All Summer Long

A tuk-tuk takes us through dust and wild traffic to our guest house in Siem Reap. There’s nothing like the feeling of exposure we get from being carted around on the back of a bike. We’re hugging our backpacks like babies when we ride over the first few stones. Then as the tuk tuk slips onto the main street, we relax, let go and leave them to rest at our feet. We sit back and enjoy our first proper view of Cambodia, weaving intricately through waves of traffic.

It looked like a swamp from the plane: huge stretches of brown water, sunken trees, probably mangroves, and a few floating homes. Siem Reap is beautiful in comparison, built low on a fine dust with its sandy roads, open restaurant terraces, and colonial sun-faded buildings.

We arrange another tuk tuk for 4:30am the next morning to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. As it turns out, it’s the same young driver in a Barcelona FC jacket, black helmet and visor, and we feel sorry for him having to get dressed in the dead of night. Our guilt subsides when we realise that Cambodia wakes up early. The market streets are already in full flow with the smell of hot woks and scooters, and there’s whole fleets of travellers making similar journeys towards the temples.

We reach the ticket office well in time and they take a photo of us to be printed on our ticket. I stand too close to the camera, which has no weight to it and resembles an eye. It captures me at an uncomfortable angle, suspended in a state of semi-sleep, semi-reclined, semi-staring-down at something I can barely see. This, the evidence that someone has permitted me to roam the temples, is the worst mugshot ever taken. When we get to the entrance to Angkor Wat, I won’t be surprised if they ask me to leave the country.

Crossing the bridges to Angkor, we get swept up in a mass sleepwalk. None of the towers are visible, just a few lights floating on the water. We follow them to the entrance and it is weird feeling the presence of the temples around us without actually being able to see them. Despite the volume of people, there’s a feeling of absolute calm. We stand at the lake feeling serene for some time (and knackered).

Watching the shape of Angkor Wat appear gradually in the light is an amazing experience. From here we spend eight hours in the tunnels and chambers of six temples, all distinctive and alluring, from the iconic quincunx of beehive-like towers at Angkor Wat to the tentacled roots that grow through Ta Prohm. The latter was used in the Tomb Raider film. In fact, the whole thing feels like Tomb Raider, without the boulders and spike traps.

Our tuk tuk takes us between the temples and tells us where to go. Whenever we’re finished, we’ll see the visor appear somewhere between the trees. Most of the drivers will sleep in hammocks as they wait, but they’ll always see their passenger before they see them.

The next day we go from the majesty of the temples to poverty and disrepair in the floating village of Kampong Phluk. The minivan ride to the boat collects us at the guest house but it soon becomes an impossible search for the “Bamboo House”. Our tour guide is hysterical trying to find a customer on his list, and he has the driver stop at the wrong hotel two or three times. “Why they all called Bamboo?” By this point his eyes have closed, his neck’s craned towards us, and his laugh has become shrill. “Bamboo Hotel, Bamboo Stay, Bamboo Hou… They write down only Bamboo!”

Eventually he finds the guy at a hotel whose name resembles nothing of the elusive bamboo we’ve been looking for. Back on the main road, we see a van in front of us filled wholly with furniture and a man is riding on the back holding it all in! The guide says “Cambodians are crazy, unless they go to school.” When we finally get to the boat, the guide apologises to us because we were on the bus the longest. He gives us a tiny banana and says something vague about immortality.

The boats literally just barge into one another to get in and out of the port. Two children are driving the thing. They take us past mangrove forests into the fishing village – a community that has formed and exists without government intervention. They’ve built their houses on stilts that go deep into the riverbed. Without clocks, the villagers turn to the sun for a sense of time. They watch and listen to the insects to know when rain is due; the ants will climb to their roofs in colonies and the snails will clack.

As we walk around the village, we meet people who are living amongst and in possession of almost nothing. They seem to get very little from our tourism and it makes us feel awkward about being here. The guide tells us things – like they’re still drinking water collected from several years ago. And before a pagoda was built, villagers hanged themselves because they had no place of worship.

We end the last night of our stay in Siem Reap with sunset over the lake. A woman in a boat glides over to sell beer. She’s the sole trader in her own floating market. The boat and drive back is long and the guide keeps repeating the phrase “long life,” but without completing the word, it just sounds to us as if he’s saying “long lie”.

We leave Siem Reap in the back of a postal delivery van. I have visions of passing through customs in a box. In reality we’re speeding across the country in a people carrier, the driver splitting traffic brutally with his horn.