Cambodia

This first glance suggested that Phnom Penh would be a really good city for people like us, who like to walk around and observe. We had a hotel near the centre of the city, close to the river and to the bus station for our bus north. The hotel was very run down, with no lift, and the five flights of irregular steps graced with threadbare, ragged carpet proved to be a bit of a challenge, but the location was good!

We left the next morning on a Giant Ibis bus for Siem Reap (same bus company we used to get to Cambodia from Vietnam). We would thoroughly recommend the bus company - they are good. One thing that the long bus ride to Siem Reap told us is that Cambodia is flat. Unrelentingly flat. Not just no hills, but barely an undulation in the entire journey.

Our hotel in Siem Reap was down near the river, close to Pub Street and the main night-life part of town - it was a fairly long walk from the bus station. We had booked three nights in Siem Reap, but decided almost immediately to extend it by another day because we were running a bit ahead of our projected timetable.

We hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us out to Angkor Wat and spent our first day there, taking in as much as we could. It was oppressively hot, over 40°C, so we started fairly early, aiming to get back before it became too much for us and our driver. We spent about six hours wandering around various temple sites; fantastic place - despite the heat we were really happy to be there. We were equally happy to retreat to the air conditioning when we got back into town in the mid-afternoon.

The next day we spent exploring around Siem Reap itself, wandering from temple to temple and cafe to cafe in the unrelenting heat. Most of the places we visited were along the river, or on streets not too far from it. Exploring on foot was fairly easy, but the distance we covered was governed by the sun. Indeed, that was true for all of our stay in Cambodia.

Then we had a third day to spend, and nothing planned. Geoff suggested we do a pottery course, so that is how we spent the morning, trying to learn how to throw pots on a wheel. We weren't any good at it!

While we were wandering around in Siem Reap it was obvious that the town was gearing up for a big festivity. It seemed that we had completely overlooked the Khmer New Year, running over three days, starting on the day we left for our next destination.

We took another (Giant Ibis) bus to Battambang, wanting to see the bat cave there. We had been unable to get a room at our preferred place, and settled on a place called "Bat Rice Resort". This was 'near' the bat cave, so it was about twelve kilometres out of town. We hired a tuk-tuk to take us there, but first got him to take us to the train station, since we planned to go back to Phnom Penh by train, stopping along the way. No trains because of the lunar New Year, so we had to do a rapid change of plans. When the tuk-tuk driver dropped us off at our resort we had the good sense to get his whatsapp number - this 'resort' was a long way from everywhere, and certainly not near the bat cave. We could see the karst formation in the distance - it turned out to be 4km away.

The resort was a strange place. We don't think there were any other guests staying there, and the only thing they offered in the way of pastimes was archery. There was a restaurant, but it closed by 7pm. When we asked about a trip to the bat cave they appeared to have no idea what we were talking about, then told us it was less than half a kilometre away, which was obviously untrue. We set out to walk to the cave, but the distance in the intense heat defeated us. We did get to walk to a nearby village, and to the Chang Kdar pagoda. Back at the resort we messaged the tuk-tuk driver and arranged for him to come the next afternoon and take us to the bat cave, the killing cave and places around the karst formation.

That turned out to be one of the memorable parts of our visit to Cambodia. Our tuk-tuk driver was great, and ensured that we saw all the places we wanted to see, including the killing cave and the Phnom Sampow pagoda. And, of course, the bat cave, where millions of bats poured out of the cave for about an hour, forming patterns in the sky as they headed out for the night.

With no train to Phnom Penh, we had booked a direct bus back, and changed our hotel booking to allow for five nights, since we were no longer going to stop on the way. We were in a different hotel, right in the middle of the night-life district. As soon as we got off the bus and started to walk to our hotel it was obvious that Phnom Penh was in full New Year party mode. This is a festival where people throw water and toss coloured powder over everyone, a rather raucous extension of the custom of bathing the Buddha statues. The streets were jam packed with vehicles, many of them pickup trucks with young people in the back brandishing huge water pistols, squirting any and everyone. To be fair, when I asked not to squirt me and my backpack as a general rule they held off. Only very little children tossed water indiscriminately.

Our hotel wasn't very good - the room had no natural light, with a window that looked out onto an internal corridor. When we tried to sleep that night we found that the corridor, which was open to the outside, also channeled all of the noise from the bar below up to the rooms. The bar on the ground floor had the bass racked up so high on their speakers that you felt the pounding beats inside your body - not as music, but as noise; like something inside your head was banging with a hammer, trying to get out. This went on until the early morning hours, interspersed with someone using an electric drill somewhere in the building, and the bashing of drums from the bar across the street. In the morning we walked around town and found another hotel that looked like a much better prospect; it was less than a kilometre away from the rowdier part of town, still within easy walking distance. We checked out early and fled to our sanctuary, where we might get some sleep.

We had lots of time to look around Phnom Penh, the night market, the royal palace, and lots of pagodas. The New Year celebrations guaranteed lots of lively crowds, and we dodged the worst of the water fights. When back at the hotel we had a good view over the rooftops, and discovered that there was quite a big troop of monkeys that spent their time there in the early morning and in the evenings, when the tin wasn't too hot to sit on. They also used the electric wire network to cross the roads and move between buildings. When you are down on the streets you never see them; you are too busy looking down at your feet on the broken pavement and dodging traffic as you are forced to walk on the roads.

Given that we had a bit of extra time in Phnom Penh we decided to go out to Silk Island Community Centre to see the silk production and weaving. It is an island on the Mekong reached via another island, about 10km from our hotel. The first tuk-tuk driver we talked to declined the job, but the next one said yes, so off we went, using google maps on my phone to direct us. Mr Google struck again! We headed onto the first island and followed the directions towards what was supposed to be a car ferry port but turned out to be a solid concrete wall. The we all agreed that this is where google said to go, but the driver was undeterred, and went in search of locals to re-direct us. Several enquiries and 3km later we headed down a small track behind a Wat and there was the ferry. Our driver had never been out that way before, and I think he enjoyed it as much as we did.

We caught the local bus out to the airport and headed off the Singapore, just to break the journey home.