We had seen so many temples, cathedrals, mosques, etc. over the last several years, that we have gotten "religious building" fatigue. Nevertheless, Angkor has remained on our bucket for some time. This temple complex was built in the early 12th century to worship Hindu gods. By the end of the century, it had been converted for Buddhist worship. Spanning an area over 400 acres, it is considered the largest religious monument in the world. And it is built in the middle of a sweltering jungle.
During its heyday, this area served as the capital of the Khmer empire and may have had a population close to a million people. But like all empires, they fall. Despite it's daunting size and fortifications, the capital was sacked by the Chams. Although Angkor recovered, subsequent pressure from Thai kingdoms to the west was the led to the abandonment of the site in the 14th century by the Khmers. Although it remained sparsely settled, especially by religious monks, the jungle claimed many of the buildings and temples over the subsequent centuries.
Angkor was "rediscovered" by the Western world in the late 19th century. The French colonial rulers began slowly restoring the site, but it wasn't until Cambodia became a constitutional monarchy in 1953 did work progress in earnest. Unfortunately, the Cambodian Civil War in 1970 interrupted progress on restoring Angkor. Even after peace returned a decade later, the temple was sacked by art thieves and looters.
In 1992, Angkor Wat was designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. Since then, foreign countries have been pouring in aid to help restore the legacy of this lost city. Angkor is now one of the fastest-growing tourist sites in Southeast Asia. It received 50,000 visitors in 1998 compared to over 2.5 million this year alone. This has transformed the small village of Siem Reap into a tourist town with high end hotels and backpackers galore.
Most of the time, when people speak of "Angkor Wat" they are really referring to the entire temple complex at Angkor. Angkor Wat is just the largest and most prominent temple. There are more than 70 smaller temples and buildings within the complex, many of them in significant disarray.
There are several touristy things to do at Angkor Wat. At the top of that list is probably watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat. When The Wife mentioned that, I just rolled my eyes. But then I thought, if this is the only time I go there, what if I'm missing out on something wonderful just so I can get a few more hours of sleep. So we decided to be a lemming and booked a tour that included the Angkor Wat sunrise.
We were up at 4 AM, only hours after checking into our hotel. Our guide, Baley, from Asean Angkor Guide met us in the lobby of our hotel. He was a half-Cambodiam, half-Vietnamese man only a few years younger than me. His English was great. He was born in a poor village in the region but had the fortune to be accepted into a private school where he learned English and received a good education. That allowed him to get a good-paying job and avoid a life as an indigent farmer. He told us that, in turn, he is paying for his children to go to a private Catholic school to get the best education for them as possible. Thus, he would be celebrating Christmas with them the following morning, although they are Buddhist. After dealing with the sweltering heat for the past couple of days, we had all but forgotten about the holidays.
We drove to the Angkor ticket office which opens way before the park does. Although we would only be in town for two days. the three day pass that costs $62 per person was the best option. It allows entry into all the temples at the Angkor Archaeological Park and some smaller ones just nearby. We were then transported to the entrance outside Angkor Wat. We were then greeted by a horde of other tourists who had woken up way earlier than us and staked out their spots.
Since the area dead-center of Angkor Wat was already full of people, Baley guided us over to a spot off to the right of the temple, next to the water. Even then, we were still three deep behind other tourists. Many of the folks in the very front had brought tripods as lighting would be poor at this hour.
We waited and waited until finally the sun started to peak out above the temples of Angkor Wat. It was pretty watching the dark shapes in the distance materialize into stone temples. However, it wasn't THAT much better than most other sunrises that I have experienced in my life.
In order to get photographs without the tops of people's heads in the picture, we had to take them way above our heads with our arms extended. With the slow shutter speed, most of the photographs came out blurry as it is very difficult to stay perfectly still in that position. We ended up taking a ton of pictures with only a couple coming out sharp. We weren't the only ones dealing with this problem.
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| The throng of tourists in the more popular center area disperse after the sunrise. |
After getting our obligatory pictures of Angkor Wat at sunrise, we headed towards the exit. Instead of fighting the crowds for the next several hours, we planned on doing the normal temple circuit backwards. We wouldn't be the only ones doing this method, but there would be less of the large tour groups to contend with.
