A trip to Cambodia, a trip back in time.

A recent weekend trip took me to Cambodia—two cities called Phnom Penh and Siem Riep. Cambodia is known for two things

When we first arrived to the airport, the first thing you have to do is buy a visa for your stay. Its kind of unnerving as you pay 20 USD, give up your passport for perusal and then wait in a line as six military officials all armed with large stamp pads quietly judge you as you wait and wonder if you are going to pass some mysterious staring process. I have no idea what they judge you on, but I know all the white ladies got through long before anyone else.

On getting out of the airport, you are barreded with taxi, tuk tuks, and moto drivers who want to take you into the city. We opted for the tuk tuk carriage. This is something like a carriage that is pulled by a small 125cc motorcycle, the kind of which you would wonder if it could be safe for two people, much less pulling a carriage.

But you soon learn in Cambodia that these small motorcycles are the family car equivalent to the rest of the world. We saw numerous families of 5 traveling, large animals being carried, and even large boxes filled with wood—all on the passenger seat of the motorcycles. But the one that takes the cake was the one motorcycle balancing 3 100 lb propane tanks, all with the help of bungee cords and a few strips of twine.

Most of the intersections had no stoplights, and yet the streets are crowded (and dirty) beyond imagine. At the intersections are a controlled chaos of traffic passing through each other with not so much of a scratch on anyones moto bumper. The one accident we did was at a intersection with stop lights. A car rear ended a moto with a mom and her daughter carrying a large buckets of onions. Not too tragic of an accident—just enough to knock down the motorcycle. The little girl was amazing—as soon as she fell off the motorcycle, she got back on her feet and started picking up the onions with a slightly annoyed look on her face—as if getting hit behind on the moto is just a small setback in her day and not lawyer extortion process we would make it into.

One of the major draws of going to Cambodia is looking at the 1000 year old Angkor Wat ruins that lie in the city of Siem Riep. From Phnom Penh (where we flew into) to Siem Riep is a 100 mile trip down Hwy 6 that takes about 6 hours by bus. You wonder why it takes so long until you see the road they call a highway and the many obstacles you see on it. This bus trip is a trip back in time as go from the city and pass through the countryside. One will see plenty of oxen carriages, oxens working in the field, and hundreds of naked children playing in the mud—maybe to stay cool. The bus turns into a bully as it constantly honks its horn to get carriages, motos, and walking people off of the road to go through. One comes to the idea that the road is a more of a meeting of the people than it is a tool for travel.

In Siem Riep we took a short tour of the Mekong Delta. It’s an amazing lake/swamp like place that stretches from horizon to horizon. Our rickety wooden tour boat brought us out to many villages that permanently reside in the water, where everything you eat starts from the water to everything you don’t need ends up there too. We were warned not to drink it, and I wondered what ridiculous tourist even had thought to try. As you travel though the waterways, small boats will race up to the tourist boats. Brave small girls carrying buckets of bottled water and coke cans will jump from boat to boat (while moving) and try to sell you whatever they can. I was amazed at their agility with their relatively heavy loads.

The Angkor Wat ruins were pretty amazing, and you could spend a week looking at them all, and still only see a fraction of them. Even though they have been picked over and all the gold and jewels are gone, they still leave you amazed at how these 1000 year old structures and temples have still survived, with many wholly intact. One of the first things you notice is that all the Buddha heads are missing on the statues, as they are worth a great deal to collectors outside of Cambodia. Around the sites themselves are always makeshift markets selling whatever they can to the tourists. This includes many boys and girls, from ages 4 to 12 trying to beg or sell you bracelets, flutes, blankets, shirts, figurines and a hundred other useless souvenirs. Sometimes you wonder if the kids are the only merchants there.

For the most it was really cheap to go there—we hired our own tuk tuk for the day—where the driver drove us around to all site for 15 dollars. Hotel room costed us 10 dollars a night, but you had to agree not to bring prostitutes there, since it was considered Buddhist guest house. Even I can sacrifice for 10 dollars a night.

A trip of Cambodia would not be complete without the seeing the S21 torture museum. In the late 70’s the leader Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge political party took over Cambodia. Everyone at first cheered because they thought the civil war was finally over, but the most gruesome chapter in Cambodia’s history had just begun. Pol Pot had a plan that said everyone in Cambodia should be working in the rice fields and only government officials could be in the city. Mass population movement from the city was forced and anyone deemed intellectual and questioning was immediately killed—along with anyone from other political parties. Wearing glasses was a sign of intellectualism. S21 torture museum was a former primary school that was turned into a prison and torture center. Going through it was a lesson in brutality not soon forgotten, as all the torture devices are still there, stories of those tortured, and walls and walls and classrooms and floors of skulls. One room was filled with skulls, each labeled on the cause of death—which for the most part was pretty obvious due to the bullets, blunt force fractures, and bayonet wounds.

After seeing how poor these people are, I was left to wonder about how the ruins from 1000 years ago are now rebuilding the country, as tourism has become the major industry. But it was a fascinating trip of another culture and lifestyle not seen in any western country.