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Published: March 16th 2011
Bus stop snacks:
Black pepper Tarantulas or Sweet/Sour chili crickets... the tarantulas seem more popular... Our bus pulled into Siem Reap at about 3pm. Its the hottest ever, I think about 38 celcius before the humidex.
Mr. Lucky, our hilarious Tuk Tuk driver from Phnom Penh called his 'Brother' John in Siem Reap to let him know we were coming. He's going to give us a 'free' tuk tuk ride to our hotel. He's at the bus station, as promised, with our names neatly written on a board, which is a nice touch.
He does the usual TukTuk driver special and tries to get us to go to his hotel (or, the hotel where he gets a cut). I had emailed another hotel to reserve a room and the hotel confirmed, so I got John to bring us there first. "We'll check it out and if we need to switch, we'll try yours." Anything to get him to just drop us at the right place. Its too hot to be tooling around looking at hotels right now!
Siem Reap means literally 'Siam Defeated' and I'm not sure who defeated whom, but thats that. Its a great little town, quiet, not too much traffic. There's a river that runs through it. The old city
Our view of Phnom Bakheng
first view out of the jungle is tourist-centric, with an old market with touristy stuff, and small laneways with names like 'Pub Street' to cater to the tourists.
Our hotel is nice, French colonial, two stories (from the outside) with a large, wrap around veranda. Our room ends up being in the 'attic' with an almost vertical stair/ladder up to the third floor. Our room is not bad, but has no window. Soon we find out there are Americans next door who love love LOVE WWF turned up on loud on their tv. I think it is only a step up from cardboard between us and the next room, so I can tell exactly what is happening in the WWF.
Oh and it gets better. When the americans get up to walk anywhere, the entire floor bounces, fairly violently. It actually shakes my laptop sitting open on the bed.
John, our new best friend waits downstairs for us to get settled, and when we go out we get down to business, negotiating a fare for the next three days of 'templing tours' and we're able to settle on $40 for three, 8 hour days. John then gives us 30 minutes to get ready
Sunset 'over' Angkor Wat
well, we are higher than it? perhaps that's what he meant by 'over' Angkor? before we leave at 4:30pm to get to the national park adjacent to Siem Reap where the temples are located. He says we should go see the sunset and can't miss it. He gives us an ultimatum that we're leaving at 4:30pm, no if's and's or but's.
Our TukTuk ride into the park is great, we have to stop for a photograph ticket at the gate. Tickets are available for 1, 3 or 7 days. We chose the 3 day ticket and we've worked out the route with John. We carry on to Phnom Bakheng, a large mountain located between Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. These places were once large cities, boasting a population of over a million inhabitants, during a time when London, England's population was just 50,000. The road into the park is lined with gigantic trees, and passes by the huge, rectangular lakes that dot the landscape.
The temple at the top of Phnom Bakheng can be reached through a fairly gentle climb spiralling up to the top of a small 'mountain'. Alternatively, you could do what we did and follow some people on a vertical incline through the jungle. We pop out in a
large, flat clearing on the top of the 200' hill. On the far side of the clearing is a large stone pyramid, absolutely covered with people holding cameras waiting for the sun to set. Trung and I are able to elbow our way to the top and get some great sunset shots. John led us to believe that we'd see the sunset over Angkor Wat. well, we can see Angkor in the distance, but the sun is definitely in the opposite direction! No matter, its a great sunset anyways.
The next day, lo and behold we decide to quit the WWF and go find another hotel. Luckily, John has a great hotel in mind and it actually is good, for the same price, but a much nicer room. As soon as we're done checking in he wisks us off back to the national park for our first full day of templing.
Angkor Wat is our first stop, it is the most famous and definitely the busiest. The structure is breathtaking, covered in the most intricate stone sculpture I've ever seen, and is an engineering marvel. Its constructed of a series of concentric, square, walled courtyards, each about 40'
higher than the last. The last courtyard is very high indeed, and the stairs are ridiculously steep, probably more like a ladder than stairs.
Because Angkor Wat is the most famous and well preserved structure in the park, it is also the busiest. Angkor has been in my daydreams for the last 9 months and it is the place I've been looking forward to seeing on this trip, so it was difficult to finally stop exploring and leave the hoards of people behind. There are several more temples we need to see today!
The next stop is Angkor Thom. It is surrounded by a huge wall, 10km long! The gate looks extremely imposing and is flanked by a large moat. The bridge is built with 50 warriors and 50 demons holding back two large, 9 headed snakes on either side. As our tuktuk bounces over the bridge and through the small hole in the giant gate topped with four huge, staring faces, I feel like I'm in some sort of Indiana Jones or... Tomb Raider! This is where Tomb Raider was filmed, so its only fitting that I feel that way...
Angkor Thom is mostly a large
forest these days, however the old palaces and temples remain (only kings or monks deserved to live in stone houses). We spend three hours in this city, hardly enough time to grasp the vastness of it. We walk past old gates, several huge pyramids of stone, one gigantic reclining buddha actually carved into the entire back side of a pyramid. And of course, my new all-time favorite: Bayon.
Bayon is constructed like Angkor Wat, except that the dozens of towers are covered with humungous, friendly looking faces. The faces are carved in the North-South-East-and West sides of the towers. The temple itself is huge, filled with small nooks and crannies to explore. At every turn an amazing relief sculpture of a hindu or buddhist god. The temple is so well designed that every time I look up through an opening in the ceiling or through a well-placed window, I can see a huge smiling face staring back at me from one of the towers.
We also visited two other temples on this first day of exploration, Ta Keo and Ta Promh. They are smaller but just as amazing as the others.
