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Published: November 21st 2007
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Matt and I had been planning on doing Cambodia and Laos at sometime and with time in the semester winding down (can't believe its almost December!) we had to book them as one solid trip. I was swamped with mid-terms but luckily Matt had time to book the trip for the both of us. This ended up being a much harder task than he'd imagined as there were so many factors involved to make all the flights and trekking work out within a schedule that didn't involve missing too much school. First thing on the agenda before the trip was cutting off the squirell-tail mullet I have been rockin for the past couple months at my mother's request.
Wednesday night we arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia to see the famous temples of Angkor Wat. We rode on the back of motorbikes from the airport to our guesthouse, the 13th Villa (at $5 US a night it wasn't too shabby) and dealt with our first sob story from our motorcycle drivers about how they would lose their jobs if we didn't hire them to take us to the temples the next day. Unfortunately for them they were unaware of our previous
experiences travelling throughout SE Asia hearing a variety of sob stories and experiencing crafty cons so their efforts didn't fetch them more than a couple bucks tip (a lot in Cambodia). That night, we dined at the Red Piano a moderate Westerny spot made famous by Angelina Jolie when they filmed Tomb Raider in the temples years ago.
The complex of Angkor Wat was known to many only as myth until a European naturalist literally stumbled upon it in the late 1800s. I cannot imagine what that would feel like! Ever since then, it's been Cambodia's main source of income as one of the poorest countries in the world. My brother had visited the temples two summers ago and told me of a particularly special moment he and his friends had when it started raining in Angkor and all the tourists cleared out giving them 32 sq miles of temples to themselves! We were praying for rain and it arrived.... unfortuanately about 12 hours too early at 10pm that night! The rain did give us a beautiful clear sky for sunrise the next morning though. The main three temples to see within the complex are Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom,
and Ta Prohm. Angkor Wat at sunrise (5:30 AM) was PACKED with tourists but was still probably my favorite of all the temples. Most of the tourists were perched at the front to get those sunrise shots, especially the facade reflected in a pool at the temple's foreground, so once we got inside the thing we were treated to relative openness and serenity, interrupted only by the sound of a lens shutter here and there and the prayer rituals of some locals within the complex. The lighting on the approximately 1000 year old stone complex (built somewhere between 800 and 1200 AD) was breathtaking and the dampness from last night's rain definitely added some jungle mystique. On the way back to our tuk-tuk driver (rented for the whole day at $15), I ran into some precious Cambodian children peddling all sorts of things ("you buy this bracelet for your girlfriend", "But i don't have a girlfriend", "you buy this bracelet and you will have girlfriend!") as well as a lone monkey wandering around the steps to the connecting bridge. I was amazed by these kids knowledge of Western culture and the English language (all of which they had acquired either
from tourists or for the benefit of selling to tourists). One kid proceeded to guess which state I was from, getting through about 10 states, before I told him Texas (at which point he told me the capital of Texas). I tested his knowledge when Matt arrived, and sure enough he knew the capital of Canada and in which province Toronto was located! I had no small bills to give him so I gave him my small, solar-powered calculator instead to help with his postcard selling business! Guess I'll have to figure something else out for my next Stats test!
Angkor Thom, our next stop, looked like something out of Legends of the Hidden Temple (Nickelodeon game show from my childhood... Wikipedia it. Silver Snakes always won). In the portion of the complex known as Bayon, there were vindictively smiling faces of the Khmer Dynasty king carved into stone pillars as well as a bunch of kids getting into trouble climbing around the ancient, loose stone piles on the ground. Also a great spot for photos with the sun still coming up at this point.
Ta Prohm is located a little farther away (about a 15 minute tuk
tuk ride and probably a 40 min walk) from the center of the temple kingdom of Angkor Wat. Ta Prohm is one of the only places where the jungle growth hasn't been extensively cleared away so you see an interesting fusion of nature and intricately crafted stone. Large fig trees burst through the stone walls or mesh intricately with roots twined around the stone shooting straight into the wet earth below. A lot of renovation is being done here and of all the temples it was the most Indiana Jones like (i.e. you expect a large snake or trap door to snap you up at any second). There are many places where the stone roofs have crumbled to the ground below so trapsing through here was a nerve-racking experience. We basically rushed through these first three temples (spending a little over an hour at each) without realizing it and found we had seen the main three attractions by lunchtime.
After some Khmer cusine for lunch, we headed to another temple, Banteay Kdei. We found a spot in the shade and napped like lions in heat of the afternoon only to be awoken by some strange screeching sound in the
trees that sounded like an electronic alarm. Matt thought it was birds and I guessed it was swarms of insects but we still have no idea. Truly odd as the sound got to ear-piercing levels at one point. More cute dirty faces tugging at our wallets to buy water made us head for the Angkor cafe to cool off and kill time until sunset. For sunset at Angkor we hiked up a hilltop, bypassing the expensive elephant rides up the hill, and watched the sun go down over the entire region. Pretty nice although it was PACKED with tourists (especially the five minutes before the sun went down completely), but we met a nice couple from San Diego who gave us some advice on a Vietnam trip I plan to take in the future to Halong Bay. That night, we had planned to nap after our long day and then head out, but we slept through alarms only to awake at midnight (at which point I decided to forgo the night and Matt went out on his own until 5 AM). Not gonna lie, it was pretty fun watching him struggle through the entire next day especially as we had
to get up early for our flight to Pakse, Laos.
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