So we booked a bus to travel from Bangkok across the border to Cambodia and head to Siem Reap...home of Angkor Wat. We got a bus which took us to the border town, from there we had to get a visa. The government officer tried to get me to pay more then the amount (as I had already read in Lonely Planet the price) I asked him why it was that much, he then adjusted the price. Meanwhile while filling in forms and waiting for our visa to be made, I realised I didn't have my visa card and asked Neil if he had it, since he carries it when we need to get money out. He said no and we both began to panic, checking all our bags and to be honest shouting a little at one another. The realisation came that we did not have it and that we would have to try and find a HSBC to try and get a new one sent...trouble was we had no Cambodian money!!!! Even with this in our minds we carried on through the visa process. Here we came across an annoying man who was arguing with the Thai officals about being overdue on his stay in Thailand. He didn't get to shout too much as a butch woman in uniform came over and expained very clearly he needed to pay. This guy was loud and brash and talking about drugs and things he had done to all of us in the queue. There was also an annoying groups of university kids on our bus, who were loud and spent most of our trip trying to change seats with people so they could sit together. They also were in our queue and annoying me and Neil. After getting the visa we got a bus to the bus/taxi station where we decided that time was ticking and so we would pay a little more to share a taxi to Siem Reap so we could organise ourseles about the lost debit card. We bought our taxi tickets and were waiting for other people to share it with us as we waited who was to come in but.....the annoying man from the border (me and Neil sat and prayed that he was getting the bus) which luckily he did. Then the large group of loud, annoying uni students came in and were all getting cabs...Great we thought, me and Neil were hoping that we wouldn't have to share with the loudest menebers of the group. Luckily we got in the taxi with 2 nice boys (from the large uni group) and chatted some of the way with them. They were Indian descent, Candians on a exchange prgram in Singapore. It was reading week and so they had been doing some travelling with that time. Part chatted and part slept. We arrived in Siem Reap and then got a Tuk Tuk to our guest house. In our Tuk Tuk a local guy was on it with us and trying to give us the hard sell about getting a tour for Angkor Wat with him. We explained that we had trouble with our card and could not give him an answer but asked for his number. He got arsy and explained he wasn't allowed in the guest house we were staying. This rang alarm bells for us and so we waved goodbye and checked into our guest house called Home Sweet Home Guesthouse. It was a lovely place, big room, balcony, air con (which is a dream) and a big bed (what more can we ask for). As soon as we got to the room we did another check of our bags and low and behold Neil found it in his bag (knew he had it!!!!). The relief of having it meant we could book our tour for Angkor Wat. That night we did some research, booked a private tour, own tuk tuk, guide and driver. Means we learn everything about the place in our pace and time. We headed out for dinner (found an excellent Indian called Curry Walla) and then headed back to the guest house as we had a few long days ahead of us.
So day 1 for our 3 day tour of Ankgor Wat, having read in the lonely planet about rough internary I had an idea of how I would like to see the temples. So we went and had breakfast and were greeted by our tour guide called Lonh. He spoke good english and had the uniform that all certificated tour guides have. We then spoke about the day and I suggested that we did the outer temples first and the Roluos group of temples (as in terms of era then come before Angkor Wat and help to give background on the rest of the days). Neil trusted me as I had done all the reading for the trip. We then got on our tuk tuk and headed to the Angkor Archaeological Park to get our 3 day pass (which have our photos on them) and then headed to our first stop of the day Banteay Samre Temple. It was a way out and so took us about 45 mins to get to the temple. At this point it was already getting hot and it was only 9.30am. We arrived and it was quiet, not many tourists and it was the first glimpse of the Temples. The place had one main prasat (tower). It was intricately carved with lions guarding the entrance. Inside a coffin of where the person whom this was built for i.e. the queen, king etc. Also since it was built during the time when the country's main religon was Hinduism a Shiva Lingam in the temple, used for holy water. There was also a number of Hindu references in the walls which our guide began to tell us about. Funnily he didn't twig on that maybe I was from Indian descent and so knew a little about the stories he was telling me. Once we had a look around there and took many photos (sorry guys we took so many photos, but we have edited then for you on facebook).
