Across Cambodia to Siem Reap: Part 6 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Phnom Penh to Siem Reap by Car

Cambodia

Phnom Penh to Skune

S picked us up at 8.30 with his driver, the ever-cheerful Mr Gung, and we left Phnom Penh heading north for Siem Reap.

Through the straggling suburbs of Phnom Penh

It took a long time to leave the straggling city behind, but eventually we crossed the Tonle Sap and headed north into Kompong Cham province across a flat land of red earth with paddy fields stretching as far as the eye could see.

Paddy fields stretching away into the distance

The highway was being widened and improved which meant that for substantial sections the usable road was very narrow indeed. There was no surface at all through the small town of Banteay which disappeared in a cloud of red dust.

Basket transporter - There is a motorbike under there somewhere

Skune and Fried Tarantulas

We stopped at a rest house just outside Skune, a town famous for its tarantulas which are stir fried and sold as food. According to the Rough Guide our car should have been surrounded by spider sellers as soon as it stopped, but this did not happen and we saw only one stall selling them. Cooked, they looked less like spiders than I had feared, but they still did not look like food. The big pile of grasshoppers mixed with garlic and chilli looked a little more edible, but not much.

Stir fried tarantulas, Skune

Perhaps closer to comfort food were grolan, bamboo tubes stuffed with sweetened sticky rice cooked with black beans and coconut.

Grolan, Skune

Skune to Kompong Thom

We continued into Kompong Thom province along a road lined with houses on stilts - the rainy season really is rainy here - through country where the main crop is cashew nuts. Cashew farmers live in poverty, S told us, because although there appear to be a large number of competing wholesalers, they are all owned by one man who uses his monopoly powers to keep prices for the farmers low and the consumers high.

Nuts set out to dry, near Skune

As will become clear, S liked his conspiracy theories. At this point I accepted his story, but later claims about subjects as diverse as the Cambodian genocide and draught beer called it into question. He did, though, raise an important point a little later, and on this one he was in agreement with the generally more plausible C. 'Cambodia,’ he said, ‘is a parliamentary democracy. We have elections every five years, and for the last thirty five years we have had the same prime minister. How do you think that happens?'

House on stilts, rural area Kompong Thom Province

Hun Sen formed an interim government under the Vietnamese in 1979. He has been in power ever since and his CPP party has won every election. There are active opposition parties and observers say the elections are free-ish but C and S are right, such political longevity does not happen where democracy functions normally.

Houses on stilts, rural area Kompong Thom province

Kompong Thom: Edible Insects and Lunch Without Them

We reached the small and surprisingly neat state capital - also called Kompong Thom - in time for lunch. Beetles.....

Beetles, Kompong Thom

...and locusts were available, but I still have difficulty accepting insects and arachnids as food. Across the road from the insect stall was a large restaurant which seemed to be feeding half the population off Kompong Thom, and such itinerant foreigners as were passing through. A tomato based soup rich with prawns and pieces of squid was more to my taste, and a dish of chicken with the inevitable cashew nuts was pleasant if hardly ground-breaking.

Locusts, Kompong Thom

Sambor Prei Kuk: 6th Century Chenla Capital

National Highway 6 would take as all the way to Siem Reap, but a little north of Kompong Thom we turned onto the 64 which has recently acquired a metalled surface. After a few kilometres we left the tarmac and joined a well-made but unmetalled road which took us the 15km to Sambor Prei Kuk.

Phnom Penh, Kompong Thom and Siem Reap on the map of Cambodia

In the 6th century an area known as Chenla, covering most of modern Cambodia, seceded from the declining Funnan Empire of the Mekong delta and built a capital at Sambor Prei Kuk. From 616 to 635 it was ruled by King Ishanarvarman who started a two hundred year period of tower building. The towers are all that remain of the capital which declined steadily in importance after 802 when Jayavarman II pronounced himself universal monarch and moved his capital to Angkor, thus starting the Angkorian period of Cambodian history.

The nearest tower has collapsed and only the lingam remains, Sambor Prei Kuk

Several groups of towers and the remains of a pool lurk in the jungle. They were first cleared in 1962 but war intervened and the area became finally free of guerrilla activity only in 1998.

Sambor Prei Kuk

A couple off small children joined us, a boy and a girl, hoping to sell us scarves. They asked our names, introduced themselves and followed as S led us to the first set of towers.

