. It is visually impossible to break out of the cycle of poverty due to the harsh communist regime.  When asked what poor people did when they got sick and could not afford hospital, our guide replied "the communist government just lets them die"!!

Think again if you have to wait 6 hours in A andE in the UK

The Communist Party offices seemingly every mile in every village and town in Cambodia.  People are not happy with the Government anymore and an opposition party has formed, but all elections are rigged.  The government is in a relationship with China who pays lots of money for its influence in the region and corruption is endemic and yet the people are so sweet and kind they surely do not deserve to be taken for granted.

 The most primitive forms of fishing are still very much in use

We left around 8am and were told that the journey by road would take around 6-7 hours and there were some roadworks en route.

We stopped first at Sambor Prei Kuk which was the capital pre Angkor period. It is about 3 hours drive from Siem Reap, has no Unesco World Heritage status and is maintained by a little community programme that does what it can to raise money to pay for restoration. We were the only people there. It was so atmospheric, we loved it, but for them it would make so much difference to be able to protect it properly. We collected our usual tribe of children selling scarves & postcards but they were just so sweet, we could have adopted them all. Steve nearly did ! We had lunch with them all in the community restaurant and then back on the road to Phnom Penh.

Steves little friend "Nike" got some tree nuts and opened them with a rock and shared them (very moving especially as they do not even have bean) - just a lovely sweet poor girl. Sometime you think you can see why Madonna took one home !!

Steves little friend "Nike".  Impossible to forget her generosity and friendliness.

 The haunting location on the woods of Sambor Prei Kuk - deserted except for a couple of tourists.

Paul and Mandys' little friend 

 The Lion temple

 American B-52 bomb crater - we will see many fo these in Cambodia and Vietnam

B52 Bomb Crater - many bombs still under the ground here

We travelled on through the countryside which was just fascinating as we could see daily life for 80% of the Cambodian population who are all agricultural workers. They have no electricity in the villages. They run a light & tv from a car battery & there is a battery charge station in each village. It is rice harvest time and everywhere we went they were cutting the rice manually with knives, threshing it & then drying it on bamboo mats in front of their houses. Once dry they bag it into sacks and the wholesaler comes through & buys the sacks of rice from them to take to large central markets for sale & onward shipping to China, Vietnam & Europe. Ox carts are still the main method of collecting & moving the rice, and every small hamlet had oxen, water buffalo & chickens. Just fascinating & every view worth capturing.

We soon discovered the Cambodian art of understatement……. The roadworks turned out to be the entire road (380Km) for the remaining 5 hours and although this is the main highway from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, it was worse than most of the roads I have travelled in Africa. No tarmac at all, red dust everywhere and tyre eating potholes everywhere – plus they drive like nutters anyway. 

Unbelievable driving conditions and more red dust

It was probably one advantage that they couldn’t get over 20km hr !!  We rattled, shook & lurched all the way to just outside Phnomh Penh when we stopped for our last stop in Skoun at the Spider Market. Deep fried Spiders are a delicacy here, they eat them with a little chilli dip and some beers.

Steve had always said he was going to try a spider but when we saw the SIZE of these and discovered that they were actually Tarantulas we thought – no way is he going to do this – but he did !!!

It was completely gross………….compounded by a woman coming up to Mandy and Janette with a live one !! Dead ones were bad enough !

Steve tried to persuade Paul to try a deep fried cricket, but fortunately Paul had more sense…

When  you get into why such odd things are eaten, you realise that it was us (The western world) that closed off their food supply routes in the war and so the locals had to find alternative sources such as insects etc.

"I probably wont have another one thanks"

Paul Sinfield refused point bank, do you blame him?

We arrived in the mad place that is Phnomh Penh, tired, dusty and sore after our bone shaking drive but  a day we wouldn’t have missed for anything as we had seen so much of true Cambodian life – just fascinating !

Nice sunset as the team rolled in to PP