Cambodia

After spending a couple of days in our favorite part of Bangkok, eating at our favorite street stall and relaxing in a nice A/C room the time came to hop a plane to Cambodia.

The flight from Bangkok to Cambodia was short and painless, clocking in at a little over an hour. We arrived in Phnom Penh and got into a taxi and headed off to the little district of guest houses by the lake. The situation with the lake is very interesting. Apparently the lake has been sold to a company that is choosing to fill in the lake, presumably for building something on top of it. So, instead of having a nice brackish lake to look at, instead we had a great view of a giant pipe spewing muddy water and bulldozers. However, there were some definite highlights to the city. Compared to other cities, Phnom Penh is very clean, and the people do not drive like complete maniacs. Also, the automobiles there have the steering wheel on the left side of the car, like we have in the states, where as the rest of the countries we had been to, the steering wheel was on the right side. It is a small insignificant detail, but different that what we had become accustomed to.

While in Phnom Penh, we went to a large temple in the city center. The temple was very cool, and on top of a hill. All around the temple there were little macaques running around and people vending all sorts of goods from food to scarves. There was also an elephant that you could get take pictures with, or take a ride on. We also went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This was a very humbling experience. Tuol Sleng used to be a secondary school in Phnom Penh, but after the Khmer Rouge took over and completely evacuated the entire city, this school became a detention center known as S-21. The Khmer Rouge was a ruthless dictatorship in Cambodia that ruled from 1975-1979. For those of you familiar with the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, you will know about the photographs. Throughout the Museum there are photos of the people brought into detention center for interrogation. The photos are very eerie because you know that none of the survived. If they were brought to S-21, it was a veritable death sentence. The photos were of 3 year old kids all the way to 60+ year old men and women. Some of the people clearly had been beaten, and if they weren't mashed up, they had terrified looks on their faces. The "official" count of prisoners at S-21 was about 10,000 but the museum estimates that 20,000 people or more passed through and only 7 survived. This was a very sobering and grounding experience, but necessary to understand the recent history of Cambodia and the people's national psyche. After 2 days in Phnom Penh, it was time to head off to Angkor Wat.

For those of you who don't know, Angkor Wat is the 8th wonder of the world, though it should be the 1st because it is utterly amazing. The temples were built between the 8th and 13th century and display a variety of styles. The temples served as religious centers for both Buddhists and Hindus. Angkor Wat has both Buddha statues and large bas-reliefs that depict different Hindu stories.

Each day we went to see different temples, and rest assured we took hundreds of photos of our experiences there. On our first day we decided to do the Grand Tour. This is the route around the outside of the temples. We saw Banteay Kdei, Pre Rup, East Meabon and Ta Som. The first day we spent about 6 hours walking around and exploring the temples. One of the neat things about Angkor is that tourists are allowed to explore all over the temples. Only a few of them have "restricted" areas where you can not go. This increased our experience there because we had access to so many different parts of temples. You could touch the faces of the bas-reliefs on the walls and feel the texture of the carved pillars.

The second day we opted to wake up very, very early and go and watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat itself. The idea was romantic and cool, but the sun didn't really provide a very memorable rise. However, the same can not be said about Angkor Wat itself. This is the temple that the entire place is named for. Just to clarify, Angkor Wat is a specific temple, but the entire area is called Angkor Wat too. There are many different, separate temples all around the entire area. But I digress...So, Angkor Wat has these amazing spires that rise up, and a labyrinth of halls and rooms. The entire temple is surrounded by a gigantic moat and you walk along this amazing bridge to entire the temple. According to our little guide book, Angkor Wat is the largest religious temple in the world. Angkor also once housed a hall of a thousand Buddha's as well as the amazing bas-reliefs telling the Hindu stories. One thing that I found very interesting about Angkor was the fact that nearly every inch of the temple was adorned with some kind of carving or relief or something decorative, with the exceptions of the steps and most of the ceilings, Another highlight from the second day was Bayon. This is the style of temple that people (I think) typically associate with Angkor Wat. This temple has a bunch of different spires, and each spire has four giant faces carved into it. We were able to climb all the way to the top of this temple and walk around. This was one of the highlights for the our second day. As you drive up to the temple all you see are this giant faces everyhere, and when you get up to the actual temple, you see so much more detail too. Like Angkor, there are reliefs and carvings all over the temple and they are all shadowed by the giant beatifically smiling faces. I can say over and over again how amazing they were, but until you see them with your own eyes, no picture does them justice.

The last day of our trip in Angkor found us at Preah Kahn. This temple is a sort of experiment. The different groups in charge of maintaining and restoring Angkor have deemed Preah Kahn to be left in its original state after being discovered. Though they have done some work there, they have not done nearly as much as at any of the other temples. The roofs that have caved in are not being restored and the the trees growing within the temple are not being removed. For those of you who saw last months cover of National Geographic with the monk at Angkor, it was taken in Preah Kahn, and Jessie and I also got our photo taken there. What makes this temple so unique is the fact that it is not going to be restored. The caretakers have put up supporting beams in certain areas and very few tree have been taken out for safety purposes, but other than that this temple is still in the condition it was when it was discovered. One of the things that distinguishes this temple are the enormous trees growing on the walls and their roots pushing coming down. The picture of the monk on NatGeo truly characterizes what a lot of the trees are doing around the temple. All in all, this temple was in the top 3 experiences of all of Angkor Wat.

I could go on and on for days about Cambodia and Angkor, but it will have to wait for another blog, or another day. Right now we are in Ho Chi Min City aka Saigon and getting ready to hop a train to Danang. We will update again when we get the chance!