They are simple structures in reasonable repair considering their age. Despite being guarded by lifelike roaring stone lions, the statutes of gods have long disappeared, though a lingam or two remains.

Roaring stone lion, Sambor Prei Kuk

There are three main groups of towers, the central group also having the remnants of a ceremonial pool.

Ceremonial pool, Sambor Prei Kuk

The children scampered along behind us, occasionally giving advice, 'mind your step,' 'be careful of those roots they're slippery,' but leaving us alone when we came to look at the towers.

The final group are octagonal, and when we discovered the children could pronounce this tricky word better than our professional English speaking guide, we knew we were eventually going to buy some scarves.

Octagonal Tower, Sambor Prei Kuk

Octagonal towers may have seemed a clever idea at the time, but it looks less clever 1400 years later. Cracks have appeared in the angles and several are slowly splitting into 8 parts.

Whether the wall holds up the tree of the tree holds up the wall is debatable, Sambor Prei Kuk

It was a hot day and walking along the shady jungle paths was very pleasant, but to venture far off the well-worn route runs the risk off encountering unexploded ordinance. Careful exploration is still finding more towers hidden in the jungle, but we remembered to say a silent ‘thank you’ to the brave people of the mine clearance teams who had made our visit safe – not to mention the lives of the ordinary people.

The paths are safe, the surrounding jungle is still mined, Sambor Prei Kuk

We asked the kids how much they wanted. ‘One dollar,’ they said. At that price it was hardly worth bargaining so we gave them a dollar each and became the proud owners of two scarves.

Indefatigable scarf sellers, Sambor Prei Kuk

Our Guide Provides an Alternative View of Pol Pot

As we walked back to the car, S said, ‘Pol Pot was born near here.' We nodded and he continued: 'He was not a bad man.' We looked astonished; we had read that some Cambodians retain a surprising regard for him, but there had been no hint of it from C. S went on to explain that Pol Pot was a victim not a perpetrator, trapped into being the unwilling agent of others. ‘It was all the fault of the Vietnamese and the Chinese,’ he said.

The claim makes little sense. The Vietnamese had just brought their own massive war to an end and were preoccupied, the Chinese supported the Khmer Rouge, as they would any other new nominally communist regime in southeast Asia, but although they had influence they were too distant to have power. Nonsensical as it may be, it represents a Cambodian way of coming to terms with the Cambodian on Cambodian nature of the killing. S was not a Cambodian ‘holocaust denier’- millions of people died and every family was affected, so that is not a tenable position - but he did say that the photos we had seen in Luol Sleng were taken by the Vietnamese to blacken the name of Pol Pot and asked: 'Why would the Khmer Rouge document their own crimes like that?' Clearly he has never been to Auschwitz and seen the mug shots on the walls there. The Nazis proved beyond doubt that genocidal killing and meticulous bureaucracy are not mutually exclusive.

'Why are the perpetrators not being sent to the Hague for a proper trial?' he asked, and answered himself: 'Because the Chinese will not allow it.' It was a valid question, but maybe not quite the right answer. Why has there been so much delay? Perhaps there are some people still in or close to power who need to hide certain events in their past.

Spean Praptos Bridge

Spean Praptos Bridge

Back on Highway 6 we continued for a couple of hours, pausing at Spean Praptos Bridge. Built in the 12th century by King Jayavarman VII (The so-called Leper King) its 20 pointed stone arches span 87m across the gorge of a small river. Once the longest corbelled stone-arch bridges in the world it is exceptionally wide for its date and had proved to be very robust. It carried all the traffic of the highway until recently when a new bridge was built and the old one now carries nothing heavier than motorcycles.

Spean Praptos Bridge

Arriving in Siem Reap

We reached Siem Reap at dusk and checked into a hotel beside the narrow and barely moving Siem Reap River.

Siem Reap is not a large town with some 50,000 permanent residents, but in the season tourists double the population and it has all the facilities that such a mass of relatively well-off people could require.

It had been a long day and we did not feel like going far, but the restaurant next door provided a good dinner of ginger with chicken (a ginger lover's delight) and beef lok lak, which appears on every menu and consists of stir fried beef in a sweetish sauce accompanied by chips, which pleased Lynne as she was more than tired of rice. Washed down by a pitcher of draught Angkor beer it came to a very reasonable 12 dollars.

