The Road to Siem Reap

OK, after much procrastinating, I arranged to have a taxi come and collect me and take me from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (roughly speaking it is about the distance of London to Edinburgh). This taxi ride was going to cost about £60, which was not too bad. However, at the last moment I thought it would be more interesting to take the bus and journey with the masses. This trip didn't even cost £10, so I have made a saving which I can blow on fridge magnets at the Angkor Wat souvenir stalls.

In case anyone is wondering, i have become addicted to fridge magnets, they are relatively cheap, personalised for the location you are visiting and, most importantly, they don't take up too much space in the suitcase. So, if your future presents from me come in the form of a small but heavy rectangular shape, you can have a good guess what it is going to be!

The bus journey was uneventful, but it did give me the opportunity to see a more rural side to Cambodia (albeit at a speed of about 100kph) The road between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap is Cambodia's best road, although that is not saying much as 90% of the roads are dirt tracks. The skill of the bus driver was undoubted, he was overtaking people on cars and motorbikes like they were crawling along. This was made a little bit more perturbing as for most of the journey the road seemed to be single carriageway and built up out of the paddy fields. One wrong swerve and we would have been up to our necks in rice!!
This is a traffic jam, Phnom Penh style. People casually walk through the traffic, taking their lives in their own hands, as cars rarely stop!!

Still, it was quite an interesting trip. Cambodia has a lot of similarities to East Anglia; it is very flat, like the fens, it is all sodden, like the fens and the communities all stick to their own gene pool - erm - like the fens.

The Khmer Rouge aimed to create an agrarian society and it seems, thirty years on, the legacy still lives on. Most people are just tilling their own food, and milking their own cows. There were one or two stone masons I noticed on the way, and this Angkorian craft has not died out, as the workmanship on some of the pieces was spectacular. It did make me wonder how much they charged for them, as I could easily see some of the pieces (some of which were 6 feet tall) going for tens of thousands of pounds at some trendy Knightsbridge store.

As the journey was so long, there were a couple of scheduled stops for using the facilities. It did seem to me that these stop offs were more of a business arrangement, as the moment we pulled up we were surrounded by people trying to get us to buy food. Being of western extraction (or possibly because I look like a gullible sap) I was seriously pestered by vendors trying to liberate me of my dollars!! It does make me feel a bit guilty saying "no" to an emaciated doe eyed child, but if I am to have any cash left for the final part of the trip I need to be tougher.

Still, after 7 hours travelling (the first hour of this was actually trying to get out of Phnom Penh) we arrived at Siem Reap. The moment you step off the bus you are harangued by hordes of tuk-tuk drivers (a tuk-tuk is a motorcycles with a carriage on the back), who promise to drive you to your hotel for free. This can be precarious, as some of them are scammers who will drive you to a hotel they want you to stay at (another cushy little business arrangement). However, as I had booked ahead, I was making it completely clear where I wanted to go, the tuk-tuk driver did not mess me around.

He was good to his word and did not charge me a penny for lift, although I gave him a couple of dollars of my own volition. Travelling by tuk-tuk with a large case is an experience in itself - the potholes in the roads at Siem Reap are massive and so every time the tuk-tuk swerved, the case lurched precariously over the side. Still, I arrived at my hotel in one piece, and once again I am in relative luxury.

Tonight I think I will head into Siem Reap and see what the lay of the land is like and tomorrow, Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples await!!