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Published: April 9th 2010
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The day began early with a 4:30 wake up to meet Puk and drive out to Angkor Wat to catch the sunrise. It was the last day of our temple passes, and we had taken the recommendation of some guidebooks to save the biggest and most well known temple until the last. As with our sunset, we joined the thousand or so other tourist for this event. Another recommendation from the trusty Lonely Planet was to stick around after sunrise to explore Angkor Wat, as most of the tour groups go back to town for breakfast, then come back.
Angkor Wat is the flagstone temple, appearing on the national flag and some of the local currency. It was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu and built in the traditional Khmer style of the temple mountain. Its a huge complex with an outer wall 3.6km long and a fairly wide moat surrounding it. There are 3 interior galleries, each one higher than the next, with a pretty steep and long staircase leading to the central shrine area, which was modified quite a bit when the temple was converted to Buddhism.
Its also the location where we ran into a bit of trouble. Going into the trip we knew that at any active temple, you're are required to dress modestly. This means at least a t-shirt (has to be fairly long, not a girls t-shirt with real short sleeves), and depending on how strict the temple, either knee length shorts or pants. The rules are also more heavily enforced for women than men. We knew this going in, and had dressed appropriately for the National Palace in Phnom Penh. But for temple ruins, there is usually no requirement, except for the very central enclosure to Angkor Wat. So when we got to the last section, Melissa only had her shorts and nothing to cover her knees, though she did have a top to go over her tank top. So I went up myself while she sat and waited at the bottom.
When I got back to the bottom I tried to tell Melissa that it wasn't that great and not to worry about it. It didn't go over well. Keep in mind this is still likely only 8am or so, an I wasn't really wanting to go the entire day
having started out with Melissa not being able to see the uppermost section of the most famous temple in Cambodia (really I didn't want to deal with her sulking for the day). So we walked all the way back to where the markets were, and started bargaining for something to cover her legs up. We settled on a $5 skirt thing that we're hoping will make for some nice pillows, as its pretty hideous as a skirt. So then we walked back through the first few levels and Melissa went up to the temple. I stayed at the bottom and watched some of the others run into the same problem. There were two girls who were putting on a bit of a show to get up there. Between using one girls skirt, and the other girls shawl, they managed to carve together an outfit to get up top, but the switchover on the bottom was pretty interesting.
So now Melissa's got a smile back on her face, and we continued on with the day. We grabbed our driver after searching through the hundred tuk tuks waiting outside the site, and went on to another temple, Preah Khan. Its fairly
similar in design and feel to Ta Prohm, and by the end of our wander we were starting to feel the effects of the 4:30am wakeup. It was about noon, and we told Puk we were done for the day, officially templed out. We walked over to Pub street again for some lunch, picked up some Angkor beer from our favorite little convenience store, and spend a couple hours by the pool in the afternoon.
One of Steve's recommendations (more from the boys Luke and Ian) was to go to the Dead Fish Tower at some point. The boys were pretty impressed by the 20 crocs in the restaurant. They also have a free Apsara show at 7pm, which is the Cambodian traditional dance, so we headed there for supper. Well, it was only a year ago, but the restaurant is down from the 20 crocs to 2, I guess living in a tiny space underneath a restaurant isn't the best. But its still a pretty cool atmosphere with cheap good food. After watching the poor girl doing the Apsara dance perform to the 6 of us in the restaurant, we walked back to the hotel, but first took
a little detour through the night market. We probably would have stayed longer, but Melissa had caught her toe on some of the broken up sidewalk you find everywhere, and had started to pool quite a bit of blood in her flip flop. Trooper she is, she didn't really want to walk away from the shopping, but I figured it was time to go.
Feb. 7 - Very unorthodox for our travel style, we had actually planned a day of nothing, if you can call that a plan. We had thought about doing a couple different things, but I think the heat of Southeast Asia really lowered our ambition, so we took it easy. We walked to the old market mid morning, and took in some of the real Cambodia market areas like the fresh fish section. I thought it was pretty cool, but when a fish jumped out of the tub and almost landed on Melissa's foot, she was pretty much done with it. We did some more shopping, and picked up some pretty good deals I think. We had figured out that its good luck for them to get their first sale of the day,
so they'll usually go a bit lower on price. So I started using that to my advantage - "Good luck for you, good luck for me", they usually laughed and took my price. We got a couple more sundresses of course ($12 for 2 - but better quality says the boss), a table cloth and scarf ($13 package deal), and a wooden vase ($4.5). I'm sure I still paid double what a local does, but I definitely saw people paying a lot more.
We lazed about in the afternoon, hit the night market again for a few things Melissa didn't get the night before, then went for some Khmer massages. I've never had a massage, so it was quite an experience. They really do a head to toe massage, including your eyelids, earlobes and the traditional walking on your back?? It was pretty obvious I wasn't sure what was going on, as the girl had to tell me "not so strong" a couple times when I resisted her contortions on me, plus a few times I couldn't figure out what type of position she wanted me to go in. But, for $5 US for 60 minutes, it was interesting.
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