Siem Reap

Day 3

Thought I should take a day out in between each big day of temple gazing, just so I didn't get completely over templed. So I booked myself in for some adventure on the Thursday starting with zip lining through the jungle in the morning, followed by quad biking in the afternoon! Not really sure why i thought it would be a good idea, me not being particularly taken with adventure in general, but there you go. Luckily, it was a lot of fun and just a little bit scary, always good to push yourself beyond your boundaries!

The zip lining was very cool, encourage everyone to have a go. Doing it above the tops of the rainforest in the Cambodian jungle was a great first experience i admit, but anywhere would be just as good, the adrenline rush is awsome! Some of the ziplines  were 200m long, so that gives you a good 8-10 seconds to look around and really feel like you flying though the air! Sadly we didn't see any wild animals as such, no elephants, tigers, monkeys or snakes roaming the jungle, although the guides said they were more frequently seen before the country was decimated by war during the decades of the 60' and 70's. We did see a lovely large gecko and a huge millipede, does that count as wildlife?

In the afternoon I turned up to do the quad biking expecting a large group of westerners. Instead it was just myself and one of the couples from the mornings zip lining. We had to do a practice run first with a guide sitting behind us to see if we could manage the bikes. It took a few minutes to get used to 4 large wheels and a different way of steering and manouvering and he made me do sharp turns and then go up a really steep little hill then back down again. He asked me twice if I wanted to ride the bike myself and then when we got back he said i could do it. But the other couple weren't allowed to, they couldn't convince the guides that they would be able to handle it. I thought to myself, "well Glen will be  pleased that it paid off trying  to train me how to ride his crazy off-road bikes all those years ago!" 

So it was just me and the guide in front on a 250cc two wheeler off road bike. We went somewhere different to the couple for some reason. He later told me it was because we were going off road and over really bumpy, muddy and difficult terrain, whereas they would stick mostly to normal roads. So it was pretty crazy! Slippery, muddy, awkward tracks and then we left the dirt road altogether and went across the fields, up an over little hillocks separating dry rice paddies, through deep puddles and soft sand. There is no way a normal scooter or motorbike would have managed this without getting very bogged. Lucky I had the massively oversized quad bike then!! I felt like I was riding the hummer of the bike world. Everyone I passed did a double take, I don't know if it was the bike or that there was a female riding it, hopefully both! Loads of little kids ran out on their houses and yelled and waved as we passed by. I asked the guide to take me to out of the way villages and along narrow, local paths so I could get a feel of how local villagers live, very differently to the cities as it turns out. Much poorer, but space, quiet and animals everywhere! Loads of dogs, cats, hens, ducks, geese, cows, pigs. All running around free range and relatively happy looking.

 

It absolutely bucketed down on our ride home. We stopped and took shelter in a little palm leaf open sided hut, but just stopping and getting off the bikes in that heavy rain completely soaked my clothes, it took seconds. Big, fat drenching drops of rain, the clouds appear within an hour and all of a sudden without any thunder or lightning the rain pours down, turning the tracks to soft, orange, slippery mud and the once shallow puddles are now a couple of inches deeper. 

Whilst we were sitting somewhat sheltered I took the opportunity to ask my guide a few questions. He was relatively young, 28, and said that he is happy doing this job as it means he doesn't have to do other work that is more difficult. When he was younger he used to fight to earn money. I saw a small stadium/hall building here in Siem Reap with paintings of western boxers on it, he said yes, thats where he used to fight. He got paid to fight with other Cambodians and other westerners, its kick boxing, similar to Thai fighting. He said the only reason he did it was to earn enough money to send his younger brother to high school. He didn't get the opportunity to go to high school himself as he had to earn money for the rest of the family. They don't have a father around, can't remember if he said he was alive or not. So he paid for his brother to go to high school and now his brother is earning his own money as a guide because he learnt english at high school. Being a guide now pays his brother enough for him to save money to go to uni in the next couple of years. So the older brother pretty much sacrificed himself and a good life in his early years so his younger brother could have a better one. Fighters are not respected members of their local community. The good thing is that once he got married his wife asked him to stop fighting for money. He did and so now he takes crazy westerners on guided quad biking adventures! He grew up near the areas that he took me so he always tries to take some lollies or little treats with him and we stopped every now and then at the poorest houses and he would beckon the little kids over and hand them a little packet of biscuits. They would look at him in surprise and put their hands together under their chin in the classic buddhist pose and say thankyou, well i presume thats what they were saying. He obviously feels passionately about trying to give something back to his local area, but at the moment thats the best he can do. 

There is no electricity out this way 15km outside the city of Siem Reap and i'm not sure what they do about water, I think some of them have wells and/or pumps? Supplied by NGO's etc. In any case once you get a couple of kilometres out of town the locals are much poorer, their houses are much less often made out of timber and rendered concrete and more likely to be rough sawn timber huts or palm leaf huts, both of which provide much less protection from weather. The palm leaf huts have to be re-done every 4-5 years as they slowely rot away. I saw little shacks with large holes where palm leaves had collapsed and they tried to cover up with gaps with old plastic sack bags and other found items. The further out into the countryside you go the higher the proportion of dogs and kids as well. They were everywhere! Each house often had 3 or 4 dogs roaming about or mostly lying spreadeagled under a tree or half on the road, bikes just have to go round. And loads of little, dirty kids running around, I could see that there were kids who probably should have been at school and weren't out this way. Primary school is mandatory and free i think, but if parents need the kids at home to help earn money they will do what they need to do. High school costs money so its again the poorest who are disadvantaged, by high school their children could be helping work on the farm or selling food at the markets. Poor families need the extra resource. A shame that schooling costs money, it completely perpetuates the poverty cycle and its definitely something the government should be encouraged to change. Its interesting that our current government want to go back to people fully paying for their higher education, when in developing countries they are starting to realise the benefit to all of society by enabling a full and free education of their people. The long term paybacks to the community, (financially, socially, politically), are so much higher than the cost of the education in the first place...hmmm..