Prasat Preah Vihear - Day 1

I've just returned from a fantastic trip to Prasat Preah Vihear: The Temple In The Sky.

It's off the tourist trail, in a remote part of Cambodia right on the border with Thailand. It's built right on the edge of a 525 meter cliff, with long distance views over Cambodia.

I'll be honest - I was slightly nervous about making the trip.

The Thai government are continuing to dispute the ownership of the land the temple is on, and fighting broke out in October of last year, resulting in the death of two Cambodian soldiers.

Because of this, and the on-going stand off, Cambodia is on the Foreign Office list of "Countries the FCO advises against all travel to parts of" list - right up there (unbelievably) with Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason it's on the list: the trouble at Prasat Preah Vihear.

It's also got a reputation for being a fairly tough trip, mainly because of the lack of transport, the state of the roads, and the fact that very few people speak English in the area.

I'd asked plenty of local people what they thought, and they all said that it wasn't a problem and I should go anyway. So after leaving details of my route with Paul and Lindon, I decided to set off and see what happened.

It was up early to get to the bus station, and a share taxi or pick up to Sra Em. It turned out that there was a pick up going via Anlong Veng, which would allow me to do a round trip rather than having to go on the same road there and back.

The route goes through beautiful Cambodian country side, with villages right on the side of the road, and every day life going on as you sail by.

The road to Anlong Veng:



At Anlong Veng we stopped for food, and everyone went to a small restaurant, so I had a look at what was on offer and went for meat with veg in a soup and a bowl of rice. Cambodians are well known for eating anything and everything, including putting intestines is soup. I'm not sure what the meat was - but the soup tasted really good, and it was so spicy you couldn't taste the meat. Despite my initial reservations - I really enjoyed it.

From there, it was on a rougher dirt road to Kor Muy - the last stop before the mountain (as the locals call it). It had taken seven hours to go about 180 kilometers.

There are two ways to do the 5km trip up the mountain: a grueling two hour walk, or a 20 minute Moto ride up a steep (think 35 degrees in places) concrete track. So I opted for the $5USD ride on the Moto. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be - but the views were incredible the higher you got.

The only place to stay is the one guesthouse in the very very small market at Preah Vihear. It's very basic, but functional. The shared bathroom consists of three plastic drums filled with water and a plastic jug to scoop the water out.

After dropping my stuff off, I headed up to see the temple to enjoy the sunset.

The temple is an incredible experience. Totally worth the hours of travel to get to. You set off up some stairs to climb the three levels to the top, denoting the different realms of the universe in Hindu thought. For the people who built this, you weren't just climbing to the top of a temple - you were ascending into heaven and the realm of the gods.

This picture is of the first set of stairs:



This is the second level:



The walkway to the third level:



And finally the entrance to the third level:



Inside:





And the other side of the temple:



There was no one else there except me for most of the time at the temple, although I did bump into a German guy who was clearly into off the trail traveling, and we swapped stories until he headed off to get back down the mountain.

And then, I went around the other side of the temple to the edge of the cliff, and the unbelievable views. There was a haze in the air, as you can see from the pics, but it somehow made the view more mystical.

The view:





As I'm waiting for the sunset, a group of 20 people came to bring offerings to Buddha, and I sat on a rock and watched while they laid out the offerings (two roast piglets, a couple of roast chickens, soft drinks, and fruit), and then lit incense and prayed.

Sunset:



A shot of the temple in sunlight:



They all hung around while the sun set, and then we all walked back down through the temple where they went off to go down the mountain, and I set off for the guest house.



There's no electricity at the village, but the generators were going, so there was light. The village is tiny - the market has about 10 stalls, and then there are about 20 houses. I did feel sorry for the people here, because the problems with the border has effectively stopped there income stream. But despite all that was going on, everyone was incredibly friendly, the kids all like to wave and say "hello" and "good bye", and everyone smiles all the time.

I chilled out for a while in the room looking at my photo's, and then headed out to "the restaurant" which is basically someone's house. I appear to have been too late, as it looks like everyone eats early here, and it looked from what was going on that there was no food.

I'd arranged my lift for the next day with a guy called Sim who spoke great English, and it turned out he lived in the village. He explained to me that there was some Fish soup, but no rice, but I should sit down as he'd get me some rice from his house. The soup was awesome - although the fish was looking at me while I was eating it :-)

Everyone was sitting around watching Shanghai Nights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. So I sat with them and everyone's laughing at the film. Luckily for me, they'd put on English subtitles.

And then I called it a night and read until the Generator was switched off at just after 10pm.

----------

Just for posterity - here's the FCO advisory on Cambodia as at the 13/03/09:



And here's the detailed note stating not to go to Prea Vihear:



Just a side note on the above: The FCO do a sterling job looking after us Brits while we're away, and just like our army, their hard work often goes unrecognized. I would under normal circumstances heed the warnings - but I did check out first hand accounts of people who'd done the trip in the last few weeks, and spoke to locals who knew the area.

This included Hidden Cambodia who run tours to the site. There motorbike tour would have been the way to do this, but it's not a trip for a beginner. If you want to do the trip by motorbike, then check them out, as they are great people who really know what's happening there. Their website is here.

As a final note - here's a "trip report" on the Lonely Planet Thorntree Forum for anyone who is interested in doing this route. Here's the link.