Trail of the Lion King

One of the places that most visitors to Asia have on their must see list is the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia. For a long time I had little interest on the basis that I’d seen loads of temples when I lived in Korea and more often than not they bored me shitless.

I think what eventually won me over to the idea of having a look at Angkor Wat was the worry that whenever in the future I ran into someone who had been ‘travelling’ they would shake their head sadly and tell me how much I’d missed out. I decided that if I’d been I could at least cut them short with “Seen it, just another temple”.

Except, when we did get around to going a couple of months ago, it was anything but just another temple. So much so that I quickly booked a return visit to see a bit more of the area. Of course, I checked to see if there was any football going on and pleasingly there was. As impressive as the temples are, a weekend is usually better if there is a match in the mix.

We’d hired a driver on both visits, but turned down a guide as the benefit of knowledgeable insights would likely be outweighed by the yapping needed to impart the information. I much prefer to wander around looking at stuff in peace, even at the expense of not necessarily knowing what I’m looking at.

Whilst Angkor Wat had been understandably busy on that first visit, it didn’t take too much effort to find areas where there were very few people about. Perhaps it was because we avoided the sunrise and sunset crowds and pitched up in the middle of the day.

The main site had numerous courtyards and corridors, with quite detailed wall carvings and plenty of statues. Other nearby areas were equally impressive, especially the buildings that had trees growing out of them.

As good as the temples were, the experience was improved by the presence of monkeys. Particularly the young ones bathing in a puddle or the even younger ones testing their mother’s patience with their recklessness.

There were also bats in one of the towers. We smelled them before we saw them. At first I thought some badly behaved monk had just taken a piss in a quiet corner but we soon realised that the stench was bat urine. We watched them coming and going for a while, doing our best not to stand beneath any of them.

On that first trip we did some eating and drinking in the pub street area, including some frog’s legs in what is clearly still a very french influenced area. We also had draft beers for fifty cents, pricing which I imagine would horrify any bar owner in Paris.

Second time we ended up in a cocktail bar where the drinks were a little more expensive but the dim sum made up for it.

There’s more to Siem Reap than just Angkor Wat and so for our non-football stuff on the second trip we headed out to Beng Mealea. It’s an unrestored ruined temple about an hour’s drive away and billed as an Indiana Jones-type place.

I think I liked Beng Mealea better than the main Angkor Wat temples. It was a lot smaller and we were able to do an initial circuit around the perimeter. The jungle had reclaimed a lot of the stonework, with arches collapsed under pressure from tree roots and with piles of carved stones cascading down by the outer walls.

After a lap of the exterior, we took the elevated walkway that winds through the inside of the temple. I was surprised at how few visitors were doing the same and quite often we got stretches of the path entirely to ourselves. Most of the other visitors were Chinese tour parties or couples where the dynamic seemed to be that of pro photographer and model rather than boyfriend and girlfriend.

After a quick stir-fry lunch that consisted mainly of ginger we were off to the game in the C-League, the Cambodian top-tier. Our driver parked up right next to the main stand alongside the tv outside broadcast van.

We still had an hour or so until kick-off, but there were already people buzzing around outside. A line of stalls sold snacks, drinks and shirts. We bought a shirt for our grandson as I thought the combination of the orange colour and a tiger badge would be something that he’d go for.

There wasn’t a separate ticket office, just a couple of young girls sat by the entrance taking money. It was a dollar to get in, although I think that was just for the covered main stand admission. It looked as if you could watch for free from the open terracing that curved towards the goals.

There were already quite a few people inside, no doubt keen to be under cover if the rain came. A group of young lads next to us all had a few tickets each. They were different to the stubs that we had and were probably complimentary. If that’s what it takes to get people watching, I’m all for it. It may have worked as the attendance was eventually announced as being over fourteen hundred.

The warm up was more interesting than most with the ref practicing his hand actions, pacing out imaginary free kicks and then waving invisible players away. I hope that whilst he was visualising aspects of the upcoming game he was dealing with the likes of Pele or Maradona. “I said ten yards, Diego. Now.”

Angkor Tiger were in orange with Svay Rieng in a blue kit. A fella in the crowd told me that the visitors had endured a six-hour bus journey to reach Siem Reap. That doesn’t seem like ideal preparation. The pitch wasn’t ideal either with the lack of grass in the goalmouths a throwback to how all pitches used to be once you got beyond the first few weeks of the season.

Svay Rieng had a couple of players who stood out, mainly for their appearance. Their keeper, Dimitry Asnin from Belarus, appeared to be about a foot taller than everyone else on the field and he looked a good twenty years older than most of the other players. My first thought was that it was Dave Beasant’s dad.

The other fella to stand out for the visitors was their beardy left-winger Harley Willard. He’s a young English lad who last played for Maidstone. Fair play to him for travelling to Cambodia for a contract. Maybe he fancied seeing the temples.

Tiger opened the scoring in the first half when a cross was turned in too low down for the wrong-footed Beasant Senior to reach. He seemed pretty pissed off about it but no doubt cheered up later after making two very good saves at full stretch that I doubt a shorter keeper would have reached.

Angkor held their lead into the second half until a cross from Willard was nodded home by Svay Rieng’s Brazilian striker. I reckon the header was probably going wide but it hit a rut in the goalmouth and turned sharply to just sneak in at the back post.

There were no more goals and it finished up even. It was a decent effort from both sides, although I couldn’t help but smile at the thought that in the previous game I’d been to I’d been watching Lionel Messi drag Argentina out of the group stages of the World Cup. That’s some contrast.