Day 82

Saturday 22^nd January 2011

After several days off pampering and TLC the Sony camera has FINALLY dried out and seems to be working again. Perfect! I really want to be able to take some quality photos today of the temples……. And then I realised that both batteries are completely dead so this is not going to happen. Although I was both delighted and relieved that it seems to be working again.

We get up to check out the breakfast in the hotel – it aint bad although the bacon is a bit random! We’ve booked an English speaking guide and a tuk tuk for our tour of the temples today and they collect us in reception at 10.00am. The Khmer civilisation centred on Angkor was one of the most remarkable to flourish in South East Asia. Between the 8^th and 13^th centuries, a succession of Hindu and Buddhist kings created numerous magnificent temples in stone. I hadn’t realised the sheer scale of the sights that were on offer here in Siem Reap – apparently you can spend a week exploring all the different sights. We decided to dedicate just one day to this and so told our guide we wanted to see the pick of the bunch.

First up was Angkor Wat – the grandest and most famous temple. This was built under the reign of Suryavarman II between 1113 and 1150 and was also a city within its own right. It was staggering to believe that they could create something so vast and so beautiful in just 40 years by hand although our guide assured us that thousands of Khmer people were involved in the construction. By comparison the Indian Government are currently restoring Ta Prohm, a much smaller temple that we saw later in the day, and they will take 10 years just to restore it, despite having modern tools and equipment!

The outer limits of Angkor Wat are set by its broad moat. I was amazed at how a relatively poor country such as Cambodia is taking care of its heritage, al be it with help from UNESCO. The moat is kept permanently irrigated, even during the dry season that they are currently experiencing. The country only has sufficient water for one rice harvest a year in comparison with 3 in neighbouring Vietnam and yet they choose to irrigate the moat at Angkor Wat rather than divert water to farming. The whole site is also kept meticulously clean. We saw workers removing weeds from the moat and clearing the roads of dust and leaves. It makes sense when you hear that Angkor Wat and the associated temples draw thousands of tourists a day. Those tourists bring the money that Cambodia depends on with almost everyone in Siem reap depending on tourism through one form or another. The bulk of the tourists come from neighbouring Southern Asian countries – Vietnam, China and Japan and they were EVERYWHERE!!!

The total area of the Angkor Wat site is almost 200 hectares – we spent a couple of hours with our guide exploring the central stone temple. Much of the original city, including the Royal palace is no longer standing as they were constructed out of wood and bamboo. Only buildings dedicated to Gods were built in stone and so only these remain standing. It comprises typical Khmer architecture of a pyramid and concentric galleries surrounding the 5 central towers.

I was gutted to discover much of the front face of the Wat covered in scaffolding and green sheeting. Restoration work was being undertaken sponsored by the German Government – bloody Germans! Is this the ultimate equivalent of putting your towel on a sun lounger? ‘No you can’t look at Angkor Wat until we’ve finished restoring it!!!!’

Fortunately once inside the first gallery the sheeting was no longer visible.

The gallery walls are all intricately carved and sculpted. Each different scene telling a Hindu story. There were even sanskrit inscriptions detailing the story being told or giving information on the King and how people lived at that time. These inscriptions have gievn a valuable insgith into the lives of the ancitent Angkor people.

Our guide was very informative and spent some time explaining the stories as we went along. We were both grateful to be out of the beating sun but the temperature in the shaded galleries was still well over 30^oC.

Angkor Wat was originally constructed as a dedication to Vishnu, the Hindu God.  This is due to Indian influences on the Khmer people. However, in later years it has been converted to Buddhism, Buddhism is very closely linked to Hinduism with Buddha being one of the forms that Vishnu took. The moats represent the oceans surrounding the earth, the concentric galleries represent mountain ranges surrounding the home of the Gods. The towers represent the mountain’s peaks and the experience of the ascent to the central shrine is convincingly like climbing a mountain. The stone steps were narrow and huge as the ascent to heaven is not meant to be an easy one.

However, there were 5 staircases leading to the central shrine. Four have these treacherous steps. The 5^th was built for the king and he was given a much gentler climb!!!Nowadays a secondary wooden staircase has been provided for the tourists to avoid them falling to certain death!

Sadly many of the Buddhist statues are headless due to looting during times of Cambodia’s troubled past. We even saw bullet holes in the walls from the civil wars. Fortunately much of the temples remained in tact as both sides of the opposition respected the Khmer heritage.

The highlight for Franky was not provided by the awe inspiring age old world wonder but by the monkeys living in the grounds. I have to confess they were very cute and inexplicably cheeky. Seemingly they thrive here as hunting is banned within the Angkor sites.

They were tame and keen to investigate what we had to offer them. I thought we had nothing as we had no food but they seemed equally happy to unload our water from us! The larger ones could even drink from the bottle without help. There was a clear hierarchy with the smaller monkeys waiting until the bigger ones had had their fill before taking water from us.

One cheeky one climbed up Franky’s leg and had his hand in his back pockets to investigate what else he might get out of us. Finally one over exuberant youngster knocked the bottle from Franky’s hand, spilling the remaining water and spoiling the fun for everyone!

After a couple of hours we had exhausted the key sights here and it was time for lunch.

We were taken to a Cambodian restaurant just outside Angkor Wat. I was delighted as I was keen to try out the local cuisine. Our guide recommended the chicken curry that was served in a hollowed out coconut shell.

We also selected the ‘Beef on Volcano’. This is not indicative of the spiciness of the dish but the fact that this is a Cambodian barbeque. The meat is brought to the table raw with a kind of hot plate device. There is soup in a tray around the outside where you put the vegetables to cook (green beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions and a random leafy vegetable called Morning Glory). You then put butter on the hot plate, braise the meat in raw egg, lime juice, salt and pepper throw it on using chop sticks. When the beef is cooked to your liking you take it off with the chopsticks and munch it down.

