To Siem Reap

TukTuk Driver: Hello tuktuk,tuktuk

Me: No thank you

TukTuk Driver: Ok mariwana ya wana get high?

TukTuk Driver: Cocaine, heroin, smoke smoke, Sexy lady, boom-boom

Me: No mate

TukTuk Driver: Ok you wana blow up cow with RPG?

The curiosity in me and the absurd offer left me thinking "you wot m8" and the American in me came out almost instinctively, blowing anything up sounds fun, so i turned around and walked back to talk to the driver and on my approach he smiled and offered a Pre-prepared handshake, he’d pulled it well too early, so i met him back and put my hand out to shake his as i crossed the road about 10 meters away.

I said then, "really, blow a cow up with an RPG? Are you serious?"

Still shaking my hand he smiled and said “my name is Mr. Bird” and then pointed at the eagle on his tuk tuk.

Mr Bird himself

He was so proud of his tuk tuk, his pride and joy it was. He said then, "it’s not too far from here, if you don’t want to shoot or do anything but look, that's fine because its low season and there is benefit for me, I will get a sale when high season comes around (which is soon) and my percentage of that sale will be higher. Because the more potential customers i bring to look increases my percentage of the final sale when ‘we’ get a customer.

His English was a little more broken than that, but good non-the-less. 

That didn't matter i was doing this guy a favour, and I’m going to see if this is actually real, look at some guns, and probably a skinny under- malnourished cow.

1880's 6-barrell-revolvers to 1700's Pirate style one-shot-reload guns, which would have definitely been my first choice, hanging from the wall.

After the old school guns pretty quickly came the AK47's, ACR’s, M4's and more modern warfare weapons.

And there is was at the end of the museum like wall, The RPG; my man Mr. Bird wasn't shitting me.

I was pretty good at getting RPG kills on call of duty, at the time of thinking about COD, i was passed a menu,

‘$30 to throw a grenade up to $300 to blow up a Cow with an RPG.’

Id already seen the 'no photo' sign on the wall as i came in, but i asked him  if i could take a snap anyway before i told him i wasn't interested in blowing up a cow but he didn't impressed and shunned his eyebrows at me. So i said "Ok, Orkun" and left hoping i wasn't going to be RPG'd to the back of my head.

Mr Bird just kept smiling so i guess I didn't offend him too much, but if I did, the 1700’s gun would be the one I’d choose to be shot with also.

So Phnom penh was a little wild, but a lot of fun, although it was refreshing to get out of the capital.

I Left the ammunition bunker, and then I left  Phnom Penh the following morning to head to Siem Reap and explore Angkor Wat, It was pleasant in many ways, Phnom Pehn, but it had the feel as most capital cities usually do, the hustle and bustle, the slight smog and dodgy characters down darkened alleys.

These were my thoughts for the brief time i spent in Phnom Penh, so more than likely not too accurate. 

Siem Reap

Cambodia has started constructing some good roads, but a huge percentage of road is orange sediment/mud, I’m not sure why its orange maybe it’s the iron content in the earth but the vans, motorbikes and cars rip up this dusty sediment and on more than one occasion I saw men, mostly wearing towels around their waist fighting the sediment off their morning glory, and small rice paddies to avoid the extra crunch and seemingly the extra iron. It really is a nice colour, the sediment, and its great fun to drift-drive on riding a motorbike, but its fucking awful to get out of clothes/trainers and probably flip flops if you're into those. 

Skill level required to drive on Cambodian roads on a moped: Over 9,000..

The drive to Siem reap was beautiful, luminous, lush green landscape dominated by rice paddies flowing for miles and miles until, in the very far distance they are met by a wall of jungle and high mountainous outcrops that are scattered all along the horizon, seemingly breaking up the miles of tree wall to create awesome images.

I took a picture but the iPhone doesn't even touch on the justice.

The rice fields are full of fish, snakes including anacondas, the odd lurking skinny buffalo who’d finally realized it made sense to not hang around on roads (good guy buffalo) and apparently a population of fresh water crocs.

it never stops the kids though, from swimming in them, they go crazy whenever foreigners come past doing back flips into their home made pool and then there's the younger ones screaming ‘hello’ and waving.

As we began approaching Siem Reap, we entered some truly beautiful villages

The older generation of rice pickers seem to pick until their back snaps and they can’t move anymore, right up until their 70's and no doubt 80's if they have to.

After an 8 or so hour of my 8 Dollar trip, I finally arrived in Siem Reap when I climbed off the cramped bus, I see a Khmer man, Jonah Lomu power throwing peoples luggage off of the bus with the aggression of Mike Tyson, I didn't feel like I was waiting for my bag though, this guy was funny and id be prepared to watch him throw all the bags out even if mine had been first.

All of a sudden I heard a loud and disturbing squawking sound, like some sort of bird was being boiled alive. Launched to the floor like a bag of rice, was a black bin back with 6 pairs of feet, and 3 chicken heads out of their mind popping out of the top of the bin bag, I just thought 'wow thats fucking raw' I looked a few inches to my left and saw a pair of adidas flip-flops with black socks, I looked up at this kids face and he looked, just as I was feeling.

I laughed out pretty loud and he looked at me and said "what the fuck man."

