Sunday, February 14, I took a bus ticket to Siem Reap but would stop halfway, has Kompong Thom. A little village with a track which goes north to the temples and few visits.
Arrive in Kompong Thom, a guy offered me to rent his service, four days of motorcycling. He speaks English and is one of the few and the only one I found by doing a turn to try to find cheaper.
Yeourn Kong has experience and a little notebook with notes flattering tourists it has already taken. He provides so much, I give its coordinates, it is a discount if you call from Bruno ^ ^
Mr Kong Yeourn
Motor driver guide
Visits Kampong Thom Sambor Priekuk, Phnom Santuk, Peahkhan, Kohki, Preah Vihear Bengmealea and Other Ancient tourist areas ".
Address: Slaket Village Preytaho Commune Stung Sen District, Kampong Thom Province.
Tel: (855) 092 955 850
It takes me tomorrow, starting 7am. In the meantime, we start to visit a corner of stone carvers, the Buddhas of 10 cm or 4 feet, beautiful, sizes chisel or diamond wheel.
We then see a small silk factory. The owner shows me the butterflies and their eggs, 24 of coupling.
Then out of the eggs of worms as big as pinheads that grow as cigarettes.
Then they form their cocoons, the end of their journey.
They are then dried in the sun for four hours to kill, cooked in boiling water to recover the gelatin silk, which is then transformed into silk thread.
It takes me to the foot of a hill, San Knom Top, a place where all Cambodians want to come it seems. I discovered the top full of small temples, meet a llama, Srors and his friend, who Kimsieng learn English and is happy to finally be able to practice. I also ride and then met a nun, Dyei Aim, in the temple (cave) of a female Buddhist deity CALLED Dyei TEIP.
photos
Monday, February 15, 2010 . We load my backpack in a bag was not sweet for him to arrive in four days of red laterite. 1h Track up Prasat (= temple) Sambor Prei Kuk, flat and wide track, full of wooden houses on stilts.
Arrive in the forest, full of small temples, all depths, including a magnificent, on which a tree grows, majestic, he must stand up what remains of the temple below, partially destroyed by Khmer Rouge.
then broken down to 4 hours of small track, 130km, sometimes clean, no holes or trees across it, and often full of surprises with stones, large bumps or through pits. Savannah as I imagined in Africa, some trees, shrubs, ground dry land and sand and the sun hits. Kong provides Yieng really riding his scooter 125, it manages to avoid them and all stops with everything you need for me too galley behind him holding me at the small bar behind the seat.
We passed a small temple building and a small school of Buddhists lost in the middle of nowhere, a 50aine children live here.
It then arrives in a small village, Ta Seng, and it arises in the small house on stilts a friend, wife and Children are the husband is out fishing, it produces rice from July to December. Lunch, onion, omelet and rice, then nap in a hammock, one is dead from 5am to cross a 2 on a scooter.
1h after relaunching the site for the temples of Preah Kham. A magnificent first temple, with 4 faces that keep, I lose myself in and the blocks of stone still standing or in a heap.
a joy to Indiana Jones, with stunning images. We then visited a 2nd site, I enter, after the sign that indicates which zone head cleared.
A huge door was still half standing, further behind, a temple, and then another behind it is really huge and magical to visit these sites alone, in Cambodian jungle.
the evening I walk around in the little village, little dreaming that street red laterite earth, lined with palm trees, all the houses on stilts of the simplest, and amuses people curious to see a tourists discover another world. The people of the family are shy or I sleep, helping. The father returns from fishing. I took a shower in a square wall of straw, a large jar filled with water from the well.
large commission for the toilets, it is a small platform was 50cm high, a hole in the floor and everything below is already so dry that there is no smell. For dinner, excellent rice and fried fish, drinking palm wine, a little spice like beer, a little acid to the first sip, then passes only ca ^ ^.
palm juice is harvested at 5 am, all day fermented in plastic bottles under the sun, the evening 19h there is not much alcoohl, but by 22 or 23h, it continues to ferment and alcohol increases quickly. In any case it is also a pleasant beer, too bad it's not cool.
Photos
Tuesday 16 february , waking in time with the sun, like everyone at home.
Breakfast, fried fish and rice, I will not DIARRHEA rice with everything ^ ^. Departure for 4h, 80km on a very small trail abyss, a lot of sand (broken jaws on a scooter with MTB tires). Yesterday it was like the trail of Voltaire Falls in Guyana, and now it's getting high, abyss, narrow, sandy or gravelly, everything I love my bike with an XT, I'm just a passenger a scooter ^ ^. 4h track, I must keep at the back, it'll make me exercise and a concrete back (or applesauce). This track is deserted, you will meet 3 or 4 in the 3 o'clock, the loggers who come magnify small meadows.
Kong Yieng explain that within 15 or 20 years there will be many people here, farmers. The 4th hour, we pass the first houses on Pilotti. We pass through a small village, passing a bridge built 1500 years ago and is still standing,
then we arrive at Prasat Boeng Mealea. Plenty of buses from Siem Reap, near the city of Angkor. Boeng Mealea is a large temple, magnificent ruins of the parties but there are some magnificent sculptures and assemblages.
I venture, from stone to stone, to avoid the tail of Chinese and Taiwanese tourists who hang out to take pictures with their huge 10,000 units. It's still great to get lost in this labyrinth of carved stones, just as surprising as it is beautiful.
A coconut before leaving, to drink, and eat the little cream of coconut green chair. The road is finally a way for 1h, with a few passages on track, but it still manages to burst, and full-dodger!
Disassembling the rear wheel, there is a water right next to test the air chamber, and back having used the old inner tube as a second skin of the first, tires are really too purposes.
