We only blogged once about Cambodia during the three weeks we were there: although we discussed it endlessly we couldn't decide what we wanted to say about the place.
Starting with the highlight, Cambodia has Angkor Wat. Un-bloody-believable.
Secondly, Cambodia is visually very interesting as
our Flickr site hopefully conveys. As in Vietnam so much life happens at the roadside (in fact 'a dull moment' is something we often craved during our 6-8 hour days in the midst of it all, prompting Zoe to coin the brilliant phrase 'enough authenticity now!'). There were occasions we wondered if we'd travelled back in time to the Middle Ages, and obviously on one level that was interesting.
In Siem Reap we met some great cyclists from Lancashire who've been travelling the world for over a year and who inspired us to try and keep saying hello nicely (or rather 'iya) to everybody as they do.
But, overall Cambodia disturbed us quite a lot. Imagine seeing (as we did several times) a woman on the back of a motorbike holding what seems to be an upright plank of wood and turns out to be a make-shift drip with a baby attached to it. Imagine seeing kids splashing about in floodwater underneath their houses, right where the family presumably shit and do the washing up. Imagine restaurants with their floors littered with bones and used tissues and flies everywhere. Imagine seeing motorbike accidents in the middle of nowhere, hours by bad road from the nearest (poorly equipped, not-free) hospital. Imagine roads (connecting sizeable towns) that have never been paved that take people hours and hours to travel along and which have potholes so big that cars get stuck in them after rain. Then imagine going to the capital city and enjoying cocktails at the colonial 'Foreign Correspondents' Club' while outside children are selling stuff on the streets and the 'Haves' are driving around with their bodyguards in blacked-out SUVs. Try to imagine the psychological legacy of a genocide 30 years ago which wiped out a fifth of the population including the majority of educated and skilled people.
In Vietnam we preferred the cities (and the south in general) to the northern countryside because we enjoyed seeing the country's rapid economic progress manifested in the improving quality of life for urban folk. In Cambodia we preferred the countryside because we felt if you're going to be desperately poor better be desperately poor in a scenic rural place where you can fish and your kids can help raise cows than be poor in a stinking city where the rich and the tourists rub your nose in it at every turn and you're tempted to send your kids out onto the streets to work.
On a more personal note we found the Cambodian roads appalling and occasionally terrifying. An extraordinary 'system' prevails whereby two-wheelers (of which there are millions) are expected to give way to bigger vehicles. Had we not moved off the road onto the sand shoulder when we heard them coming up behind us lorries would have run us over, no question about it. Add to the mix lots of SUVs driven by people who Have got a superiority complex but Have Not taken a driving test and you've got a recipe for disaster.
In the end Hannah (who had been reading generally about 'why poor countries are poor') concluded with sadness that Cambodia is an endemically corrupt basket-case with a hell of a way to go. Zoe had read more about the history and so was better able to understand the country's specific issues. But in the end we were both relieved to leave Cambodia intact five days before our visas ran out thus buying ourselves more time in a country that could hardly be more of a contrast: aahh, lovely Thailand!
