Wonders of Angkor

Banteay Srey and Bantey Samrè

First excursion to the northernmost temples of the Angkor sites, about 40 minutes from Angkor Wat (which we will visit the next day). At 15:00 we are at the entrance of Banteay Srey, restored to its splendor in 1923 (after about a thousand years from its construction), known by locals as the Citadel of Women, because of the "devata" built on the niches of the doors; the heat, the humidity, the wide avenues of red earth, the surrounding pink sandstone stones that make up the temple, all contribute to increasing the suggestion of the place. Three enclosure walls ring the heart of the site, and the porticoes and numerous doors are stormed both for the shade and coolness and for the suggestive shots and photos that can be taken.

Once the visit is over (and the first T-shirt soaked in sweat...), we get back on the bus and head for the temple of Bantey Samre, the Citadel of the Samrè; this site is by type very similar to the Temple of Angkor Wat. Anywhere in the world, the mere visit of this wonder would be worth the cost of an entire trip, but for us it is only the tasty appetizer of what the next day will hold in store for us. Exhausted from the tour of just 2 hours (plus bus transfer), we return to the hotel in Siem Reap. Just time for a shower, a few minutes of relaxation, and we head to a nearby place where a Cambodian dinner and a characteristic Apsara dance show await us (very similar to Balinese dances, truth be told less interesting and... dynamic...)

Angkor

The most tiring day of the entire Cambo-Vietnamese tour begins, with record heat and humidity; already by lunch I will be forced to buy a T-shirt and change... The tour starts at 7:15. Tuk tuks (motorbikes with a carriage hooked on for passengers) will take us all day between the temples of Angkor, a World Heritage Site, which we will visit on foot, with them punctually showing up again at the exit to take us to the next stop. Pleasant as they may be, these transfers mean that we will walk almost incessantly all morning inside the various sites, and after lunch we will already be exhausted, though motivated to visit the many wonders of Angkor. The visit to Angkor and the Khmer secrets begins first by crossing one of the gates of Angkor Thom, then with the walk inside the Bayon site (spiderweb).

Without a brand-new digital mirrorless camera, a gift received for my 40th birthday, it would have been difficult to capture the beauty of the interiors of this Buddhist sanctuary, whose best-known feature is the presence of towers with the faces of Lokeshvara; the "Bayon smile" is the most representative and well-known postcard of Cambodia. Next, at marathon pace, we visit numerous Angkor sites, among which the best known are certainly Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat; recently, Ta Prohm (the "Tomb Raider" temple... known because it was the set of the movie of the same name, whose most popular image is the trees dominating the temple, merging with it as one whole) has gained fame. At 16:30 we end the visit to Angkor Wat; we capture with numerous photos the temple reflected in the small lakes.

Though destroyed by a day of excursions, we decide to complete our knowledge of Cambodian culture in Siem Reap by visiting the Angkor National Museum; we move once again by tuk tuk. The museum is modern; across 20,000 square meters we immerse ourselves in the history of one of the oldest populations ever to exist; interesting, but considering the tiredness accumulated during the day, I would gladly have skipped this visit. In the evening, with a tuk tuk ride at the modest sum of 2 dollars, we reach the city center and Pub Street to immerse ourselves in the mix of sounds, colors, music that makes this city pleasant.

We also take advantage of the night market for unrestrained shopping and the purchase of T-shirts, sarongs and other souvenirs, whose costs will turn out to be cheaper than in Vietnam; having given up buying branded clothing, though of dubious origin, will be a nagging regret we will carry in the following days, after the reassurances provided by our guides and by some extremely well-prepared travel companions.

From Siem Reap to Phnom Penh

Day 14. Early in the morning, departure by private bus for Phnom Penh. Along the way, a visit to Kompong Khleang, a floating stilt village that we reach by motorboat; chaos reigns supreme in the village, children bathe by plunging into the murky waters, the same waters where the sewage from the houses is probably discharged; there is a lot of poverty, but at the same time dignity. We give snacks to the children who approach curiously and are happy to pose for photos with us, asking us to show them the images taken on our digital camera monitors. An engaging experience. We go back to the bus and set off again. We'll stop for lunch at a hotel on the highway, then in Skuon we'll visit the spider and insect market (which in Cambodia are delicacies); two girls in the group won't miss the chance to taste crickets, scorpions and other local delights...

