Out with the Old

We left Saigon on a bus that had seen better days but at least we managed to get to the border control without any major hiccups. We had to queue for over an hour at the Vietnamese immigration and we then crossed “No Man’s Land” into Cambodia where we went through in under 10 minutes.


On our next leg we were told that we were to go on one bus and our bags on another, we had heard so many stories about this and lo and behold at the other end you are parted from some of the nice things that you may have. So we politely declined and 4 of us with our baggage in tow and 3 other guys went on a smaller bus with no air conditioning. The windows were thrown open, we all had plenty of space to stretch out and we were off. The first part of our journey to Phnom Penh was fine, some great roads and scenery and then we stopped to wait for the ferry. We were harassed by the many hawkers pulling the windows open further, dragging your arms to give you what they were selling, beggars pushing in and a few even managed to get the door open. So onto the ferry for a short trip where the kids were banging on the windows and we gave them all the food we had left in our bags. The next stretch of road wasn’t that far but it took longer than normal due to major road works being carried out. It also didn’t help that our bus broke down but our driver had our vehicle fixed in no time and we were speeding along the road.

When we arrived we were driven directly underneath a building into the Kings Guesthouse reception where our bags were whipped off in anticipation of us staying there for the night which we did as the rooms were fine. For dinner we walked by many places selling hot pot but we really couldn’t be bothered with this so we went to the Wah Kee Chinese Restaurant where we ordered a beef dish which would have done both of us, but as usual not realising the size of the portions we also had a veggie dish and some spring rolls. Afterwards we waddled slowly back to the hotel.

The following morning we were up early for a bumpy and dusty bus ride to visit the Killing Fields just outside Phnom Penh which we had missed on our last trip to Cambodia. As we entered the grounds all you could hear was a chorus of “One, Two, Three, Smile – Take my Photo!” from the local kids trying to get $1. We walked up to the memorial stupa which contained a selection of the skeletons from the thousands of people who were buried here, the skeletons were sorted into age groups of male/female from babies to the elderly. It is a solemn sight to see with this being only a small fraction of the people who were killed during the Pol Pot regime. All of the skeletons were removed from the mass graves (or so they thought) but when the rainy season came this washed more remains up and only then was the full death toll actually realised. There were 86 mass graves with almost 9,000 bodies, the adult victims were killed by a blow to the head (as the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to waste bullets) and children and babies had their heads crushed against a tree trunk. We wandered around the grounds which had fields and rivers around it with locals farming and fishing, giving us time to reflect on what we’d seen before heading back onto the bus.


We didn’t realise that this trip also took us to the Sleng 21 prison, the last time we were there our guide told us about how the Khmer Rouge regime impacted on his family including the deaths of his brother and sister. Since there were a few new exhibitions we went back and wandered through the buildings remembering the harrowing story that we were told previously. This is the place where the Khmer Rouge tortured people before taking them to the Killing Fields to die. Photographs were taken of nearly all the inmates along with the guards each year and the negatives from those which were not destroyed by fire have been developed and put on display. When the Vietnamese came to liberate the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge, the last remaining prisoners were tortured and left to die with only 6 actually surviving and with 2 being alive today.


On another floor of the prison are a couple of different exhibitions, one taking photos of reflections of visitors to the museum in the pictures of the inmates. Another one had photographs of the Khmer Rouge then and now with details of what they are doing and how they felt about what they did at the time. Many of them showed remorse for their actions and explained how they really had no option in doing what they did, but I still felt that a few of them really didn’t care about what they had done or the people they had killed. This was another thought provoking day for us and going to this prison is a must to understand some of the atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge on their own people. All the Cambodians want now is to see some justice, but none of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge have ever been brought to trial.

That afternoon we headed in the basking sunshine to the Russian Market which is a place filled with your copy gear just like “ra barras” and I managed to replace my well worn daypack with a fake North Face bag at much cheapness. There wasn’t that much else there that delighted us so we headed back to enjoy the last hour or so of sunshine on our balcony.

