Advertisement
Published: October 8th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Cliched Angkor Wat
the postcards do a better job! {apologies for the late entries, computers in Cambodia leave something to be desired, plus the last week has been a little hectic.}
Leaving Bangkok, I was (I thought) prepared for what innumerable travelers had told me would be the hellish path to Angkor Wat. In a country of bad roads, the road from Poipet (the border town) to Siem Reap remained infamous. Leaving the guesthouse at 730 am, I arrived at the bus depot and was rushed onto an 8 am bus (I'd planned on making the 9, if not 930). Already harried, I settled into a five-hour bus ride, and happened to meet a couple of girls from Washington state who were planning the same journey, and decided to tag along with them. The bus ride was rather uneventful, but moments from the border armed Thai guards launched onto the bus and proceeded down the aisles rapidly barking orders... I clung to my seat, a look of bewilderment-meets-panic on my face, but quickly relaxed as the guards caught their prey (illegal Cambodians perhaps?), took them off the bus, and motioned us along our way. We arrived at Aranya Prathet and prepared ourselves for the inevitable accostment that accompanies any
foray into the wild, marked as clueless by a large backpack, but managed to make it through Thai immigration quite quickly. The Cambodian side proved a little more difficult, as we were swarmed by men, women, and children, all offering their services as porters, umbrella-holders, guides, drivers, et al., but shunning their attempts we laboured on, and (eventually) managed to make it through Cambodian customs (you'd think a government official would charge the governmentally-mandated price for a visa, but no), a few hundred meters down a dusty, dirty, busy road and into a taxi already looking a little the worse for wear. I emerged from that brief walk a little shell-shocked, as Poipet is the first place I've ever been that felt veritably 'third-world'. I kept on expecting to see a tv crew filming a Christian Children's Fund commercial, where for only cents a day you could save a child from the squalour of its surroundings. It was quite a poignant introduction to a country that would leave me reeling, but more on that in the next entry. The ride to Siem Reap was, well, what was to be expected considering the state of the roads - 5 hours of
the bumpiest, back-breaking drive you could imagine... The driver, impressive in his ability to move at quite a speed all-considering, had to swerve around potholes bigger than my Suzuki at home, dodge massive trucks, tourist mini-buses, as well as herds of kamikazee cows, and warn locals to move off the road by an incessant hand on the horn. It was brutal, but we survived. I'd recommend the Angelina Jolie approach though, which I'm sure is quite a bit more comfortable.
Settled into a beautiful hotel room that cost the three of us a little over US$3 a night, we began a three-day whirlwind of one of the most impressive man-made sites in the world.
Angkor is the result of 600 years of building, created from the 9th to the 15th centuries. It is a huge (HUGE) complex filled with beautiful ruins of temples and libraries, and the walls and courtyards and towers they comprised, in various states of restoration. Hard to believe considering the tenacity of the jungle surrounding the smaller sites, but there was once a veritable city here, the pride and joy of the Khmer empire. The ruins that remain, impressive and widespread as they are,
are but a fraction of what once existed, as all the secular buildings were destroyed being made of wood instead of the hardier stone reserved for religious monuments.
We divided the complex into three days, the first reserved for two of the most impressive sites - Angkor Wat and the Bayon. We hopped on the back of a moto-cab, a lovely carriage pulled by a motorbike, and set off for the temples. Angkor Wat is the image that graces most postcards and abstract ideas of the Angkor-complex, the five-tower sandstone building was (supposedly) built as a funerary temple, and represents key parts of the Hindu creation story. Its walls are lined with incredible bas-reliefs depicting various stories from mythology, and the views from the tower are beautiful. (Embarassingly enough) one of my favorite parts of Angkor Wat was the room where, if you banged your chest, it echoed (a la Tarzan) - I'm so very cultural.
The Bayon is a Buddhist temple located in Angkor Thom ("Great City"). Its most striking feature is that its walls are decorated with 216 faces of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, a Buddhist who attained enlightenment but chose to remain on earth and help
others along the path. The building is a complex white and grey collection of towers, windows, and steps, and from every step the immense faces are visible... Quite creepy, and quite breathtaking.
The next day was devoted to a few more sights in Angkor Thom, the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King, both ruins featuring beautiful bas-reliefs, and, more excitingly, Ta Prohm, the jungle temple of Lara Croft, Indiana Jones, and the cover of the LP Cambodia guide fame. It was absolutely incredible to be able to wander about a temple complex whose ancientness is illustrated by the fact that some parts have been completely taken over by trees that look as ancient as time themselves. We finished the magical afternoon by scrambling up the side of a mountain to the temple Phnom Bahkeng to see the sunset over Angkor. It was quite a strange contrast, for most of our meandering I could count the number of other tourists in eyesight on one hand, and yet for the sunset the entire mountain was crawling with them... Mostly package-tourists who were ushered in for the sunset on their air-con buses and then just as quickly
Jungle
Ta Som away again - odd.
The third day was painfully early, as we were determined to do another one of the 'musts' of Angkor, seeing the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Although it was again completely inundated with package tourists, seeing the sun coming up behind the five-peaks of the temple was majestic. Words really can't explain it. We spent the rest of the day taking in countless more sites, aided by our driver who dreams of becoming a guide, speaking near-flawless english and showing a different side to the temples. On our way back to the hotel he stopped so we could feed the monkeys... And one of those nasty fellows attempted to hop into the carriage, teeth-bared, fiending for the bananas we'd thought were well-concealed beneath the seat. A kick to the head and a quick escape and we survived, but really, where else in the world could a day begin with a sunrise over a centuries-old temple complex and end with a near-attack by a monkey? Angkor Wat is magic.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.106s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 11; qc: 71; dbt: 0.0675s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb