Cambodia/Thailand: mystical jungle and city lights

No matter how hard the fan blades whip through the air, it's no use. We're suffocating. On this late afternoon, the humid heat is so sticky that the few Europeans seated on the covered terraces of the cafés in Siem Reap's French Quarter sink into their wicker armchairs. In the rainy season, the small town in northern Cambodia, gateway to the Angkor site just 5 km away, is an oven... So it's iced tea for everyone, or cold beer, or, for the more adventurous, a Tomb Raider cocktail created at the Red Piano bar by Angelina Jolie.

In the street, the tuk-tuk drivers, known here as motorbike trailers, lie on their machines, waiting for the hypothetical customer... It's quite simple, it's like being on a film set, a sort of Indochina or Coup de torchon, reminiscent of a bygone era. Especially as this French quarter, with its arcaded houses, looks so much like colonial Africa with a Durassian atmosphere. Minus the laterite streets.

Suddenly, rain. A deluge tumbling down from an indigo sky in large, warm drops, loud and saving at the same time... It's almost dark, so dark is the sky. But the air is fresher, and you can breathe easier. The monsoon - from April to October - is marvellously sensual, sketching under soaked T-shirts bodies trying to escape the rinsing. And then nothing. The "outdoor shower" episode ends as suddenly as it began. Night, the real night, falls and the flashy lights of "Pub Street", as it's called, come on. Let the party begin... It will be held in one or other of the cafés lined up shoulder to shoulder and frequented almost exclusively by foreigners.

Asian markets

The district is a must-see when you stay in Siem Reap, as is the night market, which resembles all the markets in South-East Asia: mountains of fruit, pyramids of vegetables, huts set up here and there, piles of clothes, counterfeit goods, but also, in the souvenir shops and often lost among the usual knick-knacks, a few well-turned pieces of silverware and some superb traditional leather puppets. In any case, it's best not to return to the hotel too late, because the next day is Angkor. And Angkor is best visited at sunrise.

Let's set off, then, by air-conditioned bus, motorbike trailer or even elephant, towards this dazzling site. Angkor is a marvel of Khmer culture that you must see at least once in your life, a testament to human genius that can only be compared with what was once done in the Nile Valley. With a thousand temples spread over 400 km2, it is an ancient fortified city built over six centuries, between 800 and 1300, and which at its peak was home to between 750,000 and one million inhabitants. If you don't want to get too lost, remember that twenty or so king-builders left their mark here, establishing gigantic sanctuaries in the middle of the jungle - mountain temples, that's what they call them - charged with symbolism, first Hindu then Buddhist, religious edifices bristling with towers towering high above the forest canopy. Kilometres of galleries covered in bas-reliefs, domes, terraces, flights of steps...

It would take days, weeks, months and even a lifetime to explore such an area, with so many temples, more or less well preserved, more or less accessible.

Attacking the mountain temples

So we select. Especially if you're part of a business tourism group that doesn't usually have a lot of time on its hands, but which is generally entitled to VIP treatment that makes you forget the hours that go by too quickly. "We receive a good dozen groups every year, mainly from France. On request, and with the agreement of the relevant authorities, we organise grandiose dinners in the temples," says Adriano Dennhardt, director of Phoenix Voyages in Siem Reap. We light up the ruins with over a thousand candles, bring in traditional dancers and create a mise-en-scène that builds to a crescendo. It's simply magnificent. But we do a lot of other things too: treasure hunts along the river, sunset cocktails on local gondolas, quad biking in the countryside, horse or motorbike rides through the rice fields, boat trips on the Tonlé Sap lake, visits to floating villages...".

Let's start with His Majesty Angkor Wat, the greatest religious monument ever built by mankind and erected in the first half of the 12th century by Sûryavarman II. This eight-hectare sandstone monster, surrounded by a moat, is known the world over, if only in photographs. These stone pyramids, known here as mountain temples, were for the Khmers a way of symbolising Mount Meru, the mythical centre of the Hindu universe. In fact, Angkor Wat is an immense structure on three levels, each surrounded by a gallery punctuated by four corner towers. You enter via a sort of ramp, pass through a porch wide enough for elephants to pass through, come across statues of lions and an eight-armed Vishnu, and linger over bas-reliefs of apsaras, young celestial nymphs, of whom there are 2,000 in Angkor Wat, and countless scenes depicting battles, military parades, Khmer mythology, the judgement of souls with the fortunate chosen and the damned sinners... Then there are the steep staircases, all the towers, the dry pools and the sun-drenched esplanades...

