Back into action

Come Tuesday afternoon, Phil, Jane and I were sat nervously waiting on the deck for the rest of the gang to turn up from the South. The nerves were due to the fact that we hadn’t told them we were all still in Phnom Penh…there was a real danger that they might have taken a connecting bus straight to Siem Reap – leaving Jane and Phil to play catch-up and me to rue yet more time spent on my backside for no good reason. As the arrival time for the morning bus came and went, we began to fear the worst…until I pointed out that the likelihood of Wonton scraping himself out of bed in time for the early bus was practically non-existent. With any luck, they’d turn up in time for another spectacular Boeng Kak sunset. To keep ourselves occupied, we left the compound (harder than it sounds, believe me!) and headed down to an English-owned bar called the Lazy Gecko for a little taste of home. Their Banoffee Pie and the Apple Crumble were almost like being in mum’s kitchen…but not quite. We then hired out a copy of Michael Moore’s ‘Bowling for Columbine’ to kill the last hour or so before the moment of truth.
To our delight, Wonton, Sandra, Adam, Tom and Tash all turned up as the sun was steadily sinking below the horizon. The look of total bewilderment, swiftly followed by pleasure, as they laid eyes on us was well worth the wait. A happily re-convened party-crew had no excuse for anything other than getting smashed…the Angkor flowed, the banter flew, attractive women were crooned and swaggering, yet appallingly played, racks of pool were shot. My memories of the night seem to play back a little like the celebratory sequence in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (the night after they pulled off the heist)…while nobody slept on the piano, Adam and Tom did end up sleeping in hammocks out on the deck, as there weren’t enough rooms to go round after their late arrival.
Packing, whilst in the throes of hideous hangover seems to be a recurrent theme on this trip…and the following morning was no exception. After the idleness of the previous 12 days, I had decided to punish myself severely by undertaking an arduous pilgrimage into the northern reaches of the country. Prasat Preah Vihear is a pre-Angkorian temple (constructed in the 9th century) situated atop the mountains that divide Cambodia from Thailand. My reasons for going were mainly that, once again, I wanted to get off the beaten track…but also, I wanted to get an idea of scale of the early Khmer architecture before descending on Angkor itself. The views promised to be breath-taking and, judging by the LP’s description, I was going to have a real adventure getting there.
The first part of the journey was innocuous enough. I caught one of the tourist buses heading for Siem Reap and curled up with David J’s ‘Nascent’ and Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ for company. We stopped at a little bomb-crater by the side of the road called Skuon, which is famous for one particular culinary delicacy: deep fried spider. Never one to pass up an opportunity to find new ways to satisfy my hunger, I tucked in with a sense of great anticipation. Unfortunately, disappointment was the only result – the spider may have once had its own unique flavour, but this had long since been banished by the chilli-oil in which it had been incinerated. The result was like a black, greasy, oddly-shaped chip.
However, my culinary explorations for the morning were not yet over. Far from satisfied by the lack-lustre arachnid, I ducked inside to get a bowl of noodle soup (which is now a firm favourite!). When it came, I tucked straight into the large piece of ‘tofu’ floating near the surface…just as I was registering surprise at the somewhat meaty texture, I also detected a distinct offal flavour to the morsel. Mid-mastication, my jaw froze, motionless, as I made a quick inspection of the rest of the bowl’s contents. Sure enough, there were a couple of miniature kidneys and some slices of liver. I couldn’t begin to guess what the white, rubbery item in my mouth was – all I knew was that I no longer wanted it there. In poor countries like Cambodia, it is frowned upon to leave food uneaten…so there was no chance, in this crowded pit-stop, of me spitting out the offending article and making a run for it. Gamely, I held my breath and, not for the first time in my life, felt grateful for the sheer size of my gullet as I squeezed it down, almost whole. I only gagged twice…and this was soon remedied by a bite or two of the insipid spider. I then set about finishing the rest of my bowl of noodles…using the age-old ‘clumsy foreigner’ trick to excuse my suddenly appalling command of chopsticks. Strangely, every pinch of noodles and vegetables seemed to find its way, uncannily, into my mouth. Inexplicably, every rubbery morsel of animal innards seemed to escape dexterity at the crucial moment…and ended up on the floor. ;-) Feeling a little queasy and sorry for myself, I decided to reward myself for being a big, brave boy by having a nice can of lychee juice – a little like being taken for a Burgess ice cream after a visit to the dentist as a child.
