Our First Day in Cambodia

Just wanted to let you know that I'm back in Hong Kong. The second half of our trip got a little hectic and internet access was difficult. I'll try to catch up on our activities in Cambodia over the next few days.

We arrived safely in Cambodia Wednesday night.  From the minute we stepped off of the plane, I knew that I was going to like Siem Reap better than Hanoi.  You disembark from the plane in Siem Reap the same way that you do in Bermuda, down air steps.  The weather was finally warm.  Entering the actual airport terminal reminded me of the Polynesian in Disney World.

We did the visa on arrival again which I think took all of twenty minutes.  I guess with everything going digital, once they scan your passport they know everything about your background.  The customs officers were actually friendly and helpful.

Our hotel arranged for transportation from the airport, only a twenty minute ride.  I felt like I was driving along the Las Vegas strip.  There are hotels and spas everywhere.  They remind me of Mandalay Bay.  Of course, there aren’t nearly as many flashing lights, noisy traffic, or droves of people.  Our driver told us that in 1997, Airport Road was still an overgrown jungle.  All of the development has taken place in the last 15 years.  We even passed a Ford dealership, the first American dealership we’ve seen on this trip.

Our hotel is amazing.  It has a salt water swimming pool (the largest in Siem Reap according to the hotel brochure), a full spa, and several restaurants.  Our room is huge.  We each have our own full size bed rather than the roll away you get in most hotels.  The staff is incredibly friendly and helpful.  They all speak English to some degree - many of them very well.

The main reason for coming to Siem Reap is to visit the temples of the Angkor Archeological Park, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, slightly northwest of Siem Reap.  The Agkor Empire flourished between the 7th and 14th centuries stretching beyond what is now Cambodia into South Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.  Angkor was the imperial and spiritual capital of this vast empire.  The empire collapsed in the 14th century and the jungle consumed most of the temples.  They weren’t “re-discovered” until the mid 19th century by a French expedition.  Since then various countries have collaborated with the Khmers to strip back the jungle and re-claim the temples.  Unfortunately, much work was halted from 1973-1990 during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Thursday morning we set out to start exploring the temples.  The most popular mode of transportation in Cambodia is the tuk-tuk, a covered cart big enough to seat four people which is pulled by a motor bike. There were several tuk-tuks parked outside of our hotel so we hired a driver to take us out for the day.

Riding in a tuk-tuk is reminiscent of riding on the Tram Car on the Wildwood boardwalk, sans the annoying recording.  The ride was very pleasant, and even though it was already quite warm (I think it’s already in the upper 80s to low 90s here), the open air tuk-tuk is quite comfortable.

Our first stop was Angkor Wat, the greatest of the temples and the largest religious building in the world.  I don’t think that my description or the pictures can even begin to convey how magnificent and awe-inspiring the temples are.  We live in a society of sky scrapers and are bombarded with visual imagery.  It’s hard to imagine the impression that the temples would have conveyed to the average peasant worker who was living in a thatched hut and likely did not have access to paintings or statues in his own house. 

After seeing the temples, I can better understand the concept of a god-king. The top levels of the temples, which were only accessible to king and priests, are towering and imposing.  The only way to enter is by climbing a set of steep, narrow steps.  What better way for a king to keep control of his people than forced employment in a monumental public work project adorned with intricate carvings.

Mau, our tuk-tuk driver, dropped us off at the main entrance of Angkor Wat and waited for us outside while we went to explore.

Angkor Wat is surrounded by a 211-yard-wide moat which forms a rectangle measuring 0.9 miles by 0.8 miles.  There is a sandstone causeway that crosses the moat and leads you into the west gate of the outer wall.

The causeway continues, flanked on either side by library structures and reflecting pools, to the central temple complex. 

The central temple is also surrounded by another hall and a series of bas-relief galleries stretching approximately 888 yards around the temple.  Each panel tells a different story - some from Hindu mythology, others celebrate military victories of the Khmer empire.  Every inch of space is covered by intricate carvings.  Some of the reliefs have pieces cut away.  I presume that they were sold on the black market.

I was amazed that we were allowed to wander freely around the temple.  There were some areas that had newly constructed steps to make access easier for tourists and a few areas that were roped off as being unsafe, but for the most part, we could wander freely anywhere we wanted, climbing up narrow stair cases and through windows to get better views.  We started out trying to follow the story cycle of the reliefs but soon became overwhelmed by the sheer size of the temple and started wandering around the maze of galleries until we reached the central tower. 

The central tower is 183 feet tall and would have been accessible only to the king and his high priests. It is inside a small courtyard so the only way to view the tower is to look straight up.

