Siem Reap, Cambodia: I got an early start on the temples today at 8:00 am. My private tuk tuk driver came and picked me up ($15/day…not bad). I bought a 3 day pass to see all of the temples and started out with the Crown Jewel: Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious building. This temple is surrounded by a moat 190 meters wide (two football fields: 207 yards). The moat forms a giant rectangle around the temple 1.5km by 1.3 km (almost 1 mile x 1 mile). It is huge…and just as impressive. It took me 1 ½ to see only part of it and I never got “temple burn out”.
Then it was onto Angkor Thom. Here the monkeys come out to play. They are literally all over the place! Unfortunately when backing up, I stepped onto someone’s tail and Wild Mother monkey came after me with a vengeance. I of course ran off like a scared little school girl. Wild Mother Monkey:1 Scared chicken tourist: 0. She had teeth like a lion! After my encounter with Wild Mom Monkey, I thought it would be best to leave (aka run away very quickly) and visit another temple – The Bayon. This was built by Jayavarman VII precisely to extract vengeance upon an American tourist (me) 1,000 years later. I now consider myself a professional rock climber. As we refer to it in the biz, “free soloing”. Not only free soloing but “highball”. (You non-climbers will have to look up those terms in wikipedia). Needless to say, I made it to the top! What I didn’t really think about however was the descent. Wow…visions of my encounter with Wild Mom Monkey came back! If I was to label it scary, that would be an understatement. After letting 85 people go in front of me, I started down and I’m glad to tell you that the “Highball” guy is back in the game! Along with Bayon, I visited the Baphoun, Terrace of the Elephant and Terrace of the Leper King. I was happy with myself and thought that I survived the worse but as always, I was mistaken. I was only 50 yards away from safety (my tuk tuk) when all of a sudden a horde of touts descended upon me. Three shirts, one set of postcards and 3 beads later, I made it out of there!
Hung, my driver, had some refreshing water cold water for me. Since my sweat was sweating during my climbs, my glasses became one hell of a mess. The first time I got to “see” where I have been, was when editing the photos later.
At this point I was dead tired and faced with a dilemma. The battle between the “Cheap Chris” who wanted to get his money’s worth from the full day tuk tuk tour versus. “Dead Tired Chris” who wanted to go check out the hotel pool. Cheap Chris won and it was onto Ta Prohm aka “Tomb Raider Temple”. For those of you who haven’t seen the Angelina Jolie (Lara Craft) movie, it was filmed here where nature and some pretty aggressive trees are trying to take over the temple. It was a great place to take some shots but “Dead Tired Chris” kept bitching and moaning the whole time. By 3pm, “Dead Tired Chris” finally won out and we started our way back to the hotel. The breeze was refreshing and I got my second wind and asked Hung to make one final stop: HeliStar. Yep…the “Indiana Jones Chris” is back and going to take a helicopter ride tomorrow. Stay tune for the details.
