An Archeological Adventure at Angkor

---

Cambodia II : Angkor Wat

Part two of my Cambodia blog will cover our visit to the temples at Angkor Wat in the north-west of Cambodia as well as the rest of our stay in the country. It’s a bit strange as I’m writing this on the boat to Koh Tao in Thailand and the contrast with Ankor could hardly be any bigger.

From Phnom Penh it’s an easy six hour bus ride up to Siem Reap, which is the closest town to the temples. It used to be something of an arduous journey as the roads were really bad and a lot of people chose to take a boat instead but a few years ago the government poured millions of the money it carefully schemed out of tourists and its own population into building fancy new roads to all the major destinations. The good news is that it’s now very agreeable to travel the country by bus, the bad news is that many of the beautiful boat trips have ceased the exist as operators have been put out of business by bus companies; it’s hard to compete with a $5 ticket for an air-con bus.

Siem Reap is another one of those towns that only exist because of tourists and as such it has little authentic charm, but it’s nice enough in its own right. There are loads of affordable restaurants along the main strip which offer good Khmer and Western food, there’s a nice little night market with trinkets and T-shirts, the usual massage places on every corner, etc. Our guesthouse in Phnom Penh recommended a place owned by a relative and they would pick us up from the bus stations and show us the place without any obligation so worst case we would’ve had a free ride into town. As it turned out the Hilton Guesthouse was actually quite a nice place with decent prices, in part because it is located just a little outside of the town and to compensate for the location they offer free transportation into and out of town for their guests.

Unfortunately tourists are no longer allowed to rent motorcycles in Siem Reap -our favorite way of transportation- so instead you have to rely on one of the many tuk-tuk drivers to take you round the temples. That, or rent a bike. Obviously I’m not going to cycle 40km a day in 30+ degree heat when you can get motorized transportation with a driver for just a little more. Prices range from 12 to 15 dollars and you can get anything from a grumpy old guy who speaks two words of English to a friendly, funny and knowledgeable driver who speaks perfect English and has a tuk-tuk with stereo, DVD player and disco lights. The arrangement is usually from sunrise (5am pick up from the guesthouse) until sunset (6.30pm) so the price is really very reasonable considering a short ride in a tuk-tuk is usually already around $2. We had three different tuk-tuk drivers for the three days we visited the temples and the last one was by far the best. It really pays to go into town the day before you plan to visit the temples and look for the guys with big signs with funny texts (see my picture of our last driver) and engage them in a bit of conversation to find out if they actually know where to go and speak decent English. You get much more enjoyment out of your day that way as many places can be ‘chained’ together, so the driver drops you off at one place and you walk through two temples and a park before he picks you up again at the other end. Less walking and more bang for your buck.

Entrance to the temples is not cheap, but if you consider how huge the area is and how much effort has gone in to restoring the buildings and still goes in to upkeep and continuing restoration, it’s not a bad deal. A pass for one day is $20, for 3 days $40 or $60 for a week. Like most people, we chose the three day option as one day is really not enough to see anything but the highlights and I can’t see myself walking through ruins for a week.

We bought a nice illustrated guidebook which has detailed information on all the temples in it but unfortunately we’ve already sent that home since we didn’t need it anymore, so I’ll just give some general information and tell a little bit about the more famous temples; you can probably do without all the details anyway.

The first day we decided to begin at the beginning in the oldest temples in the region, the Roluos Group. These were built around the 9th century by Indravarman I as his capital and both the materials and the style are very different from the newer temples. While most of the later temples are Buddhist, the early ones are all Hindu and with Vishnu being the most popular deity here, usually devoted to him or to Shiva, the big boss God. The later temples are mostly constructed out of stone blocks but these earlier ones were all built out of brick which was originally plastered over although almost all of the plaster has disappeared over time and many of the buildings have collapsed. All of the temples had been lost to man for a long time, which is the reason they’re not in the 7 wonders of the world, and were rediscovered by the French in the 19th century during their colonial conquest of mainland South-East Asia. All of the original restoration work was done by French archeologists, later aided by other European nations. After the second world war a lot of money and work was put in by the German and Japanese governments and these two countries are still helping restore and rebuild some of the temples. Of the Roluos group, Bakong temple, dedicated to Shiva, is the most impressive. It’s the first temple to be built along the lines of the Borobodur temple we saw on Java, which is to say as a pyramid structure without inside spaces. This one has five tiers and is apparently one of the highest of its kind in Asia.

At the end of the first day we went for sunset to Phnom Bakheng, one of the temples in the main complex and got our first glimpse of the two famous ones: Bayon and Ankor Thom on which later more. Like most days around sunset the weather didn’t really cooperate, although the sun did put in a minor appearance before vanishing behind the clouds again.

The next morning we decided to brave the sunrise patrol and were picked up at 5am from our hotel and taken straight to Ankor Wat, perhaps the most impressive of all the temples. Like most of the temples here, it’s really more of a city than just a temple although all the original structures like houses and shops have vanished since they were built out of wood, leaving only the central temple complex and the surrounding city wall. Ankor Wat was built by Survyavarman II in the 12th century, both to honor Vishnu and to be his funerary temple. The central tower is 55 meters high and flanked by smaller towers. The view from outside the temple is as awesome as it is famous; it even features on the Cambodian flag, somewhat ironically perhaps as it was also the symbol the Khmer Rouge used for their Angkor government. Inside the sheer scale and detail are stunning. There are beautiful bas-reliefs, the most famous of which is the ‘Churning of the Ocean of Milk’ depicting demons and gods churning up the sea to extract the elixir of immortality.

