February 20th – Day 14 – Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

Firstly a brief report on our evening meal at the Foreign Correspondents Club. This turned out to be a great location to have a drink and a meal. HERO had organised a fleet of tuk-tuks to take us to and from the restaurant. This was great fun with tuk-tuks racing each other through the evening traffic.

The FCC was in reality just an ordinary bar and restaurant. Its location overlooking the river was an ideal way to have a meal. We will be sorry to leave Phnom Penh as we have really enjoyed our stay.

There were two main options to today’s route to Siem Reap. The first was a more or less straight route, with one or two side detours to places of interest. The second included a loop of some 170kms into the countryside and involved rough roads through the jungle. The advance car had reported that this route was rougher than when they had done the route survey, early last year.

We decided to opt for the easy route as we wanted to get to Siem Reap early enough to watch the sun go down over Angkor Wat. Whilst those doing the rough route left as early as 5am, we drove away from Phnom Penh at 7.30am. The traffic was pretty dire for the first 50kms. Buses, trucks, commuter traffic and thousands of motorbikes made driving quite slow.

However once we were clear of the traffic the roads became virtually empty and a fast drive north brought us to our first ‘hidden gem’, the temple at Phnom Santuk. There were over 800 steps to the temple, but luckily you could drive to near the top of the hill and only needed to walk up the last 120 steps.

A group of monkeys were running around by the steps.



Three young boys tried to get us to pay them as guides, but we refused. Even so they followed us to the top and then pointed to where the Buddha was located. This was not in the temple but on the side of the hill. We climbed over some rocks and were amazed to see this magnificent reclining Buddha carved into the rock. It was over 30 feet long and had been brightly painted.

A lovely old lady was sitting by the Buddha and we bought an incense stick to burn, making a donation of a dollar. We took these photos of the Buddha, the lady and the boys sitting in front of the Buddha. It was a lovely moment.



One of the great joys of driving through third world countries is that you often come across the unexpected by the side of the road. We came across this hive of activity in one small village - a whole army of stone carvers making Buddhas on either side of the road!

There were simply hundreds of Buddhas of all sizes . We stopped and Raza and I each bought a small Buddha to bring home with us. Wendy took this photo of me and the carver with my new possession.

The next detour was to a group of Khmer temple ruins, which have become completely overrun by the forest. The ruins were very disappointing, as not very many temples remain. Whilst there these two girls sold us two scarves at a dollar each.

As we were driving away we noticed this temple with a tree growing from it. I hope the photo does justice to a remarkable sight.

We never cease to be amazed by the weird, wonderful and often crazy loads that the vehicles carry. Here are a couple more examples.



As we drove along the main highway towards Siem Reap we made a small detour to a Khmer built bridge from the 12th century. The main road, until quite recently, used the bridge. It is a testament to the Khmer building skills that it has lasted so long.


The remainder of the drive was on fast open roads and we arrived in Siem Reap around 2.30pm. There was time for a swim in the wonderful Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor Hotel swimming pool and then for us to take a tuk-tuk to Angkor Wat to see the sun go down. We went to the hill that overlooks Angkor Wat, Phnom Bakeng. We walked up the elephant track to the top, taking this photo of one of the elephants about to start the ascent.

A view of the magnificent temple on Phnom Bakeng

It would be remiss of me not mention how those cars that decided to take the rough route fared. Well, suffice to say it was a true John Brown route. Severe driving conditions resulted in quite a few damaged vehicles, mainly from fallen trees blocking very narrow tracks. I will endeavour to post tomorrow some of the photos that Bob Howells took.