Overnight in Phnom Penh at the Ohana hotel, on the riverfront near the departure point for the fast boats to Vietnam. The city is not as safe as Siem Reap, so in the evening we're advised against going to the center. We have dinner near the hotel in a multi-ethnic restaurant. It's the first chance to bond as a group with our travel companions; apart from the young Neapolitans, the rest of the crew integrates easily and has a lot to share; a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia isn't for everyone, in fact the evening passes pleasantly amid exchanges of info about the experiences each of us has had in the most disparate corners of the earth.

We learn that a vacation in Iran is much safer than one in New York, that Madagascar is economically accessible to ordinary mortals and that the Malagasy are a very hospitable people, that Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, is the city in the world where it's most pleasant to stay up late... Summary of the evening: never as on this vacation have perfect strangers turned out to be excellent travel companions.

From Pol Pot's prisons to the Vietnamese border

Breakfast on the rooftop of the hotel in Phnom Penh. We photograph the city from the top of our skyscraper, and realize we're just a few steps from the Royal Palace. Our new guide, a survivor of the massacres of the Pol Pot era, prefers early in the morning to move away from the city center and visit the prison, to avoid long lines during peak hours, then come back and visit 3 different sites before boarding for Vietnam. A side note on our guide: fine, having a direct testimony of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, fine, understanding the emotion, even decades later, of a woman who lost much of her family in a pointless war... but her not accompanying us inside the S21 prison I really didn't appreciate; the tour operator could also have found a guide with a less dramatic direct testimony, but with more presence and preparation on the sites of interest.

S21 is an experience comparable to visiting the Nazi concentration camps, but the cruelties inflicted by the Khmer Rouge on their fellow countrymen are much more brutal than those inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews a few decades earlier; not an ideology, nor a faith, nothing even today can explain what drove men to cause so many atrocities. Everyone today, both in Cambodia and Vietnam, is convinced that in Indochina a pointless, meaningless war was fought for years, in which the actors on both sides moved without having clear objectives to achieve. After a 40-minute visit, we move on to the Royal Palace, an example of Khmer art, which strongly reminds us, albeit in miniature, of the splendor of the Palaces of Bangkok; inside the site, the Silver Pagoda houses important reproductions of the Buddha.

Next we move to the National Museum, where once again the guide inexplicably abandons us and the group manages to beat every record ever registered in the world for visiting an entire museum... in 10 minutes our hunger for knowledge is already satisfied... We then move very quickly to Wat Phnom, a Buddhist temple at the top of a steep staircase; here too, with another couple of travelers, we are so full of knowledge that we amply precede the guide on the descent back to the bus. At 12 we're at the pier, and our diligent guide is once again exceptional in managing not to explain to us how, where, when we'll leave for the border. We're forcibly abandoned in the lobby of the pier restaurant, with our luggage, and practically encouraged to consume. The short wait for the ship that will take us to the border we'll pay dearly for...

a drink and chips for the modest sum of euro 10 (as much as we spent on the previous evening's dinner!!!). We'll be informed by gestures by an official that our boat is ready to depart. 4 hours and we'll reach Vietnam. Summary of the trip to Cambodia: spectacular!!! It has some of the most interesting and well-known sites in the world, and remarkable scenic beauty; it also has decidedly low prices for us Westerners (as long as you don't fall into the classic tourist traps) and a welcoming population.

A spectacular trip, as I was saying, but not for everyone!!!! It requires a certain spirit of adaptation considering that it's a poor country, where services are still decidedly improvable, where few speak foreign languages except in the more touristy centers, where the cuisine is not comparable to Italian, and where even the Italian-speaking guides have significant limitations in handling critical situations, but sometimes even trivial ones (in the Angkor temples the guide forgot to give us a meeting point in case of "getting lost"... and this caused me 20 minutes of running around in the Tomb Raider site with 35 degrees and a significant humidity level...)