Feature : cambodia
We had a magnificent ride through some stunning hill country chasing and occasionally being drenched by monstrous thunderstorms . Our first major halt was the aforementioned Siem Reap , jump off point to visit the fabulous Khmer ruins at Angkor Wat . It ’ s a very touristy town for sure but , pestering from Tuk-Tuks aside , what ’ s not to like about a town with a place called ‘ Pub Street ’ at its heart serving 50-cent beers ? We checked in to the Blossoming Romdoul Lodge , an easy stroll from the party but far enough away for a quiet nights sleep . A Romduol , for your information , is a small , heavily scented , yellow flower , indeed the national flower of Cambodia , and local vernacular for a pretty girl . The name of our lodgings was inspired by a song by a famous Cambodian singer , Sin Sisamuth , who sang of how he fell head-over-heels in love with a beautiful woman he spied walking along the banks of the Siem Reap river , imploring the intervention of the gods to make her return his love .
Before delving in to Angkor Wat , we spent a morning at the Siem Reap War Museum , a collection of rusting armoured fighting vehicles and military ordnance that have been collected from around the area and deposited in a pleasant plot , reminiscent of a jungly orchard , on the edge of town . Walking around these orange-stained carcasses alone is interesting enough , hypothesizing on how each vehicle met its end . Tracks are gone , wheels missing , tyres burned off and underbellies ripped asunder , thick steel armour-plate peeled back as it if it were mere foil . Our guide , Sinarth , explained that most had met their end by landmines and he showed us inside one T-54 tank pointing to a piece of shinbone and a shrunken rubber plimsol , final relics of the crew upon the tank ’ s demise . Even more poignant ; his friend had died in that very vehicle .
The tour with Sinarth really brought the museum to life . He explained how at 9-years of age he went out to collect honey with some friends near the village where he lived , not far from Siem Reap . When he returned the Khmer Rouge had called , rounded up his entire family , took them off and executed them along with the rest of the village . He wound up working as a child labourer in the Killing Fields and later , when the Vietnamese invaded , he became a soldier fighting in the war to liberate his country . As we followed Sinarth around he regaled us with his war stories from which he would emerge as the sole survivor from a group of twenty similarly aged kids . He had been shot and blown up several times . To emphasise the point he let us feel lumps of pelletshrapnel still embedded under his skin or raised his shirt to display slash like scars of old bullet wounds . In spite of his ordeals he seemed like a fit , gentle , man until he surprised us all by stopping to sit down and remove one of his legs , the result of stepping on a Bulgarian-made anti-personnel mine , shredding his right leg below the knee . He beckoned us to come closer to stare into his right eye where the inky black pupil was flecked with shards of greywhite matter . These , he told us were pieces of bone from his foot , blasted up into his face by the mine to blind him for a period of five years . One day , when the war was over , some UN officials saw him begging at the side of the road and organised appropriate treatment for his eye injuries , restoring 70 % in one eye and 20 % in the other .
Moun Sinath ' s story