Dear all,
Miriam has brought to my attention that in my last blog, I intimated that I was going to speak at length about tourism in Cambodia. I guess tourism is something which seems very important to Cambodia. Since the opening of Angkor Wat (‘Wat’ is the Khmer word for temple) and the disappearance of the mass murdering Khmer Rouge, Cambodia has been a holiday destination of quite considerable interest. The marks are all over the country. You can see hotels ascending into the sky in both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap quicker than something that ascends into the sky reasonably quickly. The proliferation of T-Shirts that show various exciting tourist destinations and say things like ‘I survived Cambodia’ or ‘Achtung! Minen!’ is just one indicator of the amount of tourists visiting the temples each year. Incidentally, these shirts can be purchased (after bargaining) for little over a dollar each and so make an excellent source of clothing for the costs conscious missionary. I was worried that it would make me look like an eternal tourist, but seeing plenty of locals wearing the same garb has eased my mind somewhat. By the way, I never actually saw a shirt that said ‘Achtung Minen’ although plenty said ‘mines!’ - Usually the shirts being sold at USD $15 a pop as part of some charitable venture.
Cambodia is still regarded by Australians as a bit of an adventure destination although for somewhere as cheap as Cambodia, it’s not really that adventurous at all. By and large, we have seen mostly Korean or Japanese tour groups in Siem Reap although there are a significant amount of individual French, English and American backpackers coming through. The supermarkets are filled with foreigners although many of these would be diplomatic staff, missionaries and aid workers who flood into the country on a seemingly endless wave of other people’s money. It certainly means that the comforts of home are easily available albeit at a premium.
No doubt you have heard that Cambodia is a destination for the darker side of the human traveller. We don't see much in the way of prostitution where we are (certainly not as obvious as some places in Thailand), but there is a rather impressive list of prosecuted sex offenders, let alone the ones that get away. Sadly it means that often people are second guessing your motives, especially where children are involved.
Miriam has brought to my attention that in my last blog, I intimated that I was going to speak at length about tourism in Cambodia. I guess tourism is something which seems very important to Cambodia. Since the opening of Angkor Wat (‘Wat’ is the Khmer word for temple) and the disappearance of the mass murdering Khmer Rouge, Cambodia has been a holiday destination of quite considerable interest. The marks are all over the country. You can see hotels ascending into the sky in both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap quicker than something that ascends into the sky reasonably quickly. The proliferation of T-Shirts that show various exciting tourist destinations and say things like ‘I survived Cambodia’ or ‘Achtung! Minen!’ is just one indicator of the amount of tourists visiting the temples each year. Incidentally, these shirts can be purchased (after bargaining) for little over a dollar each and so make an excellent source of clothing for the costs conscious missionary. I was worried that it would make me look like an eternal tourist, but seeing plenty of locals wearing the same garb has eased my mind somewhat. By the way, I never actually saw a shirt that said ‘Achtung Minen’ although plenty said ‘mines!’ - Usually the shirts being sold at USD $15 a pop as part of some charitable venture.
Cambodia is still regarded by Australians as a bit of an adventure destination although for somewhere as cheap as Cambodia, it’s not really that adventurous at all. By and large, we have seen mostly Korean or Japanese tour groups in Siem Reap although there are a significant amount of individual French, English and American backpackers coming through. The supermarkets are filled with foreigners although many of these would be diplomatic staff, missionaries and aid workers who flood into the country on a seemingly endless wave of other people’s money. It certainly means that the comforts of home are easily available albeit at a premium.
No doubt you have heard that Cambodia is a destination for the darker side of the human traveller. We don't see much in the way of prostitution where we are (certainly not as obvious as some places in Thailand), but there is a rather impressive list of prosecuted sex offenders, let alone the ones that get away. Sadly it means that often people are second guessing your motives, especially where children are involved.
Anyway, back to the tourism. Tourist locations in Phnom Penh itself are limited to things like the Palace or pagodas of particular impressiveness. The other locations of interest seem to be limited to places associated with mass murder. It is suitably sobering and thought provoking to visit once. In fact, I think it is important to stand witness to the evils produced by man as if to take responsibility for the deeds of our kind. Out of the heart of man comes many and varied evils. That having been said, these locations aren’t the sort of places you want to visit every time someone new arrives at the airport. This means we have to look for other places to go and other things to see.
