Cambodia

Leaving Myanmar was more straightforward than the guidebooks and blogs implied. Unless we just luckily slipped through the net, the US$10 'departure tax' no longer exists, no one searched our belongings to ensure that we did not take any local currency with us (I smuggled out around 10 pence worth - rebel), and no one checked that we did not remove artefacts of national importance, as stated at immigration.

Back in Bangkok, we made the snap decision to leave straight for Cambodia - staying overnight at Aranyaprathet in a sleazy hotel with the thumping night club next door, before crossing the border the next morning.

Stories abound about the enourmous number of visa scams at all Asian borders, but this border, as a backpacker favourite, is notorious. So when we hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us straight to the border, we were comforted to be dropped off at an impressive building with a large car park, air conditioning and formal desks where uniformed staff were on hand to help fill in the forms.

Only two things were unusual - all the pens were from various different Thai banks and private companies; and the standard $20 fee was to be paid as 900 Thai Baht - which a little maths tells us is $30. When the manager assured us that this was the official visa application room (and indeed there was a digital photographer on hand for those who did not bring photos), we would have trusted him... were it not for the fact that just a few days earlier friends had gone through and confirmed the price was meant to be $20.

The manager invited us to go to the passport control to confirm the price - a long queue and about 20 minutes walk away. We called his bluff and went. Sure enough, we strolled out of Thailand with no fees whatsoever, and found the real visa point much, much further on; the well oiled scam, where taxis will take a cut for dropping you at the large building placed and designed just to fool us Westerners must take in a massive sum each month - enough to fund a large staff and building; and it's easy to be none-the-wiser. They will process your visa for you - by going themselves to the real place, taking a 50% cut and wasting a huge amount of your time.

On the other side, we presented our forms, and were told the fee was $20 plus 100 Baht administration fee. The hand written sign concurred. The official sign did not. A brief refusal to pay any administraion fee resulted in getting our Cambodian visa for the real price of $20 and not paying any bribes, or submitting to any cons - there are plenty of destitute people to give money to in both these countries. Corrupt border police are not the correct ones.

The scams continue - a free shuttle bus stands ready at the border to take tourists to the 'international bus terminus' a shed in the middle of absolutely nowhere where one bus company sets a falsely high price for a trip to Siem Reap - once there, there is no choice but to pay - bribed police stop taxis and minibuses approaching the terminus, so all duped people pay the bus company or walk dozens of miles. We walked a mile or so from the border to find a cheap taxi to take us traight to Siem Reap. Hot, and irritating, but worth it on principle, even though it didn't save all that much time or money.

En route to Siem Reap - we passed the scene of a car crash - where a truck had driven off the road and hit an electric pylon - the cables subsequently pulling down around another 8 pylons on either side. Watching work men dig a hole with hoes, while others built by hand brick foundations for a pylon that had yet to arrive and be assembled (if it had even been ordered) - we were blissfully unaware of the implications - that most of Western Cambodia was without its link to Thailand's power stations, and hence without power - and was to remain so for at least the duration of our stay.

Even our taxi driver screwed us - by dropping us outside town and forcing us to take a tuk-tuk to our booked hotel. The benefit of the massive number of tourists staying in Siem Reap is an extremely high standard of accommodation. $20/night got us a large ensuite with TV, DVD, balcony, access to the DVD collection, free wifi and PC use, free bike rental, and nice service. The powercut got us a boiling hot room with not even a fan, candlelit toilet visits, and not much use for a DVD player. So important is the tourist industry that the centre of town enjoyed a specially diverted electricity supply during evening and night, so that the bars, restaurants, shops and pickpockets could make their living.

Siem Reap, while quaint, really is a tourist reservoir; just next to Angkor, the world heritage site filled with dozens of temples and religious sites up to around 1000 years old (a little toddler compared to Jerusalem, but who's counting), the town is bursting with pubs, overpriced Western food, loud music, baseball cap and flip flop shops, and not a hint of Cambodia. But to buck the trend slightly, we took bicycles instead of the lazy tuk-tuk and headed up to the temples for sunset, meeting up there with the other 6000 tourists who visit every day. Nonetheless, the awesome architecture and stunning views as sun set behind the towers of Angkor Wat were only slightly dampened by the masses of flashing cameras, and the local mothers parading their disabled children with gross deformities and / or hydrocephalus to make a quick buck (see below for why this scene was yet another con).