S later told us that draught beer was cheaper because it was watered down and adulterated. After a thorough organoleptic examination of the fermented beverage situation (beer-swilling), I decided that although neither Angkor beer nor Cambodia beer are ever going to win prizes, they are perfectly acceptable in both bottled and draught form, and the draught is, if anything, slightly preferable.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Part 1: Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music

Part 2: Through the Mekong Delta by Sampan
Part 3: Chau Doc
Part 4: Phnom Penh (1) Royal Palaces and Museums
Part 5: Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers
Part 6: Across Cambodia to Siem Reap
 Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
 Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
 Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell

Phnom Penh (2), Killing Fields and Torture Chambers: Part 5 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

A Look at the Grimmest Moments in Cambodian History

The Origins of the Cambodian Genocide

Cambodia

The same driver but a different guide, a young woman called C, arrived at 8.30 to take us to the Choeung Ek killing field.

During the late 1960s Cambodia became increasingly drawn into the Vietnam War (or American War, depending on how you look at it). In 1970 General Lon Nol overthrew King Sihanouk who had made a secret deal with Hanoi allowing men and materiel to move through Cambodia along what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Lon Nol’s pro-American stance led to war against North Vietnam. His forces were no match for the battle hardened Vietnamese, meanwhile indiscriminate American bombing continued. Between 1970 and 1975 this war cost 300,000 Cambodian lives.

King Sihanouk photographed in 1983
Photo borrowed from Wikipedia

While Lon Nol fought the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge, the home grown communists, were expanding their influence from their northern bases and by 1973 they held most of the country outside the capital. On the 17th of April 1975 they took Phnom Penh and were greeted as liberators. They ordered the immediate evacuation of the city, claiming the Americans were about to launch a bombing offensive. They were widely believed, though two weeks later, on the 30th of April, American involvement in Southeast Asia ended when the North Vietnamese took Saigon. For the next three years Phnom Penh was a ghost city.

Lon Nol
Photo borrowed from Wikipedia

Taking the 11th century Cambodian golden age - the age of Angkor - as their model, the Khmer Rouge set out to create a self-sufficient agrarian society where all men and woman worked side by side in comradely equality. To achieve this superficially charming, if rather dotty, ideal the Khmer Rouge first abolished schools, money and markets and then set about eliminating all opposition. According to Pol Pot, ‘A person who has been spoiled by a corrupt regime cannot be reformed, he must be physically eliminated from the brotherhood of the pure.’ Those who could not be among the ‘brotherhood of the pure’ included ethnic minorities - the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cham – and the ‘new people’ which meant city dwellers and intellectuals. Teachers were particularly strenuously persecuted, but the definition of ‘intellectuals’ was drawn widely and included those who spoke French and anyone who wore glasses.

Pol Pot
Photo borrowed from Wikipedia)

Much of the killing was carried out by brutalised child soldiers. Of Cambodia’s 8 million people over 1 million were murdered and as many died of starvation and neglect.

The Choeung Ek Killing Field

Officially 12km southwest of the city, Choeung Ek is barely beyond the suburban sprawl. Avoiding the congested main highway, our driver zigged and zagged down a series of minor roads, some unsurfaced, between houses, factories and the occasional monastery.

Choeung Ek is just a field. Part of it was once a Chinese burial ground, but there is nothing to suggest it was a spot marked out by nature as a place of great evil, or great suffering, but then Auschwitz was once an ordinary barracks on the Silesian plain.

Passing through the entrance, we approached the Choeung Ek memorial, a simple glass-doored chedi, accompanied by the sound of children chanting at a nearby primary school.

The monumental chedi at Choeung Ek

Choeung Ek is one of over 400 killing fields so far identified in Cambodia. It was not the worst, but it is the most well-known and has become the centre for commemoration. The remains of 8985 individuals have been exhumed from 43 mass graves, but maybe as many as 17,000 more graves remain unexcavated.

Mass graves at the Choeung Ek killing field

Every year the rains bring bones to the surface and even along the paths it is easy to find the bleached remains of human beings entombed in the hard-packed earth.

Bones in path, Choeung Ek killing field

The chedi contains the remains of some of the victims, skulls at the bottom and smaller and smaller bones as it goes up through 13 layers. The base contains a collection of implements used in the slaughter - axes, metal spikes, hammers, hooked knives - and diagrams of the damage each would do to a human skull.

