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Siem Reap is a good few hundred kilometres from PP, so to get there we had to take - you guessed it - another bus. We used the same bus company we used from Saigon to PP, but the bus was a lot crappier and less comfortable - literal inches for the legs. The journey was long and bumpy, interspersed by a couple of stops at a local markets. We stopped at one where at one a local girl was walking around with a big spider which she quickly put on the shirts or hands of tourists, and she asked for money to take it back!
There were also at least 30 girls trying to sell fruit to the hords of tourists getting off the buses to use the restrooms - they particularily targeted the men saying you promise to buy from me etc and if they bought from someone else I literally saw tears produced, and often the men shelled out again - ah how some interactions transcend cultural boundaries.
We also had a short ferry ride on the journey and during the ferry crossing, Ed was woken from a nap by what he thought sounded like a
young girl screaming. On closer inspection, the noise turned out to be coming from a pig which was tied to the roof rack of a truck next to us and obvously in great distress. Hopefully the poor thing wasn't going as far as us - Kat was no happy about the lack of regard for the animal's comfort.
We arrived in the town as dusk approached, just after a torrential rain storm. We had arranged with the owner of the guest house we were staying at for him to send a tuk tuk to pick us up on our arrival, but our bus company had transferred our ticket to a different company and we were stuck at the bus station (rather than the office of bus company where our tuk tuk awaited) to get ourselves to our guest house. It turned out that we could get a tuk tuk 'free' of charge but there was a heavy suggestion that we should make some payment for it. Reluctantly we took them up on their offer and our driver sullenly accepted a dollar tip, irritated that we hadn't booked him the next day to take us to the temple complexes.
Over dinner and few beers at the guest house we decided, along with a couple of friends (Patti and Warren) we had met on the bus, to take the dawn tour of the temples. Getting up at 5am the next day to get ready (after two nights of really bad sleep in PP) we really weren't feeling it, but it was the sensible choice as we were only there for one day and as the sun slowly rose in the sky (what Homer called in the Illiad 'rosy fingered dawn'), and we rushed through the cool early morning air in the tuk tuk our spirits rose.
Access to the site is controlled by a sophisticated ticketing system (complete with photo ID) and a days pass is 25 USD (a fortune in local terms). According to our guide book, there are somerthing like 10m visitors each year and 25% of Cambodia's GDP is generated from the entrance fee!
We were at one of the biggest and most well known temples, Angkor Wat, for the dawn - for the record which we didn't previously know Angkor Wat is only one specific temple not the entire temple complex. In the slowly brightening
Poor piggie on the way to market
Kat hates this photo but knows it's important to show the Cambodian's different ways of life dawn, we walked across the 100 m long bridge over the huge lake that surrounds it, and wondered what awaited us.
As we might have guessed, what was waiting for us was a beautiful sprawling grass area dotted with various constructions, and a small crowd of people concentrated on a small lake in the centre of the complex which the sun rises directly above and is the preferred spot for tourists. Entrepeneurial kids run around, bringing you little plastic chairs to sit on and typical SE Asian 'crack' coffee (strong as hell, made with condensed milk) while you try and take in the moment.
By way of introduction, wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat) has the following to say:
Angkor Wat (or Angkor Vat) is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation—first Hindu, dedicated to Vishnu, then Buddhist. The temple is the epitome of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.
Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple mountain and the later galleried temple, based on early South Indian architecture, with key features such as the Jagati. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs and for the numerous devatas (guardian spirits) adorning its walls.
Later, our guide walked us round this particluar complex, pointing out various points of interest. He spoke pretty good english and seemed very knowledgable generally. At other times, we thought he was making stuff up when we asked him a question he didnt know the answer to - on one occasion when we asked what these little holes in a highe 300 ft long
A local delicacy
A heap of deep fried spiders wall frieze were, he said they were hole where gems had been set, but had been stolen by the Thais.* The holes themsleves were at shin level in the wall and we didn't think this very likely. Having the job of an Angkor tour guide is a lucrative job in local terms and they have to study for years to become qualified - while he was good what we have found is the generally the asians we have encountered struggle with saying 'I dont know' or 'I dont understand'.
There's way too much detail and history to describe in any detail what we saw - hopefully the photos give a flavor of our day. One particuarily funny moment when touring a temple covered with monkey families was when a lone female Japanese tourist got a little too close to a monkey it jumped on her backpack and you have never heard a human squeal like this before - she spoke no English so our attempts to calm her down and help were fruitless - it was actually pretty hilarious in our sleep deprived, cracked up coffee state.
A few hours later after tuk tuk rides to a few
The spider pre deep fry
This one is still alive and was placed on our friend's hand by a local other temples, we were all seriously flagging and managed to persuade our guide to let us go back to our hotel for a bit of food and R&R for a few hours. Sensing that the more sites he took us to and the more he talked to, the more likely he was to get a tip, he reluctantly agreed. We met up again mid afternoon to see the Terrace of the Lepper King, the Terrace of the Elephants and theTa Phrom complex which features in the Tomb Raider film. Nearby, whilst wandering around a huge tower, in the shape of a pyramid and generally getting lost, we came upon a monk standing silently contemplating us. Kat got his photo, and then had one taken with him herself. Most of the temples had many little shrines inside them were you could make an offering or light an incense stickand make a donation.
Meanwhile outside in the real world, time was wasting and we were running out of time to get to the top of the final temple of our choice in time for sunset. Unfortunately, a pack of marauding monkeys, a torrential rainstorm and a local selling rubbings and engravings
Crocs in a local restaurant
There were over 50 that customers could feed! of angkor images which the girls bought a couple of of all resulted in us not being able to make it, and our last view of Angkor was another huge majestic bridge to the Bayon temple (a hugeconstruction with 37 separate towers, many of which have 4 faces carved into them facing the cardinal points of the compass) built in an abandoned city as we drove off through the jungle (on paved roads) back to Siem Reap.
That night we had dinner at a local restaurant called Black Water, the main attraction of which is that it keeps a group of alligators inside the restaurant for diners to look at and feed. (The reason for this peculiar attraction? The building was a fish and alligator farm when the owner bought it and felt guilty about turfing out its inhabitants so they got to stay. As you do).
We really enjoyed our quick tour of Angkor - next time we'd stay for a few more days to properly tour all of the different temples as doing it in 12 hours is pretty intense.
Next stop Koh Samui for some R&R!
(*He didn't like the Thais very much-
Thailand once controlled this area of Cambodia and Siem Reap literally means 'Thailand defeated'!)
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