Siem Reap and Temples

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Where to begin...

We arrived in Siem Reap 2 days ago and had a free afternoon to explore. We looked around the market a bit and bought some cool cotton pants to wear to the temples. We also signed up for a Khmer cooking class. It ended up being just the two of us, but it was a lot of fun. I made fresh spring rolls, chicken curry and pumpkin custard. Trev made green mango salad, fish amok (a Cambodian specialty) and banana dessert. During prep Trev had a little accident with the knife... it wasn't too bad, and I think the girls teaching us were more worried than him. Some iodine and a waterproof bandaid and everything was all better. After our cooking class we met up with our group and went to a restaurant where there was a traditional dance show. It was fun too 😊 After dinner we went to the night market and looked around, but didn't buy anything. (strange for me, right?)

The next day we started our tour fairly early and went to the national park with the temples. The first temple we visited was Bayon (pronounced "buy-on"). I think that was my favorite temple. It's the one with 4 faces around each peak. It was so, so hot, but we had fun exploring and taking lots of pictures. We stopped for lunch near the temples at a local restaurant. Trev and I both sampled fried red tree ants...yum? After that we went to Bantey Srey. It's made of pink sandstone and had very intricate carvings. It's also a smaller temple and all on one level. As you leave each temple complex there are large groups of people and women trying to sell you things. They push piles of postcards, bracelets, books and scarves into your face and don't stop even when you say ''no''. As we left Bantey Srey we were trying to ignore the people, but there was a cute little girl holding a small puppy. Her mother (who was pregnant) told Trevor he could take a picture, so after I felt obliged to go see her shop. I didn't really want to buy anything, but she said "you buy and make me happy baby"... how could I say no then? So I ended up with a pair of cotton pants. We went to one more temple after that (not sure of the name) and climbed way up to watch the sunset. There were a lot of clouds on the horizon, so the sunset wasn't great, but watching all the Korean tourists was really entertaining. It was a free night, so Trev and I went for dinner on Pub Street. We decided it was western food night, so I had pizza and Trev had a cheese burger - delicious. It was an early night after dinner because we had to get up so early.

We got up at 4am this morning in order to take an early drive out to Angkor to catch the sunrise. Walking through the temple in the complete dark was fun (I had my little pen light that I use for oral mech. exams and Trev had his head lamp). It must be pretty close to a full moon, because the moon cast shadows of the temples across the grass. We sat and waited about 30 minutes for the sun to start coming up. There were some clouds, but it was a beautiful morning. We spent the first part of the day exploring Angkor Wat. Trev noticed a lot of changes since the last time he was here. The temple is huge! It was amazing. After that we went to Ta Phrom (the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed). It's really beautiful with the trees growing all over the walls and lots of green moss on the stone, but it was crazy with tourists. If we ever come back again, I would try to come out to this temple early in the morning before the masses. After the temples we had some free time, which we used for lunch and a quick nap. We just got back from a boat tour on Tonle Sap lake, the largest lake in SE Asia. We went past one of 127 floating communities. The entire family lives on a boat year round. It was an interesting experience, but we also saw some of the poorest people in Cambodia. Tonight is our last night in Siem Reap. We set out for a loooong bus ride to Chompong Cham tomorrow.

Love, Court


So we should have lots of photo's but internet is still slow and the card readers are even slower (usb 1.0 for those that know what that is) so we have filled up two 4gb cards 2 to go, i will probably have to buy another.

We check our email every once in a while and an update from you guys would be good.

Trev

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Comments

[Kas]

lol Court, I love that you had your penlight with you. I'm enjoying living vicariously through you two :)