Ahh, Cambodia... Temples of Angkor & More

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July 22nd 2009

Published: July 23rd 2009

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Woz

Angkor Wat

The one and only - from far away

Sue'sdei!! Hello from still-only-occasionally-sunny Cambodia.

Last time I posted I was in being held hostage indoors by increment weather in Sihanoukville, down on the southern coast of the country. Back in Phnom Penh I thought that, with time to kill, I could make my way down here for a few days hoping for some fun in the sun, possibly even a dive. It was beautiful and cloudless up in Phnom Pehn, but who knew weather could change this drastically in a country as small as this? This wasn't one of those short hour-long downpours that I've gotten used to going through every few days on this trip - this one lasted all the way through the day and night and showed no signs of going away. Looking at my calendar, I decided there was more I could do in Laos if I pushed up my itinerary, so I scrapped the Sihanoukville idea and headed straight up north to Siem Reap the next day to start getting down with the ancient kings of the Khmer empire at the temples of Angkor instead!

Forgot to mention in my last entry that catching the bus from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville was an

Angkor Wat

Going up the stairs

entire experience on it's own. As instructed by the agent the day before, I showed up on front of the travel agency early in the morning, and waited and waited for the bus to come... and of course it never did. It was still early, so the agency itself was closed, so I had no choice but to keep waiting until something happened. And I'm learning quick that here in Cambodia if you wait around long enough, something always does happen eventually. Lesson learned. With 5 minutes left to go before the scheduled departure, a guy from the company suddenly rolls up in his moped and urgently tells me to hop on because I can still make the bus if we went right away. He didn't even consider my suggestion that I could just wait for next bus - he was absolutely determined to get me on this one. Once we arrived at the old market (aka the bus station in these parts), the bus was gone, but another guy far too exuberantly told us that it wasn't far away and we could still catch it on the road if we hurry. So we're off again. And traffic here in

Angkor Wat

At the top - not nearly enough room to catch all the pinnacles in one shot so one had to do

Cambodia is basically a pure free-for-all... if you want to go forward you just have to make your move before someone else does. This is especially the rule at intersections as no one pays attention to the brand new shiny stop lights they put up in the middle. The only rule anyone seems to go by is that you generally want to stay on the right side of the road, and not even that holds up much of the time. So when speeding down a busy road on a moped in these conditions, with a 40 lb backpack strapped on, and in a dead heated pursuit of a big orange bus puttering along in the distance in the midst of an ocean of tuk tuks, motorbikes and mobile fruit stands... well, you just have to let go and trust your driver at that point. And I did, and sure enough the adventure came to a happy ending... we caught the bus stopped at - wait, what? - a stop light! And even though my stay in Sihanoukville was only one quick rainy night, I feel like that alone made the trip worth it. Oh yeah, the bus ride itself was

Angkor Wat

Carvings

also fun... just basically the same old dodging and honking at vehicles, people and wandering livestock all the way down for the next 4 hours. Never a dull moment in this country!

So Siem Reap is actually a fun town, beyond the obvious sightseeing one comes here for. The main area is split into three parts - the market, the alleyway, and Bar Street. The alleyway was filled with attractive restaurants and reminded me of some parts of the Village in New York, and bar street is filled with, well, bars of all popular after work drinks spot back at home. This place is definitely booming with all the money coming in from the tourists coming to see the temples, and it makes you want to do more than just sightseeing.

There are so many, many temples here. Angkor Wat is only one of a good amount that are all equally worth seeing. When planning your trip here, you definitely need to schedule at least three full days of sightseeing, and many people stay here up to a week. I planned for the standard three days, so I hired the driver who picked me up from the market

Angkor Wat

Taken from the temple, the outer walls to the city in the background

- er, bus station - Jack, to take me around the circuits. Jack's my age and seems to be a little bit of a political firebrand at times, just adding to the flavor of my visit here. He was a very good guy though, and invited me to come hang out with his friends for dinner and drinks every evening after we wrapped up our daily tour of the temples. Besides him, not many in the group spoke much English, so I just got used to nodding and laughing a lot on cue, and took the plunge and ate whatever they were eating. Cambodians really eat almost anything, and these people lived up to that reputation. Just so you all know, snake and eel are actually pretty decent, but the cubes of chicken blood and the chicken innards were nothing to write home about... and yes I tried all of that!

I also learned that in Cambodia, every time you want to take a sip of your drink you have to get everyone involved with big hearty "cheers" or else you're seen as withdrawn from the conversation. Then, after the cheers, you have to take at least a couple

Sweet Vishnu!

Inside the walls of Angkor Wat

big gulps of your beer or else it'll seem like you're not having a good time. That's the standard drinking etiquette here, and you have to do it every time. Naturally people get pretty tipsy rather quickly following this routine and soon enough big gulps turns into downright chugging the whole glass.. and when you're eating chicken innards, that's all you're thinking about!

And of course there were the Temples of Angkor Wat and the surrounding area. As reported before, there were a great many and each one blows your mind in a different way. Angkor Wat itself is the obvious star of the show, and with good reason. I visited it twice during my stay, once for a thorough initial tour and then again early the next day to watch the sun rise within the temple. The temple and surrounding city (now gone, because stone was only considered fit for building structures for the gods) was designed to represent the mythical Hindu universe - a giant square moat surrounding the city represented the sea surrounding the universe, then the lower courtyards representing the continents, and the temple itself representing Mount Meru, where the gods reside. The temple was

Angkor Wat

Taken from the 2nd level

built in three tiers with intertwining galleries on each level, making it an adventure in itself climbing all those stairs all the way to the top. The walls at the bottom of the temple are covered with 800 meters of bas-reliefs, each telling a different story. The most well known is the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, which depicts almost a couple hundred gods and demons, each on opposite sides, churning the sea to extract the elixir of immortality. It is one of the few moments in Hindu mythology where the two sides are shown working together. Another very interesting one shows the ascent and descent of the souls of the dead into heaven and hell, with some very striking similarities to our own conceptions of the two. Overall an amazing place, and even after many hours you still don't feel like you've had enough time to take it all in. But with so many other temples in the area and with so little time, I had to push on before too long...

