So today has mostly been a waste of time. The plan was to go up to Anlong Veng near the Thai border and visit the house of Ta Mok, one of Pol Pot’s butchers. The day after we would rent a motorbike and make a day trip to the Preah Vihear temples. 

We got to Anlong Veng by taxi (for some reason there is no public transport) and quickly found a guesthouse. Despite the rain that had started to fall we headed over to Ta Mok’s house which turned out to be pretty much nothing, just a few old buildings and the rusting remains of a truck. Pretty much all available information was in Khmer too so we didn’t really learn anything.

  • Ta Mok’s house 
  • Murals of Angkor Wat and a map of Cambodia 
  • The inside of the house
  • The old radio communications truck

Normally even small towns, like Kampong Thom, will have places for renting motorbikes but we couldn’t see anything so we asked at our guesthouse. Not only were the bikes quite expensive, they aren’t even able to go all the way to the Preah Vihear temples so we would have to go to the information booth then rent onward transportation from there. That simply isn’t worth either the trouble or the cost so we had to abandon those plans. Tomorrow we will head back to Siem Reap and,  if we feel like it, join a tour to Preah Vihear.

Coming here, only to realize we couldn’t do things like we planned is very disappointing. Worst of all, if I had just studied the guide book a bit better we could have avoided all the trouble. As for Anlong Veng,  there isn’t really anything to see except the highly mediocre Ta Mok house. This place is definitely not worth visiting.