I laughed at him, and he asked me "where are you staying, i didn't book anywhere" so i said come with me, jumped in a Tuk Tuk and got to the hotel, in the Tuk Tuk i'd learnt he was a Japanese guy, same age as me and he spoke reasonably good English, but most impressive for me, his name, Ryu! HADOUKEN! - Street Fighter.

When we arrived at the hotel, it was $15 dollars a night, he wasn't happy since he'd just paid $3 in Phnom Penh, but I convinced him to treat himself after the long journey.

The hotel had a pool and bar area, and we agreed to meet there after a shower and in true Japanese style, he was there 10 minutes before I was. When I got to the pool he was in it already, wearing speedo's talking to 2 Aussie girls, and at the other side of the pool were about 10 Thai girls, when I got into the pool he said to me "very good i like it".

Thought so…

After a couple of beers we both agreed to not do the 5am sunset at Angkor Wat, so agreed at the 9am wake up.

Angkor Wat

I'd arranged for $12 dollars for the tuk tuk driver to pick us up at 9.30am the same one that we’d used last night to get to the hotel, he said his name was Barang, which means foreigner in Khmer so I found that a little strange, can’t be his real name, another strange thing about Barang and a lot of other Khmer blokes, he’d chosen 1 spot on his chin, to grow out maybe 10, 3 inch strands of hair, the weirdest facial hair choices I've ever seen. 

The Drivers (and most people actually) here are insanely friendly and are looking to do as much business with you as possible, he asked for $15 but i got him to $12, pretty shady of me but I’ve bartered before in this country and you can get them around 70% down of original asking price to what the Khmer people would pay, when that happens i just buy a couple.

Of course the Jap was waiting in the lobby as i arrived at 9.30 bang on, wearing his trade mark flip flops and black socks. Outside was Barang, Who Ryu said; had been waiting since 9 am, just in case we decided we wanted to go early, top punctuality. 

After 15 minutes or so of driving, we turned off left and a few hundred meters later we got to the tolling booth, it's the best $20 dollars I’ve ever spent in my life, but the Khmers’ get in free, or anyone that looks Asian, whilst me and the black man pay $20.

A weird feeling being discriminated against because I’m white(ish), especially when the Jap gets in for free.

Barang tells us to get back into the Tuk Tuk, we jump in and he takes us for some breakfast, he suggested it, but he was a nice enough guy to give the small commission he would have gotten for taking us there, And it wasn't expensive and half decent scran.

We set back off in the TUKTUK and after about 5 more minutes driving, we started to get a little deeper into a jungle area that seemed a little bit well groomed and maintained, for a jungle anyway.

When we got to an open, clear entrance, and crossing the bridge built over the moat, Angkor Wat was there and it looks like the most epic ancient fortress.

Stolen pic

Angkor Wat translates to Temple city and that’s just what this place is, only discovered in 1914 because of its remoteness, bigger than the size of Manhattan and stretching over 250m2, 100's of temples scattered all over the land, giant enigmatic mysterious ancient statues smothered in jungle with trees so tall they must have influenced the building of sky-scrapers, some of the trees are the biggest I've ever seen in my life surrounded by man-made reservoirs, the sign of a vast and lost civilization.

The Khmer’s dominated the whole of South East Asia back in the day and Angkor Wat is a product of that strength although there was some Indian, Hindu influence into the great city.

Took this one with my iPhone. Lol.

The largest sacred building in the world with the centeral shrine being as tall as the Notre Dame Cathedral, Angkor Wat is true Indiana Jones territory.

I got off the tuk tuk and headed to the first temple, the Jap was taking photos and pretending to lick an ancient lion/dragon’s asshole.

                                              Respect for this picture of me, nice shot

on our way in when i got inside the temple, the detail and architecture was insane inside, you could climb to the top of the temple, I climbed to the peak and the details and the structure of the building is truly remarkable.

So much detail on the walls, I could only describe as a magical area, if Harry Potter and Indiana Jones collaborated to make a movie, it would look something like Angkor Wat. 

Plenty of places in there to practice dark arts magic, but the treasures were probably ransacked hundreds of years ago but I’m sure, indi could find something.

From a high point on the temple, you can see some serious images, if only my iPhone was a cannon professional camera.

After a while exploring, we came across what was an Indian/Hindu (I think) stone carved monument tucked away in a quiet corner of the temple that represented the male Phallus for reasons, I am really not sure about.

This stone phallus is sacred, priceless and up to 2,000 years old.

I told the Jap what I thought it was, since I remembered reading something about this online.

Out of nowhere the Jap sprints in his flip-flops saying "lets take it home" and runs towards the stone made, male phallus relic and picks it up in an attempt to out Indian Jones me, crazy bastard.

The next and most impressive temple for me was the one after the Ancient Angkor Wat, He left the Phallus behind and we headed to the next temple, named Ta Phrom.

A great idea by the Khmer’s to keep it in its natural state, it creates an even more mysteriously ancient feel, like there is something else here, it has aura and strong character and I think it feels alive.

                                Huge tree that some idiot called Thomas wrote my name on

I visited so many temples today, i lost the names of most of them, im going to drink .50 cent beers with Ryukan and hopefully catch some rain so i can see big groups of Japanese tourists, carrying bright umbrellas, Picturesque people.