The Long Journey Home - 4th Feb

The Last Day - 3rd February

Today we were leaving Siem Reap and Angkor Wat to visit some temples which had been hidden in the jungle for a number of years. They'd been in Khmer Rouge territory for decades and out of bounds until 2002. The area had had to be de-mined before tourists could start to visit the temples again.

It was going to be a two hour drive through Cambodian countryside to get there but I was really looking forward to seeing some true Cambodia rather than all the hotels and bars geared to the tourists. The drive was fascinating. Many of the houses were built on stilts as in the rainy season much of the land floods. In the warmer season people use the space below for cooking and sleeping but move everything upstairs when it rains. Many Cambodians are poor, many don't have running water of electricity and 80% of all Cambodians don't have flushing toilets but use the jungle as their lavatory. You also have several generations all living together.

Typical Cambodian houses

Half way we stopped off at Dom Deak town for a wander through the market. We saw fresh meat, fish and vegetables being sold but the most amazing was petrol being sold in recycled plastic bottles on the road side. You just dreaded to think what could, and probably did happen.

Local Market

Local Petrol Station

Mid morning we arrived at King Suryavarman II's eleventh century Boeng Mealea temple deep in the jungle. This is the largest temple outside the main Angkor complex. In places the temple was remarkably intact and in other places utterly destroyed. Walking to it we felt like the only people there until we saw some children playing a shuttle cock game in the forest. Then as we approached the temple a tourist appeared from out of a hole in the temple with a private guide. However by the time we were inside the temple we were met with lots of tourists traipsing around the site.

After looking around Boeng Mealea we got back in the car and drove for an hour and a half to another temple called Banteay Srei. This also had been inaccessible until the late 1990s because of the Khmer Rouge. It is a 10^th Century temple dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. The red sandstone temple was a much smaller site, with smaller buildings compared with Angkor Wat, but much better preserved and you could see all the ornate carvings in the sandstone.

How to use a toilet

After this was lunch. Today the lunch was included as part of the tour which was great because it made us try things we wouldn't have otherwise ordered. We had a beef stir fry, fish curry served in a coconut, sticky rice and a platter of fruit. It was all really good. While we were eating we watched a group of oxen cooling themselves down in a lake.

Lunch

After lunch we drove to our final Cambodian temple. On route we stopped at a village where locals were stirring big pans of hot palm sugar to make sweets. They were really good.

The final temple was called Banteay Samre which was constructed around the same time as Angkor Wat and has a strong resemblance to it. It was a laterite structure which once featured internal moats. Again as with everywhere else we were met with young children trying to sell us things. I bought a scarf off them.

We were then driven back to our hotel and said goodbye to Sam and the driver. We then had a few hours to spare before dinner and it was nice to spend a bit of time relaxing by the pool.

Dinner tonight was compliments of the travel company. The itinerary had originally included viewing sunset at Angkor Wat from a tethered cable balloon however the balloon was out of action so they'd offered us a meal instead. This included a Cambodian buffet and a traditional dance show. It was all really good and we had a good view right at the front.

After dinner we wandered into town and had some drinks at a bar before taking our final tuk tuk trip back to the hotel. It all felt quite sad thinking this was the final evening of our 3 month trip. We both said that we could have carried on travelling another month, particularly as people were telling us how great Thailand was. Sadly this wasn't the case and we packed our bags ready for the journey home.

Our final trip in a tuk tuk