Dancing Orphans: The dancing orphans are cute and sweet. The music is loud and the food is good. Although after having seen the same orphans dancing the same dances over five times, I don’t feel the overwhelming need to rush up there now and book myself in for just one more show. If you visit.. I will take you to see them anyway because they deserve it. The meal you eat there is a meal for their future education, so it’s all for a good cause.
Sunset Cruise on the Tonle Sap: The Tonle Sap is the river which cuts right through Phnom Penh and although the water in brown and the scenery is hardly green, it has a nice breeze and a beautiful quaintness about it. If you look back into the sun you can see the palace outlined in gold and on the other side see the evening life of the inhabitants of the small floating village.
Shopping at the Market: Nothing quite says ‘really hot and stinky’ like the market. Fly covered meat, odorous Durian and the whiff of a rubbish tip combine to create a smell that can hardly be ignored. The sights, smells and sounds amount to a sensory assault that needs to be experienced for that ‘old world’ feel J. On the positive side, the shopping in plentiful and cheap. Not my cup of tea, but others like it.
Visit the LCDI School: Because you don’t know how good you have it. It’s always a warm welcome and a good reminder that if you don’t want to go to school (kids), we can fly in hundreds of kids desperate desire is to go to school. That will of course mean that you will have to take their place doing back breaking labour on a rice farm for no pay.
We took the boat up to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh just recently to visit Angkor Wat. The water was starting to get low and our boat had to stop a couple of times as it was beginning to snag water plants. The trip is about the same length as the bus ride (some 6 hours). Watch out for the convenient and ever present porters who will take your bags onto the boat and then put out their hands at the rate of 50c for a small bag and 1 dollar for a big bag. To put this into perspective, you pay 2 dollars for a tuk-tuk from our house to the port so the carrying of bags down a ramp onto the vessel hardly rates this sort of exorbitant fee.
The boat was described to us as a luxury vessel that you could roam freely about on. It was air conditioned and sped along at ludicrous speed. No doubt, you could obtain water and other goodies. A luxury high speed cruise of joy for the small sum of USD $25. It was definitely a bargain to pass the 6 hours in this way for so little.
Suffice to say, none of these things were of interest to me when I awoke at 4:30am with a queasy feeling. I had an odd tasting curry the night before and I was quickly learning that the odd taste is called ‘off’. Well I was ‘off’ and it wasn’t pretty. Many hours later I was huddled under a blanket on a seat designed for a midget in the ‘luxury’ craft that was really a ‘luxury’ bus glued to a hull. The walls were coming off, the seats were compressed into a soft version of a brick and the airconditioner was obviously designed for an ocean liner because it was sending enough cold air down our end of the cabin to snap freeze a fire. It was a 6 hour nightmare.
The boat was actually quite exciting as it was a speedboat with some 6 00000000000000 cylinder beast engine. It certainly flew. You could climb onto the top of the boat and sit on the roof if you had a really good sun-cream or got a good spot under the hood of the cabin. The first 2 hours of the trip up are the best because it is in the cool of the morning and the river is still quite close on the boat. In the later part of the trip you travel across the lake and you are mostly looking at a wide brown expanse of water which eventually becomes rather boring. I only know these things because we came back on the boat as well and I was spared the awful illness.
Arriving in Siem Reap you discover a quite picturesque town displaying all the signs of the tourist dollars that have been flooding into the country – combined with all the aid dollars and corruption dollars, of course. The trip to Angkor Wat is not something I can tell you about as I didn’t go this time. I minded the baby back at the hotel and worked on my slides for the seminar. Hurrah! We visited a pretty good restaurant called ‘Dead Fish’. According to their sign, they don’t serve Dog, Cat, Snake or Worm. We were relieved and dined there twice. Good food, nice atmosphere and excellent service. Check it out if you have time. It even has crocodiles.
Our trip back was reasonably uneventful except for the dodgy boat we took to get to our speed machine. This little raft had a clapped out VW engine that the driver had to burn the guts out of to get us where we needed to go. Unfortunately, sitting at the back less than two meters from the open housing of this thing, we developed permanent hearing damage and now all use hearing aids. Arriving back at the house was nice and resting in our upper room is bliss. It’s always nice to come home :) .