Just a few of the victims of the Choeung Ek killing field

The use of expensive bullets was abandoned early in the genocide. If Auschwitz was killing on an industrial scale, this was killing as a cottage industry, more brutish, more bloody, more personal.

The base of the memorial chedi
Choeung Ek

The bones are laid on aluminium trays and some of those above eye height still have their protective packaging. On the underside of one are the words ‘the protective film should be taken out 45 days after having completed the execution.’ Even here the remorseless God of Irony demands his due.

Beyond the chedi is a banyan tree from which loudspeakers were hung so that music could drown out all other noises.

The banyan tree, Choeung Ek

All around are the pits of the mass graves. One, which was filled with mothers and children, sits beside the tree against which the youngest children’s brains were bashed out. There is another where 160 bodies were found, but not a single skull. This is a place where it helps to switch off your imagination.

Mass grave, Choeung Ek killing field

The victims were brought here, maybe 20 at a time, in trucks from Tuol (sometimes 'Toul') Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. We drove back into the city to see the prison.

On the way C asked, ‘Have you any questions about the Khmer Rouge?’ I paused for a moment, but there really was only one question, so I asked it. ‘Why?’ ‘That,’ she said, ‘is the question everybody asks, but there is no answer.’

The Cambodian genocide stands out among the grim list of 20th century genocides. Turks killed Armenians, Germans killed Jews, Hutus killed Tutsis but Cambodians killed Cambodians. Nothing marked out the perpetrators as being different from their victims; indeed, many early perpetrators later became victims. "A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants" as Jacques Mallet du Pan observed in 1793.

The 'Russian' Market

Before Tuol Sleng, we dropped into Psar Tuol Tom Poung, also known as the Russian Market, as during the Vietnamese occupation (1978-1989) economic sanctions meant the only imported goods available came from Russia. It is now a regular market with local produce and goods from all over the world. We bought some table mats as gifts while strolling round this refreshing outbreak of normality

Psat Tuol Tom Poung, the 'Russian Market'
Phnom Penh

Tuol Sleng Prison

Security Prison 21, known as S-21 or Tuol Sleng Prison is now Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It was once Tuol Svay Prey High School and from certain angles it still looks like a high school.....

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh
From some angles it still looks like the high school it once was

...but high schools do not have graves were you might expect volleyball courts, nor gallows where there should be football goals.

Gallows where there should be football goals, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Only prisoners of some importance or standing were brought to Tuol Sleng, along with their wives and children (‘kill them all, even the children so there is no one left to seek vengeance’).

A row of classrooms used as cells, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

A row of classrooms became spacious cells, each equipped with a bed and a desk at which prisoners were made to write out their life stories from their births to (very nearly) their deaths. The rooms were fitted with rings so prisoners could be suspended from the ceiling and electricity points so that.... (I do not need to finish this sentence.)

'Spacious cell' Tuol Sleng genocide Museum

The block beyond this contains many of the mugshots taken when prisoners arrived - and some after they had been tortured. There were row upon row of them, mounted on school display boards. The photographs of the children were the most disturbing. Lynne left the room in tears. ‘I found this place even more upsetting than Auschwitz,’ she said later. There were more rooms and exhibits beyond this, but we had seen more than enough.

Mugshots, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

C had declined to go through this room with us. She had the same look in her eye as Trang, our guide in Saigon two years ago, when he declined to visit the 'war remnants' museum with us. Trang had been in Cambodia, conscripted into the Vietnamese army of occupation, and remains troubled by his memories.

It was the Vietnamese who had put an end to the horror. Launching an invasion on Christmas Day 1978, they routed the Khmer Rouge in two weeks. They stopped the killing, restored markets, education, freedom of movement and private farming immediately, money and freedom of religious practice within a year. They get little credit for this, the US, Thailand and China giving tacit support to Pol Pot as the official head of state. The anti-Vietnam stance of the US was predictable given the timing and China staged a brief invasion of Northern Vietnam’s Lao Cai province in protest. The Khmer Rouge and their allies retained Cambodia’s seat in the UN until 1993.

Cambodian attitudes to the Vietnamese vary. C was careful always to refer to the years 1978 to 1989 as the ‘Vietnamese occupation’. Certainly they outstayed their welcome, only withdrawing when the collapse of the Soviet union cut off their funds, but on their arrival they were treated as liberators. Just once did C refer to the Vietnamese as ‘liberators', specifically in relation to Tuol Sleng prison.

