We arrived in Siem Reap late at night, exhausted from a 9 hour bus ride that we thought was only going to be 7 hours. Luckily, our hotel was nice. Quiet. Off the beaten track. Clean and spacious. We immediately took showers and dropped into bed.
Day 1 Siem Reap
We decided to go to the official Angkor Wat museum on the first day. Partly because it had air-conditioning and partly because we felt we would learn a lot about Angkor Wat before we actually saw it. We were right on both counts! The museum was spectacular. Not only were we better informed about what we were going to see, but we were able to put it all into a much greater context.
One of the first rooms was the room of 1000 Buddha's. Literally, 1000 different Buddha statues and figurines, many of them gold-plated, displayed in the same place. This is when I realized how different the Buddha looks depending on the culture that's creating the image. His face and headdress can change a lot from culture to culture. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos, so I just have to marvel at it in words.
Another thing we learned about Angkor Wat, although the majority of Cambodians are Buddhist, Angkor Wat was originally a Hindu temple and only became a Buddhist temple later in its life. In fact, it was changed back and forth many times. If we look back at some of the temples I took pictures of in India, I think you will agree, there are a lot of similarities, both in the overall architecture and in the sculpted pictures and graphics of the temples.
After the museum, we went to the Angkor Wat ticket booth to buy our ticket to see the real thing tomorrow. This is common practice because they only sell a limited amount of tickets everyday. Afterward, we hiked up to a small temple on top of a mountain to see the sunset. The view was mostly trees and the temple was mostly in ruins so it was anticlimactic, but good exercise (hiking up and down). Now, we are off to see a dinner performance of traditional Ipsara dancers and music and singing.
The Ipsara dancing was quite different than I expected. Elegant hand and foot movements to be sure, but incredibly slow. Incredibly slow! They also had a puppet show, which was all in Cambodian and not much movement of the puppets, except the bullfight at the end. Despite being in Cambodian, the bullfight part was really neat, and saved the puppet show.
Then, they had two dancing and singing skits, which were a lot of fun. My favorite involved a group of young people whispering and joking with each other throughout the dance. They teased and played silly tricks on other members of the group. It was juvenile in a good-hearted way that made it feel mature and funny. Quite novel I thought. They also had a song with an actor in a great peacock costume, which I thought was very inventive.
Day 2 Siem Reap
Today, we had a lovely, if incredibly hot and humid, morning at Angkor Wat. I have added captions to many of the photos giving more specific details about each temple, so look for those.
The temple, at sunrise, was so amazing. I think the pictures actually do it justice! Unfortunately, it was Buddha's Day today, so the main temple shrine at the top of the temple was closed to visitors. We don't know what we missed, other than a long flight of stairs. But it was all so beautiful anyway I didn't feel like I missed anything.
After the main temple, we went to three other temples in the area. My favorite was the second one that had lovely faces on all of its towers. The fourth one was also quite lovely with its beautiful graceful trees intertwined into the building.
By ten am, Dad was exhausted from the heat. And who could blame him - it was super humid all morning. We thought it would be the rainy season here in Cambodia and Vietnam, but its worse. There's so much humidity in the air we might as well be swimming, and sometimes Dad looks like he has been swimming, but in fact we have seen little to no actual rain.
We stopped for some iced coffee that was actually really tasty. I'm not sure which was better, the ice or the coffee. The ice was not like the half-baked ice we get from the fountain at home that melts in a minute, this ice was from a real block o' ice. And it was Refreshing! The drink pepped us up so we could make it through the final temple. Thankfully.
Angkor Wat was really quite a magical place. I wish we had had more time and less humidity to take in the spirituality and loveliness of the whole place - which is vast. We only saw four temples, but there are many more to see.
We returned back to the hotel about noon and dad was wet with sweat from the top of his head down to his knees. Poor thing. I've never seen anything like it. We were only just walking through temples and the forest, but to look at him, we had just been cutting wood for five hours. Who knew humidity could do that to a person!
After resting all afternoon and having a nice dinner at a sister restaurant to the one we visited in Phnom Penh (the one that helps street kids), we decided that we would forego a second day at Angkor Wat and instead spend an extra day in Bangkok. We are flying out tomorrow morning - we couldn't take another exhausting bus ride.
One curious thing about Cambodia, apparently, they have a real problem with orphans and street children. Although I didn't see any actual children by themselves, they have signs everywhere about orphanage tourism and not making children into a tourist attraction. Such a strange and truly sad thing to see.
We went to two restaurants that are helping former street kids by teaching them the hospitality industry - cooking, waitering, etc. I tend to think of street kids as hardened gang members or incredibly tough kids from difficult homes, but I get the feeling these kids were orphaned or abandoned because their parents simply couldn't afford to take care of them, and possibly that the whole family could be living on the street and these kids were simply fighting to survive. Definitely a different paradigm from America.
Cambodia was eye-opening. I saw so much more of the countryside here than I did in Vietnam. And I think Cambodia is much poorer than Vietnam, and perhaps even more so than India. They just don't have the resources and the infrastructure that India has. But they seem to be working their way through it slowly, but surely. And perhaps the best part is they have a strong cultural background, they seem to value their heritage, and they understand how to preserve and exploit it for turistic purposes. So we can expect that their future development won't involve bulldozing over their past history.
I especially enjoyed the laid-back vibe here in Siem Reap. It's a comfortable city that was a breath of fresh air after the endless hours of bumpy roads on the bus. And the food. We definitely had some unique dishes with great flavors and food combinations here in Cambodia. I wish I had kept better track of them. I'm going to blame the humidity for my deficiencies!
And that brings our short adventure through Cambodia to an end. Here we come Thailand!
