Cambodia
by Danny
After a very quick border crossing from Laos to Cambodia, we set course for our first destination in this country; rock climbing in Kampong Cham.
We didn’t make it in a single drive day and stopped at the side of the road, only about 1,5 hours away from the granite. While we were setting up tents a local man walks up to me with, what appears to be, his 2 sons. Already I’m preparing my speech about who we are, why we are here, when we will be leaving and so on.
Instead of all that, I get the question: ‘would you like to sleep inside my new house?’ astonishment is what he reads on my face.
The man grabs my hand and starts walking to the house behind us. The house is nearly finished and owned by this extremely friendly man. About 10 minutes later, all off our tents are set up inside the man’s soon-to-be living room, bed room and kitchen. What a way to start off in a new country!
The next morning we continue on to the granite faces of Kampong Cham. Ones we got there, we set up camp right in front of the 25 meter high granite face (on which we bolted a new 7b two days later).
This place was like being back in India for a bit. We had to use a truck rope as boundary to keep the 30-odd by locals watching us out of our camp. And we failed, because all the kids were playing on the slack-line all day anyway.
This place had about 40 routes, half of which were top rope lines and the other half lead climbs. Completely different from what we have had the last couple of weeks.
Granite crimpy face climbs instead of massive overhangs and tufa’s. After a couple of days cranking we say goodbye to this great bush-camp.
The next place we visited here is the capital; Pnom Penh. Everybody had a great time in this laid back city. Whether is was visiting the extremely shocking killing fields from Pol Pot’s evil regime, shooting massive automatic weapons at the local firing range, winning money at the black-jack table in a fancy casino, or building beer-amids at ‘Oh My Buddha Cafe’
After a day in Pnom Penh we went to the biggest tourist attraction in Cambodia; the temples of Ankor Wat. And this is not just a couple of temples stacked togheter. This is a temple complex the size of Los Angeles!
I drove through in a tuk-tuk for about 7 hours, and I think I saw a 10th of all the big temples. Let alone the small ones! A real shame we weren’t allowed to climb the ruins, now that would have been interesting!
After all this touristy stuff it’s time to get some more climbing in. Time for Thailand! Time for Chiang Mai! Time for Crazy Horse!