There is another view, which we were to encounter the following day. Some Cambodians retain a perverse affection for Pol Pot, regarding him as a victim rather than a villain. To these people Tuol Sleng was fabricated by the Vietnamese to blacken his name.

The Vietnamese found 14 corpses in the prison, they were the last people to die there, and are buried outside the classroom block where they were found.

The graves of the last 14 to die at Tuol Sleng

Bou Meng and Comrade Duch

Seven people survived Tuol Sleng. Two of them are still alive and they were both there.

Bou Meng is a small, wizened, toothless old man. He was selling signed copies of a book written about him by one of the genocide researchers. We bought one and were rewarded with this picture. I was unsure if it was appropriate to smile, Lynne looked serious but Bou Meng flashed a big, if slightly gummy, grin. He had earlier given a graphic description of how he came to have no teeth, our understanding in no way impaired by lack of a common language.

Bou Meng, Tuol Sleng survivor

He was, and is, an artist and it was his ability to draw portraits of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge leaders that saved his life. Although he seemed relaxed and happy, his art work, some of which sat on his desk, is a way of working out his feelings. His wife was arrested with him, he has not seen her since and still wants to know when and how she died. He asked Comrade Duch - the camp commander - when giving evidence at his trial. Duch, who acknowledges his crimes and is currently serving life imprisonment, had no answer - he could not remember one death among so many thousands. [Update: Comrade Duch died on the 2nd of September 2020 from Covid-19]

Comrade Duch, commander of Tuol Sleng Prison, photographed at his trial in 2009
Picture borrowed from Wikipedia

C's Family Story

We both wanted to ask C about her family's experiences and were pondering how to frame the question when she volunteered the information. He father came from Kompong Thom, she said, but had been a high school student in Phnom Penh staying with his uncle.

Pol Pot - as drawn by Bou Meng

When the Khmer Rouge arrived he tried to make his way back to Kompong Thom, but was caught up in the general movement of people and found himself in the north west of the country where he was put into a boy's camp. Khmer Rouge policy was to separate husband from wives, parents from children.

A couple of years later the Khmer Rouge decided he should be married and sent him, quite by chance, to Kompong Thom. They married off dozens of young men and women to complete strangers at mass ceremonies, except there was no ceremony, no celebration, just the declaration that they were wed.

Though back in his home town, her father could find no members of his family. As the Vietnamese arrived he and his wife escaped to one of the refugee camps on the Thai border where C was born. After five years they returned to Kompong Thom where her father eventually found his family. They later moved to Phnom Penh as the capital was, they felt, the place to get ahead.

C is now married and has two children of her own and a good job, so there are some good news stories.

Other Phnom Penh Problems

Leaving Tuol Sleng I saw a middle-aged man of European origin sitting in a tuk-tuk. He was lighting a cigarette and beside him was a Cambodian girl of seven or eight. There may have been an innocent explanation for this odd scene, the girl looked relaxed and happy enough, but after the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese occupation, we sent Cambodia Gary Glitter. Phnom Penh is experiencing a welcome boom in 'normal' tourism, but behind that a seamier, sicker, illegal type of tourism still continues.

Another Phnom Penh Problem

We lunched in the shady courtyard of an upmarket restaurant in a smart district barely a kilometre away from Tuol Sleng but a world away from mass murder and torture.

Shady courtyard of an upmarket restaurant
One kilometre and a whole world away from Tuol Sleng

That we still had an appetite was remarkable, but we ate and enjoyed spring rolls, soup with prawns and squid, fish in a coconut curry, chicken with green beans and mushrooms followed by fresh fruit.

A Gentle Exploration of Less Harrowing Aspects of Phnom Penh

We took a nap in the hottest part of the day and later walked along Norodom Boulevard....

Norodom Boulevard, Phnom Penh

....to the Independence Monument. The sandstone tower, completed in 1958, was built to celebrate independence from France and now commemorates all the country's war dead - and there are a vast number for such a small country.

The Independence Monument, Phnom Penh

A hundred metres down Sihanouk Boulevard...

