Moto-ing merrily through the minefields

Oi, I'm way behind now. Let's hope I can remember everything with all that's happened since. I think I finished last time as I got into Kompong Cham. Kompong Cham was pretty quiet, but turned out to be a really good time. I've always had in the back of mind the idea of figuring out a way to live somewhere around here and this seems like a place I could do that. That may be just because the first two people I met were the owners of a local bar, a Brit named Simon and his Cambodian wife, followed closely after by their friends, the owners of the competing restaurant down the block. (Anyone finding themselves passing through, go say hello at Mekong Daze or Mekong Crossing). In the two days I spent there, I spent most of my time back and forth between their two places chatting with them and just enjoyed relaxing like that.

For one day, I did take a bike out and go off to explore. There was a really nice old Angkor temple that had been converted into an active Buddhist temple and which easily bested Wat Phu in my book. So much for the judgement of UNESCO. The Lonely Planet highly recommended going to a pair of hills where, according to legend, men and women competed to be the first to build a stupa at the top. The trusty guide especially said to keep an eye out for a "band of inquisitive monkeys" at the top of one of them. When I got to the hills, vendors swarmed around me -the sole tourist- and tried to sell me bananas to feed the monkeys. Only trouble was, there are no monkeys -haven't been any for years. Actually, there weren't any old stupas either, the originals having been replaced by blocky concrete wats with fading paint. Yet another stunning success for the guidebooks.

Just behind those disappointing hills lay something far more interesting. Joe had told me about an abandoned American airfield from the days when the U.S. absolutely definitely did not send B-52s to pound the snot out of Cambodia. All that's left to mark the site is a pillbox perched on the low brow of a hill overlooking a rotting runway. The strip itself has been incorporated into the local roads so that the dirt track suddenly sprouts into superhighway for 1000m before branching off again into a network of paths. In a fitting manner for the site, the land surrounding the runway is dry and dead. Somewhat wary since I figured an airfield would be a likely spot for mines, I cautiously followed the paths up to the pillbox and spent an afternoon sitting in the sun.

It was tempting to just stay in Kompong Cham and do nothing, but with only two weeks I decided press on to Kompang Thom. Zoo and I had gotten a second-hand tip that the ruins of Sambor Prei Kuk there were as good as Angkor Wat. They weren't. Worth a trip certainly, but the towers were in pretty miserable condition. Many were little more than piles of rotting brick with trees growing out of them. That may have had something to do with the huge bomb craters in and around the towers (See the one in the picture?). They seemed especially dense there, though I suspect it was like that everywhere and they just haven't been smoothed out as they have in the fields and towns. It was a very enjoyable time though as it's spread out in the jungle with few tourists and just a nice serene atmosphere.

For a long while I was followed around by a Cambodian boy who appointed himself tour guide and clearly expected money for his questionable help. I'd walk into an octagonal temple and he'd tell me it's octagonal. Thanks. I'd start walking down a path and he'd follow behind kindly telling me that I was walking to a temple. Impressive vocabulary word for an eight year-old whose probably never been to school, but not exactly surprising info. When I finally managed to convey that I did not want a guide or to buy his scarves, he was pretty angry.

The dirt road out to Sambor Prei Kuk had been a miserable experience on the back of a motorbike, but I don't learn from my lessons. Besides, the Lonely Planet -though it did warn the road was not for inexperienced drivers- showed what appeared to be a real dirt road going right the way I wanted and recommended the trip. So what if the drivers all laughed? The next morning, I set out with Sity -the driver from the day before- to the temple complex at Preah Kahn. Also along, were another driver who's name I've forgotten and a Belgian guy named Frank.

The ride started out on the brand-new blissfully smooth Route 6 to Siem Reap. The back of a moto at 100kph seems pretty nice right about then. But we quickly turned off onto a dirt road heading north. It too started out alright before dissolving into the most spine-shattering lung-choking path I could imagine. At least, that's what I thought at the time. Then the road further disintegrated until it was just a knotted tangle of little oxcart ruts, rice patty berms and foot trails. These were not roads by any stretch of the imagination. The way was crisscrossed by massive roots, deep crevices left in the last rainy season, streams, fallen trees and underbrush. Hard knocks bottomed out the off-road suspension and bucked me almost off the bike. The tough grasses sliced at our legs while the low hanging branches scraped our arms and faces. We bled for this trail.