It was entertaining grappling with the chopsticks. Franky had a childhood flashback of using chopsticks after Eric had brought them back from working away in China. He and Matt used to eat Chinese food wearing their black silk dressing gowns that were also a gift from Dad! Today he had to make do with a napkin as a hat!

After lunch and copious amounts of water to replace the bucketloads we were losing in sweat we were back in the tuk tuk and off to Ta Prohm. This is a temple made famous by Angelina Jolie in the movie Tomb Raider.  

This is the doorway used in the film

This is on a smaller sale than Angkor Wat but impressive nonetheless. It was built in the later 12^th century. We  found it in an overgrown and collapsed state with trees interlaced amongst the ruins.

This temple was chosen to be left as an example of how most of Angkor looked on discovery in the 1800s. This decision still required a significant amount of work to make the temple accessible and work is constantly being undertaken to prevent further collapse. The trees themselves are responsible for much of the collapse. The roots push between the stones and make the walls unstable. However the trees cannot be cut down as death of the supporting roots would also result in further collapse.

I have to say the decision to maintain the temple in a state of apparent neglect is genius as the tree roots winding through the temple structures give a romantic appeal and a completely different feel to the pristine renovation of Angkor Wat. The trees also provided us with welcome shade and an escape from the sun.

After an hour here it was time to move onto to our third and final site. We entered the ancient Angkor city of Angkor Thom. This was built in the late 12^th century by Jayavrarman VII and was the original capital of the Khmer civilisation. It remained so until the 1600s. The walled city covers an area of 900 hectares but we were just going to 2 important sites.

We entered through the Eastern or Victory gate and went to the Terrace of the Elephants.

It is likely that this would have supported wooden buildings of the King but now only the stone terrace remains. This terrace faces the eastern victory gate and so the king would have sat here watching his army display before heading off to war and on their victorious return. This King was one of the most canny Kings in Khmer history as he embraced both Hindu and Buddhist religions and thus avoided and religious tensions. He was also undefeated until his death. His death was then kept secret to avoid inevitable attack from the Thai people who had previously been afraid to take on the undefeated King.

The Bayon temple is in the exact centre of Angkor Thom city and was the third and final temple on our list of ‘must see temples’. This temple uses a mass of face towers to create a stone mountain.

There were originally 49 towers – each with faces of Buddha. Although now only 37 are standing with 2, 3 or 4 faces on each tower – and even more on the central tower. The number of towers or faces do not have any symbolic significance as many were added at different points in history.

This was an impressive temple but to be honest we were getting templed out. We wandered around getting some shots in the late afternoon sun. The temperature was still soaring even late in the afternoon and after this temple we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel for a well earned rest.

The Southern gate to the city of Angkor Thom is the best preserved and we exited the city through this gate in a convoy of tuk tuks taking weary, hot and dusty tourists back into town after a hard day of temple sight seeing. On either side of the road 2 rows of figures carry the body of a giant serpent – a 7 headed naga – almost in the attitude of a tug of war.

On arrival back at the hotel is was time for a shower and a sleep before we headed out for the night. Franky had spotted a nice looking restaurant called Nest the day before and was keen to try it out. On arrival it turned out to be a bit pricier than the other Siem reap restaurants but had been voted Cambodia’s best restaurant in 2009 so we decided to give it a try. It was well worth it. We both had steak and it was delicious, complemented perfectly with a bottle of Argentinean red wine.

The wine was so good that after the meal we decided to retire to the Bar for a second bottle! Here we understood why the restaurant was called Nest. The bar area had a series of ‘beds’ with mini tables instead of the regular tables and chairs you would find in a bar area. It was great – we lay back supping wine and digesting our food.

We sensibly decided against a third bottle and headed to Pub Street to watch Utd vs Birmingham – a 5 nil drumming accompanied by a few pints of Angkor beer! The bar shut after the match but we were on fine form and not ready to call it a night so were delighted to stumble across Molly Malone’s, an Irish bar, on the way home.

There was a dart board with 2 blokes playing darts so Franky bowled over to ask them if they fancied a game of doubles. He wasn’t banking on the 2 blokes being French, or that they didn’t have the first idea how to play darts. So he introduced them to a game played in the pubs back home that some of you will know - Mickey Mouse. It was all going swimmingly with Tony and Bastion. The dart board left a lot to be desired – just a painted piece of cork with a bulls eye made of cotton wool but that didn’t spoil our enjoyment of the game…….

I was suddenly aware of a noticeable change in the boys as two girls arrived. One a petite French girl who was Bastion’s girlfriend and the other a Vietnamese girl with a face like thunder who turned out to be Tony’s pregnant wife. The tale goes that the boys had said they were staying out for one more beer and would be home in 30 mins….. 2 hours ago. The girls were in the hotel having gone to bed when the angry Vietnamese wife dragged the poor French girl up to go and find them. Franky tried to pacify her that it was probably all his fault for involving them in the game but she was having none of it as apparently this is Tony’s usual behaviour.

The situation probably wasn’t helped by a pretty Cambodian girl who had been keen to join in with us and was taking a go at throwing Tony’s darts when the angry wife arrived. Franky quickly declared the game over with us as the winners (we were in the lead) and suggested we joined the Cambodian girl who was sat with some Western tourists at the other end of the bar, thus leaving the French lads to pacify their women. This was the second time tonight he had misjudged nationality as we were now sat with 3 middle aged Slovakian men who had clearly picked up the young, pretty Cambodian girl and her friend for the evening – delightful!

We tried to pay our bill only to be informed that the French lads had paid for our 6 beers as well as their own. They refused to take any money from us for this so we made a hasty retreat and headed home to bed.