Siem Reap and Angkor Wat
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Siem Reap is about 7 hours by bus from Phnom Penh and for mere $14 for the both of us for the “VIP Express” bus it was a no brainer. We were glad to get out of Phnom Penh and I was excited to see a larger stretch of Cambodia.
Alexander worked on an essay for school and I was staring out the window expecting the landscape to change, any minute now. It did not. Hundreds of miles and miles of flooded rice fields. It often looked like we were driving through an ocean of shimmering green. There is nothing much to see other than the occasional Cambodian wood houses dotting the side of the road, school kids riding home in their blue and white uniforms, cows and water buffalos grazing in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes motorcycles were parked at the side of the road and you had to really look hard to make out the men in the middle of the fields casting their small fishing nets into shallow mini lakes, canals and rivers.
All the houses basically look the same, built on stilts over water, often with more small muddy water holes around the houses. You can often see the hamocks used for sleeping and some bamboo platforms used as living space. The animals are kept under the houses were kids play when the cows are out for grazing.
Rice paddies as far as you can see. I read somewhere that 70% of Cambodia used to be covered by jungle. Today, less than 2% is left of that and the newspaper reports regularly of Cambodians being arrested and even killed when they trespass into Thailand for illegal logging since nothing worth cutting down is left in their own country.
But, not everybody lives like that in rural Cambodia. The monks seem to be doing ok, on the pic is a typical Wat (Buddhist monastery compound often with school etc. paid for by the village people). Banks also always have splendidly large buildings in often just tiny villages and on rare occasion you find these large private houses in the middle of nowhere.
Once in a while we came through something resembling a city and those looked usually like this:
Otherwise, this is it.
Siem Reap on the other hand is surreal in contrast. Huge expensive looking hotel complexes line the streets, lush golf courses can be seen from some streets, expensive cars and double decker tourist buses roll along wide streets regardless of the dust and potholes. It feels like you just landed on a different planet full of fat, red faced, camera clad tourists on a shopping binge. Our hotel was down this road and I was as usual very nervous what our budget of $25 for a twin bedroom would get us in this town of seemingly extravagant and expensive hotels.
I was very pleasantly surprised. This was an oasis, it was clean, it was colorful, it was great. So what if a mouse ended up hijacking one and nibbling on all our energy bars, minor detail.
And the best part was the WELCOME DRINK !!!! A fabulous extremely sweet ice tea with lime juice. Alexander asked the waiter for the recipe and now we too can make “welcome drink”. We had a bit of an issue finding the tea. At the market you can get all kinds of exotic teas, but nobody had the cheapo “yellow label” Lipton tea. Yes, we don’t know what kind of tea it is, the tag says indeed “yellow label tea”, on a yellow tag, helpful, isn’t it? We then tipped the waiter so he would buy us a box of this tea, the magic ingredient.
But on to the reason why we came to Siem Reap, Ankor Wat. The largest temple complex in the world and spread out over a huge area. Since it is so ginormeous you can buy 1, 2, 3 or 6 day passes. Since various parts of the complex were built over several hundreds of years and each king tried to outdo the previous one to demonstrate the power of this once huge Khmer empire that covered most parts of SouthEast Asia, it is a bit daunting to explore. I knew I wouldn’t last very long in the 95 degree heat and high jungle humidity and decided that 1 day of walking and exploring was plenty for us. The empire spanned 500 years, and is considered an architectural masterpiece, there is tons of information on the net available if you are interested. I was just happy to be there and tried to imagine what this looked like when tens of thousands of people actually lived here.
It’s pretty cool to wander through the labyrinth of hallways, I had no idea where we were going most of the time. There is always the smell of incense in the air and some of the Buddha status have shrines for worship providing the only color against the drag looking stone buildings. Of course you get also constantly asked to buy incense and light them for good luck.
Everything has meaning, heaven, earth, the universe, society, wars, rulers, history, legends, myths, everything is documented on these walls. The stone carvings and bas reliefs are famous, intricate and endless.
My favorite carvings were the Apsara dancers. They are extremely beautiful female spirits based on Hindu and Buddhist mythology and their purpose was to entertain with dance and song the gods and fallen heroes. During the Khmer empire, one of the king had at his court up to 3000 dancers. Most of the images of Buddha, Hindu gods, warriors and the multitude of mythological creatures tend to all look alike but these Apsara dancers were carved as individuals. Each one has a different facial expression and features, also implying that different races were at court. When the Thai sacked Angkor Wat effectively ending the Khmer Empire, they not only took all the treasures but also all the Apsara dancers, go figure.
These smiling faces are also famous Angkor Wat images. It is speculated that they are a composite of one of the kings and the Buddha image. One of the temples has hundreds of these images carved on every surface, huge to small, you feel like you are being watched from all sides, yup, the eyes follow you…..
Alexander went everywhere up and down, I stayed mostly down, I learned my limits
However, as soon as you were not in motion, scores of children, “guides” and beggars started to circle like sharks on a feeding frenzy. A friendly “no” doesn’t do it, 10 friendly “no thank you” don’t do it, you have to move. Even then you still walk with 3-5 kids who are pressing their post cards, books, magnets, beads into your face repeating over and over “just one dollaaaaa, help meeee, buy from meeee, just one dollaaaaa”. It is hard to say no to a kid, very hard.
So I ended up with a book for twice the price then what I would have paid in town, a magnet, 10 postcards, paid an unofficial guide $5 because he showed me the way that I went anyways, paid a group of musicians that were all handicapped by landmines, gave another kid a dollar because she actually walked away after the first no, bought overpriced lunch, lots of water and coke. We also had an interesting conversation with the girls that you see in the pic. They all giggled when we told them that Alexander is just 14, they were all the same age or older but half his height. We talked about school, what they’ll do when they grow up and why I can’t buy from all of them if I am rich enough to come to Cambodia. Tough questions. In general however, these kids looked happy and very healthy. Tourism pumps enough money into this region that most people seem to be able to provide for themselves and their families. This shows in a more normal body weight what can’t be said for the population we saw in the villages and Phnom Penh where people seemed to be very small and underweight, even for Asia.
Some of the temples were left they way they were found to show what the place looked like when it was discovered.
At the end of the day, after 8 hours of walking in the heat, well dusted, my shirt sweat and salt stained as if I am lactating, I just couldn’t muster the energy to stay for the famous sunset. The thought of running up an enormous hill with hundreds of other eager, sweaty tourists fighting for camera space made me…tired. We were templed out and needed a welcome drink. Farewell Angkor, truly unforgettable.
Sonja