Mau planned to take us to other temples in the afternoon so we started to make our way out of Angkor Wat.  On our way, we passed a man fumbling to try to take a picture of himself using the time delay on his camera.  Karen stopped to see if we could help him. He had just finished his mandatory three years of service in the Israeli military and was spending six months traveling through Southeast Asia before starting university.  He was telling us about his experience crossing into Cambodia via bus. The boarder guards charged him twice as much for his visa as we paid for ours.  I guess that there is corruption everywhere in the world.

When you leave the temples, you are immediately bombarded by people trying to sell you things.  Amazingly everything costs “one dollar.”  The children will break your heart.  Even when they are hounding you to buy their merchandise, they are sweet and polite. One little boy walked with us for quite awhile trying to sell us postcards - “ten for one dollar.”  He proceeded to count them out for us.  I think that he counted better than some American children his age.

Our next stop was Angkor Thom, the “Great City” built in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. The city would have supported a population of almost one million people at its height.  The complex is spread over an area of 6.2 square miles and is surrounded by a 24 foot high wall, .62 miles long on each side and a 100 yard wide moat.  The entire city is a representation of the Hindu universe.  The royal entourage from the king down to the priests and generals lived within the city walls while the commoners lived in wooden houses outside of the enclosure.

The first temple in Angkor Thom is the Bayon.  The most memorable thing about the Bayon is the enormous faces, 216 to be exact, on 54 Gothic style towers.  The faces are either representations of a Hindu bodhisattva (someone who uses his wisdom to help others to enlightenment) or the king himself. No matter where you go in the Bayon, there is a face watching you.  We decided to forego the bas reliefs on the lower levels and climb all the way to the top sanctuary.

Next stop - the Baphuon.  Restoration began on this temple in the 1960s using a technique called anastylosis whereby the entire structure is disassembled and then rebuilt. Work stopped when the Khmer Rouge came into power and all of the plans and records were destroyed.  As we walked down the causeway to the main temple, the pools on either side were filled with numbered stones.  Work resumed in 1995, and while they have made significant progress, there is still quite a lot of work to be done.  It was interesting to watch the workers at the site.

We took a short walk through the jungle to the site of the Royal Palace.  The only thing that remains is the Phimeanaka, or “celestial palace.”  Wooden stairs have been built over top of the original stone steps to aid tourists in climbing to the top.  The wooden steps were like using the steps on a navy ship.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine climbing the originals.  Of course, we climbed all the way to the top (a growing trend in our temple tours).

From there, we walked along the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King.  The Terrace of the Elephants was originally used as a giant viewing stand for the king to inspect his troops as they marched into Angkor Thom.  The terrace was named for cared elephants which for the life of me I wasn’t able to locate.  I later found pictures of them on a postcard and thankfully we drove through Angkor Thom again later in the week so I was able to see them.

The original plan was to stay out until sunset, but by the time we finished at Angkor Thom we were exhausted.  We asked Mau to take us back to the hotel.  We found a grocery store right across the street from our hotel and we stopped in to pick up some much needed water and afternoon snacks.

At 4:00 Mau picked us up to head out to Phnom Wat Bakheng to watch the sunset over Tonle Sap Lake.  Wat Bakheng was the first temple-mountain constructed in the late 9th century.  I was hoping to take an elephant ride up the hill, but we didn’t think that all three of us could fit on one elephant so we decided to walk up the jungle path instead.  At the base of the hill, there was a group of musicians who were victims of landmine explosions playing traditional Khmer music.

The climb to the top of Wat Bakheng is unreal.  The steps are so narrow that even the width of my foot wouldn’t completely fit on a step.  The ascent is nearly straight up.

Watching the sunset from Wat Bakheng is like watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. People come out in droves, and once you stake your claim on a place from where to watch, you need to be ready to defend it or you’ll get jostled out of the way.  The scene is almost comical - tripods everywhere, cameras pointed towards the lake frantically snapping pictures of the sun’s decent.  Just as the sun was getting low enough in the sky that we would hopefully see some color, it hit the haze of the humidity and disappeared, so sunset was sort of a bust.  It was still fun to climb to the top of the temple, although getting down was a challenge.

After sunset, Mau took us back to the hotel and then it was out to dinner at Sugar Palm, where we ordered coconut soup with chicken (you actually serve this over rice rather than eating it out of a bowl), a minced pork dip that you eat with raw vegetables, and steamed fish with ginger.  I have decided that of all the different cuisines I have tried while traveling over here, Khmer cuisine is my favorite.  They use a lot of coconut milk in their recipes so it has a nice sweet taste.  By the time dinner was over, we were all practically falling asleep at the table, so it was straight back to the hotel for an “early” night.