Region Angkor and Phnom Penh

Edit: Please excuse the long drought! We have now been back in Germany for several weeks. Between visiting family and friends and dealing with authorities and health insurance, we unfortunately did not manage to finish the last blog entry earlier.

Our last two stops before returning to Germany are Siem Reap, where we want to visit the temple complexes in the Angkor region, and Phnom Penh. After recovering from our Mekong Delta tour in Phnom Penh for a day, we book our trip to Siem Reap for the next morning. The bus ride takes about seven hours, with a one-hour lunch break at a restaurant on the highway. When we arrive in Siem Reap, we are immediately swarmed by tuk-tuk drivers at the bus station who offer to take us to the hotel for $5. It is already 5pm and we are disappointed to find that the air-conditioned room we were hoping for is not available due to a power outage. We later learn that this happens more frequently towards the end of the dry season, as the reservoir that supplies the hydroelectric power plant does not have enough water. The hotel staff hopes that the power will be restored within the next hour. In the meantime, we pass the time by jumping into the pool to escape the humid heat. After an hour, the power still hasn't come back and it is already dark, which invites mosquitoes, so we take a shower and set out to find something to eat. We are simply told to walk down the street and cross a bridge, and we will find something. And indeed, from afar we can already see and hear the party mile in downtown Siem Reap. The streets are brightly lit with colorful lights of all kinds and sizes, loud music is playing from numerous restaurants and cocktail bars, and thousands of tourists are mingling in the alleys under the lanterns and chatting on the restaurant terraces. We are truly amazed. We least expected something like this here!

We're not very hungry and settle for a kebab from a street stall. Who can say they've eaten a kebab in Cambodia? For dessert, we have some ice cream. Back at the hotel, we go to bed early because the next morning we are picked up by our tuk-tuk driver to visit the temple complexes in Angkor.

By now, over 1,000 temples and sanctuaries have been found in Angkor on an area of ​​200 km². Researchers believe that the area was as large as 1,000 km² at its peak and could have been home to a million people. The Khmer Empire existed from the 9th century to the 15th century. Why Angkor was abandoned in the 15th century is unknown. The entire Khmer Empire was then referred to as Kambuja, from which the current name Cambodia derives, and must have been quite impressive. The Khmer built elaborate and huge artificial water reservoirs (barays) and canals to irrigate their fields and supply the cities with water. The flourishing agriculture and exports allowed the development of an impressive high culture at a time when the largest city in Europe had only 200,000 inhabitants (Paris around 1450).

Rhota, that's what our tuk-tuk driver is called, is punctual and so we leave a little earlier than planned to buy a three-day ticket for the temple complexes. Roughly speaking, there are two 'classic' routes for visiting the temples. The Big Circuit and the Small Circuit. Both circuits gradually visit various temple complexes. The first day is the big circuit, and we start with the most famous and largest temple complex in the world: Angkor Wat.

Our tuk-tuk driver Rhota with Laura

Afterwards, we visit the National Museum. It is housed in a beautiful building inspired by Khmer temple architecture. Here we can admire important archaeological finds from the Angkor region.

After our museum visit, we want to visit the nearby Royal Palace. Unfortunately, the opening hours of the Royal Palace do not correspond with our schedule, so we have to skip the visit. However, we still get a glimpse of the Royal Palace from the outside.

We visit another major temple in Phnom Penh, Wat Ounalom, as well as the Independence Monument commemorating Cambodia's independence from France in 1953. There is not much to tell about them, so at this point we will just show you a few visual impressions.

On our last day, we confronted the not-so-beautiful recent history of Cambodia and visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge were in power, the genocide museum was known as Prison S-21. It is estimated that during this time, 12,000-22,000 people were held 'captive' here. The inmates were forced to confess through torture. Most of them didn't even know why they were in prison, let alone what exactly they were supposed to confess. However, each prisoner eventually confessed something to escape the brutal torture by the guards. But by doing so, he or she signed their own death warrant. Of those 12,000-22,000 people, only a handful (just 9 individuals) survived. The goal of the Khmer Rouge was to violently transform Cambodian society into agrarian communism. In late 1978, troops from reunified Vietnam invaded Cambodia and put an end to the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge and deposed its leader, Pol Pot.

This museum visit affected us quite a bit, especially as the events took place less than 40 years ago. Anyone who has visited a concentration camp knows how much such a visit moves and depresses you. Nevertheless, it was important for us to better understand the history, as well as the country and the mentality of the Cambodians. The museum visit also explained why there are hardly any elderly people in Cambodia. Only few survived the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge. The average age in Cambodia today is therefore only 24.9 years (compared to Germany with 42.1 years).