Read this blog: The one where we want to be charged ‘on the meter’ Monday 1st April 2024 We travelled by GiantIbis coach again, this time from Phnom Penh to Bangkok, in a coach which was a little more modern, with just three seats across and more leg room. As before there were two drivers and one courier accompanying us. This seems to be company policy to avoid driver tiredness. This journey was scheduled to take about eight hours with three comfort stops as well as one to cross the border and get through immigration control. The courier gave everyone entry forms to complete on the bus to speed up the process but tourists travelling on a UK passport do not require a visa to enter Thailand, as a tourist. We had to get off the bus and walk to the Cambodian border control. Part of the route was along some railway tracks which looked newly laid. It may be that the cross border train will be reinstated. We were given lanyards to wear but we suspect this was so that the GiantIbis staff could identify us rather than for any immigration-related reason. The Cambodian border check point building was […]
Cambodia
Read this blog: The one where Robert is groomed by a rat Sunday 31st March 2024 The hotel receptionist had very helpfully phoned and made a booking for us and we had arranged with our tuk tuk driver from the day before to collect us in time to get to APOPO for the 10:00 tour. Unfortunately, he failed to appear. Showing him more loyalty than he had shown us, we waited for a few minutes in case he appeared. Apparently he was on another job. Fortunately there was, as usual, another tuk tuk waiting outside the hotel in the hope of picking up a fare. Although we arrived about 10 minutes late, luckily the tour had not yet started. Joining a group tour costs $10 per person and this is money very well-spent. APOPO was co-founded by a Belgian and the name is an acronym standing for “Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling” which translates to Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development in English. The acronym really is much easier. The tour starts with an explanation of how Cambodia became one of the countries most severely affected by landmines. There is still unexploded ordinance from American bombing in the 1970s referred to as […]
Read this blog: The one where Robert eats crocodile for the first time Saturday 30th March 2024 We arranged a tuk tuk, through our hotel, to take us to some of the sites in Angkor Archeological Park, leaving shortly after breakfast to try and avoid the hottest part of the day [see Video of the day]. There is so much to see that this plan was not entirely successful. The whole site covers around 400km² and it is difficult to do justice to such a vast and varied place of such historical significance, particularly in 42° heat. Cambodia has had several capital cities over the centuries. Between 802 AD until the early fifteenth century the centre of royal power was at Angkor. The capital was subsequently moved to Phnom Penh, later Longvek and then Oudong before returning to Phnom Penh in the nineteenth century. Angkor was therefore the centre of the ancient Khmer Empire for over 600 years. Unfortunately, the term Khmer has negative associations following the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge, but Khmer refers to an ethnolinguistic group which includes most of the Cambodian people as well as their ancestors and the rulers who built this extraordinary city. Angkor […]
Read this blog: The one where we catch the wrong coach … initially Friday 29th March 2024 From Phnom Penh we were booked to travel by GiantIbis coach to Siem Reap from where we would visit Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom – the remnants of the once great Khmer Empire. The bus was scheduled to leave at 08:45 and we had to get there at least half an hour beforehand so we had a relatively early start and booked a Grab car to take us to the coach station from the hotel. We checked in at the departure point, were directed to take a seat in the waiting area and after a while we handed our suitcases over and boarded the bus. We had expected it to be much busier, given our destination is one of the major tourist sites in Cambodia. Shortly before the bus was due to depart, a member of staff came running up to explain that we were on the wrong coach. Thankfully we managed to disembark and reclaim our luggage from the hold before it was too late. The bus which would actually take us to Siem Reap was significantly busier. The journey took about […]
Read this blog: The one where we visit a genocide site Thursday 28th March 2024 It is quite unsettling to be repeatedly accosted on the street by smiling tuk tuk drivers asking enthusiastically “Killing Fields? Killing Fields?” as though you will be in for a real treat. Although we were ambivalent about visiting, we felt we could not ignore such a defining part of Cambodian history and arranged a tuk tuk to transport us to and from the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre. It is difficult to know what to say about something so terrible but the Cambodians themselves are very open about the genocide. Tourists are encouraged to visit the site with the aim of ensuring that it can never happen again. The Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum [formerly known as the S-21 prison housed in two former schools] are the only two sites so far which have been turned into museums detailing the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot. There are however several smaller local memorials including the former M-13 prison. Choeung Ek lies about 11 miles south of Phnom Penh city centre and is a former orchard and Chinese cemetery. […]
Read this blog: The one where Matilda looks older and loses her sense of humour Wednesday 27th March 2024 At the start of the cruise along the Mekong we had to surrender our passports [which made us both a bit anxious] to allow the cruise company to undertake the paperwork for our entry visas into Cambodia. On the morning we docked in Phnom Penh, all passengers had to present themselves on the Sun Deck at 07:00. Here our passports were returned to us complete with a tourist entry visa and an exit visa form. We then had to walk several paces across the Sun Deck to present them to the border guards for approval. The immigration official that Robert saw compared him to his passport photo and pronounced him, or perhaps Robert’s photo, to be “handsome”. By contrast, when Matilda presented her passport to the second border guard, he spent some time looking from the photo to Matilda and back again. He then consulted a colleague who looked at both Matilda and the photo and nodded but commented, “You were much younger then.” Sadly it’s true, the current photo has little or no grey hair and she will need to […]
Read this blog: The one where we see that Robert remembers the moves Monday 25th and Tuesday 26th March 2024 On the first morning on board, as we travelled from Cai Be to Con Phuong Island, the ship’s masseuse offered everyone a five minute neck and shoulder massage as a loss leader to encourage bookings. Uptake of the free service was brisk and both Robert and Matilda indulged. She certainly found some of Robert’s knots but the prices afloat were predictable much higher than we had seen on land. As we cruised further upstream, we passed floating fish farms run by families who lived on the water permanently. The cargo boats were often so heavily laden that we feared they were close to sinking with the wash running over the bow. The activity for the day was to visit a bamboo weaving community and a school but we opted to stay on board as the temperatures were set to rise to 36° and Matilda wanted to save her enegery for the 400 steps up to the temple which was scheduled for Day Three. We moored overnight near Tan Chau and the entertainment that evening was a screening of Good Morning, Vietnam. […]