Seesea Travel Blog

     

Travel Location: Siem-Reap,Cambodia

Photos STILL won’t go in the right order! I have never had problems with the photos on this site before and this trip they are driving me crazy!

I expected to wake up more sore this morning than I did following the hike yesterday. Today is our last full day in Cambodia and we are actually going to do something besides look at temples! We started with our routine breakfast. All the other days, there have only be a few of us breakfasting (is that a word?) at any given time, but today it was really crowded. We were almost done eating when a gentleman showed up and there were no tables left. They seated him at a table in the lobby, but we were at a table for four, so we invited him to join us. His wife joined us shortly as well. They were from Munich, Germany and headed home this evening. We enjoyed chatted with them for a bit while we finished our breakfast. After breakfast we headed out. Today is a much slower temple day than the previous ones.

To start with we visited Pre Rup which means “Change the Body”. It was built around 961 by King Rajedravarman II. This temple is near where the East Baray (reservoir) was and the area around it was probably fields that were irrigated by water from the Baray. This temple was used as a crematorium (hence the name). It is built in temple style and of course symbolizes Mount Meru, located at the center of the universe. Our guide told us quite a bit about common funeral and cremation practices now and talked about how this would have been used then.

Our next temple was East Mebon. This temple used to be located in the middle of the East Baray and only accessible by boat. It too was built by King Rajedravarman II around 952 (right before Pre Rup). There is also a West Mebon temple located in the middle of the West Baray, but the West Baray still contains water and I think that you can only get to West Mebon by boat, especially now, right after the end of the the rainy season. East Mebon was built as an ancestor temple and was dedicated to the king’s parents. The two Barays here are amazing. The Eastern one was 2 by 7 kilometers (1.2 by 4.3 miles) and was filled by the Siem Reap River. They used the water for irrigation for the rice fields to feed the huge number of people that lived in this area. The Baray was about 3 meters (9.8 feet) deep, so you have to use a bit of imagination about how this must have looked when you approached by boat. This temple, is also a mountain style temple for Mount Meru. We actually ended up sitting by an elephant sculpture while our guide told us the tale of this temple and then we ended up chatting about a variety of things for the next 30 min or so. We then walked around the temple before heading to our next stop.

Ta Som, which means “The Ancestor Som” was built by King Jayavarman VII at the end of the 12th century. Ta Som is a bit of a tiny temple compared to the ones we have been visiting. The central area is quite short and small. Like Bayon, it has faces (most likely King J VII’s face) throughout the temple. Restoration on this one didn’t start until March of 2001 and it has trees growing on it similar to Ta Prom. Although the temple was designed and built by King J VII, it is thought that the outer enclosure walls were added by King Indravarman II in the 13th century. Its an interesting historic note that King J VII (I get tired of typing his whole name) built the most temples of any king. King Indravarman II built basically nothing, but spend a lot of time removing all traces of Buddha from everything that King J VII did build. Perhaps its better to do your own thing that destroy what others have done? I enjoyed this temple as I like the ones that are tumbling down with trees growing on them. You walk through a courtyard area with trees growing along the path and the denseness of the trees, even this close to traffic again demonstrates how easy it was for all these temples to be hidden for so long. The carvings here have held up really well, so took some pictures before we left.

Neak Pean, which means “Coiled Serpents” was our last stop before lunch. This was built by (guess who?) King J VII in the second half of the 12th century. This is a fascinating little temple. It was built in the center of what was the Northern Baray and placed on an artificial island. It was assessable by boat. The Northern Baray has been dry for a long time (for the most part), but due to all the flooding from the storms along Indonesia’s coast, a long makeshift walkway of two boards has been made to get you to this temple. It was kinda neat in some way, because even though we were walking and not boating, it still gave an idea of how it used to be. After we all made it across the boards, we took a look around. The main temple sits on a little island in the middle of a pool. Around it are four other square pools, each with a chamber opening into its pool. This temple was thought to be used for the priest to cleanse themselves. There was a cleaver little hole cut in the top of the chamber, that when water is poured in, it is dispensed through the mouth of a sculpture inside of it. A priest would sit under the sculpture and be cleansed with the holy water. There are little buildings next to each of the four pools where he could meditate after being cleansed. The four sculptures were of a horse, elephant, lion, and human. Its hard to look into each chamber to see the sculptures well, but some details are visible. Heading back across the boards, we saw some cute little ducklings, that didn’t want to hold still to have their pictures taken.

