We arrived in Cambodia via Poipet and straight onto Siem Reap by bus. we needed visas for Cambodia. This was all handled very efficiently by our host on the bus. He collected all our passports, application forms and dollars (including additional admin fee). the bus made a stop at the Cambodian Consulate on the Thailand side and around twenty minutes later we got our passports back with visa attached. Next stop was the Thailand border control. We all had to get off the bus and join the queue to leave Thailand - that took about half an hour - and we were then in the no man's land with a short stroll to the Cambodian border control. That was another half an hour or so in line before emerging into Cambodia where our bus was waiting to take us on to Siem Reap. Poipet looks like a very interesting frontier town and I would have liked to have stopped for a while to have a look around. But, we were soon out into the countryside, which seemed to mainly comprise livestock farming and already felt very different to Thailand. Also, as we passed through the built up areas along the way we noticed a difference in the buildings as well with their French influenced styling. We arrived in Siem Reap early evening and got straight out to explore. The town here is lovely and - another change compared to Thailand - pavements in a good state of repair. We soon learnt that this was a unique feature of this town though. There are lots of markets and restaurants both in the town and along the riverside - on both sides. And - also unique to Siem Reap it seems - Pub Street - an entire street given over to pedestrations in the evenings lined with restaurants, bars, night clubs, massage parlours and places where you can have your feet cleaned by dipping them in a tank full of fish who will nibble away at the dead skin while you sip your complientary glass of beer. the whole street is lit up brightly along the entire length by large installations of neon lighting. 
A real highlight for me in Siem Reap was the APOPO visitor Centre. Here you get to find out how rats are trained to detect landmines including an actual demonstration. The trained rats are working in several countries around the world and the current target for having all the landmines in Cambodia cleared is 2030. the rats can work very quickly - an area that can be covered by a rat in about ½ an hour would take several days using metal detectors. Also, because the rats are light they do not accidentally trigger the mines. Sadly, there are many Cambodians that have become victims of unexploded devices since the civil war ended nearly 30 years ago - many of them children.
Another highlight, also with poignant reminders of the conflicts, is the Phare Cambodian Circus. The show is performed by artists from under-privileged backgrounds - many of them orphans. There are no animals in the show - it is all a demonstrations of artistic prowess - acrobatics, music and even painting.
No trip to Siem Reap would be complete without visiting the temples at Angkor. We spent a good couple of days exploring them. The area is huge. The first day was a super early start - 4am pick up from our hotel - to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. There were already thousands of people here by this time. The next day was a later start but also a later finish to see the sun set at Phnom Bakheng. I found Angkor Thom, in particular, very appealing - including the Bayon Temple with it's multitude of serene and smiling faces of Brahma.
There is so much to see and do in Siem Reap - we also managed to fit in a Khmer style cooking class, an Apsara dance performance, a tour of the local countryside and a visit to the very impressive National Museum.
Our next stop in Cambodia was Battambang - just a few hours by bus from Siem Reap. We spent a couple of days doing some big tours of the area. At one point we had to disembark our tuk-tuk and walk across a suspension bridge - presumably because of weight limits as the driver followed us over once we had got to the opposite side of the river.
Another Stop was the Bamboo Railway. So called because, back in the day, before there were any rails, the flatbeds were rolled along on bamboo sticks for transporting goods. Nowadays, it is tourists who make the out and back Journey on the flat beds on the single track narrow guage rails. If you meet one coming back the other way - the one with the least passengers disassembles their carriage so the other can pass and then re-assembles to continue on their way. The whole process takes less than a minute. Hard to believe until you see it with your own eyes! The carriages nowadays are powered by motors and reach speeds of around 20 km/h, which seems very fast when you are so close to the ground!
Visiting a lot of traditional food manufacturing places was very interesting. we never would have guessed that behind an innocent looking frontage was a rice wine making distillery. We found out how the wine was made, including at the start of the process, the yeast from a bunch of various spices. Finished off with a quick tasting (at 10 am!) of the wine, which is actually tasty and not as fiery as some 40% proof spirits I have tried previously. Rice paper making was impressive. We admired the skill in making by hand thousands of wafer thin sheets per day, which would later be sold to restaurants to use for spring rolls. of course, we sampled some there and then.
Sun-dried banana chip making was another labour-intensive process.The lady skillfully sliced the bananas into uniformly thin slices and laid them out on bamboo trays to be laid out in the sun for 3 or 4 days to dry. Again, a tasting was part of the visit - numerous types - some sweet, some more savoury, some with salt and chilli. we bought some to take away for snacks on future bus journeys.
At the fruit stall we met a lady who grows lots of fruits to sell. We exchanged stories about the fruits we can grow in the UK versus the exotic fruits she grows and sells. We sampled a few, including some we'd never heard of before, even as highly priced imports back home. some of these were also eaten after dipping in salt-chilli powder. By this stage it was clear the our decision to skip breakfast in the hotel had been a good one!
I really liked the banana-sticky rice bamboos that we tried.The sticky rice mixture is pushed down inside the hollowed out bamboo and then placed on a char-grill for about 5 hours to cook. When you eat them you peel back the burnt bamboo to get to the delicious mixture inside. Some locals buy one of these in the morning and gradually peel it back throughout the day. As rice is very filling, this is all you need to keep you nourished until the evening.
We did visit sights that didn't involve eating as well! There are a handful of important temples in Battambang - the most well preserved of these is Wat Banan. We are getting used to having to climb large staircases to get to some temples. This one had quite a steep climb to the top.
Wat Damrey Sor was also interesting. Also known as the White Elephant temple - there are some interesting artworks and statues here related to the history of Battambang, which we were told about. It would take far too long to recount it all again here!
Our final stop in Cambodia was Phnom Penh - the capital city. Our hotel and most of the activity takes place along a long stretch of riverside. The river is the Tonle sap river, which has come all the way down from the huge lake of the same name which has shorelines as far away as Siem Reap. Actually, I say all the way down, I just read that the river is the only one in the world that flows in both directions.
The main focus of our visit was once again a sad reminder of the Pol Pot regime - the Killing Fields and the S-21 Genocide Museum. We had already seen Killing Fields (and Killing Caves) in Battambang. There are over 300 Killing Caves across Cambodia. The scale of the atrocities is difficult to comprehend. I don't want to write too much here and I took no photos. I strongly encourage reading about this elsewhere to understand it better.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia
This featured blog entry was written by P_M from the blog Exploring South East Asia.
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