Angkor Wat Cambodia

We went back to Bangkok for a few days to plan our next sidetrips. We couldn't agree so we split up. She went to Chang Mai and I headed to Angkor Wat with some friends I met at the Hotel Atlanta.

We hired a driver with a car to get us there from Bangkok. He told us it was a one day drive and crossing the border was not a problem. We were aware before we left that there was a civil war going on in Cambodia at the time. Some young communist rebels call Khmer rouge were starting to win control of the country. We went anyway because according to our guide/driver all the war was happening around Phnom Penh the capital which was a long ways from Angkor Wat. The drive was very peaceful from Bangkok to the border on good roads. The driving in Thailand was known to be terrible. The vehicles were often in poor shape and they were always overcrowded and overweight but the worst was that the drivers only know one speed--fullspeed ahead. They tailgate and make insane passing decisions. The death tolls are high. Our driver was relaxed and a good defensive driver so we felt good about the trip.

Crossing the border was not too hard. The Thai border officials warned us that entering Cambodia was not a good idea. Our driver assured us everything was fine so we continued on. The officials on the Cambodian side were gruff and rude. They seemed reluctant to allow us in. We told them it was only for two days because we were just going to go look at the temples and return right away. I think our driver gave them a bribe in the end. The road on the Cambodian side was pretty good. It was narrow but smooth. There was no traffic at all. It is only about an hour and a half drive to the temple complex from the border our driver told us.

We were driving along and a car coming toward us was driving really fast. The roads were narrow and our driver pulled over so far our wheels went off the road and the other car whizzed past us. Our driver cursed him out and then we continued on. In the next half hour several other cars also did this to us. Our driver was getting mad. Then we started to see people walking at a near run along the road. Entire family groups with looks of terror on their faces were charging in the direction of Thailand. Our driver stopped and talked to us for a minute. He did not know what was going on. He tried to stop some of the pedestrians that were going toward Thailand but he could not communicate with them due to language differences. We kept going forward. We had to drive slowly because there were suddenly lots of people walking and running on the road. We ended up going very slow until finally there were so many people that they took over the entire road and we could go no further. We were only a few miles away from Angkor Wat our destination when one of the people told us what was happening.

He told us that the Khmer Rouge had kicked everyone out of the city and ordered them to go back and live on a farm. Anybody that tried to remain would be killed. The soldiers were already killing thousands of people he said and the soldiers were coming down the road in our direction. That is why everybody was fleeing to Thailand. We talked and quickly decided that no temple was worth dying to see so we turned the car around. There were so many refugees now that it was difficult to turn the car around on the narrow road. As soon as we were turned around the refugees tried to get in or on our car. We let some get in and ride with us but we were crammed in so we had to close the doors and start driving. Lots of people tried to jump on the bumpers or just jump on the top of the car to get them out of harms way. Our driver started getting very scared. We were pretty nervous now. If our car got bogged down by all the people then we too would be on foot and the army might catch up to us and kill us too. The driver started to drive faster despite all the people on the roads. He just laid on the horn and drove through the crowds of refugees. It was not a pleasant drive. We had a few refugees kind of bounce off the car but it wasn't because we hit them it was because they were trying to jump up on the car to get a ride. The crowds thinned out as we got further up the road again and we were finally able to speed up as we pulled away from the refugees walking and running on the road. We made it to the border and crossed back into Thailand.

We told the Thai officials that there were thousands of refugees coming in their direction and they got very nervous and excited. They let us back into the country and we drove back to Bangkok in near silence.

The Khmer Rouge massacred millions of people in those days. Thousands of them fled to Thailand overwhelming the Thai ability to take care of them. The international community stepped in and helped out the refugees. The genocide took somewhere in the vicinity of 3,000,000 lives. Some estimates are almost double that number but since the population started at just over seven million I feel the three million number is closer to the correct number of deaths. It was a horrific slaughter no matter how many deaths it actually ended up being. Wiki has excellent short histories of the period when this all happened. Just search for Khmer Rouge or Cambodia and they will come up.

We went back to Bangkok and I waited for Kirsten to get back from her Chang Mai tour. I had a few days to myself in Bangkok so I went out clubbing with some of the other travelers at the hotel Atlanta. The night clubs were really just giant whore houses for the most part. There were so many hot looking girls hitting on me all night that they were pests. The young boys were just as obnoxious and plentiful. I just drank my beer and watched all the action going on around me. I had already learned that if you are not in the market you can not engage with the little street and club hustlers. If you do engage and then you don't follow through and hire them you risk getting the shit beat out of you or worse. I didn't want any trouble so I just observed.

Kirsten came back and told me all about her trip up north. She really liked the tribal people. We made our plans then to go up to Laos and see even more tribal people. After she had a few days rest we took off for the north and Laos.