At night we decided to head to the backpackers area called Boeng Kak via a tuk-tuk. We thought that there would be more happening here but as we wandered up and down the main street we realised that this wasn’t the case and opted to go into the busiest bar “The Lazy Gecko”. We were asked did we want to join the quiz so we did at $1 each with the winner taking all. Chris’s eyes were glinting at the thought of the $6 prize money but unlike our last quiz he was second and a bit behind the winner, although he does think that this was a stitch up (he is such a bad loser at times).

Friday 30th was our bus journey to Siem Reap which passed very smoothly but on arrival our names had been passed onto another hotel with guys holding placards and shouting out “Chris Reilly” but we managed to give them the slip, avoided all eye contact and made our way via a cheap tuk-tuk to the City River Hotel since we had booked a supposedly “plush” hotel for Chris’s birthday.

We had been emailed by Donna and Marc (who we’d met in Laos) that they were in town and we wandered around in the hope that our paths might cross which they did. We also met Marita (a Dutch girl) and all of us had dinner in the Dead Fish restaurant which had at least 5 floors with traditional dancing and live singing. In addition to this there was a crocodile pit near the toilets with at least 50 of them all lying on top of each other with a few swimming in the water. Back home there would be so many regulations about keeping these animals but here it doesn’t matter there wasn’t even a fence on either side of the walk way that takes you over the other side. With signs up outside advising that they don’t do “Cheap Food” nor do they serve “cat, rat, dog or worm” we certainly weren’t disappointed with our Thai meal the soup in particular was fantastic but we left to find some bars with ‘Happy Hours’ for cheap beer when the dodgy two piece band came on.


On Hogmanay as we went to meet up with the guys in the Red Piano the heavens opened and just like Glasgow we were soaked to the skin in minutes. The only difference being that it wasn’t the usual freezing winds biting through your bones more like a Turkish bath with the humidity. Donna, Marc, Marita and Klaus (a Swedish guy) had just managed to miss the rain, so we soon dried off and all of us had a great meal. The main bar street had been closed off to traffic so after our sustenance we moved down to the middle of the road to “The Funky Buddha” and managed to get enough seats for us all.


Ben and Yvonne also came and joined us (we met this couple on the Killing Field trip in Phnom Penh) and we were all set to party. Each of the neighbouring bars were competing with their music so we had at least 4 or 5 songs going in our heads at once and then the dancing started.


Lots of tourists were bouncing the street kids up and down on their shoulders with some of them wearing masks and hats. Older kids had firecrackers which they shot out of bamboo canes so we knew we were in for a good night. We brought the bells in with a bottle of wine (cheap in flavour not in price) and then Donna decided that we had to sing “Auld Lang Syne” with only a few of us knowing the words. There were fireworks and floating candle lanterns lighting up the sky. Then it started to get messy as someone thought it was a good idea to have shooters (Tequila or B52’s) so we all had one and then a few more in between our rounds of beer. Along came a couple of Irish guys who we’ve bumped into on and off since Luang Prabang with whisky buckets which Chris had to have a souk out of since it was his birthday which was mainly whisky and not a lot else.

We were all up dancing in the street which wasn’t good enough for one of us who also had to get on a speaker for a couple of songs. Again we said our farewells as Klaus, Ben and Yvonne were all up early the next day to travel onto somewhere else (lucky for them eh?) and well we eventually made it back to the hotel for 5am and Marc, Donna and Marita went to the Angkor Temples to watch the sunrise.


We received a couple of early morning alarm calls at 7am wishing us a Happy New Year and Chris a Happy Birthday (thanks & sorry guys) as you can only imagine our sober state. We didn’t make it up for breakfast the following morning surprise, surprise and we just literally chilled out. That was until we tried to access the in-room internet access and found out there was none in our room so we then had to go through the palaver of changing rooms again. The access was behind a huge bed and despite all our efforts we were unable to get it working. What a big let down! We are thinking of renaming this hotel to something that rhymes with city!

At night we had a lovely dinner to celebrate Chris turning 35!! Oh I did get him some nice gifts, he particularly liked his croaking frog!! We then went back to the hotel to see if the Hearts v Celtic game was on TV and guess what Chris’s luck was in!! He managed to see the game live although after the first half I am sure he’d had rather not. With Celtic having a remarkable comeback from 2-0 down to winning 3-2 he ran around the room whooping his delight with YEEEEESSS!! And since it was his birthday I even celebrated a little with him. The things you do for love!!