Siem Reap

I appreciate it’s been a while, but the name of the city must wind up the Thai people. Siem Reap references a victory by the Khmer King Ang Chan I over Siamese forces around 1530. The translation of the name is Siam defeated. I suppose it is hard to change it to something a bit less antagonistic, but I do get the sense that there is still some national pride around coming out better in that particular skirmish.

We arrived here on a flight from Kuala Lumpur for the start of our inland tour of Cambodia and Thailand to visit some of the places we hadn’t seen. The hotel I chose, the Pavillon Indochine, was close to Angkor Wat, but unbeknownst to me, was even closer to one of the many killing fields that can be found all over Thailand as a result of Pol Pot’s despotic regime. There are around 20,000 of these fields.

I suppose at this point, I should issue a trigger warning because some of the images below are unpleasant at least.

And I am guessing there’s no need for me to explain more about the theme of Wat Thmey; the photographs tell the story.

I’m sure people thought, after the atrocities committed during WW2, that nothing like that could ever happen again, but here we were again in 1975.

After walking back to the hotel, we embarked on a Tuk-Tuk tour of the city, starting with a visit to Theam’s Gallery. I think the driver went to the same travel guiding school as our taxi driver in Pangkor Island.

Theam’s Gallery

This is the home and gallery of the Cambodian artist Lim Muy Theam and doubles, or triples even, as a teaching space for young artisans to learn their craft and hone their skills in sculpting, painting and lacquering. The work here is truly impressive.

And on we went towards the War Museum, along muddy roads that were so bad that we had to get off the Tuk-Tuk and walk as the driver slithered his way along the ruts until he hit gravel and gained enough traction for us to move on.

War Museum

The staff collecting the entry fee reflected the sombreness of the museum. We handed over the cash and stumbled around for a while, looking at random stuff. It isn’t the best-kept museum of its type. There’s little in the way of explanation for any of the exhibits. It’s a shame. There’s a story to tell here, but we couldn’t extract it from the exhibits. It felt as though we were ambling around a junkyard full of rotting machinery.

And that’s the best I can do for an explanation, because we didn’t get any ourselves.

Lastly, on our tour, we took a stroll around the busy market

And then it was back to the hotel for dinner, where Maria practised her napkin-folding skills, and an early night ready for a 4 am start the next morning.

Angkor Wat

The reason we were in Siem Reap was to see the temples, of which there are many. Although the hotel offered a private tour of them, we decided on a group one because a) if it was anything like the TukTuk tour we had, we wouldn’t learn anything and b) if the tour guide wasn’t good or, even worse, annoying, we would be stuck with him all day, At least with a group the pain is shared.

The bus rolled up at our hotel just after 0430, full of fellow bleary-eyed people, to take us to Angkor Wat. At that sensitive time in the morning, the chances of the tour guide being irritating were very high. But it transpired that he wasn’t bad at all and was the opposite of irritating. He was clear, knowledgeable and, as a bonus, had a great sense of fun.

The idea behind getting up before being awake was to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, there was so much cloud cover that all we witnessed was a gradual lightening of the sky. Despite that, it was still an impressive sight.

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm has two aspects of cultural significance:

1. King Jayavarman VII built Ta Prohm around 1186 AD as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university, dedicating it to his mother, Jayarajachudamani. It employed around 80,000 people.
2. It was the set for the 2001 film, Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie.

Angkor Thom

Our final visit to the temples was to Angkor Thom. This city was constructed in the 12th century by King Jayavarman VII as his new capital. The temple area is around 9 sq km, surrounded by a moat and walls. Despite its relatively small size, it served as the hub of the Khmer Empire until the 15th century and housed up to a million people – a bit of a squeeze, I suggest.

Our tour group – and not one of them irritating, except perhaps the two in the middle left.Then it was time to go back to the hotel for food and festering by the pool.