Day-12: Angkor Wat At Siem Reap, Cambodia

Day-12: Thursday, February 13, 2014

Beginning Location: Siem Reap, Cambodia
Interim Location: Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Final Location: Siem Reap, Cambodia

This was to be a long hot day. We were up around 0600 providing time for breakfast before boarding the bus for our day at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. Breakfast was brief and around 0745 we boarded the tour bus for the temples of Siem Reap.








So with cars, bikes, mopeds, Tuk Tuks and buses of all sizes, let's add elephants and free range cattle to the traffic mix.

I won't try to tell the entire story of the temples but will just say it is a series of structures built by kings from the 10th century forward and like elsewhere in the world, each successive king wanted a bigger and greater temple. Some of the temples we would see were originally built as Hindu temples but had become Buddhist temples as the Cambodian "national" religion had morphed toward Buddhism.

For the morning, though we were close to Angkor Wat, we actually visited other Hindu/Buddhist temples including the Angkor Thom and Bayon Temple Complex built by King Jayavarman VII and then on to the Phimean Akas Temple complex with its arena like fighting elephant field.

 

Our second stop was at Prohm Temple probably best know as the setting for the movie Tomb Raider; with its enormous fig trees growing from the structures and rocks this temple area does look like something out of a far-gone past. The morning was relatively cool, perhaps in the mid-eighties, better for sure than what was to come as morning transitioned to afternoon.

As the heat of midday (mid-nineties) was approaching we returned to Siem Reap for lunch, another buffet. This lunch offering was laced with local dishes as well as food more acceptable to the American palate.

During a general discussion period sometime during the morning's travel the question of discovery was raised. Seemed that there is some dispute as to who gets credit for the discovery of the temples under forest growth was it the French or the Cambodians? A reasonable collaboration seems to be a suitable story, the Cambodians knowing of the presence of the over-grown temples and the French with the money to do the excavation and development of the area.

An experience noted around the temples and actually throughout SE Asia is the constant retail barrage. Who can turn down the 7-year old boy or girl selling anything and everything for "one dollar". We as did others traded dollars for pictures and a few trinkets, likely all made in China.

Around 1400 we were back on the road headed for BanteySrei, also known as the "Woman's Temple" due to it's intricate art work, etchings and carvings. The temple was one of the smallest and oldest that we would see dating from the 10th century.

Our Guide "Rino"

By 1600 we were back to Siem Reap and finally were on our way to Angkor Wat, the grandest of all the temples. As with famous places all over the world, the crowds of tourists are enormous. Apparently tourists from Korea, China and Japan make up the largest percentage of visitors and that aligns with the fact that such countries have donated large amounts of money to assist Cambodia with temple restoration and development of the Siem Reap area as a tourist mecca.

Angkor Wat was built by King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple. The site has a huge moat surrounding the temple complex. Once inside the compound, an outer wall protects the actual temple set at the center of the site. The buildings here are the tallest by far that we've seen and clearly in the best shape. Some restoration is obvious but in general the place looks much as it likely did hundreds of years ago, albeit worn and weathered.

At Angkor Wat tourists are challenged to climb to the highest reaches above ground, in total a couple hundred feet. Sheila and I both opted to climb. The final 49 steps were steep steps, strange for a population of people that aren't actually very tall.

Well after a long day, the heat, the humidity and red clay dust, everyone was ready to return to the hotel for showers and dinner. But before we could do that the guide had one more stop for us, of course it was one more "gems, silver & silk" store, not a store with trinkets made in China but real Cambodian crafts.

What's not for dinner, eggs and shellfish from a vendor stand at Angkor Wat.