Bamboo, Banana Boats & Bicycles

Flush with our recent success, helping Odyssey win the Gold Medal for Top Overland Blog 2012, we write with renewed vigour! We arrived in Bangkok yesterday after a hair raising ride in a couple of minibuses from the Thai border, without a doubt the fastest we've travelled on the trip so far.

Our first stop in Cambodia was Phnom Penh where we spent a day visiting the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields. Tuol Sleng was previously a high school but then used as the notorious secret S-21 prison by the Khmer Rouge Regime. Mainly educated people, teachers, lawyers etc. and their entire families (so there could be no revenge) were tortured until they admitted to false accusations made against them. They were then moved at night to a site out of town, now known as the Killing Fields, where the drone of generator noises and loud music were broadcast to disguise the screams of people as they were bludgeoned to death and pushed into mass graves. Bullets cost too much so tools from the fields were used instead, from spades to ox cart axles, babies were dispensed of by being swung by their feet head first against a large tree. When the site was discovered it didn't take them long to figure out why there was brain matter and blood on the bark. To this day heavy rains unearth teeth, jawbones and other fragments of Cambodia's lost generation.

Bracelets in memory of the children

Memorial stupa

S-21 Museum

Our guide for the S-21 museum

S-21 was just an ordinary school

An excellent audio tour meant we could walk around the site in near silence which somehow gave it a rather peaceful air, with a central memorial pagoda housing thousands of skulls. It was a sobering but educating day which reminded us of the very recent dark past of the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot who were responsible for mass genocide, killing millions of his own people in the late 1970s. The Vietnamese army overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979 forcing them to retreat into the jungle, unfortunately they continued using guerilla warfare tactics long after and in to the 90s. Pol Pot was never brought to justice and died in 1998. It's amazing how a country can go through such atrocities in recent times and after so little retribution for the perpetrators, come out of it and remain warm and friendly

Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital and largest city located on the banks of the Mekong River, has plenty to keep everyone busy. The Royal Palace complex and Silver Pagoda serves to this day as the Cambodian home of King Norodom Siahmoni, located in the centre of town, a peaceful place for a wander, street sounds silenced by high walls surrounding the complex. The Foreign Correspondent's Club, a beautiful 3 storey colonial-style building, gave another angle on Cambodia's history with black and white photographs adorning the walls taken by journalists in the country at the time of the bloody revolution. Sunset happy hour provided the perfect excuse to sit on the balcony with a G&T.

Afternoon rains a'coming

Royal Palace

Is that Pip?

Tuk tuk convoy

You can transport anything on a motorcycle

Hels & Rogs enjoying happy hour

Ryan, Jim & Laura

Rowan & Betsy

On to Battambang, one of the lesser visited towns in Cambodia and a welcome contrast to the recent hustle and bustle. French colonial shuttered buildings and shop houses on the main street and dotted around town as well as countless statues of animals, real and mythical. Being far less busy and with the hotel offering free bicycle rental we were all encouraged to go for a pedal. The bicycles varied from mountain bikes to ladies bikes with baskets and those with or without brakes for the unlucky few. A broken chain for Nick gave him an excuse to commandeer a tuk tuk which Ryan & Gareth then clung onto for a free ride. A wobble from Gareth as the speed became too much to take and he was down, a few grazed toes, thankfully nothing worse, he popped his bike on the tuk tuk and was chauffered by Nick for the final few kilometres to the bamboo train.

High fives!

Rogs doing what he does best, posing...

Ready to go

Not the smoothest journey

Battambang Bicycle Club

Gareth & Mikkel.  Is it real?

Nick trades his bike for a tuk tuk

Crossing a precarious railway bridge

Bike envy - Rogs & Ryan

Battambang colonial buildings

Loading Grandad onto a scooter

John, Jody & Laura

Monks on a bike

Nick starts Nicky Tours

Not what you want to see when leaving a restaurant...

The bamboo train is really just a large bamboo platform mounted on train axles and powered by a small go-kart engine. One of those unexpectedly fun activities, for a few dollars your platform was lifted onto the tracks and you hurtled along the undulating rails, more akin to a roller-coaster ride. When meeting a train travelling in the other direction the unwritten rule is that the less loaded train be swiftly disassembled and then reassembled the other side. Built by the French in the 1920s, a single-track metre-gauge line, it used to run all the way to Phnom Penh carrying coffee and bananas to the city rather than people. The trains were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge regime and the tracks became overgrown by jungle. Cleared by locals after the civil war it now runs along a 15km stretch of line, stopping at a village the other end where Mikkel had a challenge on his hands with a large python, found by the locals in the forest and now living in a wooden box. He wrestled it out of the dark box and it repaid the favour by spraying urine all over him, the clothes required double bagging they smelled so bad!

Has Mikkel bitten off more than he can chew?