Love to all
Michael
Dancing Orphans: The dancing orphans are cute and sweet. The music is loud and the food is good. Although after having seen the same orphans dancing the same dances over five times, I don’t feel the overwhelming need to rush up there now and book myself in for just one more show. If you visit.. I will take you to see them anyway because they deserve it. The meal you eat there is a meal for their future education, so it’s all for a good cause.Sunset Cruise on the Tonle Sap: The Tonle Sap is the river which cuts right through Phnom Penh and although the water in brown and the scenery is hardly green, it has a nice breeze and a beautiful quaintness about it. If you look back into the sun you can see the palace outlined in gold and on the other side see the evening life of the inhabitants of the small floating village.
Shopping at the Market: Nothing quite says ‘really hot and stinky’ like the market. Fly covered meat, odorous Durian and the whiff of a rubbish tip combine to create a smell that can hardly be ignored. The sights, smells and sounds amount to a sensory assault that needs to be experienced for that ‘old world’ feel J. On the positive side, the shopping in plentiful and cheap. Not my cup of tea, but others like it.
Visit the LCDI School: Because you don’t know how good you have it. It’s always a warm welcome and a good reminder that if you don’t want to go to school (kids), we can fly in hundreds of kids desperate desire is to go to school. That will of course mean that you will have to take their place doing back breaking labour on a rice farm for no pay.
We took the boat up to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh just recently to visit Angkor Wat. The water was starting to get low and our boat had to stop a couple of times as it was beginning to snag water plants. The trip is about the same length as the bus ride (some 6 hours). Watch out for the convenient and ever present porters who will take your bags onto the boat and then put out their hands at the rate of 50c for a small bag and 1 dollar for a big bag. To put this into perspective, you pay 2 dollars for a tuk-tuk from our house to the port so the carrying of bags down a ramp onto the vessel hardly rates this sort of exorbitant fee.
The boat was described to us as a luxury vessel that you could roam freely about on. It was air conditioned and sped along at ludicrous speed. No doubt, you could obtain water and other goodies. A luxury high speed cruise of joy for the small sum of USD $25. It was definitely a bargain to pass the 6 hours in this way for so little.
Suffice to say, none of these things were of interest to me when I awoke at 4:30am with a queasy feeling. I had an odd tasting curry the night before and I was quickly learning that the odd taste is called ‘off’. Well I was ‘off’ and it wasn’t pretty. Many hours later I was huddled under a blanket on a seat designed for a midget in the ‘luxury’ craft that was really a ‘luxury’ bus glued to a hull. The walls were coming off, the seats were compressed into a soft version of a brick and the airconditioner was obviously designed for an ocean liner because it was sending enough cold air down our end of the cabin to snap freeze a fire. It was a 6 hour nightmare.
The boat was actually quite exciting as it was a speedboat with some 6 00000000000000 cylinder beast engine. It certainly flew. You could climb onto the top of the boat and sit on the roof if you had a really good sun-cream or got a good spot under the hood of the cabin. The first 2 hours of the trip up are the best because it is in the cool of the morning and the river is still quite close on the boat. In the later part of the trip you travel across the lake and you are mostly looking at a wide brown expanse of water which eventually becomes rather boring. I only know these things because we came back on the boat as well and I was spared the awful illness.Arriving in Siem Reap you discover a quite picturesque town displaying all the signs of the tourist dollars that have been flooding into the country – combined with all the aid dollars and corruption dollars, of course. The trip to Angkor Wat is not something I can tell you about as I didn’t go this time. I minded the baby back at the hotel and worked on my slides for the seminar. Hurrah! We visited a pretty good restaurant called ‘Dead Fish’. According to their sign, they don’t serve Dog, Cat, Snake or Worm. We were relieved and dined there twice. Good food, nice atmosphere and excellent service. Check it out if you have time. It even has crocodiles.
Our trip back was reasonably uneventful except for the dodgy boat we took to get to our speed machine. This little raft had a clapped out VW engine that the driver had to burn the guts out of to get us where we needed to go. Unfortunately, sitting at the back less than two meters from the open housing of this thing, we developed permanent hearing damage and now all use hearing aids. Arriving back at the house was nice and resting in our upper room is bliss. It’s always nice to come home :) .Love to all
Michael
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