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Published: February 7th 2007
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We arrived in Siem Reap at around 7:30pm last night. The airport reminded Anand of trivandrum airport, which as you can imagine I found interesting considering that's the capital of their state and this is a tiny little town 😊. Driving into town though, both of us felt strongly that this place seemed very much like India. The same smell, same humidity (which felt great after a cold winter (by SF standards)), similar autos (they're called tuktuk's here and have a moped in front of the passenger part), lots of roadside eateries and shops, etc. There were also some very prominent 5 star hotels. These have been expanding at an extremely rapid rate as our driver mentioned that even just 4 yrs ago, there were almost no tourists in Siem Reap. Now it's a huge business and particularly after the newest list of 7 wonders of the world, we're sure it'll grow even more. And it should! We spent a fantastic day today exploring a few temples around the area.
Btw - in terms of food, we ate last night in a place that prominently announced that they don't serve monkey, dog, cat, or rat. We got some veggie Khmer food, which was really good - like thai food, but less spicy. It had just as much flavor though and we enjoyed it. Today also we had pretty much the same thing for lunch/dinner - a noodle/stir fry dish, and a curry dish, and given our love for thai food so far have still been enjoying it though we may soon get tired of eating the same basic dish (albeit at diff restaurants) for each meal and look for other options. Btw, we had breakfast at a place called Why Not? y0'ers reading this, shall we all buy up the place in anticipation of more tourists arriving in Siem Reap? 😊
So now getting to the temples, we saw the main highlights today. We had a great 25 yr old cambodian guide who has just been a guide for 3 months, is still studying, and was clearly passionate abt his work. Besides telling us abt the temples, he also would often talk about cambodian history, the political climate, and his opinions about the changes in recent past. At times, he was quite opinionated which was interesting. As many of the temples were built for Hindu dieties, he clearly had learnt a lot about the hindu stories, gods, etc. He would at times quiz us about certain stories and relationships, and at times ask us to cross-reference what his teacher had told him.
These are the temples and highlights that we saw today:
Angkor Thom city - great gates bordering the city, with large churning of the sea depiction in front of each.
Bayon temple - within Angkor thom city, with multitudes of Buddha faces, very symmetrical and interesting.
Baphuon - Being reconstructed, a 3 tier pyramid in full form.
Elephant terrace - very impressive, lots of beautiful elephant figures lining the walls.
Royal Palace/leper king - other parts of the main angkor thom complex.
Ta Keo - a very plain structure compared to the others as there was no 'decoration'- no bas reliefs, no sculptures, but still impressive - five levels high etc
Ta Prohm - the Angelina Jolie special - where they had filmed tomb raider, with huge trees and the temple coexisting - the roots of many have grown through and through or over and above the temple structures which were cool to see.
Bantey Kdei - the temple prison, where people were tried and either imprisoned and rehabilitated or killed, according to our guide. Very interesting.
Sra Srang - a beautiful lake.
Prah Khan - built for Jayavarman VII's father's tomb (we've learnt a lot abt the various kings of cambodia today 😊 ). Still in an early stage of reconstruction, so lots of huge stones lying around all over.
Finally, Angkor Wat - simply an amazing amazing place. Just beautiful piece of architecture, very symmetric, artistic and well planned out. It has a huge moat around it too. The famous bas-reliefs show scenes from the ramayana which were fairly easy to recognize. Anand says the wall with those scenes is abt 100 feet long and 10 feet high. The whole complex is immense - we'd heard it was the biggest temple/religious structure in the world, but it doesn't quite strike you until you're there. It's built in levels as well. Climbing to the top is a bit tricky as there are only stone steps that are very steep. But getting there was well worth it as the final gopurams or pagodas are just beautiful. I could have stayed there for hours just gazing at the structure.
We then headed to see the sunset at Phnom Bakheng, with hundreds of other tourists. It was quite a zoo there, and we were quite exhausted after the day, but it was beautiful nonetheless although in a different way than expected - I was thinking that the Angkor Wat would be seen in sunset, but actually it was the countryside/nearby lake that we saw illuminated by the setting sun.
One thing I noted was that both hinduism and buddhism had clearly coexisted but also competed for popularity - many temples had buddha sculptures all removed during the time that hinduism was more popular, and others had buddha sculptures placed on top of lingas or other depictions of hindu gods. Yet others had a buddha sculpture right next to a large mural depicting a hindu story.
Finally, we enjoyed dinner at the Jasmine Angkor restaurant, where we saw the Apsara dancing and had a buffet dinner (though for us the dinner consisted of noodles with stir-fry veggies, surprise surprise - but it was still good). The dancing was also interesting although the music could definitely have been improved - perhaps it was just me but they seemed to be singing basically the same song for each dance and the pitch was not ideal. The dancing - there was a version of raas with coconut shells instead of sticks that was nice, a peacock dance, another folk dance, and multiple versions of the ápsara dance. That seemed essentially like a slow version of odissi, which I guess isn't surprising given the cross-cultural history. the costumes were great.
Tomorrow we're hoping to check out the old market and possibly a nearby lake. We'll also be flying out to Phnom Penh for the rest of our cambodian sojourn.
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Karthik
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awesome patel shot !!
The title says it all. Hope you find better food in Phnom Penh and Bangkok.