Elad’s blog

A thousand years ago, around the time the middle ages in Europe were at their peak, the Khmerian kingdom of Angkor reached its peak, too.
It was a military kingdom. From the deep jungles of Cambodia, the Angkorians went to conquere Loas, Cambodia, and Siam. Their king declared himself a god-king, and allowed himself to leave at a stone house (opposite to the ruling Cambodian belief, that stone houses are made for gods and demons, and normal people should have disposable houses - a belief that made Cambodia a living hell for archaeologists). To mark one of his victories, the king built a town called in the so politically-uncorrent name, “Defeated Thailand”. As it turned in his language, “Siem-Riep“.

Nowadays, the Thay people can only lough at this historical remark. Siam Reap is behind Thailand in so many ways, it’s unbelievable they once ruled that land. Cambodians don’t even believe at their own currency - they try to charge everything at u.s.dollars, and only later they move to the local Rial.

The “Dead Fish Inn” me and Chris were staying turned out to be a nice and quite exotic place. It resembles very much Kushi Rimon’s place at the 101, only that instead of a tiger they hold here a pool of crocodiles. It turned out that Chris, Anya, Carolin and myself, after meeting yesterday at the bus, hun g around all day long. We hired together a taxi to Angkor, and had a very nice time together.

We visited three palaces.
The Angkor Watt itself, which has remarkably steep stairs (actually, a tourist who came just after us have fallen down and opened his head - they had him evacuated to a hospital). The Angkor watt holds wall reliefs describing scenes from the Mahabarata(the final battle) and from the Ramanaya (the battle between the monkeys and the dragons) ; since from all of us I was the only one who read these Indian epocs, I became sort of a guide to that part.
The Ta Prohm, where Tomb-Raider movie was shot, is the temple where you see the jungle eating the buildings - with magnificent trees covering the ruins and enormous roots going through walls.Chris got very enthusiastic about this and kept looking for photo opportunities.
We also visited smaller temples, but at 16:30 it started raining so we didn’t finish the day with the elephant terrace as we planned.
They bless here everything. On the way back to our taxi Chris and I noticed a monk blessing a Fanta can. Since we could both use a blessed Fanta at the time, we bought ourselves one (not blessed, just Fanta).

Angkor Watt is just like I expected-huge, beautiful, very commercialized, and lets you see how at the end, the jungle wins.

Tomorrow I plan on another day at Angkor, and then we’ll see about Tuesday - options are either more Angkor, or back to Bangkok, or go to Pnohm-Penn. Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s fun!

This post describes my bus to Cambodia. Soon there will be one for Angkor, too.
The bus left at 08:00 from Bangkok. It was airconditioned, very luxurious bus. I felt wonderful and went to sleep until we’ve reached the border.
After issuing a visa we crossed the border to Cambnodia, where the real adventure begun. It was around 14:30, and for some reason the bus couldn’t cross the border with us, so they moved us into a Cambodian bus - actually, a TILTULIT just like in the very far army days. The bus was stuck for two hours (which I believe was a fake, just to make us arrive late and go to a hostel owned by the bus driver) and only after we all tried to jump on another taxi that came by it was suddenly fixed and we could continue (actually, I was warned about this trick, so I just took my regular side-watch position and enjoyed the show). On the bus I met many people: Tom from Wailse, Chris from Canda, Anton from Sweden, Daniel from Germany, Veela from Thailand, Anya and Carolin from England, Gil and Oshrat from Israel, and many others. We continued to drive through a cambodian highway which looked worse than the road from Timrat to its cemetary (and that’s REAL bad). After a few hundred kilometers there was no asfalt at all, and we continued to ride on sand - good there was no rain!
Eventhough there was no rain, we did gain ourselves a flat tire. We fixed it, and wathced the scene: it was actually like a Safari through a poor, agricultural part of cambodia. The poverty is astonishing. Most of the huts are built of straw, some of them of wood or PAHONIM. Of course there is no electricity, water or anything like this around. After the night fell we saw fire inside some huts. There is a remarkable proximity of the farm animals to the people here. Pigs, cows and chicken are walking freely in the huts and by them, without any separation from the farmers.
After fixing the puncher, we went to a village to fix the spare tire. Before the bus stopped in the vilage, a bunch of kids were hung on the windows. The kids, 4-14 in age, had excelent english, and immediately tried to sell us things - from drinking botles to some handycrafts. I started a conversation with a small kid (12 years old, she has excellent english from school “but don’t have money to go to school, so please buy”). When I told her I’m from Israel she replied in the title of this post.
Though I was angry with the delay, it turned out for the best, because we had a second puncher just before Siem-Riep. At this area there are fluorescent lamps hung in the Jungle. I asked the driver what they were, and he replied that they are for Cricket. I’m not sure what he meant - probably it is insect traps, where they catch crickets so they can eat them later.
We reached Siem-Riep at midnight. The driver took us to his guesthouse, and wouldn’t let us the night free. We were very angry at him, so we - the entire group - walked away. After catching a tuk-tuk to the hostel area we found a place at one “dead fish hostel”. I took an aircon room with Chris, which costs 15$ for the two of us (7.5$ each).
I ate late night dinner at the market (excellent beef&noodle soup, 1$) and went to sleep.