Cambodia 2013

To reach Cambodia involved travelling by boat along the Mekong River in Vietnam (read Vietnam post before this one) from near Chau Doc for a few hours, crossing the border to obtain our permits to enter, then continuing along the river until we reached the capital of Cambodia... Phnom Penh, our starting point for our travels through this country.

Enjoying a refreshing beverage in Phnom Penh

Our route through Cambodia is shown below.

Route through Cambodia

Phnom Penh surprisingly is an old city, originally founded in 1372 and sits on the banks of a few rivers including the Mekong and with a population of 2M people, it is a very lively location with lots of restaurants, bars, bright lights and traffic.

One of many markets in Phnom Penh

Unfortunately it is also a city where single older men are known to frequent on the hunt for young people to have sex with... very sad.

Phnom Penh is quite an attractive city with lots of extremely ornate temples to visit with large and very beautiful gardens and lilly filled pools integrated throughout the temple grounds.

The architecture and decorations on the temples are amazing

Not very far from the capital is located the most infamous destinations in Cambodia known as the 'killing fields' where more than 1M people were murdered and buried by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.

Just a few of the skulls of the people murdered by Pol Pot and his henchmen

Amongst all the horrible sites within what is now a memorial to the dead, including a museum where people were also tortured, one specific location within the 'killing fields' caused us to really pause and ponder the inhumanity that had occurred.

It was a tree used to kill babies by bashing their heads against it... there are just no words and we spent quite a bit of time in silence just staring in disbelief.

Very brutal

Before leaving Phnom Penh we managed to somehow be invited to attend briefly a wedding, inside more temples and then enjoy the activity and lights of the city.

Happy young couple getting married

The inside of yet another temple

City lights and night food markets in Phnom Penh

The reason most people visit Cambodia is to travel to a town called Siem Reap, a tourist mecca filled with all sorts of attractions, especially bars or hotels where we also managed to watch some exquisite dancers in traditional dress.

Just beautiful

Siem Reap is a very active place to walk around with motorcycles like in Vietnam carrying everything the locals need to make a living, or people in deep contemplation at their temples.

May have had these for dinner the same night we saw this

This man was lost in prayer or meditation

The real reason so many tourists like us visit Siem Reap however, is not to just enjoy what is available in Siem Reap but to perhaps hire a tuc tuc for the ~6 km tip to visit the largest religious monument in the world, all 163 hectares (402 acres) of it otherwise known as Angkor Wat.

Aerial view taken by Charles J Sharp of the entire Angkor Wat complex

It was built by the Khmer empire and completed in the 12th century, an incredible achievement.

Along with thousands of other tourists, we were up before sunrise, travelled the 6 kms then walked to a location we thought might suit and waited until the sun rose and this is what we saw for the very first time.

The beauty of Angkor Wat during sunrise

The real wonder of this place cannot be fully appreciated until the sun has risen and we could really explore in amongst the various structures and the detail they created is almost unbelievable.

Pete standing at entrance of a very small part of the complex

Everywhere we looked there were decorations

It would be easy to visit Angkor Wat and think that's it, but there are many other Khmer temples of varying designs and condition all within easy reach from Siem reap and we visited a few.

This temple is at risk of being re-claimed by the forests

After visiting Angkor Wat you could spend days visiting all the other ancient temples nearby

We found a tuc tuc, returned to Siem Reap for a celebratory cocktail before next day taking a tour to visit the floating city of Chong Khneas, made more difficult because it was late in the dry season and the water in the river to reach the lake was very low.

The narrow and level of river water made reaching the lake tricky

Quite large communities of people live on the lake and manage to even grow their own vegetables on the lake.

Little vegetable patch for some of the watery residents

Home sweet home on water

Whilst were were cruising around on the lake taking photos, a very young girl in a makeshift and tiny boat came rowing over to us, no big deal until she suddenly leaped into fund raising mode by throwing the snake resting on her shoulders up to me to catch!

"Photo... photo... photo" she yelled now that I was holding her thankfully very docile boa.

Was quite a surprise when a snake was flying towards us

Well our time in Cambodia had come to an end as we headed to Siem Reaps airport for a relatively short flight to Laos and hopefully a few more learnings and adventures so until that post... go well!

CLICK HERE for more photos of Cambodia