A picnic in the jungle

Ton had envisaged heading to Koh Ker by motorcycle; but, when his family found out, they said they wanted to come too. So on Sunday morning, a minibus turned up outside my guesthouse containing Ton, his wife and his little girl, a selection of in-laws, uncles nephews and cousins plus equipment and supplies for a picnic. We stopped to pick up breakfast from the market: warm French baguettes spread with sweet condensed milk. I haven't eaten condensed milk like that since I was a child. Inevitably, it runs down your wrist and leaves everything sticky to touch. The milk can, from a Thai manufacturer, had a picture of a smiling blue eyed, blond haired youth on the side; I presume this was not intended to encourage South-East Asian mothers to think that their children will turn into sparkle-eyed Aryans if they consume the stuff...



The road to Koh Ker has been recently upgraded into a toll road; which does not mean that it is asphalted yet, just that the dirt road as been smoothed. Still, it means Koh Ker is within three hours from Siem Reap, at least until the rains come.

Koh Ker is a lost Angkorian capital, built by one king who decided to decamp here from Angkor and built to his own glory, only to be abandoned as soon as he died. One cannot help thinking of those civil servants who have just been deported to the jungles of Myanmar by the Generals to begin work in their ministries of the new Burmese capital before the capital has even been built. History gives us many other such follies, but the result at Koh Ker is yet another complex of temples, these ones still more of less consumed by the Cambodian jungle.


The most spectacular ruin is Prasat Thom, a vast step piramid, looking like an Aztec sun temple, rising thirty metres above the jungle. You can climb up a rickety wooden ladder to the top for a truly spectacular view of the whole of northern Cambodia, from the Dangrek Mountains in the north to the Tonle Sap in the south.

The other temples are less impressive, but evocative of what Angkor must have been before the clearances.

We stopped at one for lunch, a wonderful spread of the kind of things that Khmers like to eat on a New Year's picnic in the woods. It was all very authentically Cambodian, including the three hour return journey of karaoke videos, including a fine selection of children's hits including a Khmer rendition of "Old MacDonald had a farm" and the ten-minute extended remix of "Happy Birthday to you"...