Taro's Travels

Muddy Waters

There are two main families of bottled water in Thailand/Laos/Cambodia. The (relatively) expensive type is normally indistinguishable from standard Australian brands. The cheap type comes in 900ml soft bottles with the label printed directly on the plastic and is of extremely variable quality. Different brands look pretty much identical - the best brands are just as good as the expensive brands; the worst brands taste of dirt. These poor-quality waters are probably safe to drink, having been (supposedly) filtered and ozonated/osmosised/UVed/etc, but the taste isn't reassuring.

As the major tourist town in Cambodia, with half a million tourists or more staying a year, Siem Reap is in a disappointing state of disrepair. It's not the buildings, which are, by and large, reasonably attractive. The problem is the roads.

Surfaced roads are not unknown in Siem Reap, but there aren't many of them. Anything that's not a main road is pretty much guaranteed to be unpleasant. If you're lucky, it will be surfaced but potholed. If not, it'll be an uneven dirt road.

The drainage is poor, too. During periods of rain, gutters flood with muddy water. Even main roads and those of the riverside market quarter, with its attractive shops and restaurants, are heavily silted. It rains frequently, sandy soil washes down onto surfaced areas from unpaved roads, driveways and unpavements, and remains there. The water mostly goes in a few hours, but boggy patches remain well into the next day, and since it's wet season, it's likely to rain the next day.

Heavily-trafficked dirt roads can appear permanent morasses - even a few hundred metres from the Royal Residence there are near-impassable patches. Villages further out have it worse, with thoroughly cratered and potholed roads and street-spanning puddles. And these are not necessarily poor areas - there are two-story McMansions behind high walls here, and late-model Camrys.

I'd originally planned to visit every temple on my map. I was defeated in this ambition on the first day. Although there are only three temples in the southwestern quadrant of my map, the tracks and dykes on the outskirts of Siem Reap are unsignposted. I set out for Wat Chedai. Kilometres of mud later, I saw stone above the treetops. It was Wat Athvea. There were lots of guides available as I was the only sightseer. After showing me around, mine gave me directions to Wat Chedai. So kilometres of mud later I arrived near the mountain-top temple Phnom Khrom. After I'd climbed up and climbed down, I looked at my map, looked at the muddy dyke, and decided that as I'd be seeing a lot of temples that missing one couldn't hurt.

Up the paved road, then, and across the river Siem Reap to find some temples of the southeastern quadrant. Across the river, and along unsignposted tracks and dykes to discover modern temples that weren't on the map. Kilometres of mud and a bent bike seat later, I decided that I'd be seeing a lot of temples and that missing some of the ones that weren't detailed in the guidebook couldn't hurt.

It was not until I'd climbed Phnom Khrom that I realised just how flat the area was - just fields, paddies, and dykes for miles around, with Tonle Sap Lake to the south. At ground level, the trees and bushes on the borders of fields hide the horizon. There are hills around, but they are few and far between, and all are holy sites.

The Western Baray is a vast reservoir about 8 km broad and 2.5 km wide. It's a popular swimming spot, and the main area was busy on the sunny Saturday afternoon I visited. A track (as far as I can tell) circumnavigates it, and three temples lie to its northwest, so I started out westward along it. Not far down it, I was passed by a four wheel drive, which drove carefully through what I'd thought of as a track-spanning puddle, but which was revealed to be something a little deeper. As was the next track-spanning puddle thirty metres further along. Another three temples I really didn't need to see.

East was rocky and uneven, but dryer. Parts almost felt like coastal Australia - sandy soil, sandstone, low trees, scrub and bushes, and the glint of barely-seen water. Eventually I turned down a sandy cow-track in the direction of Angkor Thom.