After a dinner (where anything went – meat, gluten, alcohol, etc.) back in Siem Reap at Spoons which is a restaurant near and dear to my heart as it supports kids in Siem Reap and teaches them Hospitality skills. http://egbokmission.org/spoons-cafe/ . Some scary stats out there in Cambodia: Only 4% finish high school, $1.25 is the average DAILY wage for 18% of Cambodians, and almost 2 million perished during the Khmer Rouge genocide most of which were the higher educated population. Due to the deaths of so many in the 1970’s, 52% of Cambodians are 25 or younger. In order to help to break the cycle of poverty, restaurants like Spoons and Haven (dinner second night) http://www.havencambodia.com/en/about-haven/ kids are given the chance to learn life skills and help themselves as well as their families. Definitely take the time to read some of the information on the sites above as the work they are doing is inspiring and potentially something else that is an option for my future giving mindset.
We set our alarms for an early 420am in order to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. We got the tuk tuks out of the hotel and stopped in to get tickets and the singular ticket location. Each person has to get there picture taken for the most formal single day ticket I have ever seen. I think at this point the Cambodian government has more pictures of me than the US government.
One of the amazing things we learned from our guide Kaheng was that a private Vietnam company actually owns all of the Angkor temples. Apparently the Prime Ministers main goal is to get himself rich so he sold off some of the land and historical markers in Cambodia. How you could sell off your land, especially when it’s a for profit company where the money does NOT go back to the Cambodian citizens. $37 ticket and $4 goes to the guides….as our guide explained $1 for breakfast, $1 for lunch, $1 for dinner, $.50 for a draft beer and you have $.50 left for profit in a day (yeah those are prices you truly can pay in Siem Reap which is unbelievable). And if you have an injury you could be looking at $100 in out of pocket expense (yep no insurance) which isn’t possible unless you have solely saved for that for months. Needless to say, there are a lot of broken pieces in the Cambodian government AND the people are still the nicest most supportive people around.
Speaking of our guide, we had the best one as he took us all around the parks and was able to find us locations with some space to enjoy away from the crazy crowds. As we got to Angkor Wat, entering through a back entrance with a lot less people. It was a stunning sight as we waited for sunrise to occur. Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century and is one of the man made wonders of the world, especially considering it was built from 1102 to 1142 from sandstone that was miles away from where the temple was built. Elephants were used to get the stone and there must have been an inordinate amount of people using hammer and chisel to detail the entire place, some of which you can see below.
After spending time watching the sunrise come up and then seeing the amazing views by heading up the stairs to the third level of the temple, we went to the main entrance of the park to meet up with our tuk tuks (you get the same ones all day!). On the way to the entrance we got to see some monkeys! As I am not much of a banana fan, I still had my three from the breakfast we got at the hotel and threw them to a mom and baby monkey. They were super agile and were able to get to them quickly and go to town on the bananas. As we started walking again we realized what we had started as monkey’s started coming from all over towards us. Luckily I had asked the guide before feeding them and he said it was ok and that they would back off when they realized we didn’t have any more. This was completely true and we kept on with our walk.
We headed next to Angkor Thom which is where our guide used to play as a child before it became a tourist area. He was could give us great little stories of spending time with his grandmother who lived through the Khmer Rouge and survived it to live to her 80’s. This temple consisted of over 50 faces throughout the pillars and our guide told us that most people can relate especially to one version as they all have different eyes, noses, mouths, etc. It was a bit of an over-packed mad house but our guide found us a spot to sit and take it all in before we left to grab some lunch. It was a beauty of a temple and we even got to see a couple of elephants which are beautiful creatures but I hated to see them carrying people around on a structure just doing loops around the park.
We stopped at a street side restaurant and had some delicious fried rice and topped up our waters as it was quite the hot day and due to old school traditions, women still have to cover their shoulders and knees so we all had more clothes on than we would have liked. No one in Cambodia drinks the water from the tap, everyone drinks bottled water and when I asked about if that was ever going to change, our guide just said no. Clear and succinct right there.
Our last temple was Ta Prohm which is the temple with the crazy trees whose recent claim to fame was when they filmed Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie which also started her love for Cambodia, her first adoption and her second film First They Killed My Father based on a book about the Khmer Rouge that she filmed near the Hidden Temple we visited on the Yoga Pilgrimmage. Considering she not only gave a bunch of locals consistent work, she also built some homes after the filming. I read the book about the Khmer Rouge and while it was a hard read, I would recommend it.
Ta Prohm quickly became my favorite of the temples as it was so connected to nature considering the trees literally grow out and around the temple. They are some massive trees and not sure the pictures do it justice.
