The Temples of Angkor

On my 3rd day in Siem Reap, (July 4th!) I finally ended the suspense and hired a tuk-tuk driver to go and see the well-famed and visited Angkor Wat, and the many temples of Angkor.

Many travelers get super motivated and wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning to begin their temple-viewing while watching the sunrise, but, this was not in the cards for me- getting a good night's sleep was the only way I was going to enjoy the massive day ahead! I decided on sunset instead of sunrise as my reward at the end of a long day of climbing and exploring. So, Mr. Mab arrived at 8am, and we got on the road in his tuk-tuk. About 10 or 15 minutes later, we arrived at the ticket booth area, where tuk-tuks and people were lined up to buy tickets. I believe it is like this for hours each morning, and this is just the slow season! It is $20 to get in for one day, or $40 if you decide to do 3 days (so, if you think you might do two days, you might as well buy the 3-day pass just in case). That said, I just bought the one day pass. :)

We rode alongside a long lake, and eventually, I could see a huge structure in the distance which was Angkor Wat. It was impressive and beautiful. That said, it is difficult to write about looking at temples, as you just have to go there and see them yourself, or, look at photos (which, I will post when I get home, I promise!) And since we went to so many places that day, I will just tell you what 'The Small Circuit' is, to summarize the activities of that day.

The 17km Small Circuit begins at Angkor Wat, and heads north to Phnom Bakheng, Baksei Chamkrong, and Angkor Thom, including the city wall and gates, the Bayon, the Baphuon, the Royal Enclosure, Phimeanakas, Preah Palilay, the Terrace of the Leper King, the Terrace of the Elephants, the Kleangs and Prast Suor Prat. It exits from Angkor Thom via the Victory Gate in the eastern wall, and continues to Chau Say Tevoda, Thommanon, Spean Thmor, and Ta Keo. It then heads northeast of the road to Ta Nei, turns south to Ta Prohn, continues east to Banteay Kdei and Sra Srang, and finally returns to Angkor Wat via Prasat Kravan.

Now, that is a lot of information there, right? Does it have any meaning to you to just read these words? Probably not, but, at least it can convey JUST HOW MUCH there is to see, and that is just the 'Small Circuit.' To be honest, I am not even sure if I SAW all of that stuff, because to me it is a big blur of Wats, Wats, Wats, and aside from Angkor Wat which was the first (and most famous) one that I saw, I can't remember which was which, and some of the names mentioned are WITHIN other mentioned names/areas.

What I CAN tell you is that there are just endless walls and walls and ceilings and statues of intricate and beautiful carvings. People could spend days, weeks, months exporing every inch of these buildings if they wanted to, and would just be scratching the surface. It is not necessarily the SIZE of these Wats that would lead to so much time spent, but instead just the DETAIL and the BEAUTY of the millions of hand-made carvings, as well as the construction of the Wats themselves. There are some that are more like 'ruins', with huge 'stone-blocks' fallen in piles, and some are perfectly in tact. There are many Buddha statues with missing heads, and I do believe that this is a result of the Khmer Rouge take over from 1975-1979, when they banned all religion, and destroyed endless religious statues, symbols, and temples. I am not absolutely certain about this, though.

Anyhow, there are people coming and going all day from sunrise until sunset every day. And at every temple to which we would arrive, there would be young Cambodian girls, boys, women, and men, all trying to sell trinkets or 'cold water, madam? cold drink?' and 'you buy something? you buy something from ME?' and it was a bombardment all day long until getting inside the temple gate walls. If I turned down the offer of water and said that I already have some, they would ask me my name and say 'okay, maybe after, I'll remember you.' And, low and behold, when I came out an hour or two later from exploring, I would hear someone calling my name 'Rachel! Rachel! Cold drink?' Amazing.

At one point, two teenage girls kept pleading and pleading me with sad eyes to buy their bracelets, or straw-woven crickets, and more, to which I responded 'no' everytime, but they kept offering still, as I sat in the tuk-tuk about to pull away. I looked them in the eyes, and suddenly I began smiling, and they began smiling, and then we all began laughing. My tuk-tuk driver started to pull away and we all smiled and waved, still laughing, and they thanked me ''Ah-kuhn" and gave me the Sampeah gesture, which some yoginis in America might refer to as 'Anjali-mudra' or the 'prayer position' of the hands. I like this little moment, because I feel like for just a second, we were able to break the buyer-seller-tourist cycle, and just be girls/people together.

By the time 2 o clock came around, I hit a wall (not literally). All of a sudden I felt really tired and even physically shaky. This is something I relate not to being out of shape, but to some mild hypoglycemia that is a regular fact of life for me, which, ordinarily only relates to the frequency and content of my food intake, (and also sleep) but it also can arrive if I do too much physical activity, regardless of how much food I have eaten. At a certain point, I just have to shut down, or I will meltdown! Due to this fact, in the past two years, I have been changing my exercise habits to higher frequency but shorter distances, and it has helped me to keep much better balanced energy. The Angkor Wat day was not an example of this short but sweet type of exercise, but when traveling, sometimes ya gotta do whatcha gotta do to see one of the eight wonders of the world!