Sihanouk Boulevard, Phnom Penh

....is a statue of King Sihanouk. He had a remarkable career first as an absolute monarch, then abdicating to become leader of the communist party - though still styling himself 'Prince' Sihanouk – and being exiled to Beijing. Returning to Cambodia he spent the Khmer Rouge days under house arrest but later returned to the throne as a constitutional monarch. He abdicated in favour of his son in 2004 and styled himself 'King Father' until his death in 2012. His was a career without parallel in the twentieth century - or any other century.

King Sihanouk, Phnom Penh

Cambodia Unusual Way of Using its Currency

On the long, hot walk back we stopped for a beer. Draught Angkor and Cambodia beer is, we observed, far cheaper than the bottled variety. We paid $2.50 for a 33cl bottle at lunchtime, here half a litre of draught beer cost $1.50. It would be much cheaper, we would discover, away from the capital. Cambodians habitually use the US dollar and reserve their own currency, the riel, for the ‘cents’ part of the transaction, ($1 = 4000 riels). To pay $1.50 you hand over a dollar bill and 2000 riels. I had acquired a 10,000 riel note when changing my Vietnamese Dong on the border but although I never saw another riel note above 1000, they happily took it plus 2000 riels for a bill of $3.

Buddhist monks, Phnom Penh

That evening we took a stroll to a restaurant noted in the 'Rough Guide'. The Nouveau Pho de Paris is very like a mid-market restaurant in China, there is nothing French about it except the name and although it offered some Vietnamese dishes, there was no pho. It was, though, the first restaurant we had eaten in where the clientele were predominantly local. We had sheet noodles with chicken and sweet and sour pork - most Cambodian dishes, apart from their coconut based curries, are variations on Chinese originals.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Part 1: Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music

Part 2: Through the Mekong Delta by Sampan
Part 3: Chau Doc
Part 4: Phnom Penh (1) Royal Palaces and Museums
Part 5: Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers
Part 6: Across Cambodia to Siem Reap
 Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
 Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
 Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell

Phnom Penh (1), Palaces and Museums: Part 4 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

A Speedboat into Cambodia and a Tour of Phnom Penh

The Victoria Speedboat: Chau Doc to the Cambodian Border

The ‘Victoria Speedboat’ to Phnom Penh was scheduled to leave Chau Doc at 7.00. We arrived for breakfast at 6 to find the restaurant packed. Having seen photos of the boat online I knew it was too small for this crowd, but where they were going was, for the moment, a mystery.

We checked out and placed our bags at the indicated spot. No sooner had we sat down to wait than a man with a luggage trolley was beckoning us to follow as he wheeled our cases down the steep ramp to join the crowd on the dock.

11 people, we discovered, were going to Cambodia with us, the rest were bound for a cruise ship moored in deeper water.

Inside the Victoria Speedboat heading north

We sped upstream for an hour or so through much the same scenery we had been watching more slowly for the past two days, although here there were more villages on stilts like the Cham village we had visited yesterday.

Speeding north from Chau Doc

The river was some 50m wide until it merged with a larger branch on the right. We had left the delta and the Mekong was now a single stream the best part of a kilometre wide.

The Vietnam-Cambodia Border

The Vietnamese border post was built on stilts beside the river. Handing over our passports to the boat’s conductor, we disembarked and went to the waiting room where I changed my last dong into Cambodian riels.

Our stamped passports were returned, we re-embarked and sped upstream for a few minutes before disembarking again for the Cambodian formalities.

The Cambodian border post beside the Mekong

The Vietnamese post had been starkly functional; the Cambodians had a semi-circle of folksy wooden offices set round a garden. Photography is not usually permitted in border posts, but then there is little to photograph. Here, though, were trees, flowers, Buddhist shrines and a crowd of people waiting for visas in the shade of a mango tree.

Waiting for visas, Cambodian border post beside the Mekong

Formalities were reasonably brief and around 9.00 we re-re-embarked for the final three hours to Phnom Penh.

The Victoria Speedboat: The Cambodian Border to Phnom Penh

Cambodian village beside the Mekong

Cambodia

Cambodia seemed less densely populated and the few villages we saw looked basic and scruffy. The banks here were several metres high so villages were not built on stilts. Beyond the shacks, cattle - rarely glimpsed in Vietnam - sat in the shade of the trees. There were fields of crops, mainly maize, but the wide river, high banks and flat land made it difficult to see far, though we did glimpse several temples with high, steeply pitched roofs and gold finials, more Thai style than Vietnamese.

