Cambodia part 1: motorbike trips, monkeys and mass graves

Then it was time for Cambodia.

Cambodia has probably been my favorite destination of this travel and deeply touched me. While Vietnam was a really cool place to visit with interesting sights and good food, Cambodia enchanted me on a deeper level and I got many intense memories there.

our route

The beginning was already very adventurous. From our last stop in Vietnam, Ha Tien, the next bus was only coming in a couple of hours and as we were tired of waiting, we had decided to hire two motorbike drivers to bring us over the border. So with our big backpacks between their legs and us riding behind them, they drove us to the border. There, we officially left Vietnam and entered Cambodian ground.

GDP per capita is with about 950US$/year about half of Vietnam, so it's a really poor place and also one of the most corrupt in the world.

So in our guidebook we had already been warned that the border officials used to demand more money than the usual 20$ visa fee. And indeed, they wanted 22$. So we told them that we know it's only 20$ and won't pay any more. But the guy didn't gave up so easily and said that if we would give him 22$ then he will do our visas quickly but otherwise we would have to wait for an hour.
My first encounter with real, low-level corruption.
It was a really uncomfortable situation. I was afraid that I might not get a visa at all if we would piss off that guy, but I just didn't want to accept that. Also our motodrivers were waiting for us a few meters ahead with our backpacks.

So what would you do now? Of course, it's only 2$ and 2$ are for me personally definitely worth not having to wait an hour. But on the other hand I really didn't want to support corruption and add to the success of this kind of practice. Further if everyone would protest, then they might have to give up that practice eventually compared to everyone just buckling.

Especially thanks to Ankers boldness we decided to wait for a bit and see how things would develop.

And finally after two more discussions with that guy, about 20min later, he gave in and gave us our visas for 20$.
Yes! Victory! We had successfully fought corruption in Cambodia :D

I have to admit though, that if I had been on my own, I would probably just have given in and later written a formal complaint to some official (to no use probably). Good job, Anker!
In this context, I liked this blogpost "Say no to corruption".

Next was a health check:
"Please pay 1$ fee.", "There is no such fee, we don't pay that", "Okay" :D

So finally we moved on to our next destination, the small city of Kep and our mototrip took us through some fascinating countryside with small villages, salt fields and water buffaloes. Also lots of children were greeting and waving at us. A good start.

In Kep we stayed at a friendly guesthouse run by a French guy who had decided to leave it all behind.

relaxing at the French guesthouse

Italian Lihong with remains of the grand moustache

And in the evening we met some monkeys again! Woooohooo monkey-monkeys!!! They even stole two baguettes from us! Yay! :D

On the market: Very hygienic meat vendor. I don't know what she did with the guts in her hands but one end was wrapped around her toe!

For the next day we rented motorbikes and made a pretty amazing tour through the surrounding countryside.

Unfortunately my bike was pretty fucked up, somehow accelerating on its own constantly (so I just had to break all the time instead of accelerating) and additionally my rear break was not working what's a really bad thing if you have to brake in sandy dirt roads -.-
Luckily I also survived through that..

and all the children we passed were enthusiastically greeting us!

I tried to make them do an arms up picture with me but they didn't understand :-/

beach found

fun with coconuts!

The next day we took a boat to the nearby rabbit island (Koh Tonsay), off from civilisation, spending the day in a hammock and living in a small bamboo bungalow.

our lovely home for that night!

When Anker opened our toilet-door he encountered some surprise:

We had a dog! We called him "Zhonggou" (meaning "medium sized dog" and at the same time sounding like the word for China!).
Zhonggou was a very faithful companion and we still miss him a lot!

Anker defending his meal of crabs

it took him literally one hour to finish it -.-

And if you ever happen to go to Rabbit Island, I highly recommend the corresponding wikitravel article, that has been written by Mr. Lihong ;-)

Then it was time to go back to civilisation again and we headed to the capital, Phnom Penh, a 5h bumpy bus trip :-/

Phnom Penh was quite cool, we had again been afraid it might be like Manila, but no, very nice place.

a busy temple ceremony

monks

at the palace

And in Phnom Penh it was time for some Cambodian history lessons:

I had always thought that Nazi-Germany was the worst that recent history of humankind had breeded. But now I think Cambodia under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79 was worse actually. 

As some kind of preparation I had watched the movie “The Killing Fields” recently and read the personal accounts of a girl that had to live through it “First they killed my father”.

And seriously, compared to this book, “The diary of Anne Frank” (diary of a Jewish girl in Nazi-Germany) seems like a happy childhood. I can highly recommend that book, a very honest and open account of her horrible story and deeply touching and powerful.

So here's a short history overview:

The so called Khmer Rouge started as some communist guerillas in the jungle, and gained support when the Vietnam war started to spread to Cambodia with massive US bombings. Finally they managed to defeat government troops and overtake the capital Phnom Penh in 1975. Immediately they started with their plan to build their vision of a pure agrarian society and made everyone leave the cities for doing slavery work on the fields. Among all the things they despised was education and it was enough to wear glasses or to speak a foreign language to get executed. Further they had the really strange combination of communism and racism. Well, actually pretty much every type of person was a potential enemy of the state and during their 4 years of power they killed a quarter of their own population, around 2 million people.

Two fancy slogans of the Khmer Rouge: 
1) "Better to kill an innocent than to spare a traitor."

2) "The grass has to be taken out by the root" (justification for extinguishing whole familes and killing babies when one person of a family was to be killed - to prevent later revenge.)
Most people didn't even know about the identity of that movements leader, Pol Pot and were cut off from the rest of the world, working to death on rice fields (most rice was actually exported to China in exchange for weapons while the population was starving to death).

Finally the population was liberated from Vietnam and I think this time the term “liberated” is for once appropriate.
I seriously ended up in a discussion with Anker where I defended the Nazis rationality compared to that regime.

To get some insights into the Cambodian history we visited a former school they had turned into a prison and which is now a genoice museum and an actual Killing Field, where they had probably killed over one million people.

as education is banned, why not turn a former school into a political prison and torture chamber?

At the Killing field. During the rainy season there are still bones and clothes coming up.

mass graves

on that tree they had used to kill babies by holding them at their legs and smashing their heads against the tree.

Personally, I still can't really comprehend how all this was possible, how this unmatched madness and self-destruction could take place.
What can be done to prevent such a thing for the future? Today we still have places like North Korea and Syria with massive crimes against humanity. Maybe some more international intervention wouldn't be such a bad thing.

This has been pretty depressing.
So to end with something more delighting, especially for all the Bambie fans among you, here's some more fun with monkeys!

That's it for now.
The last days in Cambodia and one day in Bangkok I will describe in the next and last post.