2005 CAMBODIA a trip revisIted by heart 18 years later

After Myanmar in 2004, which I liked, I decided to go back to Asia again to visit Cambodia and Laos. I flew to Bangkok and from there to Siem Reap, close to the Thai border and the great temple of Angkor Wat. Today you go by land but in 2004 the roads were awful and there were endless queues at the border so I opted for the air travel. Siem Reap is a town with many hotels, restaurants and massage parlors where girls who look thirteen are sitting outside, maybe they are of age because it is difficult for us to understand the age of Asian women, but I know for sure that Asian men prefer women very young and that after 22 are already considered outdated and to be avoided. However, the reason for my trip there was to visit the great temple of Angkor Wat which was the capital of the Khmer empire that dominated all of Southeast Asia and the city had millions of inhabitants in the Middle Ages when Rome had returned to being a town of 50,000 inhabitants. You buy a 3-day pass which costs about 35 dollars if I remember correctly to visit three different areas of the immense space that covers the city and its innumerable temples. The first two days I went around aboard a simple bicycle-taxi whose driver pulls a comfortable panoramic armchair, speaks English and explains what he knows, stopping at the most important places, getting off for a more detailed visit. Upon first arrival, the view is impressive because you have a long line of carved black rock in front of you and as you enter you notice many precious bas-reliefs carved into the rock and many statues and temples. The second area is mainly made up of huge heads and temples completely covered by huge tree roots that overlook them while the third, more distant area is made of lighter rock but the sculptures are even finer and more beautiful. Away from Angkor I headed towards the Tonle-Sap river-lake which is a huge expanse of water that you can travel by fast boat admiring the beautiful green vegetation and the floating villages on the lake or along the river. Then the second city of the country Battambang, rather large but not very interesting, near which there are mines of precious stones that make you want to buy, but I resisted because there are also many scams. I rented a motorbike with a driver and we went into the open countryside visiting some farms, a beautiful modern temple that was frescoed by a good painter, a monastery with young bonzes, the road was very muddy and we were all covered in mud up to the river where we washed before taking the bamboo train, a board of about 4 square meters where you get on, motorbike included, and continue on the track at modest speed observing the surrounding countryside with the breeze on you. Then I took a bus to Sihanoukville, the tourist city on the coast with beautiful beaches where I relaxed by the sea for a few days also taking a nice boat trip to nearby islands. Finally another bus to the capital Phnom Penh on the Mekong river, a small Bangkok with a beautiful royal palace, some interesting temples and pagodas, a strange yellow building that encloses the city market. Cambodia is the country that is worth a visit even if only for the temple of Angkor Wat, perhaps the most beautiful archaeological site I have visited, but then it has a beautiful nature made up of lots of greenery and waters where the poor survivors of the Pol Pot regime live who wiped out half the population. There is also a macabre tourism that leads to visiting the killing fields, ie the fields of death with mass graves, piled up skeletons and photos of the many dead, but I preferred to avoid all this sadness.