We got back on the Tuk Tuk to go to our next stop Banteay Srey Temple. Again another 30 mins out and then we arrived there. Here we were met by kids selling postcards and little nic naks. We were explained by Lonh that in Cambodia there is a free primary education system however it only runs in the morning and in the afternoon they come and work around the temples. So these kids would come up and say “you wanna buy”, “where you from?”and when we say England they say “David Cameron is your prime minister”. When you say you dont want to buy a thing they say it over and over again (in a cute way cos they are soooo georgous) they force you to say maybe and then they say “I'll remember you” and trust me they do, especially Neil for his height. So anyway we arrived at the next Banteay Srey and this one was a little busier. We walked a little past some lovely rice paddies and children playing and fishing, so adorable!
This temple had 3 prasats (towers), built with stone that has a pinkish colour to it and has the best stone carving out of all of the tenples. Here we were taken around and saw the carvings on the walls, the statues of monkeys (similar to Hanuman the Hindu Monkey God). This place again built during the Hindu period was dedicated to the god Shiva and so another Shiva Lingham. The guide explained the need for Shiva as the destroyer, Vishnu as the Protector and Brahma as the creator. This was good for Neil to learn before we hit India and so a lot of statues and temples. Again more photos and looking around and then we went back to the Tuk Tuk and then drove to a place for lunc h. The Tuk Tuk rides are great as the wind helps to cool you down and you really get to take in the surrondings, I reccommend it rather then a air-con van. Lunch was at a place (bit more expensive than town) and full of tourists, we ate (me now loving the fresh fruit here) and checking the view of the lake before heading back on the tuk tuk to the Roluos group of Temples.
This place was the original capital during the reign of Indravarman I (r877-89). Though not in great condition compared to other temples still a place worth visiting. Though many of the prasats (towers) are in bad condition the plasterwork on some of the temples are amazing. We visited Lolei, Bakong which has 8 prasats (towers) dedicated to Shiva and is supposed to be a representation of Mount Meru. There again I was besotted by the cute kids, playing at the temples and their sweetness. The last temple of the day was Preah Ko which for me was the best of the day. The place has 6 prasats (towers), set amongst beautiful flowers which makes the place come alive. It also is the start of the temples which were raised. The elephants surrounding the temple are in good condition and the entrance depicts the great Hindu story (which I had never heard of before) called The Churning of the Milk (later on we would hear of this non stop).
The story goes the demons and the gods wanted immortalilty and were told by Vishnu that they needed to churn the sea in order to get the amritsar (elixir of immortatilty). Both the demons and gods worked together by churning the sea with a Naga (a 7 headed snake) which was wrapped around a mountain, lots of things came out before the Amritsar finally did. The entrance to the temple is the gods and demons churning the sea (the pictures may explain better).
Again after a wander and pictures, we were pretty tired and soaked with sweat and so headed back for the day. On the way back we so the amazing amount and array of things Cambodians carry on their bikes for examples sheets of glass, pigs (alive) strapped down on their way to market and the immense amount of fruit, veg, plastic bottles for recycling etc. We got back to the hotel and chilled out for a bit, before heading out for the night to check out the area and for a bit to eat.
We already knew we were falling in love with Cambodia, the people and culture is amazing it remined us of Bolivia in terms of people and price. Everything is really cheap including the beer at 70cent a glass at happy hour. The food a little less spicy then the Thai's but good beer especially Angkor beer.
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| 4 pigs on a moped... |
Second day we were up bright and early again. We had some trouble yesterday trying to work out what we got for breakfast. We ended up having eggs and a fry up and stuff. It turned out that we could only have bread and jam as part of our room deal so that's what we had. Lonh was already waiting with our driver for the day (different to yesterday). We set off and our driver stopped to get some petrol from one of the stalls. He also got a big block of ice that he put in a cooler bag with some bottles of water. For the rest of the day he gave us nice cool bottles of water, all as part of the service. We drove for a bit and passed through the gates for Angkor Thom, only stopping briefly for a few photos, then continuing through to go to Preah Khan.
This was originally a Buddhist temple but was adjusted when the Hindus came back into power in the 13th Century. This meant that all the Buddha images had been scratched out, or converted into images of Hindu Gods.
It was quite a ruined temple, built in the form of a cross, hardly any roof and big trees growing through the walls etc. Very Tomb Raider. We'd seen a big group of students who were training to be tour guides, learning in Chinese and English. At one point we were being told about some carvings on the wall of semi-naked women parading about. The trainee tour guides were also being told by their teacher. They looked at the pictures in awe and said, “Ah...dancing whores...”.