Aside from the wonder of it all, the fatigue is there, and we'll try to get over it by sitting on a stone bench in the shade. Nor are we averse to taking a long lunch break on the spot, or even in Siem Reap, which is only ten minutes away, before tackling another colossus, almost as famous and just as popular: the Bayon. From the outside, it's a bit disappointing. Admittedly, the building, erected in the 12th century by Jayavarman VII, is very compact and quite damaged. Then you walk through the walls, climb to the third level and the miracle happens. The galleries are covered with frescoes - undoubtedly the most famous in Angkor - which, in addition to depictions of battles, depict scenes of daily life that are actually quite rare on the site. There are fishermen, cockfights, wrestlers, a circus, carts loaded with provisions, men preparing a meal... But above all, there are the 54 towers adorned with gigantic stone faces, all these human figures sculpted in the mists of time, these enigmatic smiles that turn towards us, a little benevolent, a little mocking... The emotional sequence is guaranteed.

The roots of beauty

However, when it comes to emotion, Ta Prohm is the place to be. And plenty of it. Because, even if the building is not one of the best-preserved remains in Angkor, it is right at the top of the "must-see" list. And why is that? Because it's buried in the jungle, because the gigantic roots of the trees - cheese trees and ficus - encircle its sandstone stones to the point of suffocation. It's spectacular, sometimes frightening, and it's deliberate. In fact, the École française d'Extrême-Orient has chosen to keep this temple as it was to show visitors what the entire site looked like when it was discovered at the end of the 19th century. The visitor passes through low, very dark galleries, a sort of mossy tunnel with openings overlooking accumulations of large fallen stones, veers right or left into other equally dark tunnels before suddenly emerging into a square of raw light; a courtyard whose walls, ancient doorframes and statues are all oppressed by enormous roots. Moving from the very dark to the very bright, from narrow doorways to the sudden suffocation of vegetation, from shattered blocks of stone to the songs of birds circling in the high branches of the jungle, is almost a psychoanalytical journey. It's both terrifying and marvellous, dreamlike and tangible. It's rare to find an atmosphere like this; it's unique and touching in the extreme.

After that, we return to Siem Reap, happy to have had a great trip, but tired. So we won't balk at a foot massage, which has almost doubled in size. Or the whole body, for that matter. There are plenty of salons, both in the French Quarter and in the big hotels. It's a wonderful experience, and above all it's not "Sex and the City" - not necessarily, anyway - as the art of massage is an integral part of Cambodian culture, with mothers and fathers massaging their children, who in turn massage their parents. And then, far from the old market and the bellowing of Pub Street, otherwise known as "Thirsty Street" by the tourist guides, you'll discover two addresses - and what addresses they are! -We'll discover contemporary Siem Reap by visiting two artists who receive small groups in their studios. Workshops open to visitors? It's an opportunity not to be missed. All the more so as chic-casual cocktails and even dinners are organised in the presence of the masters of the premises.

One is a stylist, the other a visual artist and painter. Of Madagascan origin, he studied at the leading schools of applied arts in Paris. While still a student, he came to Cambodia as a tourist, discovering Khmer art during a course at Angkor, then the work of silk, particularly sophisticated in the north of the country. He made it his material, worked and reworked it, and now creates collections that he shows at fashion shows in New York and London. There are dresses, of course, with cuts inspired by the architectural elegance of the 1930s, but also scarves and fashion accessories. The colours are deep and the whole thing is incredibly light. Her creations are affordable, but they're still haute couture... So, sure, the prices aren't those you'd find on the night market. But the souvenir will mark out your trip much better than a hideous trinket or a supposed reproduction of a local piece of art.

Andy Warhol is not far away

Lim Muy Theam studied at the Ecole Boulle and the Beaux-Arts in Paris. His hyper-modern, hyper-coloured creations can be seen in the very chic boutiques of the city's luxury hotels, such as the Raffles and the Sofitel. They are elephants, Buddhas and many other things, objects with contemporary lines, practically identical and yet all different because they are handmade. Andy Warhol is not far away. But it's his paintings that really catch the eye. Multicoloured portraits or scenes of crowds painted in acrylic. A reflection on the human condition, and perhaps also on the inextricable solitude of human beings. Very good painting, which appeals to the Americans. For their part, the French are a little more reticent, no doubt judging it to be too decorative. In any case, it's light years away from the surrounding countryside, which we'll be travelling through, if possible, on a motorbike trailer; scenes of ancestral life, made up of ox carts, improbable vehicles, peasants ploughing their rice fields with water up to their knees and bent-over women accompanied by naked children transplanting rice.