On our way out we had to contend with a group of aggressive macaques that troll the temple grounds. Baley warned us to pocket all our valuables and keep an eye on these primates. He told us that these monkeys have been know to snatch people's phones and climb up to some of the high towers and leave them up their. Mainly, though, they just try and steal food from unsuspecting tourists, especially those bringing their breakfast into the park when they see the sunrise. Essentially these guys are first-class A-holes. Sure enough, we spotted several macaques eating food from packages and plastic bags. Some of the food came from dumpster diving, others snatched directly out of people's hands.
We saw one macaque go after a plastic bag of food that some Asian kid was holding. Instead of giving it up, the kid made the mistake of resisting and fighting back. That macaque came at him like a spider monkey. Luckily, the kid's parents were nearby and they helped chase off the pissed-off primate without any real harm being inflicted.
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| Resistance is futile! |
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| Second on the list of touristy things to do in Angkor Wat is a hot air balloon ride. |
We stopped at a nearby restaurant for breakfast. We had arranged for our hotel to pack us a breakfast of bread and fruits that we had kept in our car (Thankfully, we had not brought it with us lest we suffer the wrath of the macaques!)
Our next stop within the Angkor Archaeological Park was Angkor Thom, the actual fortified capital city of the Khmer Empire. To defend this 9 square kilometer of area, a large wall was constructed, and a moat was dug to surround it.
We entered through the South Gate. The bridge connecting it was lined with statues depicting the famous "Churning of the Ocean of Milk" myth.
Within Angkor Thom is the temple simply known as Bayon. It was state temple of King Jayavarmam VII, the founder of Angkor.
The temple is only partially restored, with work currently still in progress.
Nearby is a field of stones, still waiting to be put back together like a puzzle.
Our guide explained to us how the Khmer's were able to create these intricate designs in stone and use pulleys and levers to help lift these massive blocks.
On one of the walls of the temple are a series of bas reliefs. There is a depiction of the naval battle of Tonle Sap between the Khmer and Cham empires. There are also depictions of everyday life including a market, royalty being entertained, and a cock fight.
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| Bodies that feel into the lake during the battle are being devoured by crocodiles. |
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| In this bas relief, a man climbs up a tree to avoid a chasing tiger. |
Bayon is best known for the many towers with depictions of smiling faces. Overall, there are about 200 faces carved into the stones of Bayon.
Elephant rides can be purchased for $28 per person. The elephants ferry guests from the South Gate of Angkor Thom to Bayon Temple. After having a negative experience riding an elephant in India, we preferred to stick with stone elephants. Therefore, we drove a short distance north passing the Terrace of the Elephants. This long platform was used by Jayavarmam VII for public ceremonies and audience hall.
By mid-morning, it was already unbearably hot and sunny. We were already breaking into a pretty good sweat. Fortunately, Baley had anticipated this. In the trunk of his car was a cooler with an endless supply of cold water and face towels. After visiting each temple for the next two days, we would cool down and rejuvenate with an icy-wet towel.
At the entrance, we purchased some palm water from a vendor on a motorbike. It was so good and refreshing on a hot day.
Like many of the temples in the Siem Reap province, Bantaey Srei was destroyed by nature. However, it is in a more advanced state of restoration compared to many other sites. The only thing remaining from the buildings in the causeway leading into the temple are a couple of freestanding walls and door frames.
Bantaey Srei was organized into three concentric rectangular enclosures and three towers. Two buildings known as libraries also are contained within the temple,
What Bantey Srei lacks in size is made up by it's attention to detail. The carvings on the walls of the temple are so intricate compared to the temples within Angkor.
For lunch, we were taken to Kruosar Khmer, a large restaurant that is geared to tour groups. The benefits of eateries like this are they are geared more towards Western tastes. They tend to be cleaner than the local standards (especially restrooms) and are fast at getting food on the table. This benefits everybody as tour groups are on tight schedules and tables are freed up for the next busload of guests. Plus the tour guide gets an hour break where he doesn't have to deal with his annoying clients.
Usually, we try hard to avoid restaurants like these because the food tends to be pretty lousy. They have to cater their menu to the lowest common denominator of finicky tourist. I have a hard time trusting a "local" restaurant in an exotic country that serves burgers, pizzas, and pancakes. Since we were technically on a tour, albeit a small, private one, we really didn't have a choice.
