Traveling Through Cambodia

Cambodia is a country of contrasts. The road from the capital, Phnom Penh, to Siem Reap in the north-west is lined with stilted wooden houses that look like they might collapse in the slightest gust of wind. Yet occasionally, between the scruffy houses, a glimmer of brilliant gold will suddenly shine. As the bus slowly bumps further along the road, the glimmer gradually gets bigger and brighter, before a clearing reveals a magnificent golden temple.

Seasoned travelers to this part of the world can be forgiven for getting a little temple weary after a while, but the temples in Cambodia are anything but tedious. It's impossible not to be in awe of their exquisite beauty, even though it's only 15 minutes since the last one you saw.

At the heart of Phnom Penh lies the Royal Palace, another monument to wealth and extravagance which, despite its stunning architecture and decoration, sits uncomfortably next to the outside world. I sat by the river at dusk watching barefooted children in tattered clothes playing in the dirty street; legless beggars pulling themselves along the promenade on their withered hands; ancient boats pumping thick black smoke into the air: all in the shadow of that incredible palace.

Wherever you go in Asia you'll find that people who have the least seem the most content. In Angkor Wat, children wait outside the ancient temple ruins for the tourists to disembark their tuk-tuk's. As you approach you can see them playing mischievously in the distance. As you get closer they begin switching to professional mode. By the time you get there they still look like eight or nine or ten years old, but they've ceased to be children: now they're salesmen.

Handbags, sunglasses, souvenir t-shirts: it's all for sale, most of it for little more than a dollar or two after haggling (like Vietnam, Cambodia relies on the American dollar to prop up its own hyper-inflated currency, the riel).

The children are likable and confident, if at times a little pushy. I wonder how they manage to speak such good English when they spend their days hawking crap to tourists instead of sitting in a classroom. They really are students of the University of Life. Like most of the people in Cambodia, they had an optimism that seems unnatural considering the country's tragic recent history.

The forgotten victim of the Vietnam War, Cambodia suffered terribly after the Americans deserted the region in the mid-1970s; firstly on Pol Pot's killing fields, where as many as a million people may have lost their lives; then during a bitter war after Vietnam that only ended in 1991.

Anyone visiting Cambodia should watch Roland Joffe's 1984 film The Killing Fields for an insight into what the country has gone through in the last 30 years. You can visit the killing fields and the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, which is now a museum commemorating the genocide, from Phnom Penh.

I'd heard reports of some travelers getting into trouble in Cambodia, usually with the police, who I'm told don't always cover themselves in glory. We didn't experience any problems, except in Siem Reap when we got off the bus and were swarmed with a hundred or so men wanting to give us a tuk-tuk ride to our hotel. Their sales pitches were aggressive, but as soon as we picked one the rest immediately backed away and wished us a pleasant stay.

My advice would be to pick one as quickly as possible as its much easier than fighting them off, and don't be fooled by really low prices: it's only that cheap because they'll expect to be appointed your personal chauffeur for your entire stay, for which they'll eventually charge much more.

After Siem Reap and Angkor Wat we traveled to Bangkok. The locals in Siem Reap looked horrified when we told them our plans to travel by bus. Rumor has it the Thai airways make it worth Cambodia's while not to bother repairing the road, but having come this far by bus I didn't want to splash out on a flight now. It was a decision we nearly lived to regret.

The road, if you could call it that, was more like a roller-coaster and driving on it was like driving on the moon, only we didn't have the specially-designed NASA vehicles to plough through the craters and potholes. Like many of the buses in south east Asia, the air conditioning was neither cold enough nor powerful enough. When it packed up completely after we landed badly in a particularly big pothole, our driver's response was to smile, shrug his shoulders and hit the accelerator hard again.

I considered berating him; this wasn't what they'd advertised. But I noticed that his shoes were about two sizes too small for him, meaning his feet hung out the back and scraped along the floor. After that I didn't have the heart, so I just smiled back and tried to enjoy the ride. However bad our journey was, it can't have been nearly as bad as many of the local's, who do it stood up in the baking heat in the back of a packed pick-up truck.

It took five hours and there was nothing you could do to kill the time. The bus had no radio, reading was impossible and my iPod earphones kept jumping out of my ears. Even conversation with fellow passengers was made virtually impossible by the roaring engine which was barely allowed a reprieve from second gear.

At one point I thought my ribcage was going to detach itself from the rest of my skeleton, and when we arrived at the Thai border town of Poipet I was battered, bruised and about two stone lighter. But I didn't regret it. Given what Cambodia has been through I felt a little personal suffering on my part was only right and proper. They'll never fix the road if everyone takes to the skies, and besides, flying's for wimps.