A temple beside the Mekong

We passed a container ship. Relatively small as it was, we were surprised to see one at all so far from the sea. 40 minutes short of Phnom Penh we passed a modern container port.

Container ship on the Mekon south of Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh

We reached Phnom Penh around 12.30. It was the first major urban centre we had seen from the river, but there were few high rise building and little in the way of soaring temples – hardly an exciting river frontage.

The Tonle Sap joins the Mekong at Phnom Penh. We turned into the tributary and moored at the main dock a hundred metres from the confluence.

Lunch at the Bopha Phnom Penh Restaurant

We were met by Kim and a driver, stowed our cases in the car and walked into the Bopha Phnom Penh Restaurant which is described by the Rough Guide as ‘a huge, decadent restaurant …with an open front looking over Tonle Sap.’ It is undoubtedly large and stages Apsara performances in the evening - and a taster at lunchtime - but ‘decadent’?

Lunchtime 'Apsara' performance Bopha, Phnom Penh

The set meal of fish skewers marinated with lemon grass, Khmer chicken curry, stir fried vegetables with cashew nuts, rice, fruit and Khmer ‘pastries’ – much gelatine but no pastry – was very enjoyable. The chicken curry, not highly spiced, but featuring a rich coconut milk sauce was worth the journey from Chau Doc on its own. Unlike the Vietnamese, Cambodians eat rice dishes with a spoon and fork depriving us of an opportunity to further show off our chopstick skills.

Lunch at the Bopha, Phnom Penh

We checked into our hotel, a rather characterless building in the narrow grid of streets away from the riverside. The hotel’s ban on durians, guns and smoking, in that order, was less than totally reassuring.

The Royal Palace, Phnom Penh

The royal palace was nearby, though nothing remains of the original palace built by King Ponhea Yat in 1434. The current Coronation Hall was constructed in 1919 by King Sisowath, the grandfather of the present King, and is a concrete replica of the wooden hall built by Sisowath’s brother and predecessor King Norodom (reigned 1860 to 1904).

The Coronation Hall is hidden until you are well inside the palace compound, and the first view of it is breath-taking – concrete or not.

Coronation Hall, Phnom Penh

Sometimes the public are allowed in, though not today, but we could look through the windows and open (but barred) door at the high throne – used for the coronations of King Sihanouk in 1941, and of his son, the present monarch King Sihamoni in 2004. A set of normal chairs are arranged in front of the throne for use when the king meets high ranking foreign delegations.

Photography is not permitted, and the rule is strictly enforced. The man next to me raised a camera and was given a firm slap on the wrist (and not a metaphorical one) by a security guard I had not previously noticed. The message was clear, do not dis the king, and do not dis the security guards, even if they are little old men.

The royal residence – at the back of the hall – is in use so is never opened to visitors.

The Royal Residence, Phnom Penh

The Royal Waiting Room is beside the Coronation Hall while at the edge of the compound is the Dancing Pavilion – a hall without walls were dance performances could be watched by moonlight.

The Dancing Pavilion, Phnom Penh

A strange wrought iron pavilion covered in scaffolding to the left of the Coronation Hall is, bizarrely, the pavilion from which Empress Eugenie watched the opening of the Suez Canal. When it was dismantled, her husband, Napoleon III, gave it to King Norodom and it was re-erected here. It is in a poor state of repair and the current restoration is overdue. The scaffolding was home to a group of monkeys who came to stare at the tourists. The tourists stared back. Inevitably somebody approached too close and a monkey leapt at his leg and climbed to his waist. There was a certain amount of panic, but no harm came to monkey or human.

Wat Preah Keo, the Silver Pagoda

Wat Preah Keo, the Silver Pagoda, is next door, the site interconnected with the Royal Palace. Built in 1962, its name comes from the 5329 silver tiles that cover the floor. Now there is a polishing job!

Again photography was not allowed so I have stolen Wikipedia’s picture of the (not quite) life sized golden Buddha. Its 90Kg of gold are encrusted with a lot of diamonds (9584 according to Wikipedia, 2086 according to the Rough Guide). It was made in the Royal workshops in 1906/7 on the orders of King Sisowath.