Mikkel snake wrestling

No, you take it...  Rogs & Mikkel

We had an exciting boat trip from Battambang across to Siem Reap, starting off with half an hour watching 15 men deliberate, argue and take endless phone calls before agreeing who would take us on which boat. Only coming to the conclusion when the stern boss lady from our hotel turned up and within minutes it was all sorted. We wended our way down the Sangker River and some narrow tributaries, the boat felt less than stable cornering and we would lurch from side to side. More than once benches toppled over and people found themselves in the lap of the person opposite. Life thrives along the river banks with floating villages, houses on stilts, houseboats with fully equipped kitchens and enough shiny pots and pans to cook a feast for a whole village. We stopped at a floating fuel station which also housed a shop and karaoke bar. Now I've always been told never to wee into waterways and river systems but clearly that message hasn't reached them, not that they have many other options, but the long drops were a simple platform directly above the river. The river opened out as we crossed the head of the Tonle Sap also known as Cambodia's Great Lake, the largest fresh water lake in South East Asia and the richest fishing lake in the world. As is often the case the rains came as it was time to clamber up a muddy bank to the waiting minibuses bound for our hotel for the next four nights, the Golden Banana.

Batten down the hatches from the rain

Houses on stilts

Life on the river

Long drop straight into the river

Our boat for the day

Tilting around the corners

Dried fish

Fresh spring rolls

Grubs

The main attraction in Siem Reap is of course a visit to Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple complex in the world. We once again arranged a convoy of tuk tuks to take us around the temples.

We visited Angkor Wat first, the biggest of the lot, with the towers in the centre reaching over 34 metres and over 1,000 square metres of bas-reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins and winged dragons pulling chariots. The site is massive, with over 5 million tonnes of stone used in its construction during the 12^th century, all rafted down the river. It is reckoned that if built today it would take modern engineers around 300 years to build but with the help of a few hundred thousand people the Khmers completed it in just 40 years. An incredible feat, still in use today, standing tall and proud, surrounded by a large moat with just two entrance causeways best appreciated from the air if you have the budget to take a helicopter tour!

Buzzing from temple to temple by tuk tuk provided us with a good bit of wind in our faces to cool us down before the next site, the Bayon temple at the centre of King Jayavarman VII's Capital city Angkor Thom. A miniature walled city with four massive entrance gates protected by impressive lines of statues along the bridges that carry you over the moat. Bayon's most distinctive feature are the 216 serene and massive stone faces on many of the temple's towers staring out across the once great Cambodian Kingdom. It is rumoured that the faces bear quite similar resemblance to the great King himself. Our guide told us that the city used to be home to 1 million people during the height of its popularity, must have been pretty busy in there with only 9 square km to play with.

An impromptu man test

Peeping toms

Ryan trying to scare a tourist-hardened monkey

Spider in the temple

Another tuk tuk convoy

Di, Gareth, Ryan & Rogs

Rowan

A break for lunch luckily coincided with a monsoon style downpour, dry and content from our nourishment we headed to visit the temple everyone talks about. Ta Prohm normally referred to by most as the “Tomb Raider Temple”. Everyone loves it because the temple has been left to give the impression to the visitor that they have just stumbled across it themselves. The jungle trying its hardest to reclaim it. For centuries left to ruin, trees roots worked their way into cracks in the roofs of covered walkways and now the only thing holding some parts of the Temple together. There are places where it looks like it could topple at any moment, especially a small roofless room where a giant triangular rock has fallen and become wedged enabling the brave to pose under it with the pretence that they are holding it up with just one finger!

Odyssey explorers

It was decided that in the early 20^th Century by the French restorers of the Angkor area that Ta Prohm had best merged with the jungle and be left with just a little help here and there to keep it safe for visitors. Unfortunately, since 2010, the India restoration teams have taken a more proactive start to rebuilding and restoring it with the addition of wooden walkways, roped off photo opportunity spots and a massive crane as they build up the temples from scratch in similar fashion to other sites in the area. Amazing to watch a pile of abandoned blocks once again form a structure, but some of the magic will slowly be removed from the site. So if you want to play Indiana Jones or Laura Croft best come and visit this amazing place soon. There is even talk of removing the trees! Some of the more temple hardy of the group moved on to see more Temples, to do them all would take days, while the majority left after the main sites to seek the benefits of swimming pools and AC.

It was also Rogs' birthday that day, although after starting the celebrations early the night before and touring the temples in the heat all day he nearly missed his own party after sleeping through an afternoon nap. What better way to wake-up than a visit to Happy Herb Pizza where you choose between medium, happy or extra happy depending on how many “herbs” you'd like on your pizza. Onwards giggling to the pavement fish pedicure stalls where some had their feet tickled by hungry fish. Then on to the bars of Pub Street to complete the celebrations.

Fish pedicure

John enjoying his fish pedicure

Just another night on Pub Street

Herby pizza

Are we really in Cambodia?

Rogs takes over the bar on his birthday

Is it a frog?  No, just Ryan.

Beaten at thumb wrestling...

It is here in Bangkok that we leave Dianne, an epic overlander having completed 5 months with Odyssey from Cape Town to Cairo just before starting this trip. She leaves us as planned to fly to Kathmandu for some trekking and then onto India backpacking solo, she leaves a definite gap in the group, especially with her jokes, we wish her well!

Dianne, don't go!