Where the river flows

October 17th – 28th

The road from Kep to Phnom Penh isn’t very long, merely 200km, along the Mekhong. But it’s in a mediocre shape, and the closer we get to the capital, the more congested it gets.
The thing is, yesterday, while I was enjoying a cold beer on the balcony of the bungalow overlooking the river, the owner of the guesthouse came up to me, and in a distressed voice announced the king was dead. Norodom Sihanouk died at the age of 89, in a hospital in China. Though his two reigns are controverted, to say the least, he was still very much loved by his people. Sihanouk had a troubled past. He resigned in favour of his father, then came back into power and was close, some say too close, to the Khmer Rouge regime, but he also managed the independence from France, and a lot of his acts were “for the good of the people”, or so he claimed.

Whatever his reasons may have been, today the country mourns a king. And the mourning will last for three months, which will give the opportunity for the people who live in the remotest places to pay their respect; after which he will be cremated. Today then, nearly everybody gathered to welcome the body of the king to pay their respect, and over a million Cambodian in tears have crowded the city. Everybody wears black pants and dresses, and a white shirt and this gives the city a very charming look indeed. But the best was to come,

when we got to the Royal Palace at night, and witnessed the crowd of thousands, in tears, in chants, with the air thick with incense and lit by only candles, my oh my this was something. The whole palace was indeed lit with hundreds of thousands of light bulbs, making the Xsmas decoration in the US bleak as a Friday in Autumn, and the monks chanting, and the candles everywhere, and the people nicely dressed, and the overpowering smell of incense. Just epic. I don’t think we show that much adoration for our Royal family, they sure did.
Phnom Penh was in mourning, but that did not stop us from visiting the tourist attractions. There are three really; first there is the National Museum, which displays a rather vast collection of art from the pre-Angkorian period to today; then there is the old school which was converted into a torture chamber by Pol Pot’s clique, anyone remotely against the Khmer Rouge regime ended up tortured to death in that place. There are very few words to describe the place, but the strong smell of death and the inhumanity that reigned for a decade just makes you vomit with hatred. I fought back the tears watching the photos of children, women, men, Cambodian or foreigners, who were killed after so much pain they admitted to just about anything. I had seen the Nazi’s camps in Belgium and Germany but this was quite something else.

Last but not least in Phnom Penh was the Russian Market. It’s only Russian by name, today the market is the place where every piece of clothing that was on its way to Europe, Australia, USA but got rejected because of a slight imperfection, ends up here. For instance, I bought a North Face backbpack, with one broken zipper (just the handle, the zipper itself is just fine) for nine dollars, or Julie bought a H&M dress for 2USD… Bargain town ! Of course not everything has great taste and the many fake Armani and Gucci are also to be found, or the very kitsch wooden decoration…

Strolling along the market I noticed one customer towering the rest of the Asian crowd and quickly recognised my mate Sander, his wife Vera and their adorable girls, Zahra and Linde. We last crossed paths in Kuala Lumpur at Wendy’s a month ago, as they were heading north to the Chinese border but their visa got declined at the last minute. Now they are taking their time towards Bangkok, where they’re hoping to catch a boat to either Columbo in Sri Lanka or somewhere off the south coast of India.
We decided to spend the next WE together and drove an hour north of the capital to Udong, next to a Buddhist retreat for Westerners looking for meditation and inspiration, and we set up camp. What a great sight, the two Troopies reunited, and the two families sharing dinner, a bottle of wine and some Camembert. Overlanding just doesn’t get any better does it.

As we get closer to the end of the year, this also means the end of the rain season. It’s only mid-October but the rain has stopped, and we’re now beaten down by a scorching sun.

This could only mean one thing : swim ! But where ? We’ll just drive around and find a pond or a river, we thought, but then Vera had a better idea and asked a little boy who looked like he’d just came out of the water where we could have a dip. He took us to a private fish-farm, or at least that’s what I decided it was as today I still have no idea where we really were. But we got to swim and that’s all that counts. Of course, after a while the kid got greedy and asked for more and more and even more money so we left after lunch. This also meant we were heading North to Laos, and the Hohage were heading to Thailand. This isn’t goodbye either, but we all know the next time we meet it’ll be in Europe, probably in a long time. So long mate, safe travels.

Off to Kompong Chom we went and stopped at a guest house that night, a bit disappointed we couldn’t camp. We really really were looking forward that macaroni and cheese ! Damn it, stuff the fried noodles, we’re having mac n cheese right here right now. And there we were, cooking macaroni and cheese on the sidewalk, by the street light, with dozens of people staring in disbelief at two Westerners and their crazy car, but damn that was worth it! Amongst the amazed crowd, stood Nikki and Micky, two Aussies, heading in the same direction as ours. They had seen the Victoria numberplate but didn’t quite know how the hell this Troopy got to here. We stuffed their bag in the car and gave them a lift to Kratie, and spent the next day together. Highlight of this chapter : fresh water dolphins. This rare breed of dolphin can be found in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, but spotting them in the Mekhong is where they’re most famous. There’s only 70 left in Cambodia, mostly because they were either hunted down for their oil, or killed by fishermen who still used until recently poison and hand grenades to gather fish. We were lucky enough to see about ten of them, under the most amazing sunset I’ve ever witnessed on a river. Well that’s probably because the rivers I used to know in Belgium were five foot across, and the Mekhong is over 200metres wide. Or because a trout versus a dolphin, well, don’t get me wrong I love trout, but come on, dolphins!

Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s something I ate, but I spent the next night between my bed and the toilet, with a strong fever and, pretty quickly, an empty stomach, and even more empty bowels. It’s only the day after that I felt strong enough to leave the bed and get back on the road. Ban Lung is only two hours away and we’re told there was an amazing lake you could swim into. Well, though the smooth dirt road to Ban Lung was a nice break from the pot holes in the tarmac highways we rode on until now, the crater itself wasn’t what we were told. Well maybe it’s because we’d just spent the whole day before at the swimming pool of the resort next door (five dollars got us the whole pool for the whole day, all by ourselves), but we decided we wouldn’t.

So finally, after four weeks of guesthouses, we managed to find a quiet spot in a forest, with the best view on the hills ever, no one to bother us, no cops to tell us we were in danger, no villager coming to stare in disbelief, just peace and quiet and the nature. What a bliss !

We spent our last night in Cambodia in the border town of Steung Treng, talking with a Swiss couple who ran an NGO teaching kids from the poorest families either English, cooking, waitressing, accounting, etc. The NGO has been running for five years now and 2013 is to be the handover year to 100% Khmer management. We wish them luck.

A few kilometres North of here, lies the border with Laos. It’s only been recently opened for foreigners, and is the only border town for overlanders to or from Laos. Of the seven countries so far, Cambodia has been the most “Asian” to me, with all the clichés that I had in my mind. It’s green, it’s poor, it’s beautiful, the people are friendly, work in rice fields with mud up their knees, the food is delicious yet lacks variety, the climate is hot and humid, and nobody speaks any English. So Cambodia is on my favourite list, definitely.

Here I found genuine people, who truly cared when they said they cared, or truly did not want to help when they said no. No bullshit, no pleasing the white folk, truly genuine people with an open heart, an amazing food and a stunning countryside.

It’s a definite destination for whoever wants authenticity. Hurry before it too gets swamped by mass tourism.

Distance to-day: 1030, total: 38010km.