However, far from the bucolic scenes, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, forgotten by visitors for too long and only a forty-minute flight away, should not be overlooked... A martyred capital - which we'll come back to later - set on the banks of the mythical Mekong, but also a metropolis in the making which is clearly opening up to business tourism by inaugurating luxury hotels from international chains. At first, you might think "well... there's the Mekong and all that surrounds it, and then that's it". And we have to admit that we're a bit right, as the rest isn't so obvious. So we take a mini-cruise on the river to discover the gleaming gold of the royal palace on one side and the floating villages on the other. Fishermen's cottages made of odds and ends, where life seems to gain in the sweetness of living what it lacks in earthly riches. Cocktails on board, or better still, a tasting of Khmer specialities, almost as elaborate as their Thai cousins, but less spicy.

But everything comes to an end, and so you have to leave the tranquillity of the Mekong to get back to the heart of the city, with its lines of wheel-to-bumper cars and motorbikes, its exhaust pipes that know nothing about carbon standards and the din that goes with it. So, after many attempts, we still managed to cross this hallucinating river-front boulevard in one piece to reach the urbanised pavement leading to the royal palace.

Phnom penh, the Mekong and the royal palace

Built in 1866 by Khmer and French architects, this royal palace is open to the public, but we won't be visiting everything, as the royal flats remain private. So why not linger in the treasury building, the banqueting hall, the Napoleon III pavilion and, at the end of an alleyway, at the gates of a sublime silver pagoda, completely renovated by King Sihanouk in 1962 and whose floor is covered with no less than five thousand slabs of this metal? If you want to learn more about Khmer culture, don't miss the exceptional national museum, which exhibits some of the country's finest artefacts, some of which are veritable masterpieces dating back thousands of years.

Duty to remember

Alongside this magnificence - and even if the agencies are understandably reluctant to include the darker side of Cambodia's history in their programme - the less sensitive souls will not turn down the invitation to visit one of the most notorious detention centres of the sinister Pol Pot era. Located right in the centre of the city, it was a discreet place at the time, since the sad sire had completely emptied the capital of its inhabitants for four years in order to 're-educate' them to work in the fields. For their part, anyone who even remotely resembled an intellectual was almost directly assassinated: teachers, professors, journalists, doctors, artists...

No visitor escapes unscathed from this "S-21 centre", a former school where you can still make out the French inscriptions and whose classrooms had been transformed into tiny cells - the word is weak. According to the Cambodian documentation centre, 20,000 people passed through there and only 14 detainees survived. One of them was an old man, Mr Chum Manh, a young man at the time and a witness who now acts as a guide for schoolchildren and, on request, for certain groups and personalities. Obviously, it will take some time to recover from such an experience. But, without wishing to be peremptory, it is part of humanity's duty to remember, and perhaps it will encourage people to be more vigilant. That's what travelling is for.

Then it's back to life as we head off to the popular markets serving, among other things, cockroaches, locusts and silkworms, all lovingly caramelised. Understandably, some people prefer the bars of the big hotels, the rooftop lounges, the souvenir shops, the spas or the cool swimming pools... Then it's off to another runway - the fashion is for combos - just an hour's flight away.

Bangkok, an hour's flight away

Landing in Bangkok. A landing, one might say, given the Thai capital's full bite at the 21st century. One night, one day... It's a short time, but perhaps it's enough to soak up the contemporary South-East Asian way of life. In a quick city tour, you can try to understand a little of the grammar of this sprawling megalopolis, where life is based on both a thousand-year-old tradition and the conviction that the future is nothing short of radiant. The result is monster traffic jams coloured by candy-pink taxis, a Chinatown with an insane number of super-golden jewellery shops between two fragrant markets, and sublime old colonial buildings that benefit from the shade of towers built in fourth gear. There's also a river crowded with overcrowded barges, gleaming temples, a preserved royal palace and peaceful traditional houses transported back to the 1950s by Jim Thompson, an aesthete spy who mysteriously disappeared, red-light districts and alleyways dotted with lofts occupied by foreign craftsmen and artists... and finally, in keeping with the Thais' all-consuming passion for spending-just-for-spending, a host of ultra-air-conditioned shopping centres. Groups will not want to miss out: some will prefer the hyper-specialised electronics and new technology galleries, others will stray into the floors devoted to cheap but well-cut clothes, and still others will lose themselves in the chic rows of boutiques selling major international brands.

And if, after all that, there's still a little time left, you can always try a Thai cookery class at the world-renowned Blue Elephant, expertly run by charismatic boss Nooror Somany Steppe, or cruise the khlong, the original canals, on long-tailed boats. But in any case, no one can resist a sunset cocktail on the sublime roof top of the Sofitel So or the Centara's Red Sky, the city's most beautiful terraces, overlooking the night as it prepares to party. And when it comes to partying, Bangkok hardly needs any lessons.