Exploring Cambodia: The Road from Phnom Penh to Angkor Wat

The temple complex is justly famous for its architectural style and details. The changing light from hour to hour lends a spiritual presence which draws Buddhist devotees and travelers alike.

View Photos (5) Image © 2000 Tom Gettelfinger

Cambodia stands as one of the great tourist destinations in Asia and it is not hard to explain why. There is the archeological gem of Angkor Wat, the largest freshwater lake in southeast Asia, a river that flows backward part of the year, the glories of Khmer art, beautiful land and beautiful people. Cambodia is now counting on the tourist influx to help revive the country's struggling economy. Tourism is expected to surge from the four hundred foreign arrivals in 1986 to a projected one million arrivals in the year 2000.

And where else can you get a three course traditional French meal for eight dollars? Or stay in a French colonial hotel for twenty dollars a night? Or in a traditional Khmer house for thirty-five dollars? Emerging after its long isolation from the international community, there is still a certain freshness and charm about the place.

Daily flights from Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok make the capital Phnom Penh easily accessible. And when you change your money you know it's a different type of place. You get U.S. dollars instead of Cambodian riels. At 2,500 to the dollar, riels are being reintroduced, but the U.S. dollar still acts as a second national currency.

No first trip to Cambodia can exclude Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples. The jewel of Khmer twelfth century architecture, Angkor Wat is the major temple in a complex spread out over a hundred square miles near the town of Siem Reap. Frequent flights of less than half an hour will take you to Siem Reap on new Royal Air Cambodge planes.

I arranged my noon flight to Siem Reap in the Phnom Penh airport just after arriving from Hong Kong, and was off to visit the ruins by mid-afternoon. Because flights may be fully booked, it is certainly better to arrange your flights in advance.

A quick taxi trip into town from the Siem Reap airport left me at the Grand Hotel of Angkor Wat, a colonial remnant. The Grand Hotel is the first hotel (or last, depending on your perspective) on the road to the ruins. Long past its glory days, the hotel is an empty echo waiting for restoration and rebuilding by the Raffles Hotels Group. A more appealing hotel is Angkor Village in town. Built by French architect Oliver Piot and his Cambodian wife, the hotel is twenty newly constructed Khmer style houses grouped around a central courtyard restaurant. For the charm of old village Cambodia, there is no better place, though most tourists stay at guest houses in Siam Reap or hotels along airport road.

A taxi or motorcycle is needed for the trip to the ruins. A series of sites spread over one hundred square miles, Angkor Wat is the main temple and best preserved. In morning light, in rain, at sunset from the top of Bakheng Hill, Angkor Wat changes from hour to hour. Angkor Wat, the main temple, Angkor Thorn, the "great city," and Ta Prohm, the classic dreamscape of forested ruin, are all a must. But Ta Prohm must be the favorite. Its 150-year-old banyan trees rooting over and through the stones, match our romantic fantasies of a ruined and abandoned civilization.

It is a rare person in Cambodia who cannot tell of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children or grandparents killed by the Khmer Rouge. Amon, our guide was no exception. Friendly and competent, she told how most of her family was killed, victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide. The ruins seem safe but outlying areas still may not be secure, so it is best to stick to the main areas. Despite the murder of an American visitor in 1994, tourist visits continue to increase.

After returning from a day at the ruins, there are a number of good restaurants in Siem Reap. None is better than the Bayon on Wath Bo Street which features frogs legs in pepper garlic sauce. You can return to Phnom Penh by air or by boat across Tonle Sap Lake and the river. The Soon Lee speed boat costs twenty-five dollars a person. Through driving rain, squalls and stalled motors the trip was fascinating. Note, however, the boat trip is not recommended by the authorities because of continuing security problems.

Transportation in Phnom Penh is most likely the back of a motorcycle or a cyclo, both good ways to see the city. No visit to Phnom Penh can bypass the Tuol Sleng Museum (museum of genocide). The former high school classrooms became a prison. Twenty thousand people passed through here to the killing fields. The few who survived were needed to maintain machinery that the Khmer Rouge could not and were the only ones left to tell the story of horror.

In the capital, I opted for the Hotel Renakse, just across from the Royal Palace, at $20.00 per night. An old French colonial building located near the Mekong river, it is definitely run down. Just up the street from the royal palace is the Foreign Correspondents' Club. The Club is actually a bar and restaurant and, believe it or not, actual foreign correspondents hang out there. Editors from the Phnom Penh Post, stringers from the Bangkok newspapers, and assorted expatriates provide gossip of the city, of the latest political intrigue, and of ex-pat life in Cambodia. Phnom Penh seems closed at night. The few places open tend to be foreigners' hangouts on otherwise empty streets.

A few days in Angkor and in Phnom Penh made for a fast trip. I would go back again and again. And that eight-dollar three-course French meal? Le Cordon Bleu in Phnom Penh.

Published on 6/1/96