3h 1h total in the dodger with a repair and it finally comes to the group of temples Kaoh Ker. I go $ 5 a cop instead of paying the $ 10 ticket that will go into the pockets of indescribable sucking bribes.
The first group of temples is really beautiful,
in the rear, a huge pyramid that I would try to climb well, and not only is a lot of people around.
Behind a hill, I go up to the point of view and meets a french archeologist who prepared the excavations. This man-made hill at the same time as the temple next door, called the tomb of the white elephant, and he wants to know what it contains.
Amazing that money is spent here for this kind of research while the country needs education, money, work.
Here the average wage (when there is one) is $ 50 per month, 35 euros. There is still more than 6 million mines scattered across the country. Except in a few cities, there are no nursing homes (and I do not even have a doctor), it is a great misery. Cambodia is the country most aid to the world, a country on a drip, a government with a lot of corruption, the picture is appalling. So yes, money for archaeological excavations launched from Europe, it is bizzarre?
Kong Yienfg I then made a quick tour of other temples, there are still 7 on the road that leads us to the guesthouse. Still beautiful, sculptures, texts engraved on the stone arches of the doors, a real dream!
It then arrives at a Sroyorng Koh Ke guesthouse. No electricity without generating sets here at the moment,
pig pionce front of the stairs when he growls not asking for her breakfast, the young monks (often orphans educated in a Buddhist monastery) fall home.
18h Dinner at sunset, noodles and beef, I'm a good sleep. Dodo 19h as everyone here at the same time as the sun.
Photos
Wednesday, 17/02/2010, wakes around 6am with the sun still, breakfast in a snack bar next to the $ 1 beef noodles and fried fritters 2. Departure, fresh wind, mist, wide track and flat at first.
3h scooter, 150km, with a 5-minute break, the sun rises with us. It is not easy to take 3 hours sitting in the back, spine loose, sore c% # on this fine saddle.
It eats the runway without releasing the song, and it eats too much dust whenever laterite crosses a truck or car. We pass through some small villages, houses on stilts, some small shops on the roadside. It crosses mainly other scooter is definitely the transportation here, alone or 5 with the whole family, or carrying two pigs with bamboo strings behind the driver, or a stack of mattresses 2m high in equilibrium the width, really anything is possible on a scooter here! We travel by scooter 125cc Honda NCX DREAM!, Which competes against the top end of suzuki 110cc, followed by a few other small scooter cheaper and finally with DAELIM, cheapest and most widely used, both to take the tuk- tuk that making the motorcycle taxi.
At 7am, you see bits of family, parents will work, usually on foot or by bicycle sometimes, children, dress (white shirt and blue pants), go to school. Astonished eyes of a tourist crossing, one of the only passenger scooter helmets, the kids shout "Heloooooo!", Lots of smiles. We passed several
settlements and military garrisons along the last mile.
It recalls the films of the Vietnam War, the same vegetation, protected camps with these points of shooting behind the sandbags, gun just behind the soldier. All these troops are there to protect Preah Vihear temple by covets Thailand. We're just at the border and sometimes this border remains closed as now, soldiers arms, heavy machine guns ready to answer fire from the other side, for the possession of the ruined temple that dominates much of the region.
We arive at the temple Prasat Preah Vihear, I change to another scooter with a large crown that can climb very steep road that leads to the temple. Still soldiers all along the road, all the weapon to the shoulder or next to the hammock for a nap. It overlooks the valley, and on the other hand, Thailand, faced with a hill also many points of shooting protected by sandbags. The tour begins by passing behind the trenches and machine guns rating asks about a bag while the owner chats with his buddies ...
There's also several temples that follow one another in amount to the top of the hill, all is still impressive but the sculptures badly damaged and many stones are on the ground, and I still find this monster that I found on each temple, mouth wide open trying to devour a dragon. On each of my photos here, there are soldiers, they might be quiet, cool and smiling like all Cambodian, I do not dwell.
I finish the walk on the cliff with this magnificent views of the countryside which is reminiscent of a savannah, surely with mines everywhere, lost temples and even more rarely than those visits I saw those three days, it makes you want to repeat the same trip with a dirtbike, a 250cc enduro as they rent in town (the skin f #####).
We leave with Yieng Kong, 1 hour drive up a village for lunch, I guzzler a small watermelon and fried dough with a little gelatinous peanuts. Return to Koh Ker is very long, I took the handlebars while 1het makes me realize how much this machine is broken jaws, no handling, no brakes, retros ever in line to cast off the cars and trucks that double back on a track, Kong Yieng really used. We arrived at about 16h, dead, I'm empty, but equally full of images, looks, warmth, (I've rarely been as bronze ^ ^), and laterite dust, even the Cambodian scarf (Kromer = scarf) does not have me protected.
Last dinner in this little snack, served by the owner or his daughter.
the village falls asleep around 18:30.
Photos
Thursday, February 18, 2010, breakfast at the snack as yesterday, we said goodbye to mom, her mom and her daughter,
refueling station has
and go for 3h scooter, not easy, sore backs for miles and days ahead. Bumpy and as best and as we get closer to Siem Reap. We spend a PANEL that we report that changes state and the track becomes a nice road bitumen, luxury. Siem Reap is very touristy and therefore very rich against the state of Preah Vihear or no go. Yieng lets me Kong is 30km from Siem Reap as it has a rendezvous.
I finished the ride pick up, there is a 10aine in the trunk in the rear, as Cambodia is cheap transport medium distance local. Smiles, photos, hard to share them without speaking English, many Cambodia eyes of not a surprise that this transport of tourists to take a taxi pick-up. Generally, to Siem Reap tourists come three days in a hotel near the "old market", visiting the temples of Angkor the day, then leave again soon. Tomorrow I would visit the Angkor temples known as the 8th wonder of the world.
photos of the last day
photos
0 comments:
Post a Comment