We were pleased that the menu at least had some Southeast Asian fare as we hadn't been "in country" long enough to crave Western food yet. The Kids were just happy that they had free WiFi. Overall, the service was decent and the food was actually pretty good. As always, we ordered too much for our family of four. Somehow, we still ate it all.
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| Fish amok (coconut milk curry)--the signature dish of Cambodia. |
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| Fresh spring rolls |
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| Somlor Curry (Chicken, potatoes, long beans, lemongrass) |
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| Pad Thai |
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| Nasi Goreng (Indonesian fried rice with chicken satay) |
After lunch, we headed back towards Siem Reap and visited Ta Prohm, commonly known as the Tomb Raider Temple. The Angelina Jolie movie of that name was filmed here around 2001. Interestingly, it looks almost exactly the same now as it did back then almost twenty years ago. The powers that be decided to halt restoration processes and maintain the temple's identity.
Within Ta Prohm, the surrounding jungle has merged itself so well with the man-made structures. The roots of tetrameles trees cover entire walls of the temple, allowing for their giant trunks to tower over the ruins.
Ta Prohm is a very popular temple. Even in the afternoon, there were still busloads of tourists jockeying to get their Instagram-worthy picture in front of one of these trees. Still, we enjoyed wandering through the site even though the decorations on the walls were much more sparse than the previous places we had visited.
After leaving Ta Prohm, we had one last temple to visit for the day--Angkor Wat. This time, we entered through the nearer Eastern Gate. Compared to the other temples, this one was massive. It's 15 foot outer wall is a kilometer in longest dimension. There are multiple towers that are several stories high.
It took a massive amount of engineering to build Angkor Wat. The 5 to 10 million sandstone blocks that weigh 1.5 tones were quarried from a mountain about 25 miles away. The stones are well polished and carved--albeit not to the craftsmanship of the Banteay Sri Temple.
The afternoon crowds at weren't too bad. I'm sure there were plenty of people there, but the temple is large enough that we didn't feel crowded. The stairs at Angkor Wat are pretty steep--but not to bad for any child or adult in decent shape. The line to climb up into the Bakan (the inner gallery) wasn't too bad, so we went up and inside. The Girl wasn't old enough so she stayed behind and sat down in some shade.
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| A view of the surrounding area from the Bakan. |
Around the walls of the temple are many bas reliefs depicting scenes from Hindu epic literature. Not being a religious scholar, we didn't recognized most of these.
However, we did see the depiction of the Churning of the Sea of Milk once again. The large figure is Vishnu and there are gods and demons to each side of him pulling on the giant naga.
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| Free mementos for your visit to Angkor Wat? |
Baley dropped us back at our hotel by late mid afternoon. We were greeted by the staff welcoming us by first name. Wait a minute. We hadn't even meet these staffers yet. All of the staff went to the effort of remembering each guests' first and last names. I didn't know whether to be impressed or creeped out.
While The Kids and I rested and napped, The Wife walked around town to some of the boutique shops that she had read about online. After she returned, we went looking for a place to eat dinner. There were no shortage of small cafes catering to backpackers and Westerners. We settled on a restaurant called Khmer Touch Cuisine, that got rave reviews online. The food was indeed very good and much more refined than many of the other restaurants in that area.
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| Lotus root salad |
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| Wok fried morning glory with garlic |
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| Fish Amok |
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| Stir fried prawns with vegetables |
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| Stir fried fatty noodles with chicken and sticky rice cakes |
*****
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
*****
We got a chance to sleep in a little later today. We would still be touring temples, but thankfully, none at sunrise. We had a chance to get a proper breakfast at our hotel. We were each given a plate of fruits and ordered an item off their menu. I found it hard to believe that Cambodians would eat this amount of food for breakfast on a regular basis.
The day's journey would take us over two hours north by car to the area of Koh Ker, which was briefly the center of the Khmer Empire in the 10th century. Baley explained that King Jayavarmam IV relocated his capital from Angkor to this area possibly because of a power struggle between the royal family. He instituted an ambitious building plan funded by aggressive taxation. Over a 20 year period, over a hundred temples and sanctuaries were constructed all around the area. Plus, a 30 foot-deep, 4 mile-long embankment was constructed to maintain a healthy water reservoir for the population which likely numbered in the tens of thousands.
