D14: Indiana Jones + the Temple of Insta

09:00
I don’t sleep brilliantly. I think this is largely because each time I wake during the night (frequently), I’m conscious that my alarm is probably going to go off in fairly short order. I do manage to get back to sleep each time, but I don’t feel well rested. Felix is sensibly keeping his powder dry. Hopefully some more rest will speed his recovery.

My pick-up is 04:15, and I’m outside the hotel in good time. My guide is called Chanty, but his nickname (which he later admits he gave to himself) is Indiana Jones, and he encourages us to call him Indy. Our group is 13 in total, and a real range of characters / ages / nationalities / backgrounds. As we drive through the city of Siem Reap picking up other guests, there are quite a few bars still open from last night, with some walking wounded occupying tables and bar seats. We arrive at the Angkor Wat temple complex bang on 05:00, and set off on a walk to the main setting of the temple. It’s maybe 05:30, and the light is just starting to pinch at the horizon. It’s clearly going to be an overcast morning, and I suspect the light over the temple will not be mind-blowing. It’s busy - Siem Reap is living up to our analysis of it being a bit of a tourist trap. I sit on the stone outside one of the library buildings in front of the temple, and spend some time people watching. There’s a water pool to one side of the front of the temple, and there’s a HORDE of tourists,
which look increasingly to me like something out of the Walking Dead, waiting to take a picture perfect snap of the temple reflected in the water. Only, there’s insufficient light, and it’s quite breezy, so the pics will be, frankly, rubbish. This trend continues. I see countless tourists trying to capture the perfect Insta pic. Local photographers roam around offering their services to tourists who simply must capture that they were there, and how great they looked when they were there. There are very few people that are there for the experience, and for the memory.

As I suspected, the sunrise is a bit of a damp (literally and figuratively) squib. The temple is an impressive edifice, and the surroundings are beautiful. Am I blown away? I am not. I can’t help but think of the staggering beauty and scale of the bat exodus Felix and I experienced just a couple of days ago in Battambang. That stopped me in my tracks. The Angkor Wat temple - I’m glad I’ve been, but for me it doesn’t compare to the wonders that the natural world can offer. It doesn’t dazzle me, doesn’t give me the fizz, doesn’t tickle my pink bits, and definitely does not delight my danglies. I find myself wondering if I’m simply no longer that impressed by the ‘achievements’ of humankind, particularly when they illicit the kind of influencer driven behaviour I’ve seen here this morning. Christ, I sound old.

I head back to the hotel for some breakfast, and to catch up on some sleep. Our tickets are valid for the rest of the day, and across a bunch of different temples. My plan is to head out later, once it starts to cool down, and when there are perhaps a few fewer tourists.

21:30
It starts raining around 12:00. Lashing sheets of rain. I pop onto my balcony to take a look, and am quickly soaked. I’ve had 2 hour nap, so am fairly well caught up on sleep, but the rain is just too hard to think about going anywhere just yet. I check in with Felix, who is feeling like he’s through the worst of it. We agree to make a call at 16:00 whether to go templing this evening, or whether to save it for tomorrow morning.

I read for a couple of hours. The rain does not abate. I have a Krud - a fairly unpleasant local beer. It’s got a watery, thin body so redolent of beers in this part of the world. There’s a faintly metallic taste, I suspect as a result of using cheap materials in the canning process. The bouquet is nutty, and not in a particularly pleasant way. In summary, not my fave. I suspect during the Communist years, it was the 'beer of the people.' But - it’s called Krud, and that’s a bit funny.

At 16:00, the rain is still coming down. We agree to head out at 17:00 to grab some food, and save temple-town for the morning. The rain’s gradually lightening, but it’s umbrella worthy. We grab a tuk-tuk up to Pinky Poo. At least, that’s what I *think* it’s called. It’s actually called Pinak Pau - but I was close. Their Khmer cuisine is feted, and rightly so. I have a stunning cured beef salad, spiked with chilli. The beef is cured in lime and fish sauce, and has the texture of velvet. Felix, who let’s remember, is nursing a delicate tum, has an interesting sort of puffed rice ball thing, with beetroot, and some delicate spicing. Our mains are even better. My fish curry has the sour smack of tamarind, the heat of red chilli, and the fragrance of lime leaf. It’s the best curry I’ve had so far on this trip. Felix has his first ever fresh mackerel dish, which is served with a kind of mustard and peppercorn sauce, some more beetroot and some fairly plan turmeric rice. He seems very pleased with himself.

After dinner, we take a walk through the soggy streets of Siem reap - over to the riverside neighbourhood, up to the central market, down Pub Street… We stop at the Temple Bar to do some people watching, sitting upstairs with a great view down over the street. We see some young girls who look like they’ve just finished their a-levels, and are embarking on a gap yaar. We witness the touts approaching tourists and offering them everything from a tuk-tuk, via a ‘massage with boom boom’ to weed. We try to keep count of the likely sex tourists we can spot. Thailand is perhaps better known for sex tourism, but there are some obvious examples happening here in Cambodia. It leads us to Google the prevalence of organised crime in the country, and it transpires that it’s a growth industry, particularly for the sex trade, and for people trafficking. Until the past few years, this has largely been driven by international criminal organisations, including the Chinese Triads and the Red Wa gang from Thailand. Increasingly, there are Cambodian gangs running things locally. I'm not entirely sure why, but I feel a strange sense of pride in this homegrown talent doing so well.

We make a vague plan to do some stuff tomorrow, and retire back to our hotel. It feels like it may actually stop raining soon, after fully 8 hours. Hopefully, tomorrow is a drier day...En savoir plus