Angkor WHAT?!

Tuesday February 12 – Thursday February 14

For the sake of all the things we did while in Siem Reap, I’m splitting this up into two sections – Angkor and Siem Reap City (read: NGOs/volunteering/my dream come true)

And please, for those that know Ben Provan (or Ben Provan himself if he’s actually reading this…), know that every time we heard anyone make a pun out of Angkor Wat, or we wanted to make them ourselves, we thought of Ben and his profound influence on our lives…

Tuesday we found ourselves up at 530am to meet our tuktuk driver at 6, so that we could try and catch the early light at Banteay Srei – an outlier temple within Angkor, more commonly known as the Red, or Pink, Temple. It took about an hour to get to, including stopping to buy our 3-day Angkor pass (picture included – legit!), so we watched the sun rise as we drove along and arrived at Banteay Srei before most other tourists.

It was amazing to get to the temple before other tourists – we were literally exploring the pink sandstone, elaborately craved arched doorways and walkways with 6 other people. It was also a great first temple to see, it’s extremely well-known, and Heather and I both picked up on the vibe around the temples we would come to love…general awe and respect reigned among all tourists and guides. Most, not all, people we ran into were extremely conscientious of those around them, and tried to not ruin the experience for others (including not stepping in people’s pictures, which, at around midday is sometimes unavoidable).

Our tuktuk driver, Mr. Ra Da, then suggested we see a few of the smaller temples on the way to Ta Prohm – Heather’s most anticipated temple. We stopped at Pre Rup, which we had to climb veeeeery steep stairs at to get to the top – but were rewarded with a great 360degree view of the ruin complex. We then saw Banteay Kdei, but were told by Mr. Rada that we should first see Sras Srang, across the road. It was the remains of the base of a temple, or stupa, that was built on the edge of a lake. We had seen a lot of people up early, watching the sunrise over the water, and had wondered if it was anything special to Angkor – apparently, a pretty important site.

Here was where we started seeing massive numbers of tourists and being approached by tireless children, trying to sell us everything from books, to tshirts to bracelets. It’s sad that the only English they learn at an early age is, “Mister, please, one dollar, 10 bracelets” or “please, miss, buy book, family need food”. I’m sure Heather and I were easy targets because the look of pure pain on our faces as we walked by these malnourished and desperate kids probably screamed of sympathy, but we have been told my many people that once you buy one thing, or give something away, be ready to be swarmed.

And then, finally, we headed to Ta Prohm. If you’ve seen photographs of Angkor, you’ve either probably seen Angkor Wat, Bayon (the huge 4-sided face statues) or Ta Prohm (gigantic trees that have grown up, around, through and with the ruins.

When Angkor Wat was built, over a few centuries, there was very little vegetation around – the rulers of the era cut it all away and, I guess, preferred looking at their grand palaces and temples without anything in their way. Looking at Ta Prohm now, which has been allowed to ‘run wild’ with growth, I can’t imagine not having the natural habitat it does. Heather was in 7th heaven, having now found a combination of her two loves – nature and religion – and walked around in wonder, getting her picture taken within all the gigantic tree root systems on the grounds.

For me, the most interesting part of Ta Prohm was the large majority of rubble piles from the ruins. Huge stone blocks, obviously once part of walls, doorways and reliefs, were everywhere around the compound. Other temples have been ‘reconstructed’ at this point and are as similar as they can guess to the original structures – but it doesn’t seem like they’re in any hurry to reconstruct Ta Prohm. I liked the ruins having rubble around, it gave it a greater sense of age and ability to withstand time (because much of it was still intact).

From there we headed to Angkor Thom – an ancient city just north of Angkor Wat. The best known monument within Angkor Thom is Bayon, in which there are 216 huge faces of Avalokiteshvara carved onto 4-sided columns. While you stand along the outside walls of the complex, you’re a bit overwhelmed with everything to see…once you step inside, it’s a whole different story. I’m sure it gets a little creepier as the sun goes down and you have dozens of sets of eyes on you everywhere you go.

Interestingly enough, we’d run into a camera crew earlier at Banteay Kdei (I think that’s where we found them) with little monks and nuns in bright orange and white outfits running around. Turns out, the youngsters weren’t true monks and nuns, and the camera crew was either shooting commercials, photographs or both – because we ran into them again at Bayon in the afternoon. They had an entire entourage, full of flashy guys with safari vests (filled with film equipment, of course) and young adult interns who were running around trying to clear areas so that shots wouldn’t be ruined by the wayward tourist. The kids of the shoots themselves were absolutely adorable, but looked like they has as little idea as to what was going on as the tourists did (none).

After Bayon we explored a bit more of Angkor Thom’s monuments, but headed back around 3:30. The one thing everyone does say about Angkor is that it’s better to space it out – and not to overdo it. The days get very hot and the temples definitely lose their awe in the heat of the day after about 5 others so…we figured we’d be back the following two days to go back to the ones we really wanted to see.

Wednesday we woke up even earlier – crazy, I know…slash I think Heather wanted to hit me when I woke her at 5:15am – so we could get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. We were using bikes that our guesthouse had and thought maybe there wouldn’t be that many people waking up that early…little did we know that apparently seeing the sun rise at Angkor is a rite of passage for tourists. There were literally hundreds of people there for the event. We were walking on the bridge leading to Angkor and all of a sudden weren’t allowed to continue any farther because of photography reasons? Eventually we realized the same camera crew from the day before was photographing at Angkor for the sunrise and wanted the bridge cut off for the actual rising of the sun – turned out for some amazing pictures for us as well!

Angkor itself was incredible. We’d spoken to an Irish woman the previous day who had said she was a bit disappointed with Angkor, but Heather and I were anything but disappointed. It is an absolutely spectacular and inspired monument, breathtaking and awe-capturing to say the least. There are two bridges you walk across, the first is set across the moat that encircles the entire ruin complex, the second runs from the first entry corridor to Angkor itself. There are three levels to the central temple, originally built to honor Vishnu and serve as Suryavarman II’s funerary temple, and surrounding the temple are numerous squares and intricately interlinked galleries.

Words, literally, cannot do it justice. It literally is a man-made wonder, and to think that it’s one part of such a larger being, spanning centuries, is daunting.

After an incredible sunrise, we decided to bike the long way around to Ta Prohm…it ended up being a good 10-15km? probably more towards the 10km end. Regardless – the bikes we were riding were a bit dilapidated – heather’s pedals didn’t work that well, and I looked like one of the local kids who usually ride bikes WAY too big for them, I could barely reach the pedals when sitting. So by the time we got to Ta Prohm for another go-round, we were aching. And we still had to ride 6km back to siem reap. Oops.

Thursday we took the morning off of Angkor and instead spent much of the day at Wat Damnak and enjoying a bit of Aircon at a local café (read the next post for more info…).
However, at 4pm we’d planned on biking back to Angkor for sunset. We decided to treat ourselves (hey – it was Valentine’s day) and got a tuktuk to take us to Bayon first (the monuments with gigantic heads on all four sides) and then to Angkor.

We realized as we were watching across the bridge, and masses were walking towards us, that the sunset might not be visible from the inside of Angkor Wat. We needn’t be worried, apparently, because we caught the end of the sunset over the entryway to Angkor, along with several hundred other tourists. Talk about Valentine’s Day Date…Heather and I figure this one miiiight be hard to top (thank you, however, to EVERYONE that helped peter with his valentine’s day card --- it was amazing and I loved getting all your messages!).

We also figured having seen the sun rise at, and ending our 3-day pass with the sunset at Angkor Wat, was a pretty good way to end our stay in Cambodia.