Cambodia

Since I last wrote, I have done a 6 hour "trek" in Sapa, (which turned out to be more of a walk downhill, then a bus picking us up and taking us back), been back to Hanoi, flown to Phnom Penh and have now spent three days in Siem Reap.
Sapa was such a beautiful place, but I do not feel I have much to write about it; it was almost a week ago now and the details are fading. The curse of infrequent blogging. I know now with even more certainty how much I favour countryside. Cities make me feel disconnected, anonymous and lost, but I always feel a sense of connection with a beautiful landscape or open spaces. I detest the confinement of city life, but I know I will be living in one for a while when I get back.
So from Sapa we caught another sleeper train back to Hanoi to once again (for the last time) take advantage of Tuan's abundant generosity. We spent one more night in Hanoi, where we found a Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant, before heading to Phnom Penh, which is strikingly similar to Hanoi, if only quieter and far hotter. I would be lying if I said I overly enjoyed Phnom Penh, but it was a jump off point, and a place to witness some of the most brutal attrocities in human history. We visited the killing fields and S-21 prison, both of which were used by the Khmer Rouge during Pol Pot's reign and both of which are testaments to the unfathomable cruelty and oppression of mankind. I could not comprehend how this had all happened so recently and no other country did anything to try and stop it. Just a shame Cambodia doesn't have any oil stores or you could be assured that some world power would have intervened, but it displays both the self interest and the lack of empathy of so much of the world. I have visited Auschwitz and Dachau, and S-21 prison was comparable to both, however I understood it less. I couldn't comprehend any sort of reasoning behind killing one's own people. With the Holocaust, there was a racial issue, but the Pol Pot regime was simple brutality of the most despicable kind. While in Phnom Penh, we had the privilege of sharing dinner with one of the chief prosecutors in the Khmer Rouge trial, and once again, as seems to be the theme of our trip so far, he and his wife were overly generous and very hospitable, buying us dinner and instilling some words of wisdom.
It is now our third day in Siem Reap, and we have both taken a liking to the atmosphere of the place. Our original booking was for one night, which has since been extended to four, due in no small part to the hospitality of the hotel we are staying at, The Golden Mango. They know us by name and say "Good morning Tom and David" and "enjoy your rest Tom and David" and "Good night Tom and David", and generally make us feel at home.
Siem Reap is only a few kilometers from the splendourof the temples of Angkor. If there are two things Cambodia is famous for, it is the Khmer Rouge and the Angkorian temples, and the majesty of the latter almost counteracts the sobering nature of the other. We paid our new friend Panha $16 to drive us around the temples in his tuk tuk from 4:30 am to about midday taking us to the otherworldly temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Promh as well as many others. I simply could not comprehend the age and magnificence of them. They are a gateway into another time, almost lost but for the remnants and ruins. While the temples are all meticulously maintained, they have not lost any of their proud tradition, and the centuries of history have taken their toll on Angkor, not in the pejorative sense. The signs of aging add to their allure and mystique and paint a picture of a past which could so easily be forgotten. The ubiquitous Angkor Wat is everywhere in Cambodia. It is a country with such a bloody recent history, yet takes so much pride from their ancient civilisation. It is on their flag, their beer and across the chest of most tourists, however it was Bayon and Ta Promh which I found the most amazing. Ta Promh has been allowed to be englufed by the jungle and is at once a testament to the power of man and an homage to the power of nature. Trees grow from stone and is it impossible to separate the two. No one element is prevailing. It is beautiful co-existence. Bayon is a temple, constructed exclusively from numerous enigmatic grinning faces, and is perhaps the most impressive, if not the most beautifully perculiar of all the Angkorian temples. Cambodia is a country of highs and lows and the two juxtapose each other. There is an undeniable lack of elderly people in Cambodia, proof of the magnitude of the Khmer Rouge reign and it is a sobering fact to the think of the blood shed and life loss. It is so easy to think of deaths only as a number, but when an individual is made just that, an individual, it makes it so much more real. The exact number of people who died under the Khmer Rouge is very different depending upon source, but ranges from one million to three million. It is almost impossible to think that those were three million daughters, sons, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives.
There are other more trivial things I could write about our time in Siem Reap, like our affection for Pub Street and our love of Khmer Curry, but they all seem so insignificant in comparison to the two polarities of Cambodian history.
Tomorrow we will be catching a bus back to Phnom Penh and the day after, we head north to Laos. I look forward to the next and final chapter of our Asian journey and lament the fact that we have only two and a half weeks left on this beautiful continent. When I think back in time, it has been such a quick month since I left, and it is frightening to think that we have only seven left before I fly back to reality, which is the epitome of bitter sweet, but I think by December we will be ready for routine and homeliness, and will have matured and aged beyond our years.
I am now going for a bike ride to buy bread for the 6 hour bus trip tomorrow, so I will pray to whichever deity there is to stop us getting hit by a truck.
Keep checking back for more updates.
One month down, and what an amazing experience.