So, I asked Mr. Mab if I could maybe go rest at the hotel for a bit and resume our exploring again, around 4 maybe? (I only asked this because days before, when he was trying to sell me his tuk-tuk services, and talked about a 5am wake-up, and my eyes widened with fear, he said 'no problem, you can come back to the hotel and rest in the afternoon, and come back- no problem!' But now, as I took him up on the offer, he said 'no, no, you will not have time, it is too far.' So, I don't know what the story is with that, (I think he didn't want to use the gas) but we found a compromise, because I was not enjoying myself anymore, and was over-tired after climbing and exploring for 5 hours straight, and now it was the peak heat of the day.

So, he set up his hammock for me in his tuk-tuk pulled over to the side of the road, and I lay down and took a nap- just like a real Cambodian tuk-tuk driver! :) It was quite nice, and about 45 minutes later, I woke up feeling a bit dazed, but much happier, and turned around to look for Mr. Mab, and saw him sleeping IN A TREE! I had taken his usual resting place, so he found another one. I can not believe the places and positions that I have seen moto and tuk-tuk drivers sleeping! Even with his eyes closed, he sensed me watching him and opened his eyes, and I started laughing at him, and he laughed as well. He came back to the tuk-tuk and said 'Ready?' And I said 'Yes, but let's go get some food, and THEN more temples!'

I got a bite to eat, and went to a few more temples. I was feeling much better now- the sleep and food were immensely helpful, and I was feeling cheerful again, not to mention it was getting on towards 5pm and it wasn't quite so hot anymore. At one of these temples, there was a musical band of war victims, many that were amputees, that are also musicians, and they play music to raise money for amputees and war victims all over Cambodia. Not only is this a great cause, but the traditional Khmer music that they play is AWESOME- I love it! I watched them for a while, and took some photos and some short videos that I will be posting soon enough. One guy was playing a malleted wooden xylophone-like instrument, one mallet with his left hand, and one mallet with a stump from his elbow! So inspiring and amazing.

Sunset was quickly approaching, and Mr. Mab was dead set on getting me 'there' on time. He kept me on a schedule "30 minutes then come back" and such, which was quite nice since I didn't know any better. At 5:30, we arrived at Phnom Bakheng, which is a hilltop temple, where there is a large exodus of tourists that all come at this same time, to take a long walk up a hill and to the top of the temple. This felt quite exciting and fun, being part of such a mass exodus up a path through a forested hill. At the top was the temple, with people climbing up massive and steep stairs, Monks climbing down, tourists climbing up, old Cambodian ladies with shaved heads climbing down- it was quite the scene!

I found a relatively quiet seat at the top, and, knowing there was at least half an hour to go until sunset, I made myself comfortable and wrote in my journal. A few minutes later, a gentle-looking older man sat near me, and I felt that he seemed approachable to ask if he knew WHERE exactly we were (like I said, this whole day was just a blur of temples and names that I couldn't remember). He didn't really know, but we were both pretty sure it was Phnom Bakheng (and it was). We got into talking- he was Italian, and his name was Fabrizio, and traveling alone as well- and we just chatted away until the sun started setting, when we joined the crowds to snap photo after photo of what we had all been waiting for, and climbing big hills for- the sunset.

On our way down, Fabrizio suggested that we have dinner together, 'Only if you want-ah, you know? I just think it-ah would-ah be-ah nice-ah! Whatever you want-ah!' he said in his strong Italian accent. I said absolutely I would love to, but that it needed to be something like 8pm, as it was already 6:30pm, and I had throughout the course of this day purchased some pricey items at various wats, (possibly pricier than they should have been, in fact!) and had a deal with the sellers that they would come to my hotel at 7:30pm to collect money from me, as I didn't bring very much with me to the temples, not realizing it would be the place that I would finally find a large Buddha statue for my parents which I had been promising them since my trip began, as well a some beautiful Temple-etchings for other friends and family.

So, I arrived back at my hotel for my rendezvous with the two sellers just in time, took a quick shower, and sent Fabrizio a text message from Skype to come meet me. He came to my hotel, and we went to dinner at the Angkor Palm where I had taken my cooking class the day before. It was just a very pleasant dinner, and it was Fabrizio's first time having Khmer food, so I insisted that we order the 'banquet for two' which included 7 different traditional Khmer dishes, a few of which were what I had learned to cook the day before. It was all just as good as what I had made! Hooray! It was good companionship too, being with Fabrizio, and pretty simple conversations, as his English was rather limited. He was just a good person to share space with, and enjoy some good food. I asked him about his favorite Italian foods, and that was fun to hear about. Like most Italians, he said he eats almost nothing BUT Italian food!

So, another great day in Siem Reap. What would the next day have in store? I wasn't sure, and decided to just figure out how I felt when I woke up. Either way, it was going to be my last day in Siem Reap.