The next day we enjoyed an early start to get to the temples before day break and the rest of Siem Reap's tourists arriving. Cycling through silent roads of countryside, past temples engulfed in the roots of giant trees was bliss, until the tuk-tuks arrived and every view was slightly changed by a Japanese tour group, a hot and grumpy child, or a vendor shrilly shouting, "Sir? Lady? You wan' some col' wader? Col' coca-cola? Hot caffeee? Hammock? Baseball cap?"

Like seeing the ten best movies of all time back-to-back, by late afternoon we were fully numbed to the greatness of what we saw. Realising that even the most ornate and intricate stone carving from 1350 was inducing a teenage-style shrug, it was time to head back and enjoy a different culture for the evening.

In true middle class style we attended a cello concert, which was truly inspirational, but not for the music. The performer, Dr Beat Richner, is a Swiss paediatrician who has dedicated his life for the last several decades to the children of Cambodia. Previously a comedian-cum-celloist known as 'Beatocello' in his home country, he is now the founder and director of 5 children's hospitals throughout Cambodia, and plays twice weekly concerts to encourage the visiting wealthy to fund his entirely free hospital, the visiting young to donate blood to deal with the endemic Dengue fever, and the visiting young married couples with a little cash and fresh blood to give both. The hospitals received just a few percent of their costs from the government, and provides western medical services to all who require, even covering patient's travel expenses so that no family need become more destitute to care for their children. So engrained is the corruption in this country that even the cleaners earn more than 12 times the national average, to eliminate the temptation to extort money from patients' families. For those interested in donating, look for 'Kantha Bopha hospitals', named after the late King's daughter, who died of leukaemia. The cello performance only took about ten minutes, but hearing his stories of Cambodia and watching videos of hospital life during the rule of the Khmer rouge were equally, if not more, entertaining and moving.

We made a quick morning getaway to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, by bus. Once again, a single stopover in 6 hours at a cafe in the middle of nowhere, most likely owned by the bus company or offering back-handers, enticed a bus load of tourists to pay stupid fees for mediocre food; even the bus times in each direction were calculated so that we would be gone in time for the bus travelling in the opposite direction to arrive - they in turn would be out just in time for the next bus in our direction to arrive.

The capital is a semi-metropolis where Cambodian culture still bursts through in pockets among the luxury coffeeshops, internet cafes, and budget hotels where $13 may get you air con, but no windows. Street vendors will sell their fried chicken feet and entrails just outside places offering burgers for twenty times the price. The buzzing central market hosts stalls selling herbs, veg and live chickens alongside genuine top-brand rucksacks for a few dollars, and genuine Rolex watches for just $30. All genuine. Real. Gold. Honest. Tourist drive-by snatch muggings are a daily occurrence, with us meeting three victims in 36 hours.

Having checked in to a grubby little hotel in the middle of touristville, we headed out to explore. Hiring a tuk-tuk for the day, we followed the voyeur-tourism trail, first heading to Tuol Sleng, formerly a high school, but which reached world notoriety as Security Office 21 - a detention and torture centre of the Khmer Rouge in the middle of the city, where people would be sent for protesting against the regime, having an education, being monks, not reporting other people who did not support the regime, or in the case of some of the Khmer Rouge's own soldiers, not arresting enough people... or in the case of many survivors, no reason whatsoever. The site itself was remarkably poorly put together - a random mismash of photos, torture instruments, cells and the occasional testimonial, with little educational value or emotive presentation. Here and there, some cash would buy you a photo opportunity with a survivor, or a little more cash would pay for one to give you a tour and show you their own cell; given the horrors that occurred here, the site could be used for so much good - after the investment at Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where an incredible analysis of the events leading up to the largest genocide in history is catalogued and presented alongside so much explanation and documentation, and where survivors volunteer their time to talk to children to educate them in tolerance, and all funded by the government due to its significance to the state's identity, it seemed bizarre to be paying for smiley photos with survivors of Cambodia's own massacre.

Like the many victims of Tuol Sleng, our next stop was the killing fields at Chuoeng Ek - the surprisngly small compound where thousands of people were exterminated at the hands of the regime. As most of the buildings were demolished before the government realised the importance of preservation, little remains except pits where remains were exumed, and a large modern memorial - a tall tower fillled with thousands of skulls of the victims - grouped by age and gender. As one walks through the grounds, the occasional human bone wrapped in an old piece of clothing sticks up through the ground, where rain has eroded another burial site. Signs request from tourists not to touch the remains - but to leave them for the staff who periodically do the rounds and gather up pieces to re-bury. The occasional chicken roams freely around, pecking at the ground.

 

 

Cambodia is a country still shaken by its past, unable to come to terms with its history, while suffocated by corruption and trying to cash in on voyeur tourism. As it looks to a brighter future, so we looked onwards to Vietnam.