Reisverhaal «De welgekome intrede Poipet-Siem Reap, 150km»

Cambodja | 0 Reacties 19 Maart 2007 - Laatste Aanpassing 10 April 2007

Dit verhaal zal binnenkort naar het nederlands worden vertaald...

Only arrived a few days ago and I already feel so welcome! Watching me cycling the dusty red-coloured road from Poipet-border to first town Sisophon in the middle of open fields, so many kids were waving at me, cheering 'hellooooo'', others up to my age were clapping hands, giving thumbs up when I looked back and cheering 'hooow', 'heyyy', 'gooood',  supporting me like the're was such a big challenge ahead of me... I tried to give eye-contact every time but sometimes I just couldn't keep my eyes of the road without having to kiss it seconds later... I counted 6 flat tyres along the 50km... The road, a mixture of hard gravelpieces, stones and hard and soft sand, was in bad condition, but not half as bad as some of the 'main' roads we met in central China...
I spend the night in Sisophon, where I ate in a local restaurant the only thing they had left, 'rossbeef in black pepper sauce', 2.5$. I couldn't believe my ears! "You mean the only thing you have left is one of the best pieces of beef", of which I was already forgotten the existence of? Very curious about the taste coming up I forgot for a moment my decisioin not to neat porc or beef anymore and tried it, man it was so good, ah! 
My arrival in Siem Reap the next day, more and more the biggest tourist attraction of Southeast Asia, was much more pleasant cycling than arriving in a bus must have been... No tuktuk-or motorcycle-drivers sticking to my body like leeches, trying to tear you apart so they can all carry a piece of you and charge you for it... no, nothing.... ''no thank you, we'll manage" and we did... finding a bed in a dorm made of only wood and bamboo for 1 $... Nice!
That evening I met some other pleasant consequences of the French colonisation up to the second world war like the delicious, big thick crusty oven-warmed french breads for only 25 cents each! Seems like I'm not that far away from home like I expected... Prices of wines and cheeses are affordable again, compared to the surrounding countries, but still the double of in Belgian... And the local beer, Angkor, is also well approved! Topping the ranking followed by Bayon and Anchor...
The last 3 days I enjoyed wandering around  the marvellous temples of Angkor... What a story and history they have... For the first time in m y life, I actually bought a decent guidebook in front and studied their history and religions and whatever got involved, to appreciate and understand their achievements more, than just looking at them thinking "ha, that's nice, how did they come to that idea", "why is that for", and so on... And I am glad I did, sightseeing finally became fun! To give you an idea what it's all about, in short;  
Angkor is not just a temple but  a region of 200 square kms in the northwest and was the centre of the Khmer empire between 802 and 1432 ... Hundreds of temples are spread around in the region made in order of the different kings who ruled at that time... The temples were built in a way that they symbolised (them being) the link between the human being and the 'divine', following many aspects of the religion of their preference and according to carefully ordered principles based on a geometrical plan with orientation to the cardinal points... Also the position of stars, planets and all can be recognised... The temples were mostly dedicated to a god of the religion of their preference (Boddhisatva's in buddhism or Shiva or Vishnu in Hinduism, or sometimes both) or to their parents or ancestors... Some of them are really big as every king wanted to show his power and dedication by building a greater and grotesker one as the one before him... Amazing how they constructed them, who coordinated all this?, these precise sculptures telling in a so called 'bas-relief' (cravings in a wall) a whole Hindu epic story like the 'Mahabaratha' or the 'Ramayana'?  Amazing... For those interested, www.new7wonders.com, will tell you all about it...