Angkor Temples – Day 2
Saturday, December 15th, 2007So, since we had the 7-day pass we decided to use it. Armed with our trusty can-opener teethed tuk-tuk driver, we went 2 hours outside Siem Reap to a temple called Beng Mealea.
Picture this…you’re walking through the jungle with a funny wide-brimmed hat and tall boots and suddenly, you see a rock that has carvings on it. You start wandering around to find, yes, it’s a huge complex and you’ve stumbled upon a lost civilization.
Okay, it wasn’t exactly like that. But it was kind of cool. So a lot of Angkor is being restored. This one hasn’t really been touched. So you go through these crumbling doorways, haunted passageways, scrambling across large boulders that are really part of the original structure (which are off-limits in some of the other temples), trees that have overtaken parts of the temple…plus…here’s the key…there was nobody there but us. Well, for the first hour anyway since we’d gotten picked up at 6 am. And really, when we left a couple of hours later there were only a handful of us Westerners wandering around.
And some kids. I mean, how cool would it be to live in a place where this huge decomposed temple is your playground. And we met these 4 boys with slingshots that were playing around with a bat they found. Boys will be boys…
Anyway, we could have stayed all day but metal-mouth told us we needed to go if we wanted to see the other 2 temples that day…
After another 1 1/2 hours we reached Banteay Srey. Which was about the antithesis of Beng Melea. There were tons of tour groups there since it’s only about 45 minutes away from Siem Reap. And I guess if you come to the temples on a tour group it’s mandatory you all wear silly hats. There were matching hats of neon yellow, pink and green (which I guess makes it really easy for your tour guide to find you), straw hats…it would have been interesting to get an aerial shot…and amazingly, women in high heeled sandals. I actually saw a woman in a suit. Granted, it was linen, but it was a jacket and skirt and heels. Amazing – I would have taken a header right into one of the rocks if I was wearing heels…
Oh yeah, the temple. It was one of the most intricately carved temples we saw. Most of the temples were done during a 40 year period by Jayavarman VII but this cleary wasn’t one of them. Beautiful flowers, delicate women…and it was a different color (not concrete colored)…kind of like the color of Arizona…that beautiful terra-cotta color. I mean, most of the temples are pretty blocky and, well, looked like they were made by an engineer. This one looked like it was done by an interior designer. I thought it was gorgeous. John was not very impressed. What does he know.
Anyway, we stayed for a short while but then after a brief toilet stop (it’s kind of amazing how clean the toilets are here – I was picturing it being kind of nightmarish since there are so many people that go through them) we went on our way to our final stop of the day…
Kbal Spean. “River of a Thousand Lingas”. After a short walk you get to this river and it’s amazing. Carvings of Vishnu, Shiva and others are carved along the riverbed (Hindu gods). And we’re not talking crude carvings. We’re talking full-on detailed carvings. And, well, I guess 1,000 Lingas. Although I didn’t count them. Lingas are a phallic symbol that associated with Vishnu. Although the Lingas in the river looked more like circles. I guess when you lose a lot of 3-dimensional aspects you got to go with circles. Apparently it is believed that when water passes over lingas it becomes sacred or magical. All I can say is that it was amazing. I mean, what a total pain in the butt to carve them.
That was our Day 2. We were tired of riding in a tuk-tuk after 2 days of it. We were ready to get some exercise…
JohnCin