Five miserable aching hours later, we arrived in the tiny village of Ta Seng where we arranged to stay at a local house. A quick rest, and we went off to explore the temples. Fortunately, they made it all worthwhile. The temple complex there is the largest in Cambodia -larger in area than Angkor Wat- and mostly covered by the jungle so that each part is cut off from the rest. Because of the difficulty of getting there though, only a few tourists make it by every month. We were completely alone in the first area and could climb all in and around the ruins. Only later did a few local teenagers show up for a picnic.

The second stop we made was the main complex which did have a few guards around to stop looting and extract a healthy fee from the few visitors. We were given a choice: $5 for a ticket or 10k riel (about $2.50) for a "sponsor". I chose the corrupt option. This area was also beautiful, but proved depressing as so much had been looted. All over the complex, you could see where pneumatic chisels had been used to cut priceless statues out of the stone to be sold. And since the cuts were fresh, with the rock dust still lingering in the gaps, many must have been taken in the last year. What remained was beautiful and in excellent condition. It was heartbreaking to think that the work of thousands of craftsmen had survived more than a thousand years of weather and war, only to be destroyed by 20th Century capitalism.

At this point, maybe I should bring up what I'm sure my mother has been thinking about the whole time: landmines. The not-so-trusty guidebook warns not to stray off the path anywhere in rural Cambodia, including inside remote temples and where drivers say is safe. The problem is, there aren't any paths in the ruins. All along the trail, I had seen tree-trunks painted with the red and white blazes that marked a minefield. Outside both the first part of the temple and the central area were signs announcing that the minefields had been cleared with uncomfortably recent dates posted on them. Still I wondered: how good are these mineclearers at their jobs? Most of the mines in Cambodia were laid in the last ten years and are of modern plastic design specifically made to escape metal detectors (mostly Vietnamese copies of American designs). The temple areas are so overgrown and strewn with rubble that you wonder how anyone could possibly search in that environment. This came up even more later on, but I'll get to that as I come to it. Fear very much in mind, I tried to stay on what vague paths I could make out or -when that proved impossible- to walk directly on the rocky ruins. Still, there were times when I found myself walking across areas I did not at all trust.

In the evening, we went off to another section of the sprawling complex which had no signage at all. I decided to trust it as the locals had converted the site into an active Buddhist shrine. We watched the sun going down over a huge baray.

Staying with the local farmer, we ate a traditional meal with them and washed it down with palm wine. I'd been anxious to try since I'd enjoyed Lao palm beer but this turned out to be a sour medicinal version with the odor of sulfur. Sity drank a little too much and was soon talking loudly about the relative merits of the girls at the two "karaoke" bars in Kompang Thom. In his well-researched estimation, the girls at one are far more attractive but it requires more cash to take one home and you have to have a car because they don't like motorbikes. At the other, they are apparently less picky.

The next day we headed off along an ancient Angkor road towards Beng Mealea and Siem Reap. This time, the road was even worse than the day before. It evolved from rutted hard dirt to a sandpit which sucked down the tires and slowed us to a crawl. A few times I got tossed off as the bike swerved through the sand and we often had to climb off to push the motorbike out. By this point though, I was almost numbed to it and it didn't bother me nearly as much.

Only an hour or so into our trip, came upon another unimpressive ruin. All along the approach, familiar red skull and crossbones signs lined either side of path. At the edge of the ruins, however, the signs had been pulled up and stacked to the side, the dirt still fresh from the ground. The deminers (CMAC) had moved on to a field on the other side of the path and their equipment was neatly arranged on the ground with sandbags piled around their explosives and detonators. Frank started off across the freshly cleared ground and walked straight up to the temple. I hesitated and again considered the skill of the demining teams. Eventually I did go up into the temple by sticking to the rocks. There was almost nothing to see really though it was interesting to think that Frank and I were probably the first foreigners to go there in more than twenty years. Frank trudged back through the brush without blowing up so I guess the deminers did a pretty good job. I again took the long route. As we sat there on the side of the dusty jungle road, surrounded by minefields and an hour from the nearest village, an old man peddled up on a bicycle. He had a bright orange cooler strapped to the back and was traveling from house to house selling ice cream sandwiches -homemade ice cream in a baguette- for 25 cents.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful -just more of the same painful slams and terrifying swerves. There were some incredible thousand year-old bridges along the way and a suicidal Aussie bicyclist attempting the maze we had just come from. Another five hours and we reached Beng Mealea. This temple is only an hour from Siem Reap on the nice clean paved road so we suddenly saw more tourists again. Once a complex to match some of the famous temples, Beng Mealea has collapsed and been overgrown by jungle. And unlike other temples, the only way to explore the temple is by climbing directly up and along the walls and over the rubble piles. Frank and I wandered for hours through the ruins and I had one of the best temple experiences I had anywhere.