Hello one and all,

Well, there are just over 24 hours now until we hop on a plane back to the UK and conclude chapter one of the Frodessy, so I thought I should jot down some thoughts about Cambodia (and not just about beer this time). Before I get into that, though, eagle-eyed regular readers (whom I should imagine are legion) will remember that I briefly mentioned in an earlier post a visit we made in Laos to see the work of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG),and promised to expand on it at a later date. Well, rather than doing that I thought I would post a link to this rather wonderful article in the Times about it, written and illustrated by none other than the intrepid photojournalist Fran Yeoman, whose work many of you maybe familiar with. I think it's brilliant.

So, Cambodia... My general take on it was that I found it more enjoyable than Laos. Laos is lovely, but it's very sedate and often difficult to get under the skin of because the people are quite reserved. A bit like a episode of "Last of the Summer Wine" in a language you don't understand, but with more noodles and mopeds. Cambodia, on the other hand, is far brasher and louder and the Khmer people are more open and friendlier. That's not to say that most of them aren't trying to rip you off, but they manage to do it in a really amenable Del-Boy Trotter fashion, and just laugh if you enter into the spirit of it and call their bluff. The main problem for the country as a whole is that what seems like fairly benign wheeler-dealering at the bottom end of the scale goes all the way to the top, but unfortunately metamorphoses into endemic corruption. The whole country is just rife with the stuff. You see so many policemen stopping motorists for "traffic violations" and then just taking bribes to turn a blind eye that you lose count. Even more sinister is the widespread corruption amongst the army and senior government officials, which means that the average man has no real rights and no recourse when some corrupt aparatchik decides to annex their land to sell off to a developer (which happens all the time).

This is a particular problem from an environmental point of view, as Cambodia has some of the most pristine areas of rainforest in the whole of Asia, but at the moment they have very little protection because even if they are technically in a protected national park, there is almost nothing to stop anyone who wants to from "buying" the land and logging it. On an even bigger scale, the government just lets a select handful of its best buddies have exclusive contracts to destroy areas within national parks. For instance in Bokor National Park, the construction of a vast, monstrously ugly 5-star resort is underway. The man responsible for this is Cambodia's richest man, the owner of the Sokimex hotel and petrol station empire, who is (we were told by a number of people) basically just a private government unto himself, and who the actual government seemingly just allow to do whatever he wants. Which in this case is build something that looks like the less tasteful offspring of Caesar's Palace right in the middle of one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. Grrr.

Anyhow, rant over, here's my pick of things we did in Cambodia:

1) Cycling along the Mekong outside Kratie- OK, so we got lost, and it was the hottest part of a particularly hot day, and the bicycles weren't exactly Tour de France standard, but this was great fun. Crossing over to the west bank of the river on the cargo ferry (Kratie is on the east bank) meant that all the villages we cycled through really felt pretty off the beaten track, and it was pretty obvious that they didn't see many fa rang (whiteys, to you and me). The kids in particular seemed to find us endlessly fascinating and amusing.

2) Phnom Penh- Maybe it is in part because we hadn't been in any cities for a while, but I really liked Phnom Penh. Alright, so it isn't the most beautiful city in the world, and the traffic is horrendous, but it is really lively and there are some great restaurants and really interesting things to visit. The Genocide museum (the former Tuol Sleng, or S21 prison) in particular is fascinating, although it does bring to the forefront the question of what the purpose of visiting sites with morbid histories is supposed to be for tourists. I found it very interesting (although quite draining) to find out about the history of the Khmer Rouge reign, and to try and get my head around the reality of what happened to this country in the very recent past, but I found the sight of people taking photos of every little detail a bit weird. Even more bizarre was the group of Thai tourists who took a big smiley photo of themselves giving V-signs in front of the memorial at the Choung Ek Killing Fields; this being a building containing 9,000 skulls of people murdered by the Khmer Rouge. I'm sure that'll be one for the scrapbook.

3) Bokor Hill Station- The old abandoned French Hill Station inside Bokor National Park. Basically just a collection of abandoned and ruined buildings on the top of a hill, but the atmosphere is made really eerie by the orange lichen that coats all the walls. (At least one Hollywood movie, and apparently a number of Vietnamese zombie flicks have been shot here). The views over the coastline 1,000m below (whenever the cloud breaks) are also stunning.

4) Chi Phat- A small village 2 hours boat ride upriver from the nearest main road, Chi Phat used to be a major logging and poaching centre, but Wildlife Alliance have worked with the villagers to set up a community-based ecotourism project designed to offer them an alternative way of making a living. We did a 2-day trek into the Cardamom mountain rainforest, which was on the whole really good. There were a lot of rough edges and things that need improving, but the project has only been going for a year or so, and is fundamentally a really good idea, so we were willing to cut it some slack. The rainforest itself is amazing (second only to Borneo in the list of "jungles I have been to" so far), and completely unspoilt. We saw monkeys and gibbons and about 20 hornbills, which are giant birds that live in the forest and make a noise like the tardis powering up when the take off using their massive wings. We also slept out in the middle of the jungle in mosquito-netted hammocks, which was deeply uncomfortable, but really cool.

5) Angkor- I didn't want to build this up too much beforehand, because I have heard people say it is a bit disappointing. Some people even say that Wat Phu Champasak in Laos is actually better. Well, having now been to both, I can safely say that those people are delusional morons: Champasak is a small parish church compared to the Vatican of Angkor. I really don't know what people who find Angkor disappointing are on about: yes, there are lots of people there (although it isn't that hard to get away from the crowds), and yes, Angkor Wat itself isn't necessarily completely mind-blowing (although it is pretty damn good), but the site as a whole is absolutely amazing. Within an area that can be fairly easily covered by bicycle in a day (that's how we chose to roll), there is a whole network of temples, some of which are in incredible condition (considering they are over 1,000 years old), with vast and beautiful wall carvings and giant face sculptures, and some of which are wonderfully ruined, with trees growing out of the walls and so on. Here, for instance, is a pic of Fran cycling through the North gate of Angkor Thom:

And then you can hire a tuk-tuk for a day and go to some of the further afield sites, including a river where lots of carvings have been made into the river bed itself (some of Hindu deities, but mostly "lingas". That's willies in common parlance). I thought the whole thing was incredible. Although after 3 days of exploring, unless you are a real archaeology nerd, you feel like you've probably had enough.

(And if that wasn't enough, Siem Reap (the town that has sprung up to house visitors to Angkor) seems to be the one place that has undergone a price war on beer, so that the standard price of a chilly mug of Angkor beer at the end of a tough day's temple-hopping is $0.50. That's a good price in anyone's book.)


Right, that's your lot. Although for anyone that I see while we're back in the UK in the next few weeks, prepare yourselves for more elaborate versions of the same stories and observations. (Hey, I only have limited material, alright?)

Rhod