The golden Buddha, Silver Pavilion, Phnom Penh
(picture from Wikipedia - looks like the security guards missed this one)

It rather overshadows the Emerald Buddha, which is only 50cm tall and carved from jade. It is a 17th century replica of the Emerald Buddha in Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, on which the Silver Pagoda looks to have been modelled. Click here for the 2015 post with the full story,  myth and reality, of the Emerald Buddha.

On the outside wall the long mural of the Ramayana, much praised by the Rough Guide, is in poor condition and needs serious work before it will be worth looking at.

Topiary teapot, outside the Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh

The Pagoda’s garden is a delight with abundant brightly coloured flowers in pots, and some topiary, including this rather pleasing teapot.

Flowers and chedi outside the Silver Pagoda

There are two chedi, one containing the ashes of King Norodom, the other those of his queen. There is also an equestrian statue of King Norodom. Like the wrought iron pavilion it was a gift from Napoleon III and was originally a statue of him. It is now a statue of Napoleon III's body with Norodom's head.

Equestrian statue of King Norodom/Napoleon III

Behind the pagoda is a model of Angkor Wat. Large and detailed it would have saved us the bother of going there, if the trip had not been already booked. It is precisely to scale, except for the fish in the moat, which is a relief. 100m long carp would be scary.

Model of Angkor Wat, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh

There are various side rooms and halls on the way out with collections of photographs, palanquins and silver elephants among other things. They are all worth a brief visit.

Elephant room, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh

The National Museum of Cambodia

We returned to the car and drove to the National Museum, though a look at the map later suggested it would have been quicker to walk.

A large, single storey building it is, as national museums go, relatively compact.

The country’s history is neatly divided into 3: pre-Angkorian (before the 9th century), Angkorian (9-13th century) and post-Angkorian.

The first two are largely represented by stone statues, Hindu until the 11th century and Buddhist afterwards. Some are huge, some are fragmentary and one or two are huge and fragmentary like a reclining Vishnu who lacks several arms and most of his body yet still dominates the end of the first gallery. Some of the later statues are impressive, the faces emerging from the stone are clearly real people. The best known, though not, I thought, the best statue, is that of the Leper King, Jayavarman VII (1181-1218). Photography in the museum is not permitted, so this is my photograph of the replica which now sits in Angkor Thom where the original used to sit.

Replica of the statue of the Leper King on its original site, Angkor Thom

Post-Angkor is more of a mixed bag including funerary urns, wall panels and other objets d’art.

It is not the biggest or most varied collection, but it is well labelled in English and is worth an hour of anybody’s time.

The Romdeng Restaurant- Training Street Children for a Career

In the evening we followed Kim’s advice and ate at Romdeng – it involved little more than crossing the road from our hotel. The restaurant is a non-profit making school for former street children, the waiting staff wearing identical tee shirts labelled ‘student’ or ‘teacher’ as appropriate.

Through the arch from the road is a relatively quiet garden, but there was no room for us there. The restaurant is popular and without a booking we were lucky to be found a single spare table on the balcony. The service was excellent, the students a real credit to their teachers, and the food was good, too. We had rice pancakes stuffed with yam, beans and beansprouts, and stir fried chicken with courgettes and red chillies.

Having tested out ‘Cambodia Beer’ at lunchtime, we now tried ‘Angkor Beer’ so we had sampled both the country’s main brews. There was little, possibly nothing, to choose between them. Both, made with more rice than barley, are lightweight, fizzy and largely flavour free, but they are cold and wet, which is important in the Cambodian climate.

The meal, including coffee (not a patch on Vietnamese coffee) came to a steepish $22, but it was all for a good cause. The Cambodian currency, the riel, is only used for small change. All prices are quoted in US dollars (not just for tourists) but as there are no coins Cambodian banknotes are used instead of cents. Pegged at 4000 riels to the dollar, the 1000 riel note is used as a ‘quarter’, the 100 riel note as 2½ cents (they are easy to collect and hard to spend) while the 500 riel note must actually be the ‘bit’ American’s refer to when they call a quarter ‘two bits’.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Part 1: Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music

Part 2: Through the Mekong Delta by Sampan
Part 3: Chau Doc
Part 4: Phnom Penh (1) Royal Palaces and Museums
Part 5: Phnom Penh (2) Killing Fields and Torture Chambers
 Part 6: Across Cambodia to Siem Reap
  Part 7: Siem Reap (1) Angkor Wat
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
 Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
 Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
 Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell