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Published: March 13th 2007
Cambodia wasn't somewhere I'd planned to visit on this trip and my ending up there was all a bit random. I'd first been about 6 years ago with my sis and her friend Anabelle and absolutely loved it..... so now when I found myself in Bangkok with 3 weeks to kill before I needed to meet Helen and with my original plan to travel Thailand not quite turning out as I'd expected, well, booking a flight to Seam Reap seemed like a good idea ;0) I'm not usually a fan of revisiting places I've been to before... given the choice I'd normally opt for somewhere new.... but there are exceptions and this would definitely be one... I am just a weee bit of an temple/history fiend, something I'm pretty sure Jen will attest to after she put up with being dragged around Angkor for several days last time we were here ;0)
The change in temperature hit me as soon as I walked out of Siem Reap airport - strangely I hadn't expected it to be hotter here than in Bangkok. Fortunately though, in an unusual moment of organisation for me, I'd already booked my accommodation so arrived feeling very
pleased with myself, not to mention rather relieved at the thought of not having to lug my increasingly heavy rucksack around town in search of a bed! Even better the place I'd booked provided transport from the airport, so having found the guy waving a sign with my name I settled into his tuk tuk and headed into town. Easy! The road into town from the airport is lined with all the big expensivo type hotels, which seemed to have multiplied several times over since last I was here and which alas my budget still wasn't stretching to :0( So having had all that 5* luxury waved infront of me I arrived in town to check into my very nice, but not quite in the same league, guest house and headed out to explore. Siem Reap was still very much the placed I'd been to before - of course there were more hotels, restaurants and internet cafes, but then I remember there being a lot 6 years ago. The people hadn't changed much either - smiling faces saying hello and asking where you wanted to go. I love walking round new places to explore, plus I probably have a slight
public transport phobia for short distances, but here that's challenged by the locals who really don't like you to walk anywhere - tuk tuk and moto drivers are in abundance, all wanting to whisk you off somewhere for a 'good price'... and all said with a smile. Just in the 50m to the end of my road I'd was heckled at least three times with a 'hey miss, where you want to go', 'You want to see sunset?' etc etc etc. And if you actually show interest in using one of them any other driver in the vicinity seems to appears from nowhere and come over, not to compete or offer a better price but rather just to have a chat and see how the negotiations go.
One of my lasting memories from our previous trip was watching sun rise over Angkor Wat, the most well known of the 9th-15th century Khmer ruins found in the jungle outside Siem Reap. Having decided this would be a great way to start my visit this time I booked the airport tuk tuk guy via my guest house and headed of to bed for an early night. All too soon it seemed
my alarm clock was going off and I found myself falling out of bed, into my clothes and heading downstairs to the dark and eerily quiet reception to wait for my man.... where I waited, and waited, and waited and waited and... After 20 mins I was getting a little worried, or perhaps more peeved that I'd gotten up in the middle of the night for nothing!! Another English girl was having similar issues at the hostel next door, except her tuk tuk finally turned up! Having given up all hope on mine I hopped in with her and two American girls she'd hooked up with and sped off. The atmosphere at Angkor as everyone waited for sunrise was exactly as I remembered... people sitting all along the base of inner wall, the Apsara dancers carved into the wall behind watching as everyone faced the tall peaks of Angkor rising into the early morning sky. Despite the number of people, probably a few hundred, the vibe was quiet and chilled... everyone was relaxed, chatting in hushed voices whilst they waited for what turned out to be an amazing sunrise, the only other sound being the clicking noise as everyone tried
to get that perfect photo!
With sunrise over we headed off for some brekkie at one of the many restaurants lining the area outside Angkor Wat and then went in search of our tuk tuk driver, to discover that whilst we'd been watching sunrise and stuffing ourselves with scrambled eggs he'd called in the reserves... his younger brother who had a motorcycle for little old moi! Great! The only small, minor, rather large problem being my hate of motorbikes... I've had a few sliding experiences on bumpy, muddy tracks that were euphemistically called 'roads' elsewhere in Asia and that was enough motorbiking for one lifetime as far as I was concerned. But faced with jumping on the moto or heading back into town with the girls (who'd just come for sunrise) I decided it was time to get over that particular little phobia..... once I'd spent a few animated minutes explaining/miming to the young moto guy (who can have been all of about 15 and spoke only a little English), that he had to go really really really slowly... he must have got the message though because he was a real sweetie and spent the rest of the day
checking that I was OK and being completely relaxed about where I wanted to go and how long I wanted to stay there.
A short drive away from Angkor Wat is the ancient city of Angkor Thom - the first stop on my moto tour. Built in the late 12th Century by King Jayavarman VII it's surrounded by a 100m wide moat and accessed via one of 5 gates - there's one at each of the four cardinal points with the fifth being the Victory Gate. A causeway spans the moat at each gate, lined on one side with 54 devas and the other with 54 asuras, all giants leaning back with their muscles bulging in a tug of war pose and hauling on a naga serpent, believed to be in reference to the Churning of the Sea of Milk myth. Across the causeways loom the gates themselves with three towers rising above them, the largest of which has 2 giant opposing faces... perhaps the face of a 'Bodhisattva' known in Cambodia as Lokesvara, 'the Lord who looks in every direction.', or maybe King Jayavarman himself. At the base of the gate is a three headed elephant, whose vertical
trunks form pillars that tug at lotuses.
Continuing through the gate, after I'd stopped to take rather a few photo's, the road leads to the centre of Angkor Thom and one of my favorite sites at Angkor, the Bayon. Arriving so early I had the place pretty much to myself to begin with and spent a good hour perched at the top of the upper terrace, reading my book, surrounded by the 37 remaining towers and 200 odd huge heads with smiling faces that adorn them, staring down as if watching my every move. Eventually though the tour groups started to arrive again, no doubt having been whisked backed to their nice 5* hotels after sunrise for a posh brekkie and sleep, and gradually finding myself becoming a bit of a tourist attraction I moved off to explore the lower galleries. Below the upper terrace of the Bayon are two galleried enclosures, both carved with intricate scenes. The outer wall of the outer gallery depicts historical and everyday life, such as a marching Khmer army complete with wagons of their provisions at the rear and a battle on the Tonle Sap between Khmers and Chams (easily distinguished by their
different hair styles… apparently). The inner gallery is raised above ground level and its bas-reliefs are decorated for the most part with scenes from Hindu mythology.
Leaving the Bayon behind we passed the 350m long Terrace of the Elephants (carved as you might expect with images of elephants and garuda's) which was used by King Jayavarman VII as a viewing platform for things like ceremonial occasions and military parades. The rest of the day was taken up with more temples, favorites being Ta Prohm and Bantreay Kdei - the former is infamous through the Tomb Raider movie and was far the busier of the two, in that sense I preferred Bantreay Kdei. Unlike many of the other temples here these have been pretty much left to the surrounding jungle, which has encroached and overgrown the area to the point of trees seemingly growing out of the ruins... I couldn't quite decide if the large twisted roots of the trees were more dependent on the wall for support... or if they were in fact holding up the wall... I imagine its both ;0) Bantreay Kdei was built in a hurry and was not well constructed, something which has contributed to
A giant tug of war
Many of giants heads were stolen by looters, so the few remaining ones were removed by the authorities for safe-keeping and replaced with replicas.its deterioration but I think added to its charm.
My last stop of the day was the Land Mine Museum.... eventually.... several stops to ask directions and a minor detour down some rather rutted bumpy roads later it seemed this was a new one for my moto driver to. Opened in 1999 the museum is a simple corrugated iron building, packed full with different types of defused bombs, information on their use and the damage they inflict - from the directional Claymore mines that spray ball bearings in a specific direction to maximise damage to the “Bouncing Betty” that is designed to jump upwards to waist height on detonation. The museum is simple but so effective in getting its message across. The guides at the museum are land mine victims themselves - amputees and all children. Money from the museum and donations supports them, providing food, a home and paying for them to attend the local school. At the back is a small recreated 'mined' area (using diffused ones of course), which demonstrates how easily mines are hidden by the undergrowth. The museum is the work of Aki Ra, who as a child was forced to become a soldier
first for the Khmer Rouge and then the Vietnamese army, fighting, making bombs and laying mines. He joined the Cambodian Army when the Vietnamese finally pulled out and continued the fight against the Khmer Rouge. As an adult in the 1990's when the UN sent peacekeepers to Siem Reap he worked in a demining unit and today still makes regular trips to the Thai/Camboidan border to search for and defuse mines, often alone and without any sophisticated detection or safety equipment. Nobody knows for sure how many mines remain in Cambodian soil today - estimates range from three to six million. Laid by a number of factions from the 1960s onward, many were the work of Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who deployed them to maim and terrorize rather than kill.
I was feeling slightly lardy from all the Thai and Khmer curries I'd been consuming over the previous few weeks, so on my second day I decided to hire a bike and cycle round the ruins.... or at least that was the plan! After a rather leisurely breakfast where I got chatting to an English guy, Dan, who it turned out came from just down the road at home (many
conversations about dodgy nightspots we used to frequent....), by the time I'd actually hired the bike and set off it was lunch time. The cycle out to the ruins only took about 30 mins and was nice and flat, so should have been easy, but when combined with setting off at the hottest part of the day... well, possibly not one if the better moves I've made ;0) Once I'd recovered I spent the rest of the afternoon just wondering around Angkor Wat, people watching and trying to understand the Hindu scenes depicted in the bas relief work of the galleries... such as the 32 hells and 37 heavens carved into the outer gallery
I got back to the hostel just in time for a quick shower before dashing out to meet Dan for a beer..... except a rather persuasive tuk tuk guy outside the cafe convinced us that sunset back at the temples was a really good way to end the day. So it was back to Angkor and Phnom Bakheng. Atop a natural hill 60m high this Hindu site was built at the end of the 9th Century as the centre of the first kingdom of Angkor
- now it's a popular tourist spot for sunset! I'd come to see sunset last time I was here and to be honest had been a little disappointed - we'd been wowed by sunrise over Angkor Wat - the calm stillness of the still half asleep watchers combined with hushed whispers and the clicking of camera's created the perfect atmosphere.... in comparison sunset was loud and rowdy with people chatting at full voice and jostling each other out of the way to try and get that picture. This time as expected we found ourselves walking up the hill with several hundred others. At the top it was still loud and people were still pushing but the sunset was fantastic - last time the sky had been overcast and sunset a bit of a non event, this time it was amazing - I still prefer sunrise but it was worth coming back to Phnom Bakheng a second time.
Maybe I was feeling guilty for my lazy second day, maybe the beer made me forget what it feels like getting up at 4.30am.... but somehow I thought I hadn't had enough early starts recently and that seeing sunrise again on my
last day was the way forward.... huh? This time my tuk tuk turned up.... and as we arrived at Angkor to find that the sky was far too cloudy to see anything I tried not to think about all those extra zzz's I could have had :0( But as I had gotten up in the middle of the night to be here I spent the next few hours exploring Angkor Wat - I'd discovered last time that after sunrise a lot of the tour groups head back into town for brekkie and a bit of a snooze before embarking on the rest of the days sights.... leaving Angkor comparatively empty for those that stay around. Angkor Wat was built by King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city and is by far the best preserved of the temples here.. and usually the most croweded. It was initially build as a Hindu temple, dedicated to Vishnu, but later became a Buddhist site. Crossing the moat and entering through an imposing gateway Angkor spreads out in front of you - along the central walkway to the main temple enclosures and the towers that rise above
them. Having climbed up the rather steep steps to the top platform I spent a good hour sat up there pretty much on my own just chilling out and taking in the amazing views over the ancient city below. Back at the moat I met my slightly concerned tuk tuk man who thought he'd lost me and was rather amazed that anyone could spend quite that long in the same spot! The rest of the day was, well, more temples ;0)
After 4 fab days in Siem Reap it was time to move on again...next up - cooking up a feast in Battambang and the 'scenic route' back to Bangkok.
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Ladyexapt
non-member comment
Great Post!
Having just returned from Angkor Wat (for the second time in two years) I related to your post. I too am a bit of a temple fiend, and can never get enough of the beauty. The sunrise at Angkor is awesome!