Temples, fireworks and an awful lot of people...

[Warning! Pat has got carried away again writing this entry, so don't start reading it unless you have a while on your hands]

Hello again. Time for another instalment of "What I Did On My Holidays". The topic for this session is Cambodia.

So, I last wrote from Sihanoukville, where I had been busily doing bugger-all on the beach. Suffice to say that I continued that trend pretty much up to the point I left there last Wednesday - the only thing I did that didn't revolve around doing not very much was getting my visa for Vietnam, which I am still amazed that the consulate there processed in about 10 minutes flat. Other than that, much time was spent with my semi-regular drinking buddies there at the Dolphin Shack, and a most amusing night was had on Hallowe'en. Certain amount of ingenuity went into some of the costumes (and others were really scary, just not in a Hallowe'en-y way...), the beer was flowing and a dumb, fun night was had by all and sundry.

As a result of this, a less fun day was had by yours truly the following day when I headed up to Siem Reap. This involved a four-hour bus trip to Phnom Penh, 20 minutes sitting around being offered bottles of water, baguettes, fake watches and people's first-born children to buy (actually, I may have made the last one up), and then 6 more hours on the road up to Siem Reap, a trip enlivened by the poor Khmer (Cambodian) kid next to me getting travel-sick and throwing up on the floor. Which was another first for me on this trip, albeit one I could happily have lived without.

In Siem Reap, I negotiated my way through the usual throng of motorbike touts (enlivened in Cambodia by the addition of a little trailer/chariot behind many of them, causing them to call themselves "tuk-tuks", in homage to the infamous Thai transport), differentiated this time by the fact that they weren't trying to fob you off on some guesthouse that paid high commission, but were instead trying to get you to sign up with them as your transport up to the temples of Angkor the next day. Yes, Siem Reap, for those who didn't already know, is the base town for visiting the incredible complex of temples and other monumental buildings that were for many centuries the capital of the Khmer Empire. Adopting what is fast becoming my standard practice, I went with one of the guys who harassed and yelled at me the least, taking great pleasure at the looks of anguish on the noisiest ones' faces as they whined that "they talked to me first".

As a result of this, I ended up with a driver named Taea, who was to be my means of transport for the next couple of days. My first night in Siem Reap being pretty uneventul (nice if slightly expensive Khmer food, couple of drinks at Angkor What? bar, early night), the next day I started out on the exploration of Angkor. Slightly surprisingly, Taea suggested skipping Angkor Wat itself that first day and going around the so-called "Little Tour" of some of the other temples, so I took in the delights of the Bayon and Angkor Thom, Thommanon, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm, Banteay Kdei, Srah Srong and Pravat Sashan. Let's just say that by the end of that day I was far more familiar with Hindu religious architectural features and sculptures than I had been before.

This day also introduced me to the phenomenon of the local inhabitants of the area around Angkor, who run little stalls outside every single temple and will greet any new foreigner arriving with "Hey mistaaaaah, you wan' col' drink?/T-shirt?/guide-book?/souvenir?". In areas with a large concentration of stalls, this can result in an awful symphony of squawking the minute a westerner appears. In the case of many of the little kids the equivalent phrase is "Mistaah, you buy pos'card? 10 for 1 dollaaah. You buy?", any refusal to purchase usually followed by displays of an ability to count up to 10 in about 6 different languages and further entreaties of "You buy?". Further refusals will then occasion "Hey mistaah, where you from?". Providing the response "England" will then lead to being informed that the capital city is London, possibly followed by further trivia facts (one kid by Angkor Wat was a veritable walking geography lesson), and then by the exclamation of "Luvverly-jubberly! Top Banana!". The kids are adorable, but after a while you do start to wish they understood that "No thankyou" does not mean "Please continue to attempt to get me to buy your wares". Anyways, rant over.

The heavy haze (apparently due partly to forest fires) meant that the sunset was looking set to be utter shite, so we headed back into town soon after five, whereupon I had a pleasant early dinner at a place called Tell (the first German/Austrian/Swiss restaurant I can remember ever going to, and certainly the first one on this trip!) and then an extraordinarily early night, ahead of one of the Must-Dos of Angkor: sunrise at Angkor Wat itself. The only downside of this being that it entails awakening at the unfeasibly early hour of 5am, which, as most of you know, is something I am not normally predisposed to do (you're more likely to see me still OUT at 5am than getting up then).

I did it, though, and, even in spite of the hordes of tourists (mostly Asian package tourists from Japan/Korea/China etc) it was a truly majestic sight (and good for a few photos). Angkor Wat was also by far the most interesting of the temples to look around, seeing as how it has been maintained in much better form due to its continued use down the years - climbing around an extant building is much more satisfying for me than scrambling around a ruin trying to imagine what it's supposed to look like. This point was reinforced by the remaining ruins I saw that day, which were interesting enough but something of an anticlimax after The Big One, and by the end of the day I was pretty much "templed-out" (this appears to be far from an uncommon complaint), so I paid off my disappointed driver Taea (who had been hoping for another day's work out of me) and headed out for a celebratory dinner and a few beers.

Again, true to form, this evolved into "rather a lot of beers" thanks to a couple of American lads from my guesthouse, a couple of English girls we met in the Dead Fish restaurant (undeniably the weirdest place I have ever eaten - crossing a crocodile pit to get to the toilets, for pity's sake?) and, to top it all off, bumping into Marieke and Caroline again, my two Dutch friends from northern Laos. Cue me wandering home at some silly hour of the morning (patiently responding to every hail from a street-corner that No, I did not in fact want a tuk-tuk, nor did I want ganja, boom-boom or a ride tomorrow if these were offered), then sleeping in until around lunchtime.

That brings us onto Saturday, which was the first day of the 3-day Water Festival here in Cambodia. Now, I had read a little about this in my guidebooks etc, but had not realised quite what a big deal it is. Which is to say, it's a major national holiday involving everyone heading down to the rivers to watch dragon-boat racing, eat, drink, watch fireworks, eat some more, drink some more, etc. In Siem Reap this took the form of half the town crowded along the eponymous river while pairs of boats faced off in races. Here was one time when being a six-foot barang (foreigner - literally a Frenchman, but used for most foreigners) came in rather handy, as I could happily peer straight over the heads of several rows of people in front of me and, indeed, get photos from nearly the back of the crowd. So far so good. The intimation that the Water Festival might not be unalloyed good news for me was, however, broached that night by some of the ex-pats I met in town when I mentioned that I was heading to Phnom Penh the next day (= Sunday, yesterday) - namely, that everyone and their dog from all over Cambodia would similarly be heading for the capital and it might be a wee bit crowded.

Confident as ever (and having already invested in my bus ticket), I ploughed on with my original plan, meaning I staggered out of bed late morning and got my stuff ready in time for the 1230 bus. This necessitated being picked up by a shuttle bus in town at 1130, and then spending the best part of an hour weaving through crazy traffic in Siem Reap as it made more pickups for the trip. This maybe could have warned me. The idea that it might not be entirely my day could then have been reinforced by the blown tire suffered by the bus (although this had the mitigating factor of watching a bunch of Cambodians doing their best pit-crew impressions whilst changing the wheel at the next mechanic's we got to). Despite this, my reaction on arrival at our final destination was fairly happy - it was earlier than I'd expected, given our tire problems.