The capital only lasted 20 years before it was moved back to Angkor after the king's death. Some speculated that he was a usurper and that Koh Ker was the illegitimate capital of an illegitimate ruler. Other evidence points to the fact that the embankment failed during a particularly brutal monsoon causing the reservoir to overflow. This permanently damaged the embankment and hence the storage capacity of the reservoir. The area continued to be occupied, but the population continued to dwindle over time. Today it remains a sparsely-populated countryside.
Work on restoring the temples and monuments has been complicated by its remoteness as well as by the many minefields that were planted in the area during the Cambodian Civil War. Baley explained to us that it was a fact of life growing up in the country that you knew people who were killed or maimed by landmines. Many countries have sent demolition teams to Cambodia over the years to clear mines. But there is so much territory to cover and many of the minefields were never marked.
We arrived at our first stop, the small temple complex of Prasat Pram. The most reassuring thing that we saw as we made our way to the site was a sign declaring the area a mine-free zone.
The history and significant of Prasat Pram is not well-known. However, the libraries and sanctuaries that compose the bulk of this temple remain in good shape. Like the Ta Prohm Temple from the day before, restorers have allowed a part of the jungle to coexist with the man-made structures.
We drove a little farther until we reached Prasat Thom, the main temple complex of Koh Ker. At first we weren't very impressed by the site. The structures were all in pretty poor shape with little effort at restoration. Any remnants of statues or carvings were destroyed over the centuries, either by mother nature or by looters.
We finally emerged from the maze of rubble and ruins and were greeted by an amazing site--a massive seven story ziggurat. Standing 36 meters, it was the tallest structure built by the Khmer Empire.
The original stairs have deteriorated to rubble. Instead, access to the top can be made by wooden stairs located along the side of the pyramid.
The climb to the top of the Prasat Thom pyramid wasn't very fun in the oppressive Cambodian heat. But it was worth it for the nice breeze at the top and the view of the surrounding jungle.
There were many more temples that we could have visited around Koh Ker, but we had to start making our way back to Siem Reap. After an hour's drive back, we stopped at the Rumdoul Angkor II restaurant. It was also a tourist restaurant but it looked pretty nice. However, the parking lot was packed with many large buses and vans. This was likely the only major restaurant out in the middle of nowhere.
The service was awful. It took us twenty minutes to get a table. We were understandable about that given that they were busy. However, once we got a table we were completely ignored. We had to repeatedly get our waiter's attention just to place our order. They then proceeded to forget to bring half of them. Baley even came over to see if we were done eating only to discover that we hadn't even received our food yet. It was tough seeing bus load after bus load of people arriving after us and eating before us. After speaking with the manager we finally got our dishes...without any rice. The food ended up not being too bad, but definitely not worth the lousy service and wait.
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| Green mango salad |
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| Fried prawns with mixed vegetables |
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| Stir fried chicken in a spicy Khmer style |
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| Stir fried fish with ginger |
After our disappointing lunch experience, we arrived a Prasat Beng Mealea. This Hindu temple is believed to have been constructed in the early 12th century by King Suryavarmam II. It is smaller than but is similar in design to Angkor Wat. Baley explained that some consider it a blueprint or trial run for the much larger and famous temple. The Beng Mealea Temple remains in its discovered state. It is still overgrown with jungle and large vines. Walking through the ruins gave me a better sense of what an early archaeologist would have seen when first exploring the temples at Angkor. In that way, the Prasat Beng Mealea was a more enjoyable experience than visiting Angkor Wat.
We did find a couple of large vines and got our inner-Tarzan on.
The ride back to Siem Reap took us about an hour. We arrived back at Siem Reap by mid afternoon--plenty of time to rest and start packing. We said our goodbyes to Baley and wished him and his family a merry Christmas.
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| This little piggy went to market... |
Since it was our last night in Siem Reap, we decided to walk around and check out the city. There were plenty of loud bars and restaurants catering to all the Western tourists. We decided to check out one of the night markets and hone up on some of our haggling skills.
After purchasing a couple of small, worthless trinkets, we went to the Pot and Pan Restaurant for dinner. The food was satisfying and inexpensive. Altogether, dinner along with four mango smoothies set us back only $27.
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| Lemongrass chicken skewers |
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| Lotus chicken curry |
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| Stir fried white mushroom |
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| Seafood stir fry with vegetables |
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| Fish with morning glory |
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| Khmer dessert (glutinous rice balls with mung bean paste) |
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