Elad’s blog

The summary of my Cambodian visit is as follows: a beautiful 3rd world country, with 1st world prices. I met nice people, saw incredible sights, and had a wonderful time. The bus thingy was a wise decision, it added much to my Cambodian stop-over. I could stay at Angkor for another day, but I had to reschedule my flights, which couldn’t be done from Siem-Riep. Any way, I saw the main attractions Angkor has to offer.
Cambodia is much poorer than Thailand. Everybody is trying to sell things in u.s.dollars rather than Rials, because that way they screw the tourist with exchange rates. Another major difference is that in Thailand the Tuk-Tuk driver seat is located under the safety arch, so the driver is both protected and has shadow; in Cambodia they still didn’t think about it, so the Tuk-Tuk drivers remain unprotected and in the sun, as if they were driving a normal motocycle.
Apart from this, the culture is very similar, only that Thailand is half western and much cheaper.
Because I had to find an open travel agency in Bangkok, I had to fly back to Bangkok, rather than taking a boat to the Thai border and than a bus, as I considered. The plane was half empty, and half loaded with Japanese. As it was landing, the usual anouncement that asks us to remain seated until the plane full stops was heard. As a result, all the Japanese remained seated in their place, even after the plane doors opened and until the waitress (waitress? what’s the correct word for DAYELET?) shouted at them to leave the plane. It was very amusing - so different from all the other flights I’ve seen!
I arrived at Bangkok at noon, went straight to Cathay Pacific office and arranged my tickets. Now I have another day in Thailand, so I’m going to see the ceremonies tomorrow. I hope it will worth it!
I also walked around a bit: Siam center, the Israeli area (HABAD house etc.), and a few less known temples. Of course all active temples are filled with gold Budhas and stuff, but the interesting thing was the wall paintings and carpets.

In medieval Europe, many people did not know to read. This was one of the main reasons to covering the churches with statues: people learned biblical stories through statues describing biblical scenes. Looking at active budhistic Watts today, I couldn’t avoid the similarity: the walls of all the temples are covered with paintings or carpets (surprisingly, no statues) describing Budha’s life and heritage in various ways: Budha teaching at the forest, Budha on the river, Budha doing this and Budha doing that. All the carpets are very beautiful (as expected from religeous works), and cover the inside of all the temple walls, just by the galleries (for those readers who haven’t been in a budhistic temple for a while: all the temples are built like two concentric rectangles, the inner one is the main pray area and always have on one wall a large Budha to which everyone prays, and in the corridors that are formed between the inner rectangle and the outer one there are many Budha sculptures, most of them made from gold, to which the believers can bring goods and donations). The galleries themselves are full, of course, of Budha sculptures at various positions.

Tomorrow I’m going to do an essential temple-tour, probably again at the king’s palace and in some temples I missed on my previous visit to Bangkok. I may pay a visit to their national museum, to see if they have something other than temples (anybody knows if it’s worth a visit?); or maybe just walk around the streets, like I’m going to do now - I’m on my way to China-Town!

Two last things: a) Dad, thanks for the advices regarding Cambodia. They proved useful.
b) Does anybody know where is the backpacker area in Hong-Kong? Maybe even the name of a good guesthouse? Right now I have no idea to where to go from HongKong airport - this adds more taste to the adventure!

Just a backup of my rescheduled flights with Cathay. The flights were set at Cathay Bangkok office, which is located at Ploenchit tower, earlier today 10/5.

RECORD LOCATOR: J8K20

BANGKOK->HONG KONG flight CX750 leaves Bangkok at 12MAY (THU) on 11:30, and arrives at HongKong the same day at 15:10.

HONG KONG->Sydney flight cx101 leaves HongKong at 14MAY (SAT) on 23:50, and arrives at Sydney the following day at 10:55.

I have confirmed places on both flights, at economy class.

I just booked myself a flight for tomorrow. I fly with Bangkok Airlines flight PG935 which leaves Siem-Riep at 11:20. Should be at Bangkok around 12:30. The bustards want 6120 Thai Batts for the flight!

When at Bangkok, I will search Cathay Pacific offices, which are located at 11/f Ploenchit Tower, 898 Ploenchit Road, Pathumwan, Lumpini, Bangkok; their phone is 66(2)263-0616 and they also have a list of airport phones: 66(2)535-1111; 535-2155/6; and 535-2176/7.

Bye Cambodia, Let’s see what’s in Bangkok again!

No question, the BAYON is the most beutiful temple in Angkor.
From a distance, it looks like a huge ruin, just massive stones on top of each other. Only when you get close to it, you suddenly see that all the stones are sculptured faces, looking on all the directions at each other and at you. This is an amazing, very enigmatic, place. I could - and did - walk there for hours.
Apart from the Bayon, I’ve seen many other temples in the temple-city of Angkor today. There was the Baphon, much less interesting than the Bayon, there was the elephant terrace, a 300-meter terrace all covered with carved wall-relieves of elephants from which the king used to watch parades; there was the small but extremely imaginative Neak Pean (I think), in which large walls form a rectangular pool that was filled with water, and in the middle of the pool there is an artificial island, circular in shape, whose base is formed by two massive stone-carved seven-headed snakes, with a temple on it. (must look great at night with fire torches all around! I can already see the great priest sacrificing something - only that Buddhist are against this nonsense). There was also the East Mebon temple (with sculptures of elephants and lions), and a few more I just don’t remember their names. Than we climbed a hill (of course, with a small hill-temple on it), and watched Angkor-Watt (don’t mistake: Watt means ‘temple’. Angkor Watt is the biggest temple in the area, and it also gave its name to the entire site, which spreads over 40 or 50 sq. k”m and hosts dozens of temples in the jungle) at sunset. A minute before sunset, when the sun was in an exact position, the towers of Angkor Watt were colored by the orange light of the descending sun, and the Watt seemed to burn in fire - an extremely beautiful sight, which lasted for less than a minute (actually, I almost missed it).

But first things first, and first was last night.

Last night I found myself in a bar called ‘the Angkor What?’ together with Anya, Carolin, Chris and Tom. We had erally good time, drinking Lao beers and Vodka-Coka-colas. Later we started dancing and having really great time. Carolin and Anya both became really drunk (British know to drink, they have bars deep in their culture!) and it was really fun and we all had really good time. We went to sleep really late, and today the girls were both tired and hung-over. I’m afraid they didn’t enjoy today as much as I did, but at least they had great time last night - you can’t have it all!

On the way to the site today I noticed this road site saying : “We don’t need weapons any more!” with a picture of people shooting each other on one side, and children playing on the other side. Good for them they ended up their war and got rid of Paul “the psycho”-Pot. I mentioned something about it to Chris and was really surprised to discover he had no idea about Khmer-Rouge, Paul Pot, Guerilla, Civil War in Cambodia, or the land being full with mines. I was sure these things are famous!

Tomorrow I’m going back to Bangkok. I’ll probably try to catch a flight, because I need to get there when travel agencies are open to reschedule my Hong-Kong flight of Wednesday in order to stay for the Thay Coronation Ceremony. I could try to do it from here, but I don’t trust Siem Riep for this stuff - it will be better from Bangkok.

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.