We spent the rest of the day looking around various temples, including beautiful and tiny Ta Som before finally visiting our favorite temple, Ta Phrom. This is the temple which was used to shoot scenes for Angelina Jolie’s ‘Tomb Raider’. It’s a 12th century Buddhist temple which, unlike most of the other temples, has not been restored but has been left almost exactly as it was discovered. Walking through the piles of rocks from ceilings and seeing the jungle reclaim ownership by tearing down walls with massive tree roots makes you feel like one of the early explorers coming upon this place hidden in the unstoppable growth of the rainforest. Unfortunately the temple has become too dangerous, or perhaps too many people have been visiting but either way there is a lot of reconstruction work going on now and some of the nicer areas for photo opportunities are roped off, detracting somewhat from the wild feel of the place. Still, it’s very cool, especially towards sunset when there are not quite as many people around and the light filtering through the canopy above makes for dramatic scenes.

We saved the biggest of the complexes, Angkor Thom, for the last day. Not quite wanting to get up at 4.30 again we nonetheless made our way to the temples just after sunrise around 6.00 to get there when the light was still good and the temperature at least marginally agreeable. Bayon was to be our first stop and boy was it ever a good decision to come early! We were almost alone in the most popular temple of Angkor and were further rewarded by spectacular lighting from the morning sun. The name Bayon has come to be used for the whole style of architecture where the typical Khmer style temples are carved on four sides with faces. Bayon has 216 of them, as well as some 1200m of beautiful bas-reliefs, incorporating around 11.000 figures. The strangest thing about the temple is that as soon as you move away from it a little bit, the faces fade into the surrounding stone and the temple looks mostly like a big pile of rubble with some towers sticking out.

Like I said before our guide on the last day was pretty good and he suggested a nice walk from Bayon to Baphuon and then through the area where the kings used to live, including a private temple where the king had to have sex with a priest every night to appease the gods -though job, that- to finally emerge on the Terrace of Elephants, a spectacular wall of a few hundred meters long carved with elephants and adorned with statues of more elephants and nagas. Baphuon is also interesting. It’s another pyramid temple but after a lot of original restoration work, almost the entire front of the temple collapsed shortly after the war. Incredibly in the last 25 years, stone by stone, the entire thing has been rebuilt. It’s hard to believe after seeing the pictures of the devastation that anyone could be masochistic enough to take on such a job.

After breakfast we decided to take a second look at our favorite temples, Ta Som and Ta Prohm before heading south to the lake where the biggest floating village in South-East Asia promises a nice break from the temples and probably the suffocating heat as well. After a twenty minute ride we arrived at a spanking new pier where a straight-faced Cambodian asked us to fork over $20 each for a 6km boat ride in an old wooden boat to get to the village. I asked him if he was joking, then if he thought I wanted to buy the boat and finally just turned my back on him in disgust. Seriously, in Indonesia we could’ve rented a private wooden boat with captain for an entire day for less than $40; where do they come up with these prices? We could’ve rented a private tuk-tuk for three days for the same amount. Of course, if all the tourists refused to pay these ridiculous inflated prices like we did then they would soon change but sure enough about 2 minutes after we refused to pay, a touring car unloaded 40 Asian tourists who all forked over about 10 days worth of an average Cambodian’s wages for the short boat trip. And again, it wouldn’t even be so bad if that money went to the people living in the village, or the area, but you can be sure it’s going straight into the coffers of the Cambodian People’s Party there to be diverted towards a new Mercedes for one of the members. Communism indeed.

Anyway we went back to town and chilled out (quite literally in our air-con room) for a few hours before heading back to Angkor Wat for the final time to watch the sunset. The temples are surely one of the most impressive sights in Asia, even if it is somewhat sad to see what was once the capital of the glorious Khmer kingdom has been reduced to today. Yes, it can get crowded and yes, the ladies screaming at you as soon as you arrive in your tuk-tuk or exit the temple ‘Siiiiir, you buy drink sir?’, not once but over and over and over until you just want to grab a big rock and bash all their skulls in, are annoying. But pick your times and places carefully and take some time to just walk around or visit the more out of the way or less popular temples and you’ll come away with some awesome memories, guaranteed. Although the dry season will be even busier, it might still be worth it. Sunsets in the wet season are a bit disappointing and you won’t get anywhere near the lighting that you would during the dry season, something that’s especially important if you want to take nice pictures.

We decided to hang around Siem Riep for one more day to sleep in and get some things out of the way before moving on again. This is when we made what is in hindsight a bit of an unfortunate decision. Janine’s back was troubling her quite a bit and she found a chiropractor in Phnom Penh on the internet. So rather than our planned route north into south Laos, we opted to go back to Phnom Penh first. It was Friday and we’d have to wait until Monday for the chiro to be open as we couldn’t reach him by phone to make an appointment. Monday came after two days in Phnom Penh and it turned out that the chiro had left the country to go back to the US for a while. Doh! Going into Laos now would mean another three weeks on bad beds and in general poor conditions without chiro, not really an option. So we did the next best thing and went to Bangkok instead. Missing south Laos was unfortunate but not so bad, it was just a bit silly to waste almost five days on the whole detour back to Phnom Penh. On a positive note the hotel rewarded our repeat custom by letting us stay in a really nice flat that can normally house six people for a very reasonable rate so we came away from the whole thing refreshed and rested.

On Tuesday we took the bus to Poipet, a very uninteresting village on the border with Thailand. We crossed on Wednesday and boarded a third class train which would take us the rest of the 400 or so km in 9 hours before depositing us in the center of Bangkok, Thailand. I’ll tell you all about the city and our adventures during the next two weeks in Thailand in the next blog.

We’re actually back in Thailand right now, spending our last two weeks together on the beautiful tropical island of Koh Tao, about twenty kilometers off the mainland on the east, in the Gulf of Thailand. Until next time!

---