When we get back to the
hotel, my shoes and legs are covered with a thick layer of red dust from walking around the sandy/clay temples all day. We're exhausted, so after a great dinner at a place recommended by Lonely Planet, which included a Khymer sample platter of food that was delicious, we decide to head back to the hotel.
On the way back, we pass by a 'fish massage' place. Let me tell you, this is a blue glass fish tank filled with thousands of tiny minnows. After paying the nice lady $2 I stuck my feet in the tank. These tiny minnows attack your feet, gently (or roughly) scraping off all the dead skin in a matter of minutes. Its the strangest tickling/sandpaper feeling! SO good. Trung is on the ground laughing at me while I squirm in my seat as the fish pick at my feet!
The next day we wake up at 4am to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. One of the epic things to do here. John decides to take us elsewhere 'no people, no people'. Apparently the sunrise at Angkor is just like the sunset: a zoo.
He takes us to a secluded lake, one
of several in the national park. The lakes are man-made and perfectly square and gigantic (probably at least 2km x 500m). Our tuk tuk ride is freezing cold, in the dark, to the middle of knowhere. We have no idea where we are and are trusting John quite a bit at this point while whisking through the middle of the Cambodian countryside in the dark!
The sunrise is stunning and there are a bunch of little friends who hang out with us trying to sell stuff, but once we say no and convince them we're not buying, we have some fun chill out time with the kids before John arrives to take us to the furthest temple on our tour. Its 35km away!
The far temple is so/so compared to the temples yesterday. Actually we stopped on the way and saw a different, really amazing temple made from red brick. It was falling apart, but the destruction was beautiful. I thought of my friend from highschool, Christena Hurley, when I happened upon a dig site hidden behind this temple! (she's an archeologist)
The other temples visited that day were smaller, empty and very beautiful compared to the
gigantic places of Angkor Wat and Bayon. Several are pretty much completely collapsed and the only way to explore is down, around, and through fallen rubble. At one point I have an extremely memorable encounter. I was tring to climb over a wall and saw a small hole that looked well travelled, so I jumped down off the wall and ducked into the hole. A small 'tunnel' in the rubble led me around several blind corners into the dark. After turning the last corner I came face to face with a smiling 90 year old man whom I just interrupted praying in the darkness to a small, smiling buddha statue. I'm not about to climb out of there just yet after climbing down, and even though I almost yelled out when he appeared in front of me, I decide to stay and join him. He lit some incence for me and I sat with him for 20 minutes while he prayed. Amazing. I don't know what the significance is, but the statue is about the size of my hand.
That evening we decided to follow Lonely Planet again and get street food. It was amazing, and only cost about
$2 for 8 dishes that Trung and I shared! Also, we ended up shopping at the old market in Siem Reap for what seemed like the 10th time. The T-shirts are really cheap, so we load up!
On the way back to the hotel I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked down and saw a 5 year old girl (11:30pm) holding a two-month old baby. She looks up at me then grabs my hand and asks for milk for the baby. Oh boy.
She won't let go of my hand and leads me to a grocery store down the street where there's a bunch of other kids trying to get foreigners to buy food. The girl won't come with me and throws a small temper tantrum as I go inside the store. She can't say anything but milk so I'm just going to go try to find some infant formula. Of course, the store only has dry formula and its a large tin and its $6 (in Cambodia, that's a small fortune). Everyone always says not to give the kids anything, but this time I can't just let it go. When I go
Man climbing Angkor Wat
he was about 60 and had a mischievous grin on his face as he did it... outside she simply takes the milk and leaves. I'm not sure if she's just going to give it to her mom who will resell it, or if she's actually going use it, but I don't really feel more fulfilled either way. A small boy asks for candy and follows me as I leave the store bound for the hotel. He follows me most of the way but I'm serious and level with him that I JUST bought milk for that girl and i'm not buying anything else tonight. He turns and says 'fuck you too' and leaves. Charming gentleman.
Just to finish the story, the same girl found me the following night and she seemed to be in the same predicament and forgot that I bought her 5 months worth of milk the day before. When I tell her 'Where did the milk go that I bought you yesterday' her eyes grow dark and she snears at me before stomping away. I think perhaps her parents put a lot of pressure on her, because she's extremely emotional about landing this milk. I feel for the girl, but otherwise I've been staying and eating a places that work on this
country's development and poverty issues. I don't think there's much more that I can do for her at this point, and besides, in front of the store, there are 10 more similar stories.
To juxtapose this situation, our afternoon that day was spent recouperating from our three days of trekking around Angkor national park. We spent it by a pool relaxing and we then had a traditional Khymer massage, which was excellent (a cross between Thai massage and Swedish massage). I saw the girl as described for the second time after our massage.
Our time in Cambodia has quickly come to an end! Cambodia is an extremely beautiful country that is still trying to pull itself out of one of the worst atrocities in history. The people are great, food and accommodation is relatively cheap and the sights are once-in-a-lifetime spectacular. I definitely recommend taking a trip here to see Cambodia before too much time passes and it becomes a very developed, well run tourist revolving door!
We're a bit paranoid about our upcoming trip to Bangkok as we've heard the scams for the bus companies and at the Cambodia>Thai border are running full steam. The roads
were just recently paved so apparently the scams have quieted down a bit, but we'll see what happens!!
xoxo
Andy
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Brenda
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Want the fish foot treatment!
How cool is that?! And why don't we have the fish foot treatment in Canada? Great pictures Andy - spectacular history! What is the time-line for these ruins? Some of them look as old as those we saw in Greece - BC. xoxo