This good feeling evaporated somewhat upon finding that we were not, in fact, in Phnom Penh. Due to the Water Festival, buses aren't allowed into the city at the moment. So we were still umpteen kilometres out of town, as one of the more polite, restrained and helpful tuk-tuk drivers I've encountered explained to us. I ended up sharing a tuk-tuk with a fellow Englishman, a doctor named Robert who was on temporary locum with a clinic in town, and we got the benefits of seeing the fireworks (which both of us found amusingly appropriate on November 5th) as we chugged our way along through the traffic in towards town. Apart from the worrying noises made by the gear-chain of the tuk-tuk any time it encountered such difficulties as a mild slope or patch of sand, all seemed to be going well until we made it to the bridge over the Tonle Sap river into town. And then we hit the crowds.

These were big crowds. Hundreds of thousands of people down by the waterfront in Phnom Penh. Many of them having come via moto (as you may be aware, balancing anything up to an entire extended family on a single 110cc motorbike is something of an art-form in SE Asia), and most of whom were now starting to head back to the rest of town after the fireworks. Meaning lots of motos and lots of people trying to get to motos. Oh yes, and Phnom Penh has hardly any traffic-lights. The traffic at junctions works largely on the basis of sounding your horn loudly and then making your way across as swiftly as you feel confident in doing, weaving around anything that gets in your way, and giving way to whatever happens to be bigger than you.

This is mad enough in normal circumstances, but when dealing with the Water Festival crowds it can get ridiculous. Hence, we made okay time getting down from the bridge to the clinic where Robert got dropped off, and were still doing alright until we reached the boulevard across which lay my guesthouse. Unfortunately, like any other major road, this had become a major exit point for anyone walking, driving or riding their way away from the river. Even more unfortunately, there were also numerous little food/drink carts still set up by the side of this road down which a tide of humanity was flowing. To cap it off, though, at the junction of Pasteur Rd and Sihanouk Boulevard, there were solid tides of people attempting to get through on foot, on bike, on motorbike and in vehicles from ALL FOUR directions AT ONCE.

The result? Gridlock. Nothing on more than 2 wheels was moving at all, and those were barely inching their way through the crowd. In the end, I abandoned my tuk-tuk steed there and set off to walk the approximately 100-150m which separated me from my destination. The crowd was still moving at this point, so I figured it would maybe take me 5 or at most 10 minutes. This would prove to be a bad estimate of timing right up there with "Don't worry, chaps, the war will all be over by Christmas". As I inched closer to the junction, the press of humanity went from tight to solid, exacerbated by the presence of numerous bikes and motos whose handle-bars (and, in the latter case, uncomfortably warm exhausts) had to be negotiated by the crowd and which, along with the food stalls and various stuck cars, led the whole crowd through ridiculously narrow choke-points. All of this while burdened with my main pack on my back and my day pack on my front, in temperatures which, despite being after dark, were probably still in the high 20s. Hence, the Khmers around me started off grinning, yelling "Hello" (especially the kids) and asking me how I was enjoying this, and finished up very worried at the presence of an enormous, obviously distressed foreigner who appeared to be sweating in quantities fit to float a dragon-boat. In the end, it took me half an hour to reach my guesthouse. And that's one half hour of my life I could do without ever experiencing again.

Given that the entire neighbourhood was log-jammed, I took the decision to stay and eat and drink in the Top Banana guesthouse (the kids at Angkor would probably have approved of that name), getting to know my new fellow guests. And yes, again this somehow conspired to have me staggering off to bed around 3am, hence today I have managed to back up my camera, walk down to the river to see up close the madness that is the Water Festival (and end up accidentally right next to the security cordon near the main pavilion, such that I was treated to seeing the arrival of the ambassadors from Germany, Japan, Brunei and North Korea among others, along with various bigwigs from the local government - I couldn't help noting that the Cambodian equivalent of the Secret Service appear to have quite natty taste in ties...), head back to my guesthouse while the streets are still passable, eat a ridiculous quantity of Indian food and write this utter monster of an e-mail.

So, there we are. I'm off to Vietnam on Thursday if all goes to plan, my last country en route back to dear, soggy old Blighty. 32 more days on the road and counting.

Hope all's well with all of you, wherever you are! Take care and have fun,

Pat