Angkor Thom has a similar moat and city wall as Angkor Wat, but on a much larger scale and has many more temples within. Bayon

Angkor Wat

was the most spectacular - even though it looked like corroding pillars of rock from far away, when you got inside you see the intricate designs and huge icy looking Buddha faces carved on every wall, as if looking down and observing your moves everywhere you went, 216 in total. Nearby was Baphuon, which was at one point completely taken apart by archeologists just before the Khmer Rouge takeover, who then had to rebuild the whole temple like a jigsaw puzzle after all the records were destroyed by the regime.

A day later I visited Ta Prohm, also known as the Tomb Raider Temple because it provided the set for many key shots of the movie. I never saw the movie, so I just imagined Indiana Jones instead. It's famous because archaeologist never cleared away the giant trees that were almost literally eating up the temples by the time they were discovered, leaving it in the same state in which it was found. There were gigantic tree roots completely devouring entire sections of wall and building inside, and while the temple itself was very impressive, the sight of nature's victory over human construction was a spectacular scene to behold.

Ankor Thom

Entry through the gates to the city

And there were so many many more temples I visited. By day three I was completely burnt out! Ta Keo was a temple left unfinished during construction, so the carvings were lacking though the steep climb up 50 meters of steps to the top, while lots of fun, was something I'm even surprised they even let people do! Preah Khan once housed more than 1,000 Buddhist teachers, making it one of the largest temples in Angkor. It was a massive maze of corridors and entrance ways, and had a few parts that looked like Ta Prohm. Then Preah Neak Pean, a square pool surrounded by four smaller pools in a cruciform shape, must have been a spectacular sight in it's day as it sat inside a massive reservation that fed Preah Kahn.

Feeling templed out yet? Yeah, now you know how I feel! One last one worth mentioning was Banteay Srei, which was about 30 min away from the rest. Though not as big as most other temples, it's famous for the elaborate carvings throughout. On our way back we stopped at the land mine museum and learned a bit about the ongoing situation here in Cambodia. It

Bayon

Inside Angkor Thom

was started by a former child soldier of the Khmer Rouge who became an expert on the subject as he planted mines throughout the region. He now works on clearing mines, though the government forced him to do away with his own tactic - poking the thing out of the ground with a stick - and get formal training. Now he's an advocate, fundraiser and certified professional deminer, if that's what they're called! Also, I visited the floating village on the Tonle Sap (great lake) where few hundred people inexplicably live on floating houses on a small river flowing into the lake. Since the rainy season causes flooding up to 15 meters, every building floats, from houses to schools to churches to basketball courts. Amazing lifestyle, but certainly not an easy one!

So those were the highlights of my three days in Angkor and Siem Reap, and now I'm back in Phnom Penh spending the night here before I take the early bus up to the Laos border tomorrow. Earlier, after checking in to my guest house back on the riverfront, I went down the block to grab some food at an outdoor cafe, which culminated in an interesting

Bayon

Icy looking Buddha faces

experience. As I was paying the bill, a waiter came out with a large tray of fruit and set it on the table nearby me, right by the street. Thinking nothing of it, I turned back to my book for a moments, then looked back up and saw - what else - but a massive elephant standing right there, pigging out on the food! It's not every day you unwittingly eat lunch next to a pachyderm in the city, so I had to run up and grab my camera. And my list of absurdities in this country keeps growing. Even an innocent trip to the ATM can result in electric shock therapy by touching the keypad - and I would probably be one of the dumb monkeys in one of those experiential because I kept punching the keys and tried again after the first transaction timed out... all while there was another ATM sitting just two doors down! Excellent work.

As I described in a previous entry, almost everyone is trying to sell you something here. Normally you're just being asked on every street corner if you need a ride somewhere, either by motorbike or tuk-tuk or whatever, but

Angkor Thom

More Buddha faces

every once in a while someone tries to offer you something a little more unusual. For your further reading pleasure, I compiled a short list of some of the things I've been offered in broad daylight in the main tourist drags in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap:

- Marijuana
- Special shakes (huh? Did I hear this one right?)
- Special night with lady
- Special night with boy
- Trip into the country to fire automatic weapons and toss hand grenades
- Trip even deeper into the country to fire rocket launcher at cows

I don't even know who actually comes to Cambodia with $300 to spend on shooting livestock with rocket launchers, but I guess if you ever want the experience, you can get it here. My heart goes out to the cows though.

Alright, so next time I'll be in southern Laos! I'm going to Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands) where I hear the living is easy easy easy, and I can't wait! It's also home to a few nice waterfalls and the unique irawaddy dolphins, so hopefully I get lucky and catch a glimpse of a few while I'm there. Basically, there's

Bauphon

Steep climb up

going to be little to do but relax, which is fitting because I hear Laos altogether is supposed to be a very laid back country. Great time to catch up on some reading, hopefully no more elephant interruptions!

Best to all!

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