We weren’t all that hungry at lunchtime after our huge breakfast, but our guide and driver were hungry, so we had cold drinks at a little food stall across the street from Neak Pean while they ate. Again today, our schedule and location doesn’t lend itself to a trip back to the hotel. Like our lunch the day before, we were entertained by some of the local animals while a chicken and a few dogs came through. Two little cats came through chasing each other and one very friendly one ended up in my lap. She had similar coloring to our cat at home, but was way shorter in both length and height. Oh and of course she was quite a bit lighter Once the guide was ready to go, I had to evict her from my lap, although they offered that I could take her home with me. Since we go from here to Thailand and the US government frowns on bringing in animals, I had to decline.

We had one more temple to see this afternoon, Preah Khan, which means “The Sacred Sword”. I hear you wondering if this temple was also built by our good friend King J VII, and the answer to that would be yes. He built it in the second half of the 12th century around 1191. This temple is dedicated to his father. This has to be one of the most complex temples that we wandered through. Its grounds cover 138 acres total and the temple itself is huge. It is surrounded by a moat and walls that are about 6 feet high. The balustrade of the bridge over the moat is the gods and demons churning the Sea of Milk. This is an important story and pieces of art everywhere throughout the temples illustrate it. I have already written a novel for all these temple days, so I won’t retell it, but I am sure that google with be happy to share it with you. This temple is doorway after doorway, drawing you deeper and deeper until you finally reach the center. The central sanctuary was probably once covered with gold, bronze, or gems, from the remains left. This temple is built on a very significant site to King J, as this is where he defeated the Cham army and became king.

This ends our tours of the temples of Angkor. Each temple has much more history and interesting building points than I have described in the last four days. If any of them interest you more, there is a good amount of info available on the web about all of them. The best complete book of the temples, if you are planning a trip, is by Dawn Rooney. Its called “Angkor, Cambodia’s Wondrous Khmer Temples”. I didn’t find it at any of the local book stores, but the latest version was readily available on Amazon. The book is written so that it will guide you through each of the temples if you want to visit them without a guide. I found it a good resource to look back on when writing this, and to look up the temples that I knew we were going to visit. I find the guide very useful and at only $25 USD per day (arranged through our hotel) it was well worth it. I am sure that I have missed things about all the temples that others think are important, but hey, its not a history lesson, its just some random info. I hope that you learned something and are perhaps inspired to want to explore the temples yourself!

Now back to our day:

A very smart company has a large tethered balloon that gives you a great view of Angkor Wat and we really wanted to do that before we left. When we got there, the balloon was already up in the air, and it needs some time once it comes down, so we settled in to wait. Other than our park passes, this is by far the most expensive thing that we did here, at $15 USD per person. Once the balloon was ready we climbed in the cage and were off. The cage is circular around the balloon. It was only us and the operator, so it was very easy to move around. The ride is about 15 minutes and you can walk around the cage and take in all the views. My camera battery died on the way up and I impressed myself by changing it without dropping anything. The view of Angkor from this height was absolutely amazing! You can read the statistics on how large it is, but being up above it like this, really gives you a way better feel for how large it is. We spied the temple that we climbed up to the first night through the trees and the view of Tonle Sap Lake and the Cambodian countryside were great as well. Jeff was happy since we had a nice view of the airport too . The 15 minutes went by all to fast and we headed down.