Another hour’s journey brought me to my first destination of the day, Kompong Thom. It’s roughly half way between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh and also gateway to some of the outlying Angkorian sites. More a functional than an aesthetic conurbation, I wasn’t too disappointed to be only passing through. I wondered down to the taxi park to find myself a nice 4-WD pick-up which would take me up 137km of logging track to Tbeng Meancheay. There weren’t any ‘nice’ Ford 150s or anything else ‘nice’ for that matter...just plenty of decrepit Isuzu and Toyota rust heaps, which seemed to be held together more by the rope tying down their cargo than by conventional welding. As I began bartering for a seat in the air-conditioned cab of one of these dubious machines, I learnt my first lesson about Cambodian hire-transport: the front seat is actually designed to hold two people. Well, I say designed…what I should say is expected. That means that someone requiring the entire seat (essential when you’re 6ft 4 and 120kg) has to pay double.
After some good-natured haggling, and a lot of sitting around waiting for more people to spread themselves over the sacks, parcels and firewood in the back, we eventually got underway in the baking heat of the midday sun. Stretching out in my (relatively) comfortable seat, with air-con playing full-blast into my face, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself…I mean, how bad could the roads be in a leviathan like this? The tyres looked like they’d been borrowed off a JCB and, as Jezza had so ably demonstrated on Top Gear, these Japanese babies were almost bomb-proof. The only slight annoyance was the high-volume, low-quality Cambodian pop music blaring out from the speakers.
Of course, full of so much optimism, something was bound to happen…and sure enough, not an hour out of Kompong Thom, we were bouncing across a particularly rocky stretch of ‘road’, when there was a thumping on the roof of the cab. We stopped to see what the problem was and as the driver opened his door, there was an ominous hissing sound and the horizon began to lean slowly to the right: we had a flat. For half an hour, we stood in the blazing sunshine as the mechanic and the driver rectified the situation. I did make at least a token effort by helping to loosen some very tight nuts, but they seemed to have the situation well under control…almost like it was a regular occurrence or something.
It was another 5 dusty, bone-shaking hours before we pulled into Tbeng Meancheay – capital of the Preah Vihear province and a one-horse town if ever I’ve seen one…and the horse appeared to be away on holiday. My rucksack, which had spent the journey tied to the tail-gate, had acquired a new camouflage layer of thick ochre. The amount of dust that flew off in clouds when I gave it a beating got me wondering about the state of the lungs of those people who’d been riding on the back…the same people smiling as they waved me off and disappeared in another whirlwind of red dust.
I found lodgings for the night in a clean, if basic, guesthouse and when I wandered round the corner to the only eatery mentioned in the LP, I was surprised to see another foreigner chowing down on a plate of noodles. Stewart was a Kiwi working for one of the NGOs, responsible for co-ordinating the mammoth task of clearing the country of the landmines left over from civil war and the Khmer Rouge. He rarely saw English-speakers and appreciated having a chance to hold an unstilted conversation. In return, I was happy to get a better picture of a situation which still affects the daily lives of most rural Khmers – and still maims and kills many victims every year. Of all the pernicious aspects of war, the ongoing legacy of land ordnance is the one that continues to have the worst consequences for civilian populations…long after the fighting has ceased. In every village I’d passed through, there had been 20ft signs educating the locals of the dangers. Many miles of even the main road were lined by red posts with skull and crossbones and local people were forced by necessity to live and work in close proximity to these danger zones. Stewart had signed up for two years – living in the back of beyond – to help these people…and I have only the greatest respect and admiration for him.