Then you've come to the right place!
Nicole and I arrived to Siem Reap, Cambodia on July 7th. After feeling a sort of stagnation in Bangkok we were quite eager to get moving again.
Siem Reap accommodates a large volume of tourists who come to see the Angkor archaeological site, which is host to hundreds of beautiful temples in various states of repair. We spend an early morning seeing Angkor Wat and a few others in the area. One particularly ruinous temple features immense trees growing from its cracked foundations. These towering trees are now home to swarms of bees, with each hive leaving behind a large fin of mineral deposits along the tree branches. It was quite a sight.
Other than temples and the like, Siem Reap is like most other towns. Night markets smelling of bizarre foodstuffs, pushy tuktuk drivers, brown water running through canals. Cambodia is approximately like most places in Southeast Asia as far as I can surmise. I still have more to see, but I wouldn't say I'm overwhelmed. Nor does that mean Cambodia isn't enjoyable. It's just different on the surface, and getting to know any place takes some time.
After three nights in Siem Reap we are more than ready to move again. We enjoyed plenty of good vegetarian food (one perk of the heavy tourism industry) and even a yoga class. But certain things about this place just wore me out. Mostly being accosted by people any time you walk around. They offer tuktuks and MDMA and smoke and boom boom. Constantly. It got to the point that we pick the least pushy driver out of the hordes. I understand that it's the low season and fares are far and few between, but it just seems so unnecessary.
Our next stop is Battambang, an unassuming little town a few hundred kilometers to the southwest. Here we visit what's known as the Killing Caves, although in actuality there are dozens upon dozens of mass graves throughout Cambodia from the genocide from 1975-1979. We start to glean bits and pieces of Cambodian history during this time, learning about the leader of the Cambodian Community party Pol Pot and his horrific purging of Cambodian people and culture. This particular cave became the resting place of some 8,000 people. The human remains have mostly been excavated, some to be preserved and stored in a memorial within. These people did not die quickly, often bludgeoned over the head and dropped in the cave from a height of 25 meters or so. It was impressive and awful all the same to stare into that dark pit.
This large network of caves is also home to inestimable number of bats. Some say in the millions, but it's hard to say how far back into the cave they live. At about 5pm we see a spike of activity as the bats wind up for their nightly insect hunt. They fly in circles near the cave entrance for several minutes, each bat slowly joining the swarm until it reaches a critical mass. At that point the bats begin to pour out of the cave in a thick stream, following a corkscrew trajectory over the nearby rice fields. The bats continue to flood out steadily for more than half an hour, and the remaining number inside the cave appears to be the same. They just keep coming with no sign of thinning numbers. The horizontal tornado of bats eventually breaks off into smaller squadrons by the hundreds, and for miles one can see cluster after another of little dots against the early twilight sky.
After a long evening, we get on the night bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.
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