We didn’t plan our trip this, but we just happened to be here during the 12th full moon of the year. In both Cambodia and Thailand (and I am sure other countries in Southeast Asia as well) this is a time of celebration. Historically this time of year is when the rice harvest would be done and everyone would have more time. There is a multi day celebration to give thanks to different gods including the gods of water and fertility. In Thailand, the celebration is called Loy Kratong (and you will hear more about it in the coming days). I am not sure what the holiday is called in Cambodia, but it is celebrated similarly, but a huge part of their celebration is boat races. The boats are paddled by large teams (I think about 30 people) down the river and the winners of each round face off until their is one winner. The winner then travels to the capital in Pheom Phen and races against the winners from all the other regions for the ultimate prize. There were both women’s and men’s boats and I was never clear if there was both a woman and man winner or if at some point they raced each other. Today was the start of the races, so we headed to the downtown river area. They had streets blocked off and many food vendors selling things. We hung out for a bit and then all the boats headed down the river to hear opening announcements. Both Jeff and I got a bit bored by the time announcements were over, since they were all in Khmer and they lasted almost an hour. Finally, they were done talking and the races started. Wow, some of those teams could really paddle! I stressed out our guide again, when I went after a kid selling bags of popcorn, but I lost him in the crowd. I then wandered around trying to find another popcorn vendor (sadly for me, without success). Jeff said that he was quite worried the whole time I was gone. He and my dad would get along well! Jeff is pretty easy to pick out in a crowd here since he is so much taller, so I had no doubts that as long as they stayed where I left them, I could find them again. After watching the races for a little while, Jeff and I decided we were hot and sweaty and ready to go home, so our guide led us across the river to where our TukTuk was. Our driver navigated all the people and closed roads and got us back to the hotel.

Our plan had been to have a swim, but the German couple that had joined us at the end of breakfast was in the lobby area having a drink, so we joined them. We compared our thoughts on Angkor and heard a bit about their trip to Vietnam, where they were prior to Cambodia. We had just ordered some drinks as well, when suddenly part of the drywall on the ceiling came tumbling down! No one was hurt, as it missed the German man’s head, but it startled all of us. The staff rushed over, moved us to another table, and practically before you could blink, they had a ladder and were doing a quick repair job. It appeared that perhaps an animal or something ran over it when it fell as the drywall piece broke in half. Sebastian, the manager, was there before long to check on everything. We were laughing about it by that point and were glad that everyone was OK. They headed off to catch their flight soon and we headed to our room.

We showered and put on about our last bit of clothes that weren’t covered in sweat and decided to be different tonight and go out to eat. I think that our TukTuk driver was shocked that we were actually going somewhere and happily took us to the Khmer Kitchen, which has cheap local food. We thought for some reason that it was on the same side of the river that we were on, but we had to cross the river, around which people were still celebrating. Our driver dropped us off and we arranged a time for him to pick us back up and we headed in. Jeff got something with Cambodian curry and chicken and I got fried garlic with shrimp. Both dishes were very good. I have to admit though when I read fried garlic with shrimp, I assumed that it was a translation thing and it really was shrimp with garlic. I was shocked at the amount of garlic present when it was served! The shrimp were very good though, so I worked around the garlic. Even though we were done before our set time, our driver was nearby when we came out of the restaurant, so we headed back to the hotel. It was peaceful to ride on the TukTuk in the dark without our guide. He has an amazing amount of knowledge and stories to share, but it can get exhausting to listen all the time. We headed to our room and packed to head back to Bangkok tomorrow.

We both greatly enjoyed our time here in Cambodia. When we planned our trip, we figured that four full days here would give us time to do everything that we wanted, but I could have easily spent more time. I would love to come back, not just to see the temples, but to see more of the surrounding areas as well. We were both very aware of the standard of living here, which is so different from what we are used to. Many families struggle to even have clean water (hand pumped from a well). There are many orphanages around this area as well. We didn’t get a chance to research the many different groups that are here to help, but plan to do so once we get home. We plan to do something to help make a difference for someone here. We did tip our guide and driver quite well and felt very good about that. I think if we came here again, I would find an orphanage or school that is reputable and bring them supplies. Our trip here has certainly made us feel very lucky and very grateful for what we have.