The next place we saw was called Neak Pean. This was built in the middle of four ponds with the temple in the middle.
On each side was an ornamental spout in different head shapes, an elephant, a person, a horse and a lion. Both of these temples were built by Jayavarman VII, who seemed to be a pretty popular King around these parts. Next was Ta Som, another ruined temple with loads of tree roots etc. before we went to lunch.
So we arrived at a little place where there was a collection of stores. As soon as they saw the Tuk Tuk approach all they women came out and starting trying to get us to go to their store. We followed our tour guide and sat down to have some beer, drinks and fresh fruit. As soon as we sat down we were swamped with little kids trying to get us to buy something from them. The kids and women found Neil's height funny and also kept staring at me. It seems that they are confused by my look, as I have the skin tone of Cambodians but not the features. The women laughed as a girl stood behind me, she had dimples too and they thought we looked like twins. Neil also found this very amusing I though she looked nothing like me. As we waited for our food the little cute girls kept on talking to us trying to get us to buy something. They asked our names, where we were from, the cutist one of all said she liked me and that I looked like a Indian Princess...from that point on I knew I had to buy something from her. We thought the best thing to buy was postcards however our cute girl did not sell them and was so hurt when we were going to buy something from the other girls, so we decided to buy from her 2 little paper animals she was so happy when we did.
It was times like this when we put aside the fact that we are homeless and jobless and give something to the kids who are clearly in a less priviledged position. During our lunch we heard a lot of shouting and people running over to another cafe. As we looked over it was a vicious fight between two women. There was hair pulling, slapping and punching going on. Even when other women tried to stop it they got roped in and starting fighting themselves, this made the rest of the locals run away from the cafe and the fight out of what looked like sheer fear. After it settled down and everyone started to recreate the fight and chat about it. We asked our guide what was going on and he explained that a Ladyboy was annoying the locals and trying to poach people from their cafes to go to another and this caused the fight. The boy left in the ladyboy obviously came out during the fight as he/she gave some mighty punches and slaps. After the entertainment we left and headed to the next few temples.
The next temple was East Mebon, a multi storey temple with quite well preserved elephant statues on the corners. We climbed up and admired the view, just making out the towers of Angkor Wat in the far distance.
We were very hot at this point and had done quite a bit of walking around that day. Our plan was to head out to the big lake, Tonle Sap, and see the floating villages for sunset. Our camera was about to die so we asked our driver to take us back to the hotel for 20 mins so we could charge it up a bit. We headed back out, passing the part of town where Lonh lived with his uncle -in-law's family. It was a famous part of town because it was where lots of people made the Cambodian fish paste, prahoc. It was a very 'distinctive' smell. We kept on driving for a while until we got to the end of some sort of man-made canal. The whole thing is a bit of a tourist trap now and we paid 10 dollars each (Lonh knew someone...) to get a boat up to the lake and the villages. We got to the harbour and saw some lovely boat with sofas however we were ushered to an old boat with straw chairs.
We got on and thought we might sink in the boat, however we were off and going down the river to the mouth of the lake. As it was dry season the river and lake were lower than normal and so boats had to be careful how to manouvre in the shallow water. During the ride we passed stilt houses and boats carrying fruit and veg. When we got to the lake a boat came running up beside us. It had an old woman and a baby in it. The woman was shouting something and I realised that she had a large python curled around the baby and was holding it up to us. Whether she wanted to sell it to us, or have us pay for a picture, I don't know. The baby was sticking the snake's tail in it's mouth. I got a few pictures anyway. We went past some floating villages and arried at a floating restaurant, where their speciality was crocodile.
The place was a kind of crocodile farm, all that was keeping us from the crocs was a flimsy piece of wood, supporting the weight of about 20 tourists. There was a nice display explaining about the lake, it's environment and ecology etc. Some snakes in a cage, more children playing with snakes, different fish from the lake etc. We had bought a couple of beers before we got on the boat so took them upstairs and sat there watching the sun go down. We headed back after this. On the road on the way back were loads of 'Hammock Bars' which were just bars with big, stilted platforms out the back, covered in row after row of hammocks. Seemed like a nice idea.
We got back and got dropped off in town where we had a bite to eat near 'Pub Street'. There were a few restaurants that claimed to sell 'Happy Pizza'. Apparently a certain illegal herb is part of traditional Cambodian cooking. We stuck to a nice bit of fried rice with veg. We wandered around the market a bit and bought some clothes for pretty decent prices. We were quite hard-core bargainers now but I don't think the Cambodians were so ruthless.
So we were up 4.30am as we were being picked up at 5am by the tour guide. When we arrived downstairs there was a group of tourists who were shouting for their breakfast to be wrapped, me and Neil were in no condition for that at that time of the night. We waited for our tour guide who arrived and then saw them wake up our tuk tuk driver. He drove us quickly in pitch black through the town to Angkor Wat. We had decided that we would work our way up to the main temples so it was more impressive and so we understood more about it. We arrived at the main entrance of Angkor Wat and realised very quickly that it was not the isolated, serene set up we imagined, instead, coach loads of people were heading to the temple for sunrise.
Our tour guide Lonh found us a great place to see the sunrise and get great pictures. We managed to get a spot where we saw the reflection of the prasats in the water. Even with loads of people there it was still romantic and stunning to watch. We didn't get the clearest sunrise but the haziness added to the atmosphere of the place. Our guide told us that many people come every day, especially the Japanese, trying to get the perfect pic, he even suggested they forgot about hygiene when doing this, I think he called them “difficult and stinky”. After sunrise we went around Angkor Wat starting from the outside working our way in.
At this point my guide had learned from the guest house that I was Indian and was asking me if his stories based on the Hindu legand were correct and asked me to explain some of the work on the the palace. We saw depictions of the Mahabharat along the walls as well as the Ramayan. This is because Angkor Wat was built in the reign of Suryaarman III (r1113-50). It is built for the god Vishnu at a time when the Hindu religion dominated the country. The temple is surrounded by a large moat and many of the walls depict the Churning of the sea of Milk story. The detail and sheer size of the pieces just amaze you as you wander how many people, how long and just how did they put this all together. We took hundreds of pics and walked around for a good 2 hours.
In that time we were able to go inside and witness the 5 prasats (towers) up close. The whole place is supposed to represent the spatial universe in miniature and the central tower is Mount Meru. We also waited to go up the tower which was a good 150 steep stairs. The views from the top were amazing and we got to see the Buddhas in the towers (these are recent additions and now show the buddhist religion that dominates the country).
We got annoyed by some idiots clambering around and on a Buddha statue to get a good photograph and made a point of discussing loudly how rude it was. This seemed to put off the other people around us from doing the same. It just takes one person to do this then everyone else thinks they're missing something and do the same. We also got to witness a ceremony where the monks were blessing children of a certain age and I got to get blessed by a nun (rare and hard to find) who tied a multi coloured string aorund my wrist (similar to what Brahmans do in the Hindu religion) by the orginal large Vishnu statue.
After our tour of Angkor Wat we went for some breakfast in a restaurant with a view of the temple. At this point we were tired but had a good few hours left seeing the last few temples in the small curcuit tour.
We headed through the gates to Angkor Thom ('big city') and went to Bayon Temple. This is famous for having many Bodhisattva faces cut into the towers – also meant to represent King Jayavarman VII – 216 faces in total. We enjoyed this a lot and spent a long time wandering around and taking photos in lots of good places that Lonh knew about.
The outside of the temple had carvings depicting everyday life in Cambodia. As we walked around, some woman was waving her arms around while talking and smacked Bindya in the face with her hat. Bindya was not amused by this but everyone else was. The woman was horrified by this though...
After this was a long walk around other small temples. We were flagging by this point – it was so hot and humid and we were pretty knackered and not taking much in. We saw the Terrace of the Elephants and Terrace of the Leper King (so called because the statue of Yama (God of Death) had fingers missing). We finished at Ta Prohm which is impressive due to how much the jungle has grown back and over the temple.
It was here that we queued with all the Japanese and Koreans to take a picture of us where a scene from Tomb Raider was shot. We just wanted to head home now so we went back to the hotel. I spent a few hours helping Lonh out with web stuff as he wanted to have somewhere he could show to potential clients etc. I set him up with a blog page and showed him how to use it and helped him with his Facebook page etc. We had our final meal, bought a few more bits, got our bus ticket for the next day and relaxed.
Big THANKYOU to Donna and to Chris and Luciah for their wedding presents that we used for these three days!
Day 1 at Angkor
Day 2 at Angkor
Floating Villages
Day